In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Thrillers have many key conventions in order to fit in to the genre, these are things like:

 
To widen my knowledge of the conventions used in thrillers (especially the ones similar to how I would like mine) I watched the beginnings to a few films. The film that interested me the most was ‘When A Stranger Calls’. We studied these conventions ant tried to use them at all opportunities.

In our thriller opening we aimed to hook our audience from the word go. This is vital in a thriller so we aimed to creating tension within the allotted two minutes. Inside these two minutes we also had to find a way of putting the film titles in, in a way that added to the thriller, not distract the audience away from the tension and suspense. The opening is vital to the rest of the film as it will either entice the audience to keep watching or it can put them off and they may not choose to watch much of it, ways in which we managed to make our thriller interesting was with the use of interesting camera shots. We used a range of camera shots including close ups (to add tension and show emotion on faces). We used various shots including close-ups, pans and long shots in order to fit in with the conventions. We used pans in order to show the location to the audience. We filmed in a gloomy bunker in order to set the mise-en-scene. We developed on this convention by using an open field as our second location. This suggests vulnerability, as the field is open and bare. This allows the audience to connote that the victims are in a vulnerable situation.

(From Our Thriller Opening)

(From ‘When A Stranger Calls’) 

With our editing we used quick transitions in order to create tension and a feeling of suspense. In all only our titles were the only clip that was longer than 2 seconds. We did this in order to leave the audience with a feeling of mystery and confusion; this is a convention in many thrillers, using inspiration from Disturbia (2007) and When A Strange Calls (2006).

Sound is important also. This includes the use of sound effects, diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. We used the sound of a ticking clock; we thought this suggests progression of time, and a loss of any idea of time or location. This will leave the audience on edge, as they will be unsettled. We decided to mute all of the diegetic sound throughout our thriller. This was because we deemed it would fit in with the conventions to use only non-diegetic sounds in order to build more tension. We chose music with gradual crescendo in order to get peaks in our tension. We used the use of sound as a big way of increasing the tension and a way of hopefully involving the audience more. These would be included to up the suspense and tension throughout our two-minute opening. The Mise-en-scene of the opening is also vital in order to hook our audience in. We filmed in gloomy environments to show fear, our props were things like ropes and are associated to things like fear and crime when mixed with the setting we chose. We used the cigarette as a big prop throughout our opening, to show routine and give our villain a more thorough and intelligent way of committing his crime, rather than something that had no thought and effort involved.

In the opening to ‘When A Stranger Calls’ it uses very little diegetic sound. There is a sinister backing track playing in the background leaving the audience with a sense of anticipation as the opening progresses. The shots used are quick. This is in order to build tension and an element of suspense, quick camera shots shot lots of emotion, different locations and different things happening in a short space of time. There is a happy medium hit between it being too quick and the amount of information that is given been show to the audience. There are a few long pans showing location to the audience but after these the shots are quick and mainly Mid-shot to Extreme-close-up. Using close ups and mid shots means that the audience can see lots of emotion on the faces of the actors, this allows them to connect with them. Also close ups can be used as a way to give a feeling of claustrophobia. This allows the audience to infer that the film will have a fast tempo to it. The fairground sets the Mise-en-scene throughout the opening. This implies fun is being had, however this is a contrast to the sound and the pace of the shots. This will hook the audience as they will be confused as to what is going on, there will be a sense of mystery as to why such sinister sounds and quick tempo building shots are used over the image of something so innocent.

It is not unheard of however for directors to ignore the conventions and go off on a route of their own in order to make an attractive thriller. A Clockwork Orange (1971) is a perfect example of this. Director Stanley Kubrick seemed to make a thriller filled with satirical humour. Making an almost fantasy world to draw the audience in it was a unique viewing experience and still is now, and as one of the biggest cult films of all times it shows that it doesn’t always pay off to stick to every convention. Many thrillers seem to stick as close to the realms of reality as possible in order to allow the audience to relate to it in a frightening way, or an exciting way however in A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick did quite the opposite, allowing the audience to be invited into this fantasy world if you like, thus enthralling the audience and trapping them into watching the film by sticking to none of the conventions

I tried to challenge the usual thrillers by allowing the audience most of the information. Usually the villain is hidden away from the audience and the mystery is unravelled at the end in order to bring the production to a resolution, however my media production is shown from the perspective of the villain, unusual as it is usually shown from the side of the hero or heroine. I thought this added a certain sinister spin onto our thriller. It doesn’t allow the audience to connect with the villain however it heightens the emotional response that the audience will have with our damsels in distress. The use of damsels in distress is another example of stereotypes in our thriller. 

