Jess Brayne - Evaluation

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

Our media product uses many of the conventions that identify to the thriller genre.

• The use of antagonist/protagonist is used in the form of the teenage girl and the mysterious kidnapper.
• The kidnapper also fulfils the role of an enigma character; a character or item that remains a mystery to the audience to build suspense.
• The narrative of our media product is told in such a way that it leaves the audience asking questions and wondering what will happen next, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. Cutting between two different characters, the girl leaving college (protagonist) and the man unlocking the cellar door and preparing for what is to come (antagonist), creates a feeling of tension among the audience.
• We shot our opening in such a way as to hide the identity of the kidnapper, creating a more tense feeling and also to create an amount of untrustworthiness about the character. A lot of the footage was taken from very high angles in order to show the difference in power between the two main characters, the kidnapper having more power.
• The clothes our two main characters wore also helped build tension and suspense. The girl wore normal clothes as a stereotypical teenage girl would in order to show that she was just a normal girl; this was to emphasise the characters vulnerability and overall innocence and to build up  level of sympathy amongst the audience. We had the kidnapper dressed in dark clothes to create a higher amount of mystery encasing this character, also, being dressed in all black makes it even harder to give the kidnapper an identity.
• The knives we used as props add more thrills to the opening of our thriller, the sharp noise they made as the kidnapper sharpened them, and the use of chloroform, made the tension even higher due to the malicious implications they gave off.

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

Our main two characters represented particular social groups such as Gender, Age, Ethnicity and Social Class. The two are very different and represent their social groups very differently.

• Gender: The girl dresses like a stereotypical girl would, showing that she is a normal girl. 
• Alternatively, the kidnapper will, despite his almost lack of identity, will be presumed to be a male with a certain amount of strength and logic. We can, from his build and his stance, guess that he is male. We can also deduce that he is quite logical due to the fact that he has managed to plan the kidnapping and carry it out, presumably thinking of all possible eventualities.
• Age: Again from the way she is dressed, her general look and the fact the audience sees her coming out of college, we can see that the girl is in her mid to late teens. This can also be learnt through observing her behaviour and her facial features.
• The kidnapper, however, is harder to put an age on as we never see his face, or get any hint of his identity. Nevertheless, we can guess that he is a young adult, maybe early twenties, because of his build. Nothing else about this character really gives away anything about his age.
• Ethnicity: Unlike the other social groups, ethnicity is very easy to determine. The girl is white, of British descent.
• On the contrary, it is very difficult to appoint the kidnapper to a certain ethnic grouping without looking at his face, which we never get to do.
• Social Class: social class is determined by someone's wealth or behaviour in particular situations. The girl comes across as being upper-middle class, she enters her house through a very large kitchen, implying that she has a lot of money. This can also be given away by the way she dresses and that fact that we saw her at college, which we assume she would regularly attend.
• Once again it is harder to define the kidnapper's social class because of the efforts to keep his identity secret. Although, we can gather that he must have a decent amount of money in order to purchase all the props he would need to carry out the kidnapping.

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

A small British distributor like: Revolver, Metrodome and Icon.
How many copies? £1500 each
Where to release: A small cinema like: The Duke of York's, Brighton, The Cornerhouse, Manchester or Hyde Park Picture Palace, Leeds. This is because a small company would not have lots of money to spend on distribution unlike Hollywood for example.
Eventually maybe Lovefilm or Netflix or maybe online for xbox if the film became very popular.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience would be, predominantly, males in their teenage or early adult years. This is because the thriller genre is preferred by this target group. I found this by doing a small survey of my friends on Facebook. I looked at the BBFC standards website to determine what certificate to place upon our thriller. After careful consideration, I have decided to classify our film as a 15. This because it could contain strong violence and strong language under circumstances of frustration and anger. This decision is also based on the certificates of films of a similar nature, such as: Inside Man, The Negotiator and Die Hard.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted this audience through our storyline, which contains violence and suspense. We found out that this is what our target audience liked to see in a film. We also attracted our target audience by not having a really far-fetched storyline that was unbelievable. Although this thriller is aimed at males, females may feel sympathy for the female character and this makes them want to watch the film to see if she survives. This connection of sympathy can be used to attract all sorts of people to watch a film, as can the premise of mystery and suspense.

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

Sound/video clip.
Rough script:

• Camera: Shot distances, how effective it is to get close, how to frame things better (we had to re-shoot parts as there was either lots of unused space of feet/tops of heads were cut off), tracking and how the dolly made too the camera wobble on the tiled floor so we improvised, how to pan and not have unused space during, how to make angles effective and show power or give the impression someone is being followed, 180 degree rule (we broke it and had to re-shoot)
• Lighting: We had problems in the house when we panned because by the door it was really light but further in it was not, we solved this later in the editing. We created different moods through the lighting, in the cellar it was very dark lighting,
• Editing: How to cross cut, we had problems editing scenes together so they didn't jump, we had to change the size of some shots as there were unwanted things, like light stands, in the background,
• Sound: How to remove all sound and overlay a sound track, how to accentuate specific sounds, of parts of sounds, to improve I think we need to spend more time as the sound track become annoying and doesn't fit the film properly
• Titling: I knew nothing before, now where to place names/the title, how to change fonts and size and colour,

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

I feel I have learnt:

• Better framing
• Use of more shot types, especially close ups
• How to track and pan effectively
• How to edit things together more smoothly and how to use cross cutting
• How to edit sound and change the volume of only certain points
• How to construct a character better, mainly through their costume and subtly little actions
• How to get cut effectively so the shots don't drag on
• How to speed up clips enough for their purpose but not so they look comical
• How different types/positions of lights can change a mood