Evaluation

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

In our thriller we use some of the conventions used in read media products. We firstly have the crime, which is the main theme of our thriller, and it is the murder of Karishma and Tobi. We also have the villain and the innocent people, as real life media products include as well. However in our thriller we do ont really have a "whodunit" theme, as we make it clear from the beginning exactly who the murderer is. Therefore we do not have clues as to who it was, and they do not have to work it out themself, and this is something that other media products do include.
We leave the ending on a cliffhanger, the audience have probably already discovered what he is going to do, but we leave it as a "will he, wont he" cliffhanger. He is about to go and do anpother murder, however we do not show this, we just show him preparing himself for it. The music we use is tense and creates tension and suspence.

2. How does your media product represent particular media groups?

We represent teenagers in our thriller. All of our characters are teenagers and we use one of them as the murderer. This is also stereotypical, as it is suggesting that all teenagers, are involved in gangs and knife/gun crime. We have three typical teengaer girls, who are all friends, and two teenage boys where one wants to get rid of the other one, so he can get with his girlfriend. We focus a lot on teenage life, and how their life is portrayed.

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

Warner Brothers may want to distribute our film as it is a thriller, and they distributed Alfred Hitchcocks films, who was well known for making thrillers.

4. Who will be the audience for your media product?

We have decided that the target audience for our thriller is teenager from the age of about 15 and above. This is because the characters are teenagers, so they can relate to the social realism that we have attempeted in our thriller. It can also be watched by adults as well as teenagers, however the main target audience is teenagers.

5. How did you attract / address your audience?

To attract our audience we used tense music that created alot of tension and made the audience want to know what was going to happen. We also also see the victims, with the murderer following them, this requires the audience to use their imagination as to what could happen. They will then be interested in watching our thriller to see what the actual outcome was.

6. What have you leant about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

From doing this project I have learned exactly how to film using a camera, and how to edit footage that we film. I have learned how to edit using apple mac, and how to cut out scenes, add transitions, effects and music. All in all I have learned alot about the technology of filming and editing in media.

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

We have improved so much since our preliminary exercise. The footage we produced is alot more complex than opur preliminary exercise was. Our camera techniques have also improved, for example our camera is now more steady than it was in the preliminary exercise. I have also learned alot about editing, and including transitions and music to make our thriller look alot more professional. I now know a lot more about different camera techniques, such as jump-cuts and panning shots, and now understand how to use these in my thriller and why they are useful, and how they change a mood, and ouline emotion of certain characters. However during the preliminary exercise I did not really know a lot about this side of the media filming.

Storyboard

We changed or storyboard when we started filming. We took out two scenes that were on our storyboard and decided that we didn’t need these in our thriller as it would make it too complex and take up too much time. Therefore we took out the two scenes that had the least relevance to our thriller and did not film these. Our original storyboard is now no longer the same as what we have filmed for our thriller. However for the rest of the scenes we have followed our storyboard.

Shot distances.
We used a mixture of all different shot distances throughout our thriller. For example when we wanted to show a lot of emotion from one character, we used a long shot to show their whole body language, and this told the audience how they felt. If we used a close up this was also to emphasise a certain emotion of a character.

Shooting appropriate material.
Before we actually started filming we made sure everyone knew exactly what they was doing and when they needed to do it. We also made sure that everyone had an understanding of exactly was going to be in each frame. The opening scene is of me Karishma and Tobi all walking into the fair, with Edwin following us. This for one, introduces the characters, it also sets the scene of where we are and the mood we are in. And it also asks the question straight away; “why is Edwin following us?” We then show us actually in the fair, and Edwin is still chasing us. Later on we show Karishma and Tobi going on a ride and Edwin follows them on to it. However only Edwin comes of, this is to outline their murder. Then we show their funeral scene and how Ian is in the way of Edwin getting “close” to me. It then goes to Edwin’s house and we show him with a knife, showing that he is now ready to kill Ian as well.

Editing, transitions and effects.
We use mainly straight cuts and jump cuts, as this is more natural. However thrillers are not calm, so we want ours to be catching as create tension as well. The editing is at a set pace as this helps us create suspense and keep the audience interested. We also use cross dissolve and fading transitions between some shots to show how moods change as well as the setting does. We also used rain affect on the funeral scene, to show that it was a dull and unhappy day.
Mise-en-scene.The murderer wears black and gray to show a dull, mysterious, suspicious character. I wear black at the funeral as this connotes death and grief. However at the funfair scene I am wearing a more colourful top to show I still have life.
Mostly everything in our frame was there for a reason. For example the graves at the graveyard, to symbolise the fact that two people have died, I am at their funeral and am grieving over their death.

Using sound with images.
The only sound we have is music. This is put over all the natural sound, so we can no longer hear the natural sound of talking and cars ect. This music is a heartbeat that gets faster and gains more beat as it goes on. This is to build up tension and create suspense. We introduce our characters and the scene starts of with a slow, steady heartbeat. As we reach the climax of our thriller the music gets faster, then as we reach the end, and predict what will happen it gets slower again.

Steady shots, and framing a shot

Keeping a steady shot

It wasnt too bad to keep a steady shot while filming. This is because if we needed too we could use a tripod in order to keep the shot still and steady. At first if our hands were a bit unsteady then we just kept practicing keeping a steady shot, and it time it got better and more balanced.

Framing a shot

We had already planned before we started filming exactly what we wanted in each frame. We had decided what shots we were going to use, and when we was going to use them. For example using a panning shot to set the scene and show where we are. Also when we was going to use close ups to show the characters expressions or mood. We want to keep the audience interested so we used many different frames for different shots.

Planning

Planning

Research – Target audience
Our target audience was mainly teenager, as it was based about teenagers. However adults could also watch it as well. Our research was mainly based on our peer group. And we done our research by doing a questionnaire, asking what films they enjoy watching, and what they expect to see in a thriller. We considered teenagers and their behaviour while planning our thriller.

Change of plan

We have decided we are no longer going to film the Burger King scene and the trainstation scene. This is becasue firstly, we have run out of time to film and still need to edit. And secondly we already have enough footage to use for our thriller.

Props and Filming

During the Easter holidays we forgot our equipment; therefore we couldn’t do any filming during the Easter holidays. However this worked well for us as it was hot and sunny during the Easter holidays and we needed it to be dull and raining when we done our filming in the cemetery. Therefore when we went back to school and the whether was raining we done our filming in the cemetery. Filming the funfair scene we needed and extra person to help us direct. We already had five characters in our thriller, which all needed to be filmed. So Alma Futu came with us why we filmed this scene to help us direct what we were doing.

The props we used included; knife, clothes/costume, and a black jacket. The knife was used for Edwin to hold to show that he was going to kill Karishma and Tobi. We thought a lot about our costume and what we were going to wear for each scene. For example for the funeral scene I was wearing black as this can be used to symbolise dark/murder/mysterious/death. And also because people wear black at funerals. Te black jacket was used to represent the villain and the murderer.

We all contributed to the work as a group. We all met up and decided on what we wanted to film, how we was going to film it and also costumes. We all came up with ideas and said what we thought would work well, and what we thought wouldn’t work well. Then we all decided how we wanted our thriller to look and what we wanted to include in it. We followed by our storyboard, apart from two scenes which we decided to take out. We took them out because there was too many scenes and they were too complex for our thriller. It also took up too much time as we already had enough footage.