Preliminary task video

Questionaire

Our group formulated a questionaire so we could have a further understandingof want people wanted from a thriller so we could develop our own thriller. We went into woood green  and enfield town cinema and gave out a 100 surveys. we got back some intresting information


 

    

Storyboard for opening of our thriller

preliminary task

1. mid shot of the library door as it opens
2. 1st character looks nervous
3. 2nd character walks to chair we use a macth on action shot for this
4. same as no.3
5. 2nd character sits down oposite 1st character
6. wide shot of the two characters opposite each other
7. shot of 2nd character as he begins to tlak about a package he needs money for
8. reverse shot of 1st charcter as he replys weakly
9. mid shot of 2nd character as he points  at 1st character and gives a warning
10. close up of 1st character's worried expression
11. wide shot as 2nd character leans forward and grabs 1st character to give a final warning

Evalution

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

•Our thriller takes its inspiration from other thrillers such as Black Mirror, and also we have a slow start in our thriller much like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.  Directors such as David Fincher and Alfred Hitchcock have inspired our thriller and we have  murderer who has no motive behind his murders similar to the film, Seven. 

        My media product does use very generic forms of conventions in thriller films, one being that we keep the character's facial features hidden beneath a dark hood. This creates an enigma around the characters identity and also leads the audience to believe that he is the villain. We make sure there are close ups, also a convention from thrillers but these are always from behind and never revealing the facial features. We also used eerie music to set the scene. We muted  the  phone conversation  again to provide a sense of enigma around who the phone call was from and what it was about. There wasn’t much we did to  challenge the conventions of thrillers, but we did try to challenge stereotypes, for example the misconceptions that people have of young people.  We kept the opening slow rather than fast paced and heart pumping to focus on the enigmatic factor rather than the thrill and to provoke the audience with unanswered questions. Our film doesn’t really follow any of the narrative theory as there is no clear villain.  Everyone has their own reasons for doing what they do, so the film doesn't really follow Levi Strauss's theory of binary opposites or Propp’s theories on characters within the narration. It does however adhere to Todrov’s theory of there being a sense of equilibrium which is disturbed by an outside force being the murders.  There is then a disequilibrium and then the hero must overcome the outside force  (the detective must find the murderer).  Finally there is a new sense. of equilibrium ( nothing can ever be the same again after the situation)

Tzvetan Todrov

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

•In our media product we try to go against the stereotype of social groups. We do this through  making the detective a young man, who although young is married, and having marital problems.   This goes against the convention of a young detective is reckless, aggressive and out of control.  Our detective is calm and calculative although he is stressed  by his job and his outside life, somewhat similar to the convention we usually see in senior cops. Our cast is mainly male, however no particular member of the cast is shown to have dominance. The victim in our media product looks weak throughout despite being a male , the killer is shown to have a defiant sense of dominance however there are signs of weakness such as his It does challenge the stereotype much like Samuel L Jackson’s character in Unbreakable where we see the disabled character have an intellectual dominance over the more abled bodied characters. The detective doesn’t show much dominance as he has to listen and follow his superiors decisions. The cast is a mix of races so there is no stereotyping of a race or ethnicity such as the black character being a thief or immigrant

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

Finding a media institute for our film was difficult as we had to look at what we wanted from our film . Obviously we wanted the film to do well, we wanted it to challenge and entertain the audience however we did not want it to be just another summer blockbuster but maybe a film that would pick up a few accolades and get good recognition. We decided our tactic would be similar to se7en, whereby we would put the film out during the Christmas  holiday. Just before the award season.

 We thought our film could be very similar to Phone Booth because the film is based around a killer who uses a phone as his weapon of murder.  There are also similarities with the film se7en because our film has a maniacal serial killer who has no personal vendetta but rather a more sinister plot.  Because of the similarities we looked at these film's distributors but decided not to go with them because there is more of a  British feel to our film. We then remembered the success of the Kings Speech and Woman in Black and had a look at Momentum Pictures.  It is a vertically integrated conglomerate distribution company. This was perfect for us as it meant they could us pick up the accolades and/or recognition and also they would give the film a British feel but also a global appeal as it is owned by Paramount Pictures.

