For our media product, an opening of a thriller film, our main character is an adult male with a hidden identity. We used an adult male as this is conventional in thriller films such as Die Hard and The Dark Knight. The majority of thriller films have a male antagonist or a group of males for an antagonist so we used this convention in our media. In a thriller film, the antagonist usually does not hide their identity and if they did, their identity would be revealed in the end. Our male antagonist's identity is hidden and his identity would be revealed at the end of the film so we have used this convention.
We challenged the conventions of a thriller film by filming in a woodland area. In general, the setting of a thriller film is usually in a town or city with many people and buildings around. We filmed ours in a woodland area where no other people were around which adds to the creepiness of the film.
Another thriller film convention we have used is our film titles. The font we have used is small and italic and we made the font white with a glowing outer colour which is red. These colours represent the contrast between good and evil. The good in our film opening is the young girls and the evil is the antagonist of the film, Nicholas Stone. The red in the font also represents the blood involved in the film. The background for our titles is a plain, black background and this continues to create a creepy feel to our titles and uses the thriller film conventions. Our titles fade in and out which is another convention of a thriller film. At the start of many thriller films such as 'Red Dragon', the titles also fade in and out like ours do.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The victims in our film are two young, white, primary school girls from a C1/C2 social class. This is unconventional in a thriller film because the protagonists are normally adults or young couples. Having the girls so young makes the audience wonder why the antagonist of our film is targeting such young people. The girls are holding a teddy bear which shows them as pure, innocent characters and this contrasts with the antagonist who has dangerous qualities and is seen as evil.
The film then fast forwards to the future when the girls have grown up and are now teenagers. Having the antagonist of the film targeting teenage girls continues to challenge the conventions of a thriller film because the conventional victims in a thriller film do not tend to be that young. The antagonist is a male, but the audience do not know what social group he belongs too because his identity is hidden. If the film continued, they would find out that the antagonist is an adult male and he would be a qualified doctor who is of a working class.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
A British media institution such as Warp Films may distribute our media product because they have released films such as Four Lions and television series' such as the well known This Is England. Our film would be a small independent film and if it was completed and it was not just the opening, it would be a short film therefore Warp Films would be the ideal studio to distribute it.
Another studio that may distribute our film could be Sony Pictures. They have released many successful thriller films such as 'Resident Evil', 'Ghost Rider' and 'Casino Royale'. Sony Pictures would release a typical thriller film such as our film 'The Vision' so Sony would also be an ideal studio to distribute our film.
Warp Films and Sony Pictures would distribute our film because it is not like the usual thriller film. The two main characters are females which is unconventional in a thriller film, so this would attract a female audience to the film. Females would usually be attracted to romantic comedies so having females wanting to watch a thriller film would widen the demographic of the film. These studios would be unique for distributing a thriller film that would attract females as well as the stereotypical males.
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
We rated our film as a 15 certificate and this is because it does not contain any bad language, relation to drugs, no sex references and no extreme violence. Mild violence is included therefore our film rating could not be any lower than a 15 certificate. Stereotypically, males would be the audience for our film because they tend to prefer action packed, thriller and horror films whereas females tend to prefer romantic comedies. However, because the main characters are females, more females would be attracted to the film, therefore both genders would want to watch our film. The audience would have to be over fifteen years old due to the rating we have given it and they would be of any ethnicity and social class as long as they have the technology to be able to see the advertisements for the film and the technology to be able to watch the final film.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
We have attracted our audience by challenging the conventions of a typical thriller film. Our characters are young girls which will attract the audience because they will want to continue to see what happens to the girls and why. They will want to watch it because it is an unconventional thriller film and they will want to see how it turns out.
The music behind our titles is a slow tempo, incidental/non diegetic, eerie track which is a convention of a thriller film. This will attract the audience because they will be able to tell by the titles we have used that our film is a thriller and that the storyline is going to involve something mysterious because of the music that backs up the text.
