The genre that i mainly focused on in my two minute opening of a film was thriller, however there are some elements of different genres such as action. The typical codes and conventions of a thriller film would be that the atmosphere is always tense, that there are some characters with hidden identities and a lot of build up is often present. However, the typical codes and conventions for a action would differ a little such as action films would contain a lot of gun fight and car chases although my film doesn't include this it does contain a sense of action as one of the characters gets shot.
A usual location for a thriller film would be in a well built up area such as a city. My media product relates to this and of a action film as well. For the first scene it's in a more scluded area with little surroundings which relates to the genre of action, where as in the second scene we see the location is much more open relating to the thriller location of it being in an opne city. The reason why we choose two different locations was because to add choice to our film and give the audience codes and conventions of both action and thriller. The narrative of a typical thriller film is that there is a crime scene and a lot of investigating in eneded to find out who caused the crime. My film does contain this type of narrative as we see the main character being chased by an unknown source this adds a sence of mystery to the narrative, in the final sequence we see the main character being shot and dragged away this then builds the film up afterwards as this is the crime scene thats needs to be investigated.
A typical thriller would use dark lighting as much as they could, the film would contain not a lot of light scenes my film fits this convention in the second scene as all the shots are quite dark and relativly hard to see, however in the first scene it's quite birght which takes away this convention. Action films are meant to be more bright this relates to this first scene of my film not to the first.
As you can see i have typical conventions from both a thriller and an action film which illustrates how my film challenges both genres to make my film seem more entertaining.
Friday, 18 March 2011
2:) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product represents particular social groups in a specific way, just from our main character we can tell what type of social group we are representing. There are many ways in which he represnts this social group. Through what clothes he is wearing and how he acts, we can tell that he is part of a rough background and is seen as more as a lower middle class person. Through what he is wearing, the way he speaks and even the way he runs/walks it represents a particular social group of how a teenager is seen as wearing hoodies, low jeans and looking pretty messy. Furthermore through the environment we have used represents the type of social groups that may be seen in these places. Late in the evening and hanging around town is typical of groups of teenagers with their hoods up and are seen are michevious. Our character represents a teenager criminal and this is also seen from the diegetic language used in our media product which is implying that he has bough an illegal item and is running away from someone. This represents particular socials groups such as teenagers, criminals and others that would watch it. Many people assume that a teenager with their hood up and hanging around town must be up to no good and is a criminal, we used this in our media product to suggest to the audience that our main character is of that social group, however of course it is not true that he is a criminal but to the audience we do get this impression.
We also represented social groups through the music that we used as well. We thought carefully about the genre of music and how wel it would flow with the continuety, not only did we think of this we also though about what type of music our audience and the main character would listen to, so that the audience would be able to relate to the character. We used a more energetic feel of music to our intro. As this type of music is very popular with younger audiences this means that they are able to relate to it.
Here is a shot of what we wanted to get our main character to look like (pictured left) in doing this it makes the audience not like the look of him and instantly have an opinion on him that he is the antagonist because f the steriotypical view on them. However, later on in the film the audience will realise that he is instead the protagonist and their steriotypical view was wrong. As you can see the main charcter in our film (pictured right) is seen with his hood up this connetes that he is michevious and up to no good. we tryed to make our main character seem like the antagonist our intro.
We also represented social groups through the music that we used as well. We thought carefully about the genre of music and how wel it would flow with the continuety, not only did we think of this we also though about what type of music our audience and the main character would listen to, so that the audience would be able to relate to the character. We used a more energetic feel of music to our intro. As this type of music is very popular with younger audiences this means that they are able to relate to it.
Here is a shot of what we wanted to get our main character to look like (pictured left) in doing this it makes the audience not like the look of him and instantly have an opinion on him that he is the antagonist because f the steriotypical view on them. However, later on in the film the audience will realise that he is instead the protagonist and their steriotypical view was wrong. As you can see the main charcter in our film (pictured right) is seen with his hood up this connetes that he is michevious and up to no good. we tryed to make our main character seem like the antagonist our intro. 
