Task 1 - In what ways does your media Product use, Develop or Challenge forms and Conventions of real media Products?

Here are 9 screen  shots of our media video.

With these 9 screen shots of our thriller clip you can tell it is going to be quite a dark and mysterious film. If we wanted to portray a happy and bright atmosphere, we would have used brighter light and bolder colours. With these 9 pictures you can almost instantly see that it is a thriller/horror.

The first image shows 'A LIONSGATE Production' as we thought this was the appropriate production company for our thriller as it is a well known and successful company.

The second,third and forth images show the credits with movie stills of our thriller. This automatically draws the viewers attention and shows that there are dangerous aspects to our film. The other images show our location, set, props and actors. Our media ends with our female detective announcing "Think we've got a murder" creating suspense and tension leaving you wanting to watch more which is the ending we wanted. The sound also adds to the suspense and conforms the typical thriller convention.

Task 2 - How does your product represent particular social groups?

All media products represent social groups, whether or not they necessarily apply. Very commonly they are stereo types of social groups, E.G. In skins, they show that all teenagers get drunk and take drugs which isnt true.
Another common stereo type also commonly used is that teachers are strict. People are normally mor interested in something which has an element of their age group E.G. 'Skins' is focused around a group of teenagers and so this mainly draws in that age group and rarely interests many above the age of around 30 with exceptions.
As our media product features a different range of ages it will hopefully attract a range of different ages. As our film is a thriller it is likely to draw in people who like drama, action and thrillers.
In our opening scene it shows there has been two deaths of young adults, behind which is a love story, this is more likely to attract the female audience although it is just the opening of the film, there is more to interest other ages through out the rest of the film.
I would think our media product would interest the same audience as 'CSI' which I would say was ages from 16-40+.

Task 3 - What kind of media Institution might Distribute your media Product and why?

What Institution Would Make Our Film?

Our thriller would use a low budget American film company like Fox Searchlight. They are low budget films but come out very successful and make a much greater profit than budget.



Fox Searchlight would want to budget our film as there is a big market for crime thrillers.The main role is played by a woman which attracts people to watch. Our thriller contains suspense, tension and drama which are all strong qualities in a thriller. 'The girl with the dragon tatoo' is proved to be a successful film which proves that there is a market for a low budget film like ours, therefore For Searchlight is the ideal company for us as they prove they can successfuly market and distribute low budget films to a larger audience.
Foxsearch light also made 'Black Swan' which is a drama/thriller which also features a woman as the main role and was very successful and made it to the cinema. 'Black Swan' was a very low budget film which proves that low budget films can be successful and make it to the cinema.




Fox Searchlight distributed the film 'Sexy beast', which is a crime thriller, which is very similar to our film.

   They also did 'Juno', a drama which made a huge profit, supprisingly from a very low budget. The Director of 'Juno' had not previously made big films so there could be a chance of  Fox Searchlight making our film.
Our film would probably not make it to the cinema, because there is too much competition with big budget Hollywood productions, but there would be a market for DVDs and on BluRay.
Fox Searchlight does not have a particular genre but consists of horrors, thrillers, comedys, dramas etc so our film would fit in as there is a large variety of films which means the audience is much larger.

Task 4 - Who would be the Audience for your Media Product?

Audience Of our Thriller

Our film is aimed for the ages of 15-24+ but im sure there will be younger people who would be interested as well. Our genre is not aimed for young people as it does not attract them neither would they like our film.Thrillers and dramas normally attract the older age group as it suits them more and they are much more likely to understand it then a young audience. Our film contains drama, tension and suspence which attracts a lot of the older generation as they can relate to drama and they find the excitement much more interesting.
Also younger people generally have more free time and so would be able to find out about our film and have time to watch it and they are much more likely to watch it with friends.
Our thriller is aimed at both genders but possible more for males and I think that our film is more likely to attract males there is a suductive, smart, sifisticated young woman as the main role, which attracts the male audience more than it would attract women. Our film will most probably be a 12a or 15 rating as it is not too scary but may contain content that is not suitable for children any younger.

Task 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

How did you attract audience

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Task 6 - What have you learnt about the Technologies from the Process of Constructing this Product?

