Question 2 - How does the media product represent particular groups?

There are only two characters within my thriller opening, the first being a blonde female teenager. My group chose to use this as she is a very conventional character to the thriller genre, this is because blonde hair is seen as innocence, and the light colour then goes onto portray the colour white, which has the connotations of good. This is then complimented by the fact that the victim is a teenager, this again shows innocence, as teenagers have not had to get jobs and live by themselves, this represents vulnerability, therefore by making our victim a teenager we can appeal to our audience as they will begin to emphasise with the character. Also my target audience are teenagers the audience can relate to the character, allowing them to feel the character’s fear, which is important in helping the audience becoming more involved in the opening sequence. The fact that my victim was a female was because females are often depicted as being weaker than males, like age, it again portrays vulnerability, this again allows the audience to emphasise with her situation and begin to fear for her wellbeing, therefore once the killer is seen the audience begin to build some fear, therefore making conventions for example a chase scene more effective.

The other character I have included within my thriller opening is the killer, he is a hooded male dressed in black. From the fact that the killer’s identity is hidden it represents that the killer is going to do something bad, this is due to the fact as people want their identity hidden it means that they don’t want anyone to know it was them who did it, from this assumption the audience will believe that the killer is going to do something bad. Therefore as soon as the audience see that the characters identity is hidden they will automatically begin to build a fear for the character. Also because the fact that the killer is wearing all black this carries the representation that the character is going to be bad. Black carries the connotations of bad, evil and death, so therefore the audience will automatically think this of the character as he is dressed in all black. This again builds on the audience beginning to fear the character as they automatically assume that he is going to do something bad, this is the reason why we chose to use this character.

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

The conventions of the thriller genre are dark/isolated setting, a victim, a protagonist, chase scene, suspense, shock, surprise, iconography, low key lighting and enigma. One series of films that uses these conventions well is the Scream series, always having a victim and a killer involved in a chase scene, the iconography of the mask of ghost face, also an enigma of always who is the killer.

One convention I followed was iconography, this is the killer's weapon, and I chose to use a hammer instead of a knife because it portrays a more brutal side to the killer, which reveals more about the killer to the audience, which intrigues them, and makes them want to watch on hoping to find out why he uses a hammer.

 A film that uses the convention of iconography well is Scream, they use the stereotypical knife however uses it well, as the audience already have an instilled fear for knifes as people know the damage that they can cause. Scream plays on that idea and therefore uses it for the killer portraying him as deadly.  Another convention I used was a chase scene, this is because this is a good way of creating suspense in the scene, as the audience begin to emphasise with the victim, therefore as she is being chased by the killer they want her to get away, therefore putting them in suspense as to whether she is going to get away and what is going to happen if she is caught. This is important in a thriller film as suspense is one of the main effects that the thriller genre aims to create for the audience. One film series that uses this convention well is the Halloween series, as it often uses them throughout the series, like our chase scenes they are made in order to put the audience in suspense, as they wish for the victim to get away and are scared for what is going to happen to them. This is the same effect that we are trying to create, and is a key convention of the thriller genre. Another stereotypical convention of the thriller genre I used was low key lighting, this is used to add enigma to the scene, this means that less of the scene is revealed to the audience, which leads to them not being able to see what is behind the characters and etc, creating a sense of tension and suspense. I used this convention throughout the opening and especially during the chase scene, this reduced the audience's view of the scene and gives the idea of the victim being lost, as you cannot see where she is going, therefore it gives the idea that the victim does not know where she is going. This was used well in the film Mama, this was used during a chase scene and throughout the film.

Audience feedback - Miss Georgiou

Explain why the audience feedback is important to production?
Audience feedback is important to the production as the film is made with them in mind, therefore their opinions on the film are an important factor, if the audience finds a certain element ineffective then that element has been unsuccessful. Using the audience's feedback can help making improvements, and therefore a more improved final version, which has a greater effect on the audience.

How did you receive feedback from your target audience?
I received target audience feedback by doing a presentation, this presentation first showed the audience where we got the idea for our setting, character, narrative, and the inspirations behind them. We then proceeded to show them the rough cut of our thriller opening, giving them sheets in which they had to place what mark they thought we deserved and then what went well and what should be improved. Another way we collected information from the target audience was through questionnaires, this was before we had filmed our thriller opening and greatly benefited us when we was planning, this gave us the existing opinions on the thriller genre, therefore we knew what was effective and what we could include in our very own.