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

The primary target audience for 13 would be males aged  16-40  , this is because the genre of thriller and especially crime and physiological thriller has a mass appeal to males , also the cast is predominantly male.  However by using popular or attractive actors we could also entice a female audience, like the use of Daniel Radcliffe in Woman in Black. We  wanted the audience to be challenged yet entertained while watching our  film, thus appealing to the older members of the audience as they prefer something which has a clever storyline rather than endless scenes with  chases and explosions.  As many of the cast are young this would have a further appeal to young members of the audience as they will feel as if they can connect with the characters. Looking at it from a media perspective we would probably  fit our film under  a b-d audience for the income bracket theory, reformers and succeeders for young and rubicam and thinkers for VALs theory

Question 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

•Plot: we attracted the older audience with our plot . It is filled with twist and turns and a surprise twist right at the end .  We try to keep the audience  on the edge of their seats and always presented with a new question at each turn of the movie.

•Characters: our characters are all young in the opening so this may attract a younger audience as they may feel a connection with the characters. They are also complex and not always easy to understand so that the audience is kept on its toes trying to work out the motivation of the characters.

•Mis-en-scene: there is quite a contrast in mis-en-scene  between the victim who is wearing t-shirt and jeans in an average flat which gives quite a casual look,  and then we see the detective in a modern office dressed smart in shirt and tie . This will help the film apply to a wider audience as the ere is a smart looking man who may be middle class and there is a casual looking victim who is working class this means both middle class and working class people can relate with the characters

•Dialogue: there isn't much dialogue in our opening only the detectives phone conversation which would be rated 15 as there is swearing in it

Question 6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this products?

We were provided  with all the equipment by the school who had got it from the Delta Media Centre. It was a basic 5 mega pixel camera which was slightly disappointing and a memory card that didn’t have enough memory.  Fortunately we had other memory cards we could use. We were also given a tripod which was very useful as it kept the camera on a steady base and made sure the footage was steady and the pans were clean . We kept running out of battery and had to use the charger we were given at school.  For one clip we used an iPhone 4 which was ok and even had a better picture . 

I didn’t learn that much from camera work just because I’d done it before. However I did learn a lot using I movie and editing. It was difficult at first but after a while I got a knack for it and it was really enjoyable putting the clips together and seeing our opening coming together. I learn how to cut clips together, how to add music to a clip and also how to split a clip. Overall I did learn a lot doing the opening and had fun at every stage from planning to filming and finally editing the clips together .

Question 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 to say that I've learnt a lot and I hope my group have as well. I have had experience of filming and planning before and it is always a difficult,   but I'd say the thing that struck me really hard were the deadlines .MEETING DEADLINES IS KEY. This is one of the most difficult things for me to understand as to tell the blatant truth I am  lazy and therefore don’t always meet deadlines. It is difficult to run a project like this with only three people as the less people you have usually means less motivation especially when your team is made up of three lazy teenage boys. We didn't put that much effort in to the preliminary task however we did go all out with the opening as it meant something to all of us and hopefully it shows in the final product. I've also learnt that blogging is difficult and takes a lot of effort. Group work was OK as we were all relatively on the same page as each other and did try keep as much contact as possible.  I also did a massive amount of research on the thriller genre and learnt a good deal and it has now become my favorite genre of film. I finally learnt the basics of editing which I can hopefully use later in life. It was a long and difficult journey from our preliminary task to our final project but it was worth it and fun at the end

Final day of editing

In our second day of editing we did have a few problems. we had got more use to the software which made the rest of the editing that needed to be done a lot easier however put the music onto the product was a lot more difficult than we thought it would be, we kept having trouble sorting out the length of the music for each scene we did finish our product in the end and we were very impressed with the final product after many weeks of planning and filming and editing, it was finally finished we were all quite emotional (LIES!) . It would have been better if we added all the stuff we wanted to add but then our clip would be like 5 minutes. We decided that our production name would be something that rang true to us and so came up with the name ' LAZY BOY PRODUCTIONS'

editing day 1

The first day of editing consisted of a 5 hour session in which we got about to editing our clips together . It was very difficult at first as we had troubles putting all our products onto the imac and the start a project up in I movies. We had never use imovie before so none of us really were expert at this but we dealt well with it and got most of the editing done. shortening the clips were fairly simple but we realized some of the other things we wanted to do  such a s add pictures from the internet were pretty hard to carry out and we ended up leaving them out but overall it was a good day of work it would of been better if we settled down quicker and also if we had some experience but we did what we could with what we had.

Like the imac we used 

imovie -the editing software