1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products i.e. existing films?
Our opening is similar to the film the ‘Orphan’ as both use the main protagonist as a young girl with hidden motives. The young girl is also essentially the iconic convention in our thriller and is also frequently used throughout many other thriller movies as the audience never suspect a young girl who is supposed to be sweet and innocent to be quite deranged. Our young girl is also essentially our narrative as the audience are following her story. We used a continuous backing song throughout our opening and in certain sections used a nursery rhyme to represent the youth of our child and hidden danger. We have gone against some typical conventions of a thriller because in our opening we have made our storyline seem more confusing than needs to be. We haven’t made our purposes clear to the audience yet. We have tried to add a unique style onto this opening by adding the black and white sequences which allow the audiences to tell which is meant to be ‘reality’ or ‘memory’.
2) How did you attract you audience?
The themes our opening mostly contains are murder and light themes of child neglect and potential abuse as our main protagonist’s dark motives are fuelled by the mistreatment performed by her mother. The classic conventions of a thriller contain murder and the ability to make the audience, our opening contains a murder and many cliff hangers so the audience keep questioning. We casted the young girl with the appearance of a feeble girl so audiences wouldn’t expect the girl to turn. The mother casted was taller and had more mature features. Representing womanly independence and the idea that mothering isn’t particularly in her nature. Mise-en-scene isn’t needed to take place frequently in our opening, the layout of the bedroom was feminine, leading audiences to believe that it is not likely to be tainted by death. We would rate this certificate a 15 as it does contain violence but we try and put twists on the conventions of thrillers by changing the actors half way through our opening so the audience continue to guess. 3) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Mise-en-scene in terms of props and costumes played a big part of our opening, our main protagonist, the young girl. She wears white tights which projects imagery of innocence and purity and a pale, vintage nightgown. At glance she appears innocence and good but there is a sense of evil about her. Her mother wears a red shirt which projects ideas of evil and death. The main prop we used was the teddy bear which gets zoomed in on to show the child inside her is still there but it’s almost like the young girl is burying her goodness. In the start of the opening we use long shots of the young girl walking this is also used as an establishing shot so the audience are able to see her surroundings and her full appearance. Our media opening represents age through the mother and the daughter as there are many low angle shots this represents how the older mother looks down upon her young daughter. Our opening does promote clips of voyeurism as the idea is that the supposed ‘father’/stalker is watching the young girl.
4) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
An independent British film company would likely be interested in distributing our product. An institution like Film Four would be likely to produce our opening. As our thriller could almost be deemed as an indie thriller in that it is low budget. With the budget that we had available it would be difficult to create a thriller that had that ‘Hollywood’ style. Also our use of black and white images in this opening might exclude the audiences that prefer more modern styled films, these types of effects give limited audience appeal. Our marketing would be a key element for our thriller opening’s success. A few teaser trailers would be made and then uploaded onto popular sites like YouTube. An official movie website could be made to give audiences who want to understand the movie more that chance, fan pages of this movie could be made on Facebook to fuel excitement also advertising our thriller using images from the film or trailers on popular sites would also gain audience attention. It would be important to make sure the release of this movie onto DVD and in cinema do not clash with any other major movies, if they did it would be likely that audiences are forced to pick that movie over our own.
5) Who would be the audience for your media product?
I think our media product could appeal to both male and female audiences, although the age rating might be for a more mature audience of 15 or higher. I also think it would have more of a national audience, especially if the media institution was a British one. As the certificate would be 15 we are cutting a few of our audience groups out although film fans who enjoyed cult films like ‘Orphan’ and ‘The Grudge’ might also enjoy our thriller as ours also contain elements of supernatural and young child being deceiving. Film fans who are interested in cult films like ‘The Grudge’ might be interested in a gothic lifestyle and thriller films would fit under that stereotype. Although a lot of teenagers are interested in thriller films as they are exciting and give them an adrenaline rush, not only this but if teenagers go to see a movie then their friends are likely to go also. Not only teenagers are likely to go and see this thriller movie though also people in the C1 socio economic group to group D might also go and see this movie. As the people who belong in the A and B group might be too academic to go and see a low budget thriller movie and there will be a chance that they will likely just criticise it if they did see it. The members in the E group might go to see it but this type of movie probably will not appeal to pensioners as they might find it too gory.
6) What have I learnt about Technologies in the process of constructing my film sequence?
When constructing my opening sequence we used Final Cut Pro extensively. To help create our thriller mood we had to edit our flashback scenes to something we all agreed on. Using our digital camera for filming we mixed between having steady shots to shooting freehand for the running scene. This enabled it to look as though there is someone running after our character. We also used Motion to create our opening title for our thriller, we used a moving image for our title in our thriller opening, and our group believes the title fits with the generalisation of a ‘thriller’ theme. When we were editing we made certain images seem almost iconic, so they had an impact and meaning. For example the close up of the teddy bear expresses the innocence of the child. While using the digital cameras we used a few long shots as our young girl is walking to almost make it seem like the audience are looking in on her. 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Since the preliminary task I have learnt to better handle the equipment and have understood how to use wider varieties of terminology. Not only this but I now understand that planning needs great detail as without it sometimes we have been left wondering what needs to be done so we can complete our product. I feel I have learnt a great deal from when I started the preliminary task to the progression of our opening to now with our finished product. I fully understand how to make a thriller have meaning and I now know what to do to make an iconic symbol for thrillers. When we received audience feedback before our group tried to fully appreciate what our audiences thought we’re of our plan. We have tried to fit this to our opening in the best possible way. I feel I have learnt a large amount, not only through terminology but also planning and the technology behind everything.