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our media production we try to present a range of social groups. These include middle and upper class, Our main character is dressed in the ways that a typical villain would have been dressed. By this I mean he is in rough clothing, not very presentable in the sense that if you saw him out and about in clothes covered in blood and with a parka coat done up you’d think something was very wrong with him or he was taking part in some illegal acts. We also went for shots such as over shoulder shots in order to attempt to conceal the identity of our villain. We also avoided close ups on the villain. This was in order to hit as many different types of social groups as possible. We did this in order not to stray too far away from stereotypes, as it is important that the audience understood the roles of characters in the allocated two minutes. However we did try and add an intelligent edge to our main character by showing his planning and plotting. Inspiration for this was taken from TV dramas such as Criminal Minds and CSI. We felt this was important to represent a more upper/ middleclass victim. This allows more people to be able to relate to our character.

(Showing our villains costume choice to represent certain social groups)

 (Our victim plotting his kidnappings on a map, showing a more intelligent side to our villain rather than just a brutal and unsophisticated person representing a more middle class social group)

For our victims we chose younger girls, this was to give a sense of vulnerability. This also widens our target audience as it allows younger children (15-18) to make an emotional connection with our victims. We used plenty of close ups in order to show age, gender and ethnicity. 

(Showing our victims, normal clothes, but of a young age, representing a young and vulnerable social group)

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We used the BBFC guidelines in order to work out the age group that would be suitable for our media product. We also did this before we did our shoot so that we could have the biggest audience as possible. We didn’t want to include anything that would push our thriller up to be an 18 rated rather than a 15 as then it would limit our target audience. We also used similar films and looked at the type of audience they had attracted. The content of the film makes it a 15 as it fits in with the guideline of; ‘Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualized’. We do have the strong threat element however none of it is directly sexualized. However looking at the 12A guidelines our thriller may also fit in that as the guideline for Horror is 'Moderate physical and psychological threat may be permitted, provided disturbing sequences are not frequent or sustaine’. This gave us more freedom with editing and shooting as it meant we had a bit of leeway with getting into the 15 guideline.

 Alongside the research into the BBFC and other films like our media product, we sent out an audience questionnaire in order to see what type of thriller and what aspects of a thriller they looked for. We tried to include as many aspects that the audience we keen on as possible in order to widen our target audience. We asked questions about the types of thriller that they liked, and The questions on our questionnaire that helped us most to specify our target audience were;

Age range;

Opening preferences;

These two questions gave us the guidelines to our thriller, we had to make it within the 15 age rating and go for a more subtle psychological thriller rather than something big and bold. To fit within this rating we had to fit within the BBFC’s guidelines. This was reasonably easy as we had no intentions of showing any drug taking, we did show smoking, however we did not promote the idea of smoking so it fits into the BBFC guidelines. Also there is no violence shown, it is all implied and to fit in with the BBFC’s guidelines dangerous behavior has to be shown not dwelled on.

We decided that our most likely target audience was between 15 and 30. It may attract people older that 30 however we believe that our main audience will be within the ages I earlier specified. These could also be from any ethnic background so long as the person themselves enjoyed the thriller genre as a whole.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our media product wouldn’t appeal to such companies as Disney or Universal studies but rather a lesser known company willing to take risks with films it publishes. The media institution I think that we would show and would then distribute our media product would be Screen Gems. Screen Gems are a subsidiary company off Sony Pictures Entertainment and Columbia Tri Star Motion Pictures Group whom are the parent companies of Screen Gems. It allows for different films to be produced without the parent companies risking it on lower budget, more quirky films.

Screen Gems pride themselves as a distributor that produces and releases "films that fall between the wide-release movies traditionally developed and distributed by Columbia Pictures and those released by Sony Pictures Classics.” It also goes on to pride itself on releasing mainly Horror, Thriller and Comedy making it perfect for our hybrid genre of a Horror/Thriller.

Its previous films include Underworld, and all of the follow ups to it, Resident Evil, and again all of the sequels to the film but most importantly the film we based our thriller around, When A Stranger Calls. The film is based more around the idea of a clever killer. He plots out the movement of the victim to make sure that everything goes his way when it comes down to it. We took this in mind when we produced our media to make our killer more intellectual and more interesting on a whole. For these reasons I think Screen Gems would be interested in producing our media product.

This is a Wordle with some key words about linking in to they type of companies that would be interested in our media production.

How did you attract/ address your audience?

We posted our media product on Facebook and Youtube in order to try and attract some attention from our audience. We received comments saying it was ‘better than any of last years’ on Facebook. Also just from people seeing it in lessons we received some important feedback about how the sound was well timed with the production. This was not fantastic feedback so we also did some audience feedback videos in order to obtain some more factual and accurate feedback.

