The student reflects on what they have learned from their preliminary media project and how they have improved their full project. They discuss planning better, considering the mise-en-scene, and executing shots accurately. The student also thinks about how to keep the audience engaged and distribute the project to gain recognition. They analyze their intended teenage audience and how they aimed to attract their interest.
2. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression of it, to the full project? Since the preliminary task I have learnt a lot, such as planning and setting the scene is the most important things in making any media project. In our main task, we had to take in to consideration as to where we would be filming our piece, making sure that our surroundings looked accurate. But with our preliminary task, we did not take our mise-en-scene into consideration, as there were people in the background, and you could tell it was a school canteen, rather than some form of restaurant, as we intended it to be. Despite the mistakes we made when making our preliminary task, as a group and an individual I learnt from this to create a well established thriller piece, by planning everything in detail, and with accuracy . Since making our preliminary task, it was important to think of how the audience would feel whilst watching our piece, we needed to create something enjoyable, and enticing , and make a thriller opening that would not bore the audience. Not only was it important to keep the audience happy, but within the group, it was important to keep each other happy, and let everyone have their own individual input. Finally, when making the preliminary task, the shots of which we were asked to use in our piece, (shot reverse shot, 180 degree , and eye line match) were not accurately executed, so when making our thriller we had to make sure everything was done accurately.
3. What kind of institution might distribute your media project and why? When thinking of a distributer, a company which has a large income would be a good company to have our media product distributed by. Companies such as 20 th century fox, universal, and paramount are all large distributers, and would be good companies to have our thriller piece distributed by. We would also need a company of whom has a well known status within the target audience we would be aiming our thriller at. So a good reason to have an American company distribute our film, would be so that we would gain a good public response by using a well known company, and ‘Reel Productions’ would also gain a large recognition, and following by having a distributer such as one of these handling our work. By having a large company supporting our work, could also mean ‘Reel Productions’ gaining a large income, and becoming a small company such as ‘working title two’, to growing into a more well known company such as ‘film four’ did with ‘slum dog millionaire.’ Below is: paramount, 20 th century fox, and universal’s logo’s.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product? We tried to aim ‘Exposed’ at teenagers aged 15-18, this was due to the characters used, And the nature of the thriller. Although, I still feel it would be a piece that a more Older audience would be interested in (aged 20+) Our audience we hope would consist of both males and females, as the stereotypical male is usually interested in thriller films, and females maybe be more interested in it as it is psychological rather than a jumpy/scary thriller. The certificate rating of the film would be a 15, due to the psychological nature of the film, and therefore this age group would find this more easy to understand and follow. Due to the characters being of middle class, this may indicate as to who the audience would be. Although, I do not feel that this would discourage a higher or lower class from watching the film either. The clothing worn by the characters within the piece, may help an audience member to decide whether they would or would not watch the film. As advertising a certain brand of clothing or an item may also encourage the teenage audience of whom we are aiming our piece at, to watch it. we also hope that a range of stereotypes would watch our piece, and not only be appealing to the ‘normal’ teens of today. Therefore, we hope that the stereotypical ‘emo’, ‘punk’, ‘chav’, ect… teens, would be interested in veiwing ‘Exposed’.
5. How did you attract / address your audience? By having an enigma code at the beginning of our work, we hoped that this would create suspense, and therefore make our target audience more interested and want to carry on watching our thriller. Although they still had some form of information as to what was happening, so that they would not lose interest, and stop watching. By having the protagonist as a young attractive girl, we thought this would create interest with both males and females. We hoped that females would find it interesting, and yet terrifying, as this could happen to them, where as we hoped that by having an attractive female lead role, that the males would be interested in this fact, and want to watch the thriller. Later on in our production, we thought of showing products such as: IPods, certain brands of cameras, brand clothing ect… to interest the teenage audience, and this way we would be advertising for companies within our thriller. Also, we tried to think of a storyline that wasn’t predictable and yet interesting for a young audience to watch. Therefore, making a psychological thriller, that wouldn’t be obvious, and was something that maybe a teenage audience could relate to, was our intended idea, and hopefully something that would appeal to our intended audience.
6. In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productions? When producing our thriller, we tried to contain thriller conventions within the piece. We used two main thriller’s as inspiration when making our thriller, these were ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Se7en’. For the opening of our thriller, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo was very inspiring, as it helped us build up the suspense for our piece, and create a piece different from the other AS pieces we have viewed. This is the opening frames for ‘Vertigo’, they are very simple, and focus on one thing to create a theme of suspense for the audience. This is the first two frames of our productions, we tried to keep with the simple shots, showing a limited amount of movement and information, to create the theme of suspense.
7. How does your media product represent particular social groups? Within our piece, we followed the general stereotypical branding of a character, as our main villain is a male, and our stalked character is a female. It would also help us to later on in the progression of our film, create a vulnerable female character, and a more fears male character. Through out our piece, I feel that we portray the teenage females as vulnerable characters, who are victims in today’s society. Where as the males are seen more as a bad character, and as later on there will be scenes where the male would be lurking behind trees as he stalks his victim, he would be wearing a black hoodie, which could represent the danger that people see in the youth of today. Therefore, through out our piece, I feel it shows the modern female teenagers as vulnerable and more psychologically effected by the situations taking place. Where as the male is seen as more of a strong, yet dangerous character within society.
8. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this production? Please follow this link for the response to this question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6gZSTu1XwQ
9. This PowerPoint was animated, but due to uploading it on to tumblr, all animation was lost.