How would your feedback benefit your product and the industry?
This feedback would benefit our product as this gives us guidance of what to improve, letting us know what aspects of the film we need to change in order to have a greater effect on the audience, this would greatly improve the final product. This would improve the industry as by having a more professional looking final product it would make the industry more competitive as they would be challenged by our film, making them want to make even better films, improving the industry all together.

Constructive comments made by other groups

Narrative - One of the comments made by the other group was to make the narrative of our thriller clearer, this is because the target audience found that our narrative was not clear enough for them top understand.

More sound effects - The audience found there was not a wider range of sound effects and found that the ones that are there did not have a great impact on them, feeling that the sound effects should be used for more effect.

Improved lighting - The other comment we recieved was that the lighting in the final scene was too dark, meaning that they couldn't see clearly what was happening in the final scene.

How we overcame these comments

Narrative - We overcame the narrative problem by adding extra clips to the sequence, this gave the audience more to watch and to help them understand the narrative.

More sound effects - We overcame this problem by finding more suitable sound effects, especially ones to use during the chase scene as this intensifies the clip which means it would have a greater effect on the audience.

Improved lighting - We overcame this problem by going out and filming the sequence again at an earlier time, this meant there was more sunlight which made the scene alot clearer, during this time we was able to make improvements the actual narrative of the sequence.

Rough cut post - Miss Miller

Why is a rough cut important to consider?

A rough cut is the first cut of a film, without no or minimal editing. This is an important process in creating our thriller as this allows us to see how our opening is looking so far, this is also an important process as this allows us to receive feedback about our thriller opening, therefore letting us know how to improve our thriller film and what to change in our thriller films, for example what editing techniques to include and how much of each clip to cut.

Why is it important to consider audience feedback?

It is important to consider to audience feedback, as it allows us to find out what the initial ideas of the target audience are about our thriller film, and what they think could be improved in our thriller films, for example if they didn't like a certain part or aspect of our thriller film, we could find that out, and then improve it according to there feedback, this helps us appeal to our target audience more.

How did we collect our audience feedback?

One way in which we collected our audience feedback was through audience feedback forms, these were given out after the presentation of our rough cut, this form included what we mark they think we deserved out of 60, what went well in our thriller opening and then what we could of improved on.

The second way in which we received feedback was by giving a presentation of our inspirations of the narrative, the setting and then the characters, and the reasons why we included them, after that we then received questions about our thriller from the target audience in which we answered appropriately.

What feedback did we receive?

The praise from the feedback we received was mainly about the cutting of our clips, saying that the cutting of each of the clips went well and that we cut them at the correct times, for the correct effect. However we did receive many more improvements that we could make, one of them being that we should increase the amount of effects that we should add, as our editing was basic at that point in time. Another improvement we had to make was improving lighting of the final scenes of our opening scene, as this would make what is going on in the scene a lot more clearer to the audience, however this was an improvement we couldn't make as we had no time to re-film, and it was harder to film as it got darker as we had to rely on natural light because of the setting, and if we was to film it any earlier it would of not had the same night time effect. The other improvement that we received was to add more sound effects, due to this feedback we are now going to find a more sound effects that we could add into our thriller opening however we need to be sure that we don't over use sound effects.

Opening Sceneration - Miss Miller

The first four scenes are scenes that are initialising the setting, making the audience aware of where the opening is set, and they get an idea of what is happening, the victim is seen walking through some garages, and entering an alleyway. For those shots we are going to use panning and mid shots as these are simply shots to initiate the setting, as well as keeping the sound the same, as no sound effects are used before the killer is seen.

As she exits the alleyway the victim is seen in a mid shot, as she leaves the alleyway to the right, the killer is suddenly seen behind her without her awareness, holding a hammer, this is the iconography in the scene. This is when the sound track first kicks in, this begins to build up the suspense, and also represents that something is present in the scene that wasn't there before.

The camera angle then switches to a POV/handheld camera angle, from the killer's perspective looking at the victim, as she walks around the corner and then switches into the victim's perspective, she then looks around in suspicion, thinking that someone is following her. During this the sound track is slowly going to be building up, this builds up the suspense in the scene.

