Evaluation

Question 1


CONVENTIONS USED.

  


One of the ways that we used the conventions of real media products was when we did our credits. The example that we have used are in the credits in the film "Inception". The credits from that and the credits from ours reflect the subject of our piece and of the film Inception. They are both in black and white, and they both show confusion as we don't want the audience to really know what is going on at that stage in the film. We wanted our credits to not give away anything, which is the same with the Inception credits.

 

Another way that we used conventions is that we showed suspense, which is common in thriller films. In the scene in our thriller we have our main character walking along a long straight road. It is not clear as to why she is doing this, which creates mystery for the viewers. We used a scene from "The Da Vinci Code" as an example. There is a scene where an old man is in the middle of a art gallery naked and dead, and hes been spread out. The viewer has no idea why he has or the relevance, but as you watch the film it all becomes clear. We did the same for our thriller.

 

CONVENTIONS DEVELOPED.


We also developed the usual conventions by having a female, young protagonist. Our example of this being done in another film is the film "Black Swan" In the film she is a young female. This is not common in horror films, normally they are middle aged men. We didn't want to use the normal horror convention for this and decided to make our different from all the others. It also meant that we had the target audience that we wanted.

Another thriller convention that we challenged was the fast that we used cross cuts between flash backs and flash forwards. Normally in a thriller film the cross cuts go between two plot lines.We decided not to do this. An example of this in another film is "Inception". Our thriller film goes in between the past and the present. From the screen shots you can see the present (when she is walking along the street) and the past (when she is trapped in the cellar) In the film Inception you see the past and the present. The two shots show this. We thought that it would be a good twist for our thriller and would be more exciting for the people watching our film.













CONVENTIONS CHALLENGED.

We challenged the normal thriller genre by adding in a twist of thriller to our piece. In the screenshot of our film you can see that our protagonist is trapped and isolated, which is also something that happens to the girl in the film "The Ring". We decided that by twisting in a mix of horror we would be able to grip our audience more and also get them to pay attention. Because our opening two minutes don't give away much, we thought that by getting their attention would be vital if we wanted them to want to watch more.

 




Another way that we challenged the typical thriller conventions is by having our protagonist that had a physical injury. Normally if the protagonist has an injury its mentally, but we have challenged this. Our example is from the film "Se7en". We decided to use this because he a very able bodied man, and is a strong character. Our main character has a limp, and you don't find out in the opening how she has got it or why she has the plaster on her arm. This also creates mystery as the audience will want to know how and why she has those injury's.

Question 2.

Caroline Anderson - Question 2 on Prezi

Question 3.


 http://nfgsnorthstar-noone.wikispaces.com/


Question 4.

• Our ideal audience member would be a 20-25 year old female. She is middle class, and lives in a flat with a couple of other housemates, all female. She is currently doing an apprenticeship  at a law firm, which she takes seriously. The course is 2 years long, and she is in her final few months. She feels the pressure to impress her boss because at the end of her course, only 3 people will be hired out of the 20 people she is currently working alongside. She enjoys going to the cinema to see films, but also enjoys buying them on DVD when the are released.

• She goes to the cinema at least once a week, sometimes with her flatmates, but sometimes alone. She enjoys films that play with your mind, and films that leave you wanting to see more. One of the last films that she saw and really enjoyed was the Da Vinci Code. 

 

• She studied Religion at university, and also enjoys films with a religious theme. 

• She enjoys coming home of an evening, sitting down, having a glass of red wine and watching a film on DVD. Most of her housemates go out to the bars and pubs, which she doesn't mind as it gives her a chance for some peace and quiet and to enjoy her film in peace.

• She likes watching T.V programmes like Whitechapel, as she feels that they play with your mind and you have to pay attention to little details to be able to make your own choices about the storyline.

• Although she currently lives with her flatmates, she hopes to find a place of her own soon, so that she will have more space. She doesn't like living in a mess, and does struggle to live with so many people.

Question 5

Here is our media piece that is on youtube. Tags have been added in to explain the different costumes, lighting, camera angls and general Mise En Scene that we used.




Question 6

This is a picture of me using the camera to film a scene. I had to learn how to use the camera's because for our preliminary task i didn't get to film as i was starring in it meaning that i had no experience with how to use the camera's. I learnt how to film with the camera's and also how to take pictures. Also by using the tri-pod i learnt how to make sure that the camera was steady and that it didn't jog. It made it easier to film our scenes.

This is a picture of a scene that we filmed. It was a close up shot of the phone ringing. I learnt how to do close ups on the camera, which worked well for the effect that we wanted. It looked very dramatic which is what we wanted.

This is a picture of when i was creating my Prezi for my evaluation. I learnt how to use prezi by looking at youtube video's to help me and also by listening to other people in my group about how they learnt how to use it.

