Thriller Opening Scene Evaluation

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

Throughout our opening scene the sequence tends to follow familiar conventions that will be seen in most of the thriller films that are being produce today. One convention that we have used which is often found at the start of any new scene is an establishing shot will engage and tell our audience where and when the action is taking place.  I believe that we had created a narrative that creates a mysterious atmosphere which also keeps the audience in suspense after the establishing shot which is fitting with the thriller genre. I believe we created this unique atmosphere by showing all characters in the room or just outside at the start but then having one sent down seeming so innocent that the audience automatically knows that something is about to happen and we have incorporated typical conventions into the sequence that lets the audience knows that something is about to happen such as the use of diegetic sounds like the footsteps and creaking doors but also non-diegetic sounds such as the mysterious music. One film which taught us that the use of sound as a convention in a film is such an important thing is "Inception" which use sound extremely well to create suspense, drama and mystery which are vital components in a thriller film. One way in which i believe that we have challenged conventions is the use of a character. In so many thriller films, often the character when confronted with a noise, they often appear clueless to where it is coming from or often ignore it if they are in a typical dark spooky location just to avoid any chance of confrontation and we have challenged this by making our character go to that specific location where the noise came from because we know that people our age, in the back of their head know that nothing is there but just to be sure and get that thought out of your head go and check it out.

2. How does you media product represent particular social groups?

Media often portrays and separates boys that are our age in to two groups, those being "jocks" and "geeks" but we felt that this was best to get rid of in our film, particularly  because its genre is thriller as "jocks" would stereotypically be to dumb to handle the situation where as "geeks" would find it more physically demanding. One other reason why we thought that is was best to scrap these to social groups is because in reality the majority of people fit into the group that's not "geeky" but as well not popular and this social group is so effective as we have seen it being used in the successful "Inbetweeners" which i believe was so successful because it really appealed to a larger audience and represented that age group as how it really is in society and not use stereotypes. The way in which we represent this social group is from the start of the sequence where the establishing shot shows the characters playing video games, drinking and just having a good time which is quite normal in society as defiantly not many boys this age (16-17) are out stabbing people and getting into trouble as so many forms of media show.

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

I believe that this film will have a high amount of viewers but will not be a box office smash hit. The main reason why i believe that the film would not be a huge box office film is because the whole film is representing a social group from England and from all over the world people have different views on how young adults should live there life and maybe find it strange how this age group is presented but also the age group and gender also restrict the amount of viewers because our target audience is primarily for 15-35 year olds. From taking that into account and also realising that the sequence shows the use of typical conventions which make for easier viewing as they don't challenge the audience, a production company such as film4 would most likely be used for this film as it only really appeals to the British audience but is well respected and has a lot of good films that it has been involved with.

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

Our target audience for our film are 15-35 year olds, primarily male gender who have enjoyed thriller films such as "Disturbia" which shows how younger people address the situations that they are presented with but also has a softer side to it not meaning that love is involved in our film but that it is not 100% serious all the time. We made it very clear in the opening frame of the sequence that this is our target audience by showing the room full of boys doing what boys normally do which is not often shown in that many media productions.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

The certificate for our film would be a 15 which attracts our audience as if it was a 12 and people saw the trailer with a load of 16 year old boys in it they most likely would have been put off by it but by making it a 15 this tells the audience that the film will not really take into account the age of the characters and build the film around that but will just make a good thriller film regardless of the age of these characters.

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

One thing i learnt was the amount of editing that can be done to a piece of work. The reason i learnt this was because at the beginning of us editing our work our whole sequence didn't really make sense due to a number of thing such as poor lighting of bad angles but by editing certain thing, such as changing the contrast of frames and adding certain effects to them our sequence soon started to fit into place. I also learnt that when filming you can never have too much light as many of our shots that looked fine on the video camera didn't come out clear on the Mac and even though we had main lights on we discovered that the camera cannot film if light is not directly on that object you are filming and unfortunately this was one of the films that cannot be achieved to its maximum potential from the technology we used. Finally i have learnt that as sound is such a important component to any film there are specific programs that are designed to help achieve what you are aiming for and these programs have taught me about the importance of sound. Overall technology defiantly made me more creative with our film as it enabled me to try our new things and find the best ways to make this product.

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

I have mainly learnt that even if one frame doesn't switch over to the next smoothly then that can ruin and take away the whole atmosphere of your sequence and in the preliminary task which was all about continuity and the importance of making the scene run smoothly and make sense to the audience it really makes you understand and learn how hard it is from filming yourself  and how you need each frame in the right spot with the right angle and from this task it has helped me progress in the basics of making a media product such as filming.