AS MEDIA PROJECT EVALUATION

Joe Ormondoyd

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

Our film contains several generic conventions , which place it under the thriller genre. One of which is the use of tense places that are usually shown to be quite dark and mysterious, to specify we used a grungy ally and plantation. We challenged this convention by keeping the scene light but giving it a sharp colour contrast.

Another generic convention would be the use of flashbacks. Flashbacks are a powerful and common device in thriller movies as it really helps structure a storyline or the background of a character. We challenged this convention due to the fact that flashbacks are normally used to show an important characters memory, where as we use flashbacks to show a fore-mentioned event giving the audience the opportunity to experience it first hand.

Another generic convention we used would be the use of a female character portrayed to be vulnerable and in danger. We challenged this convention by creating a twist in the character and making her not as vulnerable as first thought.

A further generic convention would be

Post EditingPre Editing

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

Subgenres of a thrillerAfter analysing the conventions and context I have narrowed my project into 3 thriller sub-genres. These subgenres are:Drama thriller: Reasons why I found my film to be under the subgenre drama thriller is because it is quite a slow paced film with a lot of dialogue. Also it contains twists in the plot that effect the audiences and characters opinions on what happens in the plot.Psychological thriller: This subgenre seemed to be suitable for my film as the main character struggles with mental and emotional conflict with herself though out the film.Crime thriller: From what we can gather in the opening sequence of my film, we can see that the police are highly interested and involved with these mysterious and possibly linked murders. Therefore it is clear that crime investigation and other related themes will play a major role in the film.

InfluenceThe conventions we used do have some form of indication of which films inspired us one of which is the film ‘Taken’ this is because the film featured a flash back as early as the opening credits like our film does. Another film that inspired me was Jodie Foster’s ‘Flight Plan’ reasons behind this was due to it having a female main character who eventually is forced into a state of denial and has a mental conflict herself.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? The type of character that had the most screen time in our film introduction was just

the average man, nothing abnormal about him, living life like a average citizen, to emphasise the normality that was this character we had him do the very common task of making a cup of tea. A reason why we used such a simple and normal character is because everyone from all ages and both genders can relate to them.

Another character featured in our opening sequence would be a teenage girl being watched and followed. As large portion of film and television portray young females to be "the damsel in distress" in most situations, we wanted to escape from that stereotype. So we came up with the idea to create a red herring in our sequence by first making the audience believe that this teenage girl is yet another female to be saved from the big hero, to then be followed by a twist in the plot proving she is not as vulnerable as first thought.

Finally our last featured character was for all we know a stalker, we didn't feel age or race was relevant for this role as any would have sufficed. However it was important to use a male for the role as we found it to be a good contrast with the teenage girl. Also as using a male it would stick to the stereotype of using a man to be the dominant figure, thus complemented our red herring idea.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Production Company

I feel our movie would be suitable for a smaller production company as it would be a more low budget movie that relies on the strength of the plot than its special effects, that most Hollywood blockbusters depend onto these days. The company ‘Lakeshore Entertainment’ would be a suitable company to represent our film as they have produced films such as ‘Untraceable’ and ‘Underworld’ which have similar conventions as ours. For example the use of a female lead.

Merchandise

From release, the ‘The Unsuspected’ franchise can be expandedthrough merchandising. Convergence could be used formerchandising, for example a ‘The Unsuspected’ iPod application could be released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Other ways in which our movie could be merchandised is through posters, t-shirts and more. Not only would this expand the franchise but also expand the audience’s opportunity to demonstrate their appreciation for the movie.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product? Our target audience for our film would be any age from 15 and up, also our film

wasn't gender specific. However, as we knew from personal experience and research that males are more likely to be drawn to thriller based movies due to the fact they commonly contain things like violence, a male as the dominant character and a dark and sinister sense, we wanted to feature things in our film that would appeal to woman as well as men thus expanding the films audience.

We chose such a large audience as we didn't want to create ourselves a restricted audience like a lot of films today as they don't necessarily appeal to particular people. What attracted us to the wider than average audience is strictly because it's different to most movies especially in the thriller genre.

The reasons why our opening film credits would appeal to both males and females is because we made the lead character female which already separates our film from most films in this genre. Also our opening sequence contains an everyday scene which everybody can relate to (making a cup of tea whilst listening to the radio). Having such an everyday situation feature in the opening scene of our movie can be quite a risky move as it can be boring but we had it so it featured crucial information relevant to the plot, therefore maintaining entertainment.

5. How did you attract/address your audience? We made it a top priority to make sure none of our scenes on our media

favour a specific audience because as previously stated, we didn’t want to purposefully limit our audience.

