Evaluation Questions:

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

For our final piece we adapt the traditional thriller media products by using various elements such as camera shots and angles e.g. POV (point of view), high angle shots, close ups and extreme close ups.

 We used editing and flashbacks which are usually used in thrillers to tell a story from the past that is relevant to the present situation (flashbacks); and to create excitement within the audience as the edit either fastens or slows down.

Another way we used the forms and conventions of real media products was by the narrative theory. We originally wanted to base our narrative theory on the ideas of Tzetan Todorov that suggested most narratives start with a state of equilibrium in which life is ‘normal’ and the protagonists are happy. This is then normally disrupted by an event which has to be fought to get back to equilibrium.


 For example the supernatural thriller ‘Premonition’ starring Sandra Bullock where her life has taken an unexpected turn for the worst then evolves into what it was before but this time its better. She is a normal house wife that goes through her usual routine for the day until she listens to the one new message on the answering machine. The message confuses Linda: it’s from Jim, and he says that he meant everything he said in front of the kids the other night and he wants her to know that he was sincere. He spots a call waiting on his phone and mutters "Is that you?" before hanging up. Linda calls him back and leaves a message.

The door bell then rings and it’s a police officer that informs her there has been an accident involving a truck the previous day and her husband Jim is dead. This is the disruption of equilibrium that occurs and turns the week into unusual shifts of the days as she received the news on Thursday the week continues as Monday, Saturday, Tuesday, Friday Sunday and Wednesday. These days each have important events/things that happen within them and she has to piece it back together to get to her state of new equilibrium.

The movie ends with Linda back home asleep on a mattress with no sheets; her daughters run in and tell her that the moving truck has arrived.  The girls then leave the room and do not close the door. Linda moves to sit on the edge of the bed when suddenly Father Kennedy's voice runs through her head, saying that every day we’re alive can be a miracle. She smiles slightly, and gets up slowly, exposing a pregnant belly. Her new equilibrium was her unborn child.

Even thought this was the original plan our group wanted to do it did not come out this way as we changed a few things with the storyboard and on the day which left us with a narrative theory that was more similar to Vladimir Propp’s narrative theory.

Propp came up with the theory that there are only a certain number of characters, who are the main people that we see within the story; they are:

·       The hero (Matthew)

·       The villain (portrayed as Emmanuel but is really Tyler)

·       The princess (Georgia)

Matthew is portrayed as the hero, he’s the loving boyfriend that is mourning after his dead girlfriend (Georgia) and he doesn’t do anything bad this is why the audience likes him. Emmanuel is illustrated as the obsessed guy that shows no happy emotions. He wants to break up the relationship of Georgia and Matthew which is why he’s seen as the bad guy. Georgia is portrayed as innocent and caring, throughout the film she has not offended anyone or done anything to anyone and her death highlights this.

Films such as ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Shrek’ fit Propp’s model precisely. Here's a link to the Shrek trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnJZqEWVLHg


Claude Levi-Strauss
He is a Social Anthropologist that studied myths of tribal cultures. The stories he examined reflected their own beliefs and culture; these were usually expressed in the forms of binary oppositions.
Binary Oppositions- A conflict between two qualities or terms:

• Christian - Pagan
• Domestic - Savage
• Weak - strong 
• Gorden - Wilderness
• Inside society - Outside society 

This narrative uses the love and hate scenario that we have within our film as Emmanuel loves Georgia but hates Matthew whilst Tyler loves Emmanuel but hates Georgia.
This is another way we have used conventions of real media products.

By using a male antagonist was how we followed the generic conventions. Even though the male character we portrayed as the murderer wasn't actually the culprit we still let it seem that way. This is done in a lot of thrillers e.g. David in Fear.