3) What media insitutions might distribute your product?
The different types of media institutions will vary as the genre of our film is both action and thriller. We would want a well known institution to distribute our media project as the institution is well known and has a very high reputation. A company such as Paramount Pictures who have distributed thriller films such as Shutter Island, Cloverfield and Disturbia. I think that choosing this institution would be the best way of making a profit because people are more likely to buy more from a well known film production company as they have a high reputation and are seen as more reliable and get more publicity. 
Another large institution that may be a good distributer would be Universal Pictures thia institution has released many thriller film in it's time. Thriller movies that were produced and distributed by Universal Pictures are Drag me to Hell, The Srangers, The Last House on the Left, Stay Alive and The Unborn. The reason why this institution would be good to distribute my product is because they are a well known institution that not only distributes thriller films but can vary from many different genres. 
A thriller institution which specifies in the thriller genre is Dimension Films this insitution specifically distributes thriller films which is why it would be a good media institution to distribute my product. The reason why this institution would be good to have distribute my product is because although it doesn't have as much reputation as the other, larger institutions do, this does however have a specific audience and theier consumers will know that it is a thriller film as soon as they see this institution distributing it. An exmaple of some of the films that Dimension Films have produced are Scary Movie, Darkness, Halloween and Scream.Wednesday, 16 March 2011
4) Who would the audience for your media product be and why?
As our film is cleary a thriller film the audience is quite clear, we knew who our audience was as me and my partner were big thriller fans as well so we knew that young adults was a good start at who to aim our product as.
The audience for our product would be male from the age of sixteen to thirty (pictured right) the reason for this decision is becuase from our own knowledge we could tell that this was the age that people usually watched the genre, also from research of the thriller genre we found out what the top thillers were and what the typical audience was.
An example would be The Minority Report (pictured left) which is a sci-fi thriller and aimed at a more male audience who are quite young. Another exmaple would be Gone in Sixty Seconds (pictured bottom right) which genre is a action thriller after reader comment reviews and peoples opnions on the film most men agreed that it was a good film however females didn't enjoy it as much as the males did. This made me certain that the audience for thriller films are male and young.
The audience for our product would be male from the age of sixteen to thirty (pictured right) the reason for this decision is becuase from our own knowledge we could tell that this was the age that people usually watched the genre, also from research of the thriller genre we found out what the top thillers were and what the typical audience was. An example would be The Minority Report (pictured left) which is a sci-fi thriller and aimed at a more male audience who are quite young. Another exmaple would be Gone in Sixty Seconds (pictured bottom right) which genre is a action thriller after reader comment reviews and peoples opnions on the film most men agreed that it was a good film however females didn't enjoy it as much as the males did. This made me certain that the audience for thriller films are male and young.
Monday, 14 March 2011
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
When attracting my audience I initially asked them what they would like to see and what they would expect in a thriller movie. In an earlier post I posted the questions that I was going to ask people and also the results. Each question was going to tell me what i should include in my film and what I shouldn't. I asked people from around the age of 17-20 the reason for this is because this is the age range that usually watch thrillers. For my questionnaire i only asked five questions however I believed that these five questions would give me all the information that i need.
The response was very similar with most people saying that they would like to see something mysterious and involving a lot of tension with this is mind we made sure the identity of both of our characters was unknown and that the tempo was always fast paced. During the whole intro Frankie Duck (actor, pictured left) does not reveal his face to the capture so that the audience is able to get a clear view of him, this makes the audience be able to feel more in the actors shoes as they don't know what the outcome of the situation is going to be. We made sure that you didn't get to see both the antagonist's and protagonist's face throughout the whole intro. The reason why we did this was because we wanted to satisfy the audience by adding a sense of mystery. We added tension to the film by making everything seem fast paced in the second scene, then in the second scene everything clams down and the audience isn't suspecting anything.