We used camera shots as a key devise to address and attract our audience, as we used several different ones, some of which helped build the suspense. For example the point of view shot, (stalkers) it leaves the audience having to wait in anticipation for the girl to notice the stalker, as see the reaction. We purposefully made sure that the stalkers face is never shown to give a sign of anonymous mystery. Also we used the news report to reveal vital information before showing the clip via flashback so it leaves the audience holding the knowledge of something a character doesn’t, this is called dramatic irony.

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

I found using the camera equipment relatively straight forward as I am used to using similar pieces of equipment. A specific strength I had whilst using the camera equipment would have been using my environment as well as the tripod etc. for the best possible camera angle available.

During the filming process the main problem we faced was the lack of equipment availability. At times we were denied access to a tripod as it was already in use. To resolve this problem we had to make one with a panning function, so we used a spinning computer chair. A technical problem we faced was that when we intended to film a television screen we noticed that lines were flowing across the television screen , which was because of  the interference with the feedback of the television. We had to change the settings on the camera so that the to numbers were not the same as the television and that the camera setting number is lower than the television setting number.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product? Continued

Editing- As I hadn’t used a Mac before I was quite slow while using it to begin with but quickly got the hang of programmes such as iMovie. During the process of editing I learnt quite a lot, as I was unaware of how intricate the process could be even when editing a 2 minute clip. During the course of editing my skills at analysing the Mise en scene increased and I was able to pick out issues in continuity easier than before. There some effects that iMovie featured I found very useful, such as the ability to change the contrast of a specific clip because it enabled to make out flashback scenes black and white with a sharper tone. Another feature of iMovie I found useful were the transition effects as it enabled us to create a flash before and after flashbacks.

A Still image taken from a flash back scene after using iMovie’s contrast adjustments.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product? Continued

Garageband - The programme Garageband played an important role in our project as we used it to voice record the key part of our sequence; the news report. We also used Garageband to record a girls scream in order to back up our ‘red herring’ idea. I found it to be quite a straight forward and easy programme to use as I managed to get what was needed done with our any problems.

Internet music - Trying to find suitable music for our project proved to be quite a challenge as not only did it have to fit what it was being played with but we had to make sure it wasn’t under copyright law.

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

I found the planning stage quite an interesting part of the process as it enabled me and those in my group to brain storm our ideas for our project, being as creative as possible. As a group we worked well with developing each others ideas and getting the best of what we could. We turned to looking into existing thriller movies for inspiration or even to expand our own ideas further. I feel we were really able to develop our creativity skills during the planning for the main task in comparison to the preliminary task as we were somewhat limited as to what we could do (man enters room, sits opposite another man and they exchange a couple lines of dialogue. Once we had a list objectives we wanted to cover in our main task, we went fourth to write a brief plot including all the things we wanted to include.

StoryboardOur main task storyboard demanded a lot more creativity than the preliminary task as we had more freedom to do so. We had to revise all the possible camera shots we could use and work out where they would be suitable and most effective in our product. The making of the storyboard consisted of constant changes as new ideas changed our opinion of which camera angles, lighting effects would work best.

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Continued Scripting

As I wanted our main task script to contain a lot of detail so it explained our idea thoroughly, I decided to research into other scripts for television programmes and movies to get a feel for how they are written and what is included in them. After reading a variety of scripts I knew exactly what had to do and I got it done. The personal progression in the art of script writing from prelim to main task was that for the preliminary task the script was predominantly spare of the moment planning, so during the main task I went through the process of drafting and consulting my group for feed back. Even when filming there was last adjustments to the script. From that I learnt that, is that scripts can be drafted several times to what appears to be perfect but when brought to life in front of a camera everything can change.

Shooting ScheduleMaking a shooting schedule was a new experience in the planning for our main task as we didn’t create one for our preliminary task due to the fact we able to film within one time slot. Our main task idea was a lot more complex thus demanding a lot more time for filming. Also as an idea of ours required more than one camera, we had to put equipment availability into consideration before setting a time and date for filming. We managed to successfully create a filming schedule that we were able to stick to, until during one filming slot we discovered that an idea we had was now to difficult to achieve. So we had to re write a small part of our product idea and then re plan another filming schedule in order to make sure we got the job done.

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Continued After finished the project I do feel more confident with the equipment used,

my skills in all areas improved as we progressed through project. I found my self more capable with different camera shots. My speed using macs improved significantly as I learned where things were over time. All in all I feel my confidence using filming equipment has grown significantly as to when we first started as I have managed to overcome and problem that has faced me.

Over all I feel I have accomplished quite a lot considering it was my first media project. Both my group and are proud of our final outcome and found the time it took worth while and beneficial. We can now only use our knowledge and experience taken from this project and put it into tasks to come.