Formally Address The Seven Key Questions Specified By The Exam Board

In concluding my Blog, I am now going to answer these questions:
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product uses the content in the style and structure of the overall look to generate generically authentic and spontaneous tension and rising fear in the viewer’s minds and hearts. We were aiming to play on the audiences most basic worries and let them enjoy the suffering of the characters but at the same time feel sympathetic for the mother and child. You have to focus on just the title sequence in isolation, as we are not producing rest of the scene. For more on this specific topic, refer back to the post on the evaluation called ‘Final Evaluation And Analysis Of Finnished Product’.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
We represented three main social groups, being young mothers and women, who are negatively stereotyped as ineffective, weak, oblivious, complacent and helpless. For example when she is obliviously watching TV whilst the intruder is taking her child. Also we represented, again the negative stereotype of aggressive, strong, logical and predatory males. For example when the intruder cleverly makes his way into the house through the window without being heard. Lastly, we represented the middle class through the use of mise en scene, with the typical stereotype of as large houses and big gardens. For more on how we tried to represent social groups through the choice of costume and props refer back to the previous post called 'Account Of Props And Costume'.

3. What type of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
This comes down to whether it is the distribution of the product that we made ourselves or if it is a big budget remake of it. This is because with a big budget available, our idea could be a big Hollywood success as it plays on the same themes and voyeuristic style as the very successful thriller movie ‘Halloween’ (2007) used. Although the product that we made was with a very small budget and would only be suitable for television.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
When looking at the types of audiences that are out there that you could target your product at, you should think about the complex unwavering narratives of the sequence, variety and intensity of suspense, age, gender, adult/teen audiences or mainstream TV dram audiences. Dependant on the group you target the product at, will dictate weather it will be a massive box office success or only have a small cult following. For you to achieve your desired success you must target the right audience. For me; we would want to target the main stereotypical male teenage to young adult thriller genre follower who would want to see the film in the cinema, buy the DVD and become pulled in by all the traditional and viral marketing techniques used. This meaning that through this type of person we would be able to generate the most amount of money.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted our audience through the production style, by targeting expectations of a thriller audience. We made it accessible as a mainstream text, which delivers a fairly predictable abduction based thriller suspense inducing narrative that gratified expectations and needs of the viewer. For more on this, refer back to Blog 'Account Of Lesson On ‘What Is A Thriller?’' when we learnt about what makes a thriller successful.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The amount of new skills we have learnt is so vast. We have gained so much experience from working with different video cameras, using proper film lights to create the best light for the situation and the different editing software’s. Working with the cameras has taught us how to use and change the settings so as to be able to let the right amount of light into the camera, using different exposures, changing the white balance so the camera reads the colours correctly for the current lighting conditions and focusing correctly so that you make sure everything in your frame is sharp focus. From the beginning of the year when we edited and filmed our preliminary task to now, we have progressed in the ease of use of all the technologies available to us and it has now become a second nature to us. We have learnt about all the very complex stages of post production a film goes through and have applied them to our project. From continuity editing using Final Cut Pro, choosing and mixing the music, diegetic sounds (recorded during principle photography) and non diegetic sound effects from the effects library, building titles and finally coloring and grading. Refer back to the blogs called 'Intro To Using Final Cut Pro Editing Package', 'Intro To Video Camera', 'Account Of The Editing Process and Difficulties Encountered' to read more about the skills we learnt through making our thrillers.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The development from our preliminary task to our main thriller is humungous. Our understanding of filmic techniques in pre-production planning, on camera and set during principle photography and editing it together in a coherent and generically authentic way during post-production has significantly improved. During our preliminary task we didn’t worry about dressing the set, giving costumes to the actors, etc. so therefore we progressed in our film making skills and used much more detail and professional filming styles and skills. We created a massive production file that had planned through in huge detail every step of the principle photography stage. We were using more equipment, lighting it properly, used two microphones, one direction boom microphone and one on camera. We used audio tracks in editing to enhance the tension and spent much longer during the editing process in generating a product that’s style is authentic of a thriller movie. Refer back to previous blogs called 'Account Of Editing Our Preliminary Task' and 'Account Of Shooting Our Preliminary Task' in comparison to the how much more we took into account and executed during pre production, principle photography and post production stages of our thriller sequences, shown in past blog posts called 'Review of Shoot Day' and 'Account Of The Editing Process and Difficulties Encountered'.

Audience Feedback Based On Youtube Viewings

Link to video: Click Here

We uploaded our video to Youtube in the hope of getting audience feedback in the form of comments to give constructive criticism. I have now copied some of the comments into this blog post and am now going to reflect on them and talk about the points made.

Comment 1)
Good use of sound and music creating atmosphere and tension. The credit on the stairs is very good and works well. I like when the light is turned off and the music stops then starts again. Creates a lot of tension.

Reflection and Analysis 1)
We took a long time deciding over the sounds so that it would create tension, however we decided to use sinister innocent creepy music at the beginning whilst the child is going to bed as we wanted it to sound like a child’s toy as we thought it would help the audience to feel uneasy as to what might happen next. For example the film ‘The Orphanage’ uses childlike music throughout the film to increase tension as the juxtaposition between the scary situations with calming innocent music works well to unnerve the audience.


Comment 2)
Very effective mise en scene. Like the credits on the stairs. Very good - disturbing music, creating a scary atmosphere! Bit long, but I really enjoyed it! Well done x

Reflection and Analysis 2)
We did find it very hard to keep the length of the thriller down to as short as possible as we had shot 2 hours worth of footage and our first edit was about 5minuites long. It was a very painful process having to cut much of the footage that we really liked out of the sequence to get it down to 2:21.


Comment 3)
I think that the thriller is really effective. I think it is really realistic and believable. The only things I did not like so much were the font of the title at the end and also I was unsure of whether the lady was the mum or a baby sitter. However it was engaging and I would carry on watching the film. I thought the continuity and editing was very good as well.

Reflection and Analysis 3)
This comment is very useful as the writer obviously enjoyed the video as they would want to carry on watching the film however their comments about the choice of font for the title at the end of the sequence is interesting as our group spent a long time going through many different fonts trying to find one that looked both scary and suitable for the concept of the film.

Comment 4)
This has made me paranoid about being in my own house! Excellent casting, intruder very believable, convincing mise-en-scene, but I felt that it was maybe a bit too long. Well done anyway.

Reflection and Analysis 4)
This person mentioned our success in achieving a genuine and authentic Mise-en-scene of the film which we worked hard to try and achieve. We had to spent a long time and been very pinicaty over trying to find a location that was suitable for our needs and would give off the right vibe to the audience.


Comment 5)
I really liked the way it felt as if someone was being watched. The last credit also I thought was really good and the transitions between the shots worked very well.

Refection and Analysis 5)
I am very pleased by this comment as this is what we were hoping to achieve, the voyeuristic style and filmic technique that we saw in the movie of influence (Halloween).