Another question that we asked was what location do you think of when thinking of a thriller movie some people said industrial estates and well populated areas and some said forests and unpopulated areas. As the result was very different we decided to do both. In our first scene it's in a quite location surrounded by trees then in our second scene it's in an deserted car park. We feel that in doing this we satisfy a lot of the customers needs and making them happier with the film. As soon as i knew what type of character we would need in our film for our audience to be attacrted to it we started planning making sure the protaganist and the antagonist are not known from the intro adding a sense of mystery to the film. We also made sure the locations where unknown aswell to make sure that the audience didn't know where the characters where and that they knew the protagnosit was alone and had no one to help him.
I attracted my audience by using actors of similar age of the target audience. The actor Frankie Duck who is 17 and plays the protagonist is meant to be representing someone in the film of an age around 18-25 and the antagonist James Bradford who is 16 is an masked man who's identity is unknown . This would also then appeal to the rest of the majority of the target audience as they will be able to relate to both the antagonist and protagonist if they are the same age as them.
The response was very similar with most people saying that they would like to see something mysterious and involving a lot of tension with this is mind we made sure the identity of both of our characters was unknown and that the tempo was always fast paced. During the whole intro Frankie Duck (actor, pictured left) does not reveal his face to the capture so that the audience is able to get a clear view of him, this makes the audience be able to feel more in the actors shoes as they don't know what the outcome of the situation is going to be. We made sure that you didn't get to see both the antagonist's and protagonist's face throughout the whole intro. The reason why we did this was because we wanted to satisfy the audience by adding a sense of mystery. We added tension to the film by making everything seem fast paced in the second scene, then in the second scene everything clams down and the audience isn't suspecting anything.
Another question that we asked was what location do you think of when thinking of a thriller movie some people said industrial estates and well populated areas and some said forests and unpopulated areas. As the result was very different we decided to do both. In our first scene it's in a quite location surrounded by trees then in our second scene it's in an deserted car park. We feel that in doing this we satisfy a lot of the customers needs and making them happier with the film. As soon as i knew what type of character we would need in our film for our audience to be attacrted to it we started planning making sure the protaganist and the antagonist are not known from the intro adding a sense of mystery to the film. We also made sure the locations where unknown aswell to make sure that the audience didn't know where the characters where and that they knew the protagnosit was alone and had no one to help him. I attracted my audience by using actors of similar age of the target audience. The actor Frankie Duck who is 17 and plays the protagonist is meant to be representing someone in the film of an age around 18-25 and the antagonist James Bradford who is 16 is an masked man who's identity is unknown . This would also then appeal to the rest of the majority of the target audience as they will be able to relate to both the antagonist and protagonist if they are the same age as them.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I feel that I have learnt a lot about both filming and editing. However, I couldn't have done it without the technology that was available for me to use. I used a wide range of different technology such as editing programmes and filming equipment to help me make my film look professional as I could. Without the technology that I used my film wouldn't have been as good as it was the reason for this is because each technology helps my film in a different way.
The main technology that help my film the most was an editing programme called Final Cut Express. This programme affected my film a lot because of the possibility's I was able to do with it. Examples would be cutting the shots so that I was able to add continuity to my film and dimming sound at certain parts this affect helped me a lot as my film involved a lot of wind which affected some of the dialogue within my film, because of this affect we was able to dim the audio which cut out the wind. Other affects that we used were colour correction, the reason why we used this affect was because some of our shots were too dark to see, from this affect I was able to make the shot brighter so that dark parts in our film were visible. I also added a blur affect to a shot to make it seem more dramatic. From my preliminary task my knowledge of final cut express has improved greatly. As when I started my preliminary task I had no knowledge of how to use the programme, I only knew how to cut shots and fade shots in and out. After completing my main task I now feel that I have sufficient knowledge of how to use the programme successfully.