Whereas the real antagonist in our media product was in fact a female which goes against the stereotypes of women making it an archetype. Just like in the ‘Roommate’ and ‘Obsessed’ the stalker was a woman. 
We did this as we thought it would make a better story if the culprit was not the usual suspect so we reversed the roles and put someone that is normally seen as the weak and vulnerable one now being powerful and brings more suspense and excitement to the villain. 
As it is rare to see women in the position of power being the antagonist in thrillers we have challenged the generic conventions of a thriller.


Here is some examples of women being the antagonist :

Here shows the women as dominant over the man

Again here shows female dominance making this an archetype

Whereas these would be typical Thrillers:

This enforces the male dominance

Again her uses the antagonist stereotype of males

                                  

Our media product exhibits and forms the technical conventions of low key lighting through special effects and multiple camera angles.

Examples of low key lighting pictures from our final product-

We used mind games on the audience to challenge the way they usually think when watching a thriller. They needed to think deeper and read between the lines to figure out who the real murder was. This idea was done because of the reaction we got back from one of our questionnaires that showed our target audience liked the idea for solving the mystery before it was shown within the film. 

Another way we challenged the regular convention was by using a house (Georgia’s) as the main setting where we filmed. This was done due to the fact that a home is an intimate and safe place which you and your family share; we wanted to breach the lines of this by allowing Emmanuel to sneak into this home posing as a threat whilst envying Matthew as he wanted the same intimacy with Georgia but never got it. Most thrillers are set in a forest or an outside setting. 

Music with tension was used throughout our film to give viewers that chill down their spine which keeps the excitement following continuously. Click here to listen to the music we used in our media product  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieKBnbqXEaU  .These were important conventions we developed into our product. We frequently used thriller conventions and typical opening sequence conventions throughout the opening sequence.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film represents young black youths in the UK (London), even thought our thriller is based around Obsession it also incorporated: Jealousy, relationships, conflict and murder. Seeing that our opening involved all these things we decided to link it to the Murder of Shakilus Townsend, who was murdered by Samantha Joseph’s ex-boyfriend Danny Mclean and his group of friends.

  

Here shows the links we made between the characters of our thriller and who they represent in the ‘honey trap’ murder of Shakilus Townsend.

The top line for pictures shows the people that all share something similar which is that the all loved an individual. This compelled jealousy and conflict which arise and cause a death. Below are the love interests of ‘love me’ and the Honey trap murder.

Representation of Gender:

In our media product the victim was a female that played along with the stereotype that women are weak and can’t compete with men. Emmanuel that was our false antagonist was still shown to be the typical stereotype of men being more able to commit murder and is stronger than women. Even though the real antagonist was a female (Tyler) the audience are oblivious to this until its reveals at the end of the entire clip so they don’t see the gender archetype.

 Representation of Race:

We didn’t follow any stereotypes when it came to our characters. All of the characters are from African or Caribbean background; this was not planned it just happened that way as they were all convenient to us as 2 of the characters are members of our group. If we had used different ethnicity for the characters I still think there wouldn’t be any stereotype that they would be associated with.


Representation of Class:


Based on the setting and location of our product you can see that it isn't a Upper class area but is more middle/working class which was not done on purpose but was because it was convenient to us. As we decided not to include dialogue because of the amateur look it gives, the audience would not be able to tell class by the characters speech but would be able to see it through the Mis en scene that was used such as clothing which is high street brands ,settings that where used like the 6th form common room that would portray educated young adults. We did not try to use Upper class as it wouldn't represent our thriller in the way we wanted it to be. More people would be able to relate to middle/working class people rather than upper class.

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

The institutions that we choose to use are not vertically or horizontally integrated, but are a British distributor of independent films in the UK and Ireland for many different productions which is best for us since it is culturally based in London, UK. They are ‘Entertainment Film distributors’ who have released distributed films internationally.

We saw it best to use this institution as they distribute various types of genre from horror western, thrillers, romance etc.  They have distributed many thrillers such as: ‘American Psycho’, ‘Pride and glory’, ‘Freddy Vs. Jason’ and ‘Pathology’. We thought that since ‘Entertainment’ was not independent they would be open to amateur films.

