1) In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Conventions of a Thriller:
- Make the audience ask questions
- How to create enigma and mystery
- Narrative structure
- Whether or not the audience are restricted or unrestricted
- Themes and issues such as crime
Example of a Thriller that conforms to the conventions above:
Bourne Identity:
– The opening scene is of a man in the ocean in the middle of a storm. This makes the audience ask QUESTIONS as we do not know who he is, how he got there, whether or not he is dead or alive and if him being there is the because of a CRIME such as murder, attempted murder etc, this creates MYSTERY.
– This is a perfect example of the audience being RESTRICTED. As the film goes on the main character learns information at the same time as the audience – they both do not know additional information.
2) This close up of a children’s glove makes the audience ask questions such as why is it there? Who does it belong to? Has something bad happened to the child? I decided to do this shot because it hints to the audience that something is going to happen to the child later on.
3) This shot works well because it appears slowly after the previous one of the
glove which shows the audience that the child holding the ball is the one who
is missing the glove. Also because you cannot see their face but can hear
voices it, it makes the audience intrigued and want to see who they are and
what they look like.
4) This links to Thrillers as throughout the whole opening the audience never see’s her face, only when she is looking out of the window however even then it is very hard to see her properly. I chose to do this because I wanted the audience to be restricted in what they see so that they will want to carry on watching in hope that she is revealed. Also it hints to the audience that she might be the antagonist as she is wearing black which usually represents darkness, death, evil etc.
5) The shot of the two kids fighting works well in terms of creating mystery because the women is looking out of the window glaring down at them. I used a slight low angle to represent the women as being dominant over the two boys.
6) I decided to use carrots as the vegetable as they are orange which represents danger; also it shows that the woman is probably the mother as she is preparing dinner. The knife represents danger, death, crime, murder etc which are all conventions of a Thriller which is why I chose to do lots of shots getting closer each time to show the significance of the knife and to hint to the audience that the women might be a danger to the kids.
7) Here is where I decide to have the kids suddenly go quiet. This works well because it makes the audience suddenly wander why they stopped talking/yelling. It shows that something has happened to make the kids suddenly go quiet and it encourages the audience to want to know what happened.
8) The reason I chose to have this in an example of how I used conventions of a thriller in my opening is because it creates mystery as it makes the audience question where the kids are. The reason I chose to have so much open space around the ball is because I wanted to represent that the ball is like the kids, it is rolling down a hill into darkness which shows that the kids may be in danger and are too heading towards darkness.
9) This is my favourite shot and to me the most significant to Thrillers because it finally shows the audience, without jumping to the next scene, that the kids have disappeared as they have faded out of the picture. It also hints to the audience that maybe the kids were never there or in that photograph.
7) Here is where I decide to have the kids suddenly go quiet. This works well because it makes the audience suddenly wander why they stopped talking/yelling. It shows that something has happened to make the kids suddenly go quiet and it encourages the audience to want to know what happened.
8) The reason I chose to have this in an example of how I used conventions of a thriller in my opening is because it creates mystery as it makes the audience question where the kids are. The reason I chose to have so much open space around the ball is because I wanted to represent that the ball is like the kids, it is rolling down a hill into darkness which shows that the kids may be in danger and are too heading towards darkness.
9) This is my favourite shot and to me the most significant to Thrillers because it finally shows the audience, without jumping to the next scene, that the kids have disappeared as they have faded out of the picture. It also hints to the audience that maybe the kids were never there or in that photograph.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
· My media product represents particular social groups such as masculinity, femininity and age.
- I have represented gender as traditional and modern representation.
- I have done this through areas of mise en scene such as costume setting and props, for example I had the little boys dressed in dark colours and ‘typical’ boy clothes such as trousers and black coats, I did this because I wanted to show the audience that they were males and that it was cold outside as they needed many layers. I decided to have the lady wearing jeans and a black polo neck jumper to show that my film is set in current times as she is in what used to be seen as ‘male’ clothes.
- The reason that I decided to have the boys playing with a ball is to represent typical stereotypes as according to many, boys are more likely to be playing outside kicking and throwing a ball around than girls are.
- I chose the setting of a kitchen to represent traditional gender roles as the mother was preparing dinner while checking on the kids outside.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Digitally
Distribution Company
There are many distribution companies that release British films such as, Focus Features, Momentum Pictures, Icon Pictures and Soda Pictures. I think the best choice for the distribution of my thriller film would be Focus Features as they have been known to take interest in digital releases. Below are some films that Focus Features have released.
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
- My target audience is male and female aged 16- late 40’s. The reason for this is because my Thriller is something that both genders from the age of 16- late 40’s can relate to as it is about children going missing which is every parents worst fear.
- Other Thrillers that my audience have enjoyed are ‘Taken’ which is about a young girl who goes on holiday with her friend and gets taken away by men and her father goes looking for her, this is very similar to my thriller as it is too about someone’s child getting kidnapped. Another film that my audience likes is ‘Phone Booth’ which is about a man the gets punished for telling too many lies and his life is threatened by an assassin. This fits into my Thriller because it involves crime and lying as in my Thriller the women takes her sisters kids and tells everyone that they are hers.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
- · By making sure that my film attracted my target audience I went round and asked people asked 20 people from the ages of 16-40 onwards what kind of thriller they would be more likely to see.
What thriller would you be more likely to want to see?
a) One about gang violence - 3
b) One about kidnapping- 10
c) One about murder – 7
- · The majority said that they were more interested in seeing a thriller about kidnapping so I decided to do a film about that.
- · Ways in which I made sure that my audience would enjoy my film is by adding in a twist as films such as The Sixth Sense was very popular with my target audience and this film had a big twist at the end.
Mise en scene and camera work.
- · To make sure that my audience enjoyed my film I wanted to include genres from thrillers through mise en scene and camera work. The way I did this was by having 5 shots of the knife, each cut getting closer and closer. I did this because I wanted to portray dramatic irony and hint to the audience that maybe the person cutting the carrot is actually the antagonist.
- I decided to use a close up of the children’s glove and then a fade to the child holding the ball to show the audience that he has been at the park and his glove is missing which hints that there is a possibility that he has been taken.
Themes
- · My theme was kidnapping which is a very popular thriller genre so I wanted to make my film unique and stand out from all the rest so that it would attract my target audience.
- · To do this I decided to have a twist such as allowing the audience (further on in the film) to find out that the ‘mother’ of the two boys isn’t actually the mother and is in fact the sister of their mother and has kidnapped her sisters children.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
1) The progression from my preliminary to my final product I learned three main things that I wanted to improve and didn’t want to repeat any of my mistakes. In the first image on the left (left from my preliminary and right from my thriller opening) my reflection was in the glass so the audience could see me moving around filming which takes away any reality to the clip so I decided to make sure that I didn’t repeat this mistake. In order to do this I positioned the camera at an angle where you could only see the reflection of the kitchen not me and the camera.
2) In this image we didn’t use any lighting for the shot purely because we forgot or didn’t think about it properly, so for my thriller opening I made sure I had artificial lighting just in case I needed it, which I did because on the day I filmed it was dull and raining which effected the light in the kitchen so I used artificial light to give a natural light effect.
3) In the preliminary I accidently nearly broke the 180 degree rule when she sat down so I wanted to make sure I didn’t do that again, in order to prevent this I filmed all of my shots from different angles just in case I did break it so I had spares that I could use instead.
4) I also learned that the more cuts you do the more professional it looks (not in all cases) I decided I wanted to include as many different shots as I could in my thriller piece because I was not very experimental with my preliminary and found that it went on a bit too long because there were hardly any cuts which is bad because it makes the audience lose focus and attention
