We understand what the thriller genre should consist of and have applied it to our opening by including elements of dark lighting, enigmas and suspense to make the audience want to carry on watching while feeling agitated along the way. When thinking about our thriller we considered films like 'Saw' and 'Shank'. The thing that these films have in common with our thriller is showing teenagers paying the price for their mistakes. Although they go to extreme lengths of punishment they still have the basic outline that our thriller portrays. We took the idea of the dungeons and dark places 'Saw' uses for their torture scenes and tried to replicate it to highlight the thriller aspects along making it frightening to watch.
The trailer of 'Shank' is shown below:
2) How does your media product represent particular media groups?
We have chosen to represent young people (teenagers) reasonably, unlike daily newspapers and films that go above and beyond in trying to dehumanise teens today. Although we have taken a stereotypical event for teens we have not just tried to glamorise the issue of drug use but instead show the dangers and consequences it has. Our thriller also highlights the recent increase in teenage drug abuse. The drug that has got the media in a frenzy is a legal drug called “Mephedrone”. Two teenagers have died from an overdose which emphasises the impact drugs have on vulnerable teens, it also doesn’t help the fact that it is available online which makes it easy to be purchased by the public.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Personally I can see our film being shown in digital cinemas around “hackney” and “Angel”, this is purely because they have the highest number of teenage drug abuse than anywhere else in the country so I feel that it is an ongoing issue and people would be more interested to see it than a place like Richmond. It can also be used for other media classes for other students to watch and evaluate our work or it can even be showcased to short film festivals which also allow us to show off our media product to other people. However as a group we decided to distribute our film on YouTube, it is popular with our target audience and also this is because as YouTube gets over 100 million hits a day, it enables our film to get a larger amount of viewers as people might not want to pay to watch our media product as it is made by amateur media students. Another way of distribution is through the ‘Microwave’ system films like “Shifty” have gained success and become familiar through this type of distribution and we hope out film will do the same. Viral marketing was another way of distribution, not only is it cheap it also brings vapid awareness to our film; it is the idea of sending someone a link which will then pass it on if they found it interesting and will hopefully lead in a chain and reach many people.
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
(Click link to see questionnaire)
I made a survey on http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HKJXQ8Y to find my target audience. We collected the results and found that people from ages 15 to 21 would most likely be interested in our thriller, we feel that our film is a representation of teenagers so it is most relatable to this age group.
We chose to ask our target audience group questions about our thriller and record extracts of their feedback.
I created this illustration using www.wordle.net which includes comments from my research.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
After distributing questionnaires which not only enabled us to identify our target audience but also give them a chance to include what they would like to see in our film. Our results informed us that we had to make a spy / physiological thriller. It was easy to make sure our thriller provided what they had asked for as we kept this in mind while coming up with our storyline.
Also by using clever shots like point-of-view it makes the viewer feel as though they are the protagonist as they can relate to certain events shown in our thriller. Our choice of location for the torture scene has had a successful affect on our audience as it makes the our film more gripping and interesting to watch. Overall we have used moments of shock and suspense which let us stay true to the thriller genre while making it appeal to our target audience.
As we have left our thriller opening at a cliffhanger this makes the audience want to carry on watching to find out who did it and what will happen next. By using young actors it makes the film more relatable to the teenage market, which is our target audience.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Blogger.com was a new experience for me, I never knew how and why it is used and after creating my media blog I have found that I have enjoyed updating it with new information. I had no previous experience in using the iMac computers or editing software, even recording on the camcorders was new to me because I never knew the rules and effort that goes into recording a short clip, for example making sure the frame is steady by lining up the vertical lines, also not crossing over the 180 degree rule so it doesn’t confuse the audience. Once we got familiar with the iMovie software we began using different transitions, adding music, cutting and arranging scenes and adding out opening titles, which are evident in our film and makes it more enjoyable to watch.
The iMac computers were frustrating to use at the beginning as we didn’t save our first preliminary task which meant we had to re-edit.
Surveymonkey was another site that I have learnt from media, it is an easy way to make a questionnaire, distribute it and collect answers, i will defiantly be using this in the future as I have done for my thriller questionnaire. I also created a montage including all the thoughts and ideas that went in to create our thriller using onetrue media. This is a quick, fun and easy process to making a video about anything by adding music and pictures. Other internet sites that helped us with our research are google, Wikipedia and YouTube which has enabled us to embed our videos and made it easier to complete our film.
The techniques I have learnt in media, I will take away with me and apply them, not only to other media projects but also into everyday life.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the product?
I have learnt about team work and organisation as well has filming and editing. Our preliminary task was a very basic and simple training exercise to get an idea of what our final product would be like. Our preliminary task included a few camera angles, no audio and no real storyline. When it came to editing our preliminary we only used straight cuts, so in comparison to this I feel we have come a long way as our thriller includes all the aspects of the thriller genre, we have paired it up with appropriate music to work alongside the torture scene and we have got interesting camera shots and transitions, such as dissolves and overlap. If I could go back and change one thing it would be our organisation and timing issues, as we missed our original deadline due to lack of planning it meant we fell behind and under pressure to get it done but as we continued to work as a team we combined our talents and overall I think we have done a great job.
An example to show how far we have come and how much we have learnt, I chose to incuded a framing shot from our preliminary task and a framing shot from our thriller.
(A poor framing shot from our preliminary task)
(A clever use of over-the-shoulder shot from our thriller)
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