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<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/?version=3&feature=player_embedded"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/?version=3&feature=player_embedded" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object>

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt about a few different types of technology throughout my experience shooting, editing and publishing my media product. These include;

 I used blogger to keep record of all the research I did into the thriller genre and the planning before the shoot. I also posted various techniques I learnt about shooting as well, including the 180degree rule and the various different shots and what to do to enhance my thriller. This was useful as it was effectively a virtual folder I could go back and look at it whenever it was necessary. I also learnt about using iMovie, as a piece of technology I never knew existed till about four months ago I learnt all the editing tools and effects to make sure that my media product was up to the standard that I wanted. Youtube and Facebook were also technologies I learnt about throughout my media production. These were both vital in making sure that my product got across to my target audience. We could then use the comments as the audience feedback too. Then iDVD was used to publish my media product. I learnt some things about shooting as well, like how to use the camera and tripod in order to get the most effective shots to get the desired effect.

Lighting was a problem that we overcame throughout our shoot, we were filming inside an abandoned airbase so it was extremely dark, using iMovie I tweaked with the footage in order to give the illusion of there being more light than we actually had.

iMovie was the technology I learnt the most about. I learnt about making the footage look effective when they are edited together using certain transitions when they were needed, speeding up clips to give the effect of time flying much quicker. I also learnt  about putting non diegetic sounds into our media production and how to cut the sound up so that it fitted in almost seamlessly with my media product. I developed my skills with iMovie specifically with the use of clever transitions. I found myself using a range of various shot transitions as my skills on iMovie developed in order to make my footage more effective. These include shooting my own transitions of black footage as I could not have the fade to black come in quickly enough to give the required effect that I wanted with my footage and media production.

We found when we got back from our shoot that we may not have had enough footage to make a good media product, however using iMovie I made shorter clips out of bits of footage that would have otherwise been useless in order to make my media product much more effective.

(iMovie open, and the iMovie and iDVD icons on the toolbar)

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back at our preliminary task I think I have learnt so much. Being a novice to all of the equipment in our preliminary task our footage was not of the best quality. Just being out with the camera I was much more aware of what shots I wanted to produce. Our planning was much better so we had storyboards showing all of the shots we wanted before we went out there to do it so it was much more organized. Instead of going out with a camera and making up footage we went out with ideas already in our heads, which made obtaining the footage much simpler and quicker. Also we were aware of the amount of footage that we had to obtain, even though the finished product would only be two minutes long we were aware that we would need at least three takes of every shot so we could pick and choose what footage to use. In the end we ended up with almost 40 minutes of footage to pick and choose from for a two-minute opening so we had many options of what to put in and what not to put in. I tried to put in a larger number of shots in the media production to really show off my ability with the camera and this did not occur to me in the preliminary task. In the preliminary task we hade very little footage and found it hard to make a convincing media product, however as my skills progressed we included much more effective shots and also took the shots more times in order to ensure that we would have all the footage that we needed. This was not something that occurred to us to do in the preliminary task. This shows how our skills have developed.

When it got to our editing you could see the difference. I was much more professional, putting in much less childish transitions and letting the footage do the work rather than putting in transitions and slowing down the footage. We needed to include less transitions in our media product as we wanted quick sharp footage, and with a fade to black rather than either a cut straight to black of more footage straight after it would have slowed the footage down, loosing lots of the tension that we had previously built up. Also the shots are much more flowing, allowing the audience to staying interested rather than drifting away because it was either too confusing, or much too slow. I went with a much choppier editing style in order to keep the audience hooked. This progressed from out preliminary task as we used some awful transitions that make the footage look comical rather than serious. We worked out that it is better to use many different types of shot rather than a few shots as not only does it show off our ability, it also shows location and mise-en-scene. We developed our editing skills massively from the preliminary task in this respect.

With our planning, we had specific storyboards so we wasted no time on our shoots. These were not something that we did at all on our preliminary task. We also did extensive research into different locations for the shoot in order to give our footage the most realistic feeling that we could obtain. When filming our preliminary task this was something that we didn’t have to take into consideration. We developed our organization and planning skills massively from our preliminary task.

We had to deal with various problems throughout our shooting also. We had the problem of the lighting that was solved by editing the footage on the Mac. We also found it hard to stick to the 180degree rule as we were compromised by space as to where the camera had to go, however we changed certain shots in order to make sure we stuck to it. Finally we also struggled with getting the footage because of natural light. Our locations from the outskirts of Bourne to just outside Grantham was a 35 minute car drive and obviously getting everyone down there, props and also doing it in times where we had light was a challenge, however we all gave up our free time in order to make sure we obtained the footage that we required.

Making sure that the music that we had chosen fit in with how quick our footage was also proved to be difficult, it took hours of editing it on iMovie and GarageBand to make sure that it gave a tense effect and also ran with the footage so it would crescendo when the footage was at its most tense.