We also decided that we would let shops such as HMV, Amazon and blockbuster distribute our film as they are successful in the retail market/ online retail sites and are popular with our target audience as many people now shop online and it’s also more accessible. To further distribute our film we would use synergy on Blu-Ray DVD and normal DVD’s because they are on different formats. Another synergy that would be used is the soundtrack ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieKBnbqXEaU, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF2AlO8cKbE  ) of our film that would also be distributed.

2) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Within the income bracket category, C-E would be most appropriate as they tend to prefer things that are just out in the cinema; also since it’s based on relationships of black youths in urban areas of London that they would more likely to be able to related to and understand. Whilst the A-B category would not be interested as its average and they strive for better.

We believed that people with self-control and their own mind set would mostly likely be the audience that are attracted to our product being that we aren’t mainstream and it’s unusual to see young black youths film which consisted of obsession. The audience that best fits the category of ‘Young and Rubicams would be reformers and succeeders. Enthusiastic would be attracted to our product since they are open to new things which would be the experiencers  in the ‘VAL’ category.

3)How did you attract/address your audience?

My group and I used questionnaires, online surveys and campaigns they using social networking to distribute them.

 Our results were drawn into a chart which is below:

From our result we were able to see what appealed to our target audience. The target audience was classed at age 15-17 and only people in the UK took part as it’s the location we are looking at.

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

I have learnt a lot about what goes into making a media product and how to uses different technical elements. Using the camera equipment was not hard at all which I found amazing since it didn’t hold back time for filming.


Since I am a technician and was mainly in charge of recording, I did have to learn how to use the camera before anyone else as it was my role within our group, I learnt how to zoom in whilst rotating at the same time even though it took an extra pair of hands to do so it was still a valuable thing to learn as we use this action throughout our film. 


Another thing that I got to use was the tripod and being about to choose the appropriate height and position which best suited the scene we would shoot. A few important things has to be considered when positioning a tripod such as the lighting-‘Does the lighting affect us being able to see through the lens?’, ‘Is the ground too high or low for the shot/angle we are meant to get?’ all these things are important and must be looked at which I have learnt through this process of constructing our media product. 


Although this was easy others weren’t such as editing. 
Editing truly tested mines and my groups’ ability to be successful and to complete the task we were given.


The music had me confused as it worked then stopped or would arise with another problem which was very frustrating, at times it seemed like we were taking 1 step forward and 2 back every time. Even though this happened it did give me a better understand of how to use iMovie and iMac as we had to explore it to solve the problem so in the end it was worth all the headaches.


I have learnt how to overlap edits onto clips and crop and length clips which I thought was quite handy. The thing I like best was learning how to put clips into slow motion. I also learnt how to put music onto a clip.


The 2 days of editing has opened up my knowledge and understand of technologies a lot more and I'm more enthusiastic about using the program now than when we first started.


On a whole I have learnt from the process of constructing our media product it takes a lot of time, effort, energy and patients to get something to a good standard as it doesn't always work out on the first try whether its filming, finding the right locations, costumes, make up, lighting, editing, casting, music etc. It’s a process that should be taken carefully, seriously and with a guideline that keeps you in check of what’s needed.

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

Looking back at our preliminary task I feel I have broaden my understanding and knowledge on everything to do with making a 2 min opening to a thriller. Our preliminary task has been our guideline throughout our filming, from the stage of our storyboards that is key to our filming and what scenes come after the next to us using the shot-reverse shot that is used for conversations and consist of close ups on a character which we used consistently as we got emotions through facial expressions of the characters since we had no dialogue. We learnt how to rotate a camera to a person as we also did with our preliminary task. Overall I have learnt a lot from using the preliminary task up to filming the full product; I’ve grown and become confident with using technological software and equipment. Even though we had basic equipment’s and props we still took most of our knowledge from the preliminary task developed and expanded it into the final product to create a mind boggling opening 2min clip of a thriller.

Storyboard 

Preliminary task

Editing media product