I learnt how to use Final Cut Express by playing about with the Macs. I slowly started to pick up how to to different things and how to make different effects on our media piece. At first i wasn't comfortable using the macs as i didn't understand fully what i had to do or how to use them, however after a few weeks of using them i started to pick up different things, like how to add in music, how to use cross fades, how to lighten or darken the scenes, and a lot of other things. In our preliminary task we rushed through it meaning that we didn't experience how to properly use final cut express. After using it for our real thing i now feel comfortable on how to use the Mac's and how to use Final Cut Express.

We decided that for our media piece we were going to use the Mac laptop. We did this so that it would enable us to use it whenever we wanted and also meant that we could take it with us when we filmed so that we could transfer our footage onto it straight away and see what it would look like. By doing this we thought that it would be easier to see what looked good and what didn't and would mean we would know if we had to re-film or not if it didn't look how we wanted.

This is a picture of Final Cut Express, the piece of software that we used to create our opening thriller. it shows the different clips that we used, how we put them in place and the use of the cross fades. It also shows the title's to our film, where we used the broken television effect with the credits going on top.

Question 7

this is our preliminary task, that has been annotated. We annotated it to show all of the things that we did and how we felt we improved on them through out the making of our actual piece. this includes things like how we didn't use a tri-pod, making the camera shaky, and also the fact that we didn't use good camera angles.

Evaluation

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

DaVinci Code

USED:

  We have used the typical thriller convention of building suspense by not letting the audience fully know what is going on. Within our final piece, we have used this convention as the audience doesn't know why she is bare foot, walking down a long road which is very dangerous, in the freezing cold, looking tired. This is used in the Da Vinchi Code when there is a man, half naked tied up to a board, looking very uncomfortable. 

credits from inception.

 

We have used credits in the standard place within the opening, as they are usually over the top of the piece, reflecing teh subject being portrayed. Ours are very bold, blocked and look as though they have been printed on, to create a unknown, 'who typed them' affect. The inception link with their theme, as the lettering is a maze, reflecting that the subject is based around a 'need to find the end/ escaping' theme, which it is.


DEVELOPED:

Black Swan

 We have developed on the character as it is usually a man aged between 20-30, who is strong willed. However, we used a woman character, which is more unusual to find within the thriller genre. The Black Swan used a lead woman characterful and it worked extremely well, however it stayed within the normal age of 20-30. We felt the lead of a woman worked well so used it, but felt we would be more effective if we created the character not be withing the typical 20-30 age boundaries and to make her younger.





We challenged the use of cross cutting as typically is cuts between two different plots, running along side one another. We however, cut between the past and the present (flash forward/flashback, separating with the use of a blur, which could indicate confusion) using the same character making it unclear for the audience to fully know what is going on and this manipulates time.
 
inception, crossing between the two levels of dreams.


CHALLENGE:

The Ring.

We challenged our piece by using a very horror genre based story line with a thriller twist. It had a fair amount in common with thw horrow 'The Ring'; the costume; the long hair and the fact she was trapped/isolated, however it was a thriller as the story line was very 'thriller filled' and it had many conventions which fitted the thriller genre.

Seven

We challenged disability within our piece as our character had a limp. This is completely opposite to the usual thriller convention, which is usually a strong willed, intelligent, dependent, mighty man, who doesn't show any sign of weakness. However ours shows a women who is psychically ill/weak, and by the way she is dressed within her surroundings, mentally ill as well.

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Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Q2 on Prezi

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Q3. What kind of media institutes might distribute your media product and why?


http://nfgsnorthstar-noone.wikispaces.com/


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Q4. Who would the audience for your media product?

• It would be a female, as the main character is a female, and this would appeal to women.
• The female would be a brunette as the character has brunette hair and aged between 20-25.
• She would be a university graduate, who studied law, as she'd think about what could happen and try and work out the plot. However, she would be very 
•  laid back, and enjoys spending  time with friends and family, having meals out, and going clubbing with friends.
• She's a social consumer of films. She'd have many dvd's, of which vary from chick flicks too her favorite type of films; psychological thrillers.
• Have the up to date technology; i-phone, i-pad, HD ready TV, laptop, however would have many law books of which she used to study. She would also have a few thriller books, in which she would read when she goes on holiday, but would leave them there as she doesn't want to clutter her home with books.
• Her work life is very hardcore, as she has to investigate and work out many investigations. She is very clever, and can work out tricky situations, that is why she likes a good psychological thriller with a twist. 

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Q5. How did you attract/address your audience?




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Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? on Prezi

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Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

COMPLETED FINAL PIECE

rough cut film with speech

This is our film with the speech. We still haven't finished as we want to add a prayer over the top at the end, as in our research the results showed that people wanted a religious theme.

rough cut film without speech

This is the first rough cut of our film. This is without the dialog in which we included.