Here is a example of a shot that has had a number of affects to it to make it more appealing than it originally was in this picture we see that it is quite bright, this is due to the affect colour correction which I used in quite a few shots to make the shots seem much brighter. This shot also contains the affect blur which makes the point of view shot of the actors vision seem blurry to make the audience know how the actor feels and the condition he is in.
Here is same the same shot as above but without the affects, as it is clear not a lot can be seen this is because this shot doesn't have the colour correction affect which means not a lot can be seen. Also the blur affect is in the shot, however because the shot is too dark the blur affect makes no difference and it cannot be seen. If I didn't have knowledge of how to use Final Cut then this would have been the final outcome for my film. But as I had learnt a lot from using the editing programme, I knew how to add these affects to my film and thus make it as successful as I could have.
Another form of technology that has helped me a lot is the filming equipment, the reason for this is because without the filming equipment a lot of the cinematography wouldn't have been successful. The reason for this is because one of the technological equipment that I used was a tripod. This helped me a lot through out my filming giving me the ability to have steady shots when I needed to. Without the tripod I wouldn't have been able to have steady shots, I also wouldn't have be able to pan as well as I did. The most important technological piece of equipment was the camera and using it affectively was going to separate my film from good to bad. As my preliminary task was the first time I had really used a camera other than to take pictures, I knew that I needed to understand how to use it innovatively. Examples of this would be the birds eye view shot in my film.
The main technology that help my film the most was an editing programme called Final Cut Express. This programme affected my film a lot because of the possibility's I was able to do with it. Examples would be cutting the shots so that I was able to add continuity to my film and dimming sound at certain parts this affect helped me a lot as my film involved a lot of wind which affected some of the dialogue within my film, because of this affect we was able to dim the audio which cut out the wind. Other affects that we used were colour correction, the reason why we used this affect was because some of our shots were too dark to see, from this affect I was able to make the shot brighter so that dark parts in our film were visible. I also added a blur affect to a shot to make it seem more dramatic. From my preliminary task my knowledge of final cut express has improved greatly. As when I started my preliminary task I had no knowledge of how to use the programme, I only knew how to cut shots and fade shots in and out. After completing my main task I now feel that I have sufficient knowledge of how to use the programme successfully. 
Here is a example of a shot that has had a number of affects to it to make it more appealing than it originally was in this picture we see that it is quite bright, this is due to the affect colour correction which I used in quite a few shots to make the shots seem much brighter. This shot also contains the affect blur which makes the point of view shot of the actors vision seem blurry to make the audience know how the actor feels and the condition he is in.
Another form of technology that has helped me a lot is the filming equipment, the reason for this is because without the filming equipment a lot of the cinematography wouldn't have been successful. The reason for this is because one of the technological equipment that I used was a tripod. This helped me a lot through out my filming giving me the ability to have steady shots when I needed to. Without the tripod I wouldn't have been able to have steady shots, I also wouldn't have be able to pan as well as I did. The most important technological piece of equipment was the camera and using it affectively was going to separate my film from good to bad. As my preliminary task was the first time I had really used a camera other than to take pictures, I knew that I needed to understand how to use it innovatively. Examples of this would be the birds eye view shot in my film.
Thursday, 10 March 2011
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt from the progression from it to the full product?
From our preliminary task i can see a lot of improvements. Looking back i can see the quality of work has improved a lot from mis en scene to cinematography. The reason for this improvement is because from the preliminary task i found out what we did wrong and how we could have improved our filming in the future. The improvements that were suggested were mainly about mis en scene the reason for this is because the location in our preliminary task was not well planned out this then lead to the shots being to close or to far away, also the lighting was very dark and some shots were very hard to see.
This is an example of the lighting in our preliminary task as you can see some of the location is darker than other parts this affected our task a lot as some of the shots were to dark to see anything. Also from this shot the actor is not directly in the centre of the shot which is affecting our cinematography as well.