If we were advertising our film for the cinema, we would advertise our product through viral marketing. We would put a trailer on websites such as iTunes and YouTube which will give the audience an idea of what our film is about and we would also make a Facebook page promoting the film. Online games could be created which would involve aspects of our film and pop ups could also be created to allow online audiences to see our new, upcoming film.
We would use traditional marketing and create posters to show the audience our film and create radio adverts and television adverts to promote the film and engage the audiences attention. Adverts would be put into magazines and newspapers and merchandise such as t-shirts and pens promoting the film could be made.
We would drip feed our film to audiences and if the film became popular to the audience we would have a movie premiere/red carpet event where all of the characters/cast from our film will attend and television companies such as BBC would interview the cast and promote the film further on their television shows. This would widen the demographic and as a result our film would be more popular and probably be more successful.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
From constructing our media film we have learnt about many technologies.
To film our media product we used a Sony HD touchscreen camera (10 ati). We learnt how to record shots effectively and how to transfer the footage we filmed onto the Apple Macs. To edit our footage and create the opening of our film we used Adobe Premiere Pro. Adobe Premiere Pro has allowed us to cut down our footage to the bits we need and piece them together to make an effective sequence and a seamless edit.
When using the Sony HD cameras, we found that we could not get the camera positioned correctly when we arrived at our film location and as a result we had to take some of the shots out of our storyboard that we were previously going to use and change them. We did a variety of camera angles and shots that we thought would be effective and pieced them all together on Adobe Premiere Pro.
We were able to create a title sequence on Adobe Premiere Pro. We used red and white text and an italic, small font for our titles and we put a fade in and out on each clip to create a seamless edit and to use a thriller film convention.
We have been able to put effects onto our film opening such as dissolves to show a change in time and we have also been able to add incidental music onto our film opening.
We used many effects on our film such as colour corrector. For the dream scenes in the film, we changed the colour of the footage to sepia to give it an old, newspaper effect. For the scenes where the main characters are asleep and dreaming, we changed the colour of the shots to black and white to show the audience that it was in the past but not the same scenes as the dream. The black and white effect give the clips an old effect so the audience are aware that it is not filmed in present tense. For the footage that shows the main, older characters, we have kept the clips the colour they were originally to show that this part of the film is filmed in the present.
Another effect we have put onto our film is the spilt screen. The spilt screen shows both of the young girls sleeping, dreaming and waking up at the same time. This allows the audience to see that the girls have a connection and this is shown again when they both meet at the end of the opening.
Another edit we used on Adobe Premiere Pro is the speed and duration of the clips. For some of our clips we have changed the speed/duration to create effect or to simply make the clips fit together. On one of our clips we had to increase the speed of the clip to ensure that it fit with the clip that followed it. For the blood clip and the clip where the girls bump into each other at the end of the opening, the speed was slowed down to create a slow motion effect which creates impact and tension for the audience.
Me and Charlotte also used Garageband to create some music and sound effects for our film but unfortunately did not use them because they did not fit properly into the sequence. Instead, we went on Incompetech and chose some soundtracks off there that would fit into our film.
We have been using BlogSpot to blog all of our work onto the Internet and we have learnt how to edit our blogs design so it is clear to read and how to add, edit and delete posts.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When filming our preliminary task, we were made aware of what the 180-degree rule was and how it should be obeyed. From filming our preliminary task, we automatically knew that we should abide to this rule when filming our film opening. If we captured some footage and the 180-degree rule was broken, we would film the footage again and correct it.
We were also made aware of the eye line match. This is where two characters look at each other and the camera is at an angle which shows a match in the characters eye line. We knew how to film an eye line match effectively due to previously filming an eye line match in our preliminary task. We learnt how to work the Sony HD cameras when we used them for our preliminary task so we automatically knew how to use them properly when filming our film opening. We used a tripod to ensure that our clips were clear and steady when we were filming our shots (unless the shot was hand held) and from our previous experience with tripods and cameras we knew how to get the spirit level correct to make sure that our footage was not titled or blurred.
We have also co-operated well in a group and we allocated roles for each team member and stuck to them to ensure that our planning, filming and editing was completed correctly.
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