Task 7 - Looking back at your Preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the Progression from it to full Product? (includes Preliminary Task & video)

Before we were to shoot our final thriller clip, we had to shoot a preliminary video. We were given a storyboard and were told we had to more or less stick to it. Our scene contained two actors in a scenario when actor B had to do something he/she didn't want to do. This was the story board:








We casted two guys who we found around school. We tried to make the story slightly more interesting by adding in a mobile phone to the scene and also making it slightly more modern. we filmed our preliminary task in the film studio, which was assigned to us. It was a useful location as there was enough props and lighting for us to make it seem slightly more interesting. We had a a white corner, two chairs, a mobile phone, desks, folders and a door which became very useful as it made it seem more realistic then it would have done. This is our Preliminary task finished:



We have now finished our thriller and looking back at the preliminary task it seems much more professional then the preliminary task. I think that the premiminary task was vital as it made everybody feel much more comfortable with using cameras and their editing skills become much stronger. If we had not done the preliminary task our thriller would have been much worse and if we were to do another video it would be much better than our thriller. We were also given much more freedom and we were told we had to to a thriller and/or horror whereas with the preliminary task we were pretty much told what to do and how to do it.

The main task was easier because of the fact we had more freedom as we were not entirely restricted. However the main task was more complicated because there was more stress and pressure as we knew there were certain expectations.

We had a much larger variety of shots in our main video as we were more experienced.

Our background was much better in our main as it was set up in a much more controlled way. We also had more skills with editing, so were able to put in different sounds, such as music that we had created which.

I thought that our preliminary task would end up being much more successful than it was, but I think due to our lack of experience we were not able to make it as professional as we wanted.

Main Task Props & Costumes for our thriller

Our thriller opened into a crime scene so we wanted obvious crime scene props to make to clear to the viewers what it was. So we wanted tape that indicated there had been a crime, which could have either been police tape or tape reading 'crime scene' but the only tape we were able to find was black and yellow tape, which seemed to have the same effect.

In our crime scene we had two dead bodies and in order to make their death of being shot remotely realistic, we needed fake blood to create more of a thriller mood and to hopefully create more tension and to have the viewers on edge and un easy.

The dead bodies were average, young teenagers and so their costumes would just be casual/smart casual.

Our two crime scene investigators/detectives would be wearing carfully thought about cosumes to subtily reflect their personalities and roles within the scene. The female investigator is the most dominant of the two so she will appear more sophosticated and attractive to catch attention and to have more focus upon her. She would be wearing something smart, like a black skirt, tights a shirt and possibly a blazer to start with whereas the male investigator is much more relaxed wearing his own casual clothes.

We would also need a prop gun as this is how we suggest our bodies were killed. Another key prop for our thriller is an inexpensive necklace which we will talk about in our dialogue.

In our set we will need  basic props which will be easy to find, e.g. tables, chairs, paper etc as it is set in a basement.

Main Task Cast

Originally we wanted to have a busy room with one dead body, a group mixed up of detectives, forensics and  photographers and a dominant, attractive female investigator but changed our idea to something much more simple. We thought about having two dead bodies to create more of a twist and then cancelled out the photographers and forensics but decided to keep a dominant female character and add in a male investigator to acompany the female.
Our cast are all students but the two investigators were both doing theatre studies and/or drama and were perfect for the parts.
We chose to have two of opposite sex to create a sense of romance, realism and possibly slightly commical.
The relationship between the detectives is juxtaposed with the story behind the two dead bodies which is a hidden love story.

Main Task Location

To create more of a sinister feel to it we wanted to open our movie at Leith Hill which wasnt too far away and it had what we needed for our opening scene, which was an empty abandoned room and a creepy feel to it.

 It also has a lot of land around it, including feilds and woods so we could shoot these aspects and decide later on if we want them in our opening.
It used to be a hotel so it is very big and empty which we would use to our advantage. Next to the old hotel there is a tower which we could also choose to work with.






If for any reason we were not permitted to use this land or there were any problems we could improvise, using the school studio and create a similar set with the same probs and empty room.

Main task storyboards and evaluation

Our Thriller's Cast

Our thriller is based around a crime scene therefore we need at least one investigator but in this particular case we have two. We also have two dead bodies. The bodies consist of a male and a female, they are both young and are wearing relatively modern clothes. The investigators are also male and female and in order to achieve the stereo typical woman we are dressing her up to look sophisticated yet attractive and seductive. She will be something smart but also appealing, a short black high wasted skirt and a blouse and possibly a blazer. I selected these images as to what I feel my characters should look like:

Female Detective:                                                                                                       Male Detective:
                                                                 

 They are both meant to be wearing smart casual and this is why i picked out these two looks. They suggest smart but not taking themselves too serious

In this case the woman is the dominant character over the man and this is shown in body language and in the way she expresses her self and her general ora.

It is not vital what the victims wear although they are most likely to look smart but not formal.