Some of the cinematography wasn't as good as it could have been. An example of this would be that some of our shots weren't that steady also the camera shots that we took didn't really capture as much as we would have liked to. This shot is an example of how we didn't capture as much as we planned in the shot we see both actors looking at the prop. However, we planned to get the actor furthest away form the shot to be able to see his face and his reaction.
knowledge of how to edit and use affects on our shots. This shot is a clear example of the effects we used in this shot we used both colour correction to make the shot much lighter so that it is visible, we also used motion blur to make more of an affect to the shot. The editing was much more successful in our intro film rather than our Preliminary Task the reason for this is because we had much more experience the second time editing and we knew what we needed to edit to make our film look better from the feedback that we got from our preliminary task.
This is a screen grab of the editing effect that we used called colour correction this affect lets us be able to change the brightness of the shot and also change the shot so that it is just one colour. We used this affect to make our shots much brighter as we filmed our video at night. The reason why we didn't use this affect in our preliminary task was because we didn't know how to use it. If we didn't use this affect then most of our shots would have been too dark to see. The editing in our main project was much more successful than in our preliminary task. he reason for this is because we had much more knowledge of how to edit.
This is an example of the lighting in our preliminary task as you can see some of the location is darker than other parts this affected our task a lot as some of the shots were to dark to see anything. Also from this shot the actor is not directly in the centre of the shot which is affecting our cinematography as well.
Some of the cinematography wasn't as good as it could have been. An example of this would be that some of our shots weren't that steady also the camera shots that we took didn't really capture as much as we would have liked to. This shot is an example of how we didn't capture as much as we planned in the shot we see both actors looking at the prop. However, we planned to get the actor furthest away form the shot to be able to see his face and his reaction.
From looking at these mistakes in our preliminary task we adapted to them and mainly focused on these aspects to try and improve them in our main project. We mainly focused on the continuity of our shots and how the film flowed together. When we started our preliminary task we had little knowledge about the editing programme we used called Final Cut Express. This meant that we was unable to use all of the features as we didn't know how to. However the second time we came around to editing we had some
knowledge of how to edit and use affects on our shots. This shot is a clear example of the effects we used in this shot we used both colour correction to make the shot much lighter so that it is visible, we also used motion blur to make more of an affect to the shot. The editing was much more successful in our intro film rather than our Preliminary Task the reason for this is because we had much more experience the second time editing and we knew what we needed to edit to make our film look better from the feedback that we got from our preliminary task.
This is a screen grab of the editing effect that we used called colour correction this affect lets us be able to change the brightness of the shot and also change the shot so that it is just one colour. We used this affect to make our shots much brighter as we filmed our video at night. The reason why we didn't use this affect in our preliminary task was because we didn't know how to use it. If we didn't use this affect then most of our shots would have been too dark to see. The editing in our main project was much more successful than in our preliminary task. he reason for this is because we had much more knowledge of how to edit. Not only were there a lot of mistakes in our preliminary task relating to cinematography there were also a few mistakes with sound as well. As in our main project there is non-diegetic it means that less dialogue is needed, where as in our preliminary task there needed to be dialogue which meant that more mistakes could be made. Sound in our main task was not such a large problem as most of it was non-diegetic, however we did have a large problem with choosing the right soundtrack for our film due to copyright. The wasn't a problem in our preliminary task as all the sound was diegetic.
In conclusion I feel that I have learnt a lot from the progression of the preliminary task to the full product. From doing the preliminary task it taught me a lot about basic filming and editing. After developing on these skills it gave me the potential to make an intro film. Also the feedback that I received from the preliminary task helped me a lot as it told me what I needed to improve on and what I did very well.
In conclusion I feel that I have learnt a lot from the progression of the preliminary task to the full product. From doing the preliminary task it taught me a lot about basic filming and editing. After developing on these skills it gave me the potential to make an intro film. Also the feedback that I received from the preliminary task helped me a lot as it told me what I needed to improve on and what I did very well.
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