Evaluation (Andy)

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

Our media product incorporates generic conventions such as lighting and the relation to tense build ups. We achieved the certain lighting by placing our shots underneath lampposts places in the street. This would much easier than using our own artificial lighting sources. We did have to use a flashlight for two of the shots though as the scene was visible but just not right to fit with the generic conventions of a thriller. The suspense of a thriller was achieved by using a soundtrack which built up with an increasing texture as the track progressed.

Our subgenre would definitely be towards the action side of it. This is shown in the clip with the “drum and bass” sound track used. Also the running scene through the streets give it the fast paced quality of an action film.

This is part of our opening scene where we see a detective writing a report. This is similar to the opening scene of one of our influential films seven.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The social groups involved in our thriller are very much the young teen age. The character involved in the running scene represents a young teen out late at night wearing classic teen clothes. Where as in the opening office scene the class is raised and age group increased to a mid/late life character playing the detective. There is no real representation of race or gender. As both of the characters used in the clip are male there can be no comparison of male dominance or female passiveness. Although w

e can see that the detective is a high class important man with the gun and classic smart dress and hat. These representations of gender, age and class could possibly link to our target audience of young and middle aged people as they are involved in the thriller piece. The long haired teen represents a stereotypical teenager rebelling to society ever so slightly.

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

I can visualise this thriller piece being shown in cinemas and perhaps be a Hollywood production. This could hopefully let the production be as successful as it could possibly be which what every director wants. It isn’t unique as a type of film as it has the fast paced, tension building qualities of many other films in the industry. It could be a TV movie but only following a cinema release first. The potential film offers a lot for things such as fra

nchises, merchandise and possibly sequels as the film itself includes certain props such as guns which could be recreated as merchandise. Plus the story line itself allows there to be a potential sequel as the threat in the actual film could easily come back and wreak more havoc! This does not seem a likely thing to happen though as it is rare for sequels to be made on thriller films

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The age and gender of our target audience is set around young adult and adult males and females. We can link this to our product with the young teen character used in the piece. Also the drum and bass music will suit more young adults and teens as it is a

recent modern genre of music.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience with the opening scene of the murder investigation under way. This added with the beginning parts of the soundtrack entices the audience and build up tension which naturally makes the viewers want to see more. The camera angles used in the opening scene are always hiding his face. This can also entice people in as you m

ay eventually find out who the character is and what he looks like drawing in the viewer. In the film we are allowing the audience to see what happens without any character in the film actually knowing by showing the audience the actual murder scene. This has impact as throughout the film the audience will always know more than the characters giving the option for concern for the character from the audience to happen. The camera angles used relate to the lighting used as well which creates suspense.

This is a picture of keys being dropped in the film. This is a vital part of the act as he will find later that he needs them. And if he did not drop them his life would have been spared. We used a complete different shot to emphasize this.

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

The equipment we used was mediocre but certainly acceptable for what we wanted to achieve in our media piece. I wasn't completely pleased with the lighting and how the camera coped with lighting but our media studies centre has a budget they need to stick to. Final cut express is the program we used to edit our clips. This was completely new to me before I started using it. I eventually picked it up after playing around with it for the preliminary task. I already knew how to use a camera to its basics which is all I needed for the filming process. I used Cubase 4 to compose our media soundtrack. This was not really new for me as I have used cubase many times before and was quite easy to make a soundtrack. Using the screen snaps we did we could achieve our desired mise en scene plus we also edited the brightness and contrast of the clips to enhance our desired mise en scene.

Here is a screenshot of our added font to the actual video. We did this on final cut express easily. The font we used was an add on which we downloaded from the internet. We wanted the text to be visible (so we made it white) but yet discreet which explains the lack of dominance on the shot.