It then shows the victim walking away from turning around, and then going onto enter the gate which leads into the forest, using this setting because anyone can just walk into the forest, meaning that the audience can relate with the scenario. As she walks down the path it switches into the perspective of the victim, she hears something hit the gate that she has walked through, and she sees the killer behind her with the hammer in his hand, she then runs. It then shows a mid shot of her running off the path into the forest, the killer is then seen following behind her but walking, showing the confidence that he is going to catch her, whereas the victim is running for her life.

The camera angle then switches to one in the forest, where the victim is seen running through the forest towards the camera, followed by the killer who is again walking, this also that he is in control of the scene. Switching to another POV angle, which shows the victim's perspective of running through the forest and looking back at the killer, this builds up the suspense as you think that she is going to get caught however you want her to get away as you sympathise for the victim.

The victim is then seen to fall over and then crawl and hide at the bottom of a tree, showing a high angle shot which looks down the on the killer, this shows that the victim is inferior in the opening scene and could then go onto infer that she is going to get killed, this builds up the suspense in the scene. The killer is then seen walking away from the forest which makes it look like he's lost her, this is when the sound track pauses. The victim's phone then goes off, as she is trying to turn it off she is dragged away.

One element that will really make our thriller better is by using the hammer instead of a knife as the killer's weapon, this reveals more about killer than what a knife would, the hammer would show a more brutal side of the killer, whereas a knife is just a stereotypical weapon, revealing more to the audience.

Another element that makes our thriller good is by using a POV angles, this really gets the audience involved in the scene as they can see through the perspective of the killer and the victim, this gets the audience really involved in the film, therefore elements like suspense will have a greater effect on the audience.

Production Roles - Miss Miller

producers - devon
directors - devon
actors - tom sophie
director of photography - scott
music producer - scott
screenplay writer - everyone
mise-en-scene co-ordinator - scott
editor - tom

Within films production you need  allocated specific roles for each person as this makes the production of the film more organised and efficient with time. The main roles neccessary in producing a film are producers, directors, actors, directors of photography, music producers, screenplay writers, mise-en-directors and editors.

In our group Devon is going to be the producer as she was assigned team leader, therefore by giving her the role of producer would be a good choice as she has to organise the group, therefore putting her in charge of production would be better than choosing a different group member. In her role she has taken charge of  who is going to play each role in the production and then oversees how they do it.

Devon also played the role of director in our thriller sequence, a director is incharge of everything creative in the scene, and directs the making of the film, this was because she was team leader, and therefore giving her this role would make sense rather than anyone else playing this role. She played this role well making sure we filmed the sequence within the deadline.

The actors in the sequence were Sophie and me, our role was to act out the roles we had given to the characters in the opening, choosing Sophie because she was blonde and me because the killer was meant to be a tall.

In the production, Scott was the director of photography, this meant he was in charge of all of the camera equipment and had to take charge of all of the filming, making sure the camera was in the right place for the scene and make sure he got the right camera angles. Scott did this well as he did everything he needed to do.

Scott was given the role of sound director, this meant he was in charge of all of the sound in our opening sequence, meaning he had to decide which sound track to include and which sound effects and when. We gave Scott this role as he is very creative and would do the task well,

Screenplay writing was done by everyone, as this meant we all had an input instead of one person writing all of it, this meant we would all be satisfied with how it was wrote and we could put the best of all ideas into one sequence.

The role of editor was given to me, this was because I had previously edited the preliminary task and had experience in cutting and trimming the clips. Being an editor meant I had to put all of the clips in the correct order, cutting them, as well as adding the correct effects and sounds for different effects. I did this role well, however because this was a hard task, I had the rest of my group available for assistance.

Filming Schedule & Risk Assessment - Miss Georgiou

It is important to carry out a risk assessment in order to identify the risks involved in the filming process, and therefore helping us prevent them from happening, and helping us to counter them. The table below shots the possible risks involved in filming.

Making a filming schedule is important as it helps organise the filming of the sequence, and therefore makes the filming more time efficient, letting us meet our deadlines. Even though we made a filming schedule we was unable to follow it as when filming the third shot it got too dark for the cameras, therefore we was unable to film the rest of the scene and had to delay filming until the following day. Even though there was a delay we was able to film the whole sequence.