Evaluation of the finished production

1). In what way does your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productions?

There are main ways in which my piece uses and develops forms and conventions of real productions. Previously on my blog I wrote about the conventions of a thriller, an example of were we used the conventions of a thriller would be “Extraordinary events happening in ordinary situation”. We have set the thriller in our school which is an ordinary event for the girl, going to school, and the killer came in to follow her, which is an extraordinary situation. This showed that we used a convention of a thriller.

We didn’t at any point challenge the conventions of a thriller, because firstly we wanted to create a thriller so not using the conventions of a thriller would not make it work, nor make it effective. We wanted to follow the rules of a thriller because this was the easiest way of making sure we done it right and that we done it effectively.



2). How does you media product represent particular social groups?

The only social group that is shown in the whole of the thriller is teenagers. I feel there are a few different reasons why we chose to do our thriller about this age group. Some reason why would be because both me and Chris are in this age group so we know what would interested this group the most. We are both teenagers so we could act in the production, and not have to get other older actors to work in our production, and teenager viewers would be able to relate with younger actors rather than older ones.

We didn’t try to attract other social group, for example people from different religions, older people, etc. this was because it would have been much harder to try and add things into the thriller that would attract all different types of people.

I feel that they age group would range between the ages 15-25 at the most. This is because these sorts of issues are interesting to this age group and would attract them.




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

Of course due to the fact that we are doing a AS level piece of work for school, and that we used none copy righted music, we would not sell our product, we only will show it to our friends and use it as a piece of work.
But I did some research into different institutions, used my knowledge and looked at what type of films they distributed.
As I study Media studies we have learnt a lot about Film4 as an institution. Film4, I feel would possible want to distribute mine and Chris’s film because it is a film about real issues. That is the types of films that film4 show, show our thriller would fit into it.

But if I was to distribute the piece I would think of putting it on the Internet on a free play website so that other people could watch it for free. This would be useful for people that were in my position, because it would show them what they need to do and give them some ideas for things like camera shots to include, camera angles, stories, etc. I would have found it useful to have seen a sample piece of work, but I am sure if I had done some research I would have found some.




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

Our target audience would be over 15 years of age because that is the certificate that our thriller is meant to be. I don’t think our thriller would be very popular with the older audiences because the sort of issue that the thriller is about. Also all the actors are young and the editing that is used suits the younger audiences.
Teenagers are our main target audience because this style of film is interesting to this age group. Also the audience would be able to relate to the actors in the thriller, which would make it more effective.




5). How did you attract/address your audience?

The main ways in which we attracted the audience was by the story of our thriller. Me made sure that it is easy to follow, but still making sure that there was parts that the view had to think about and wonder about. The target audience we choose was 15-25, and after doing interviews we realised that this type of story line would really attract them to watch the thriller.

The actors that we used attracted the audience, and I don’t mean that because me and Chris was starting in it people wanted to watch it but I mean that we used actors that are in the target audiences ages group or close to there age group which meant that the audience could relate to the actors and the story. The issue used in the story could make them also relate to the thriller because at some point they could have felt like they had been being watched or followed, or maybe know someone that has been thought this situation, even if it isn’t as server as this story line.

The music we chose was very jumpy, at parts it was fast and at parts it was slow, but it was always creepy with made the audience know something was going to happen, which made them want to keep watching.

Another way that I feel we attracted the audience was the way it was edited and the scenes we used. We didn’t use fast paced editing, which would have attracted the audience, because this would have fitted with the action that was happening, but we used editing that make the whole piece flow, and really well. The shots showed that the killer was walking thought the school, and because of the clothing he was wearing, the hoodie, this meant that the audience knew something was going to happen so they would want to carry on watching.



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

The technical side of the thriller is very hard. It was very hard to get the hang of using the imac’s at first, but after a few times of using them you just get used to it and do things like you would if you were on a normal computer.

The technical equipment that we used was the imac computers and the cameras, and the software on the computers imovie, which we used to do all the editing.

Editing was a very hard part of the thriller, and it took, in my view, the most of the time. This is because we had to learn have to editing, which we had from doing the preliminary exercise, but we also had to learn how to put the titles in, put the transitions in the correct places. The technology was easy to use once you knew how to do it, which meant that in the end we were doing the editing really quickly.

We only encountered one problem that I can remember will using the imac’s, which was that it would let us letterbox two of the scenes so that they looked like the other ones. This really annoyed us and meant that we left before finishing the piece because we was to annoyed and it wasn’t working, but the next day we went in to finish it and it work. This annoyed us a little bit because there was no reason for it not to work the day before, but we just glade that it worked.



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

I feel that me and Chris have progressed so much from what we done in the preliminary exercise. Firstly we become more focused on doing our work and getting it all finished in time. I am not saying by that, that we didn’t put effort into our work that we did for our preliminary exercise, but what I mean is that when we was doing it we didn’t come back after school and make sure it was absolutely perfect before we found we was finished. Where as when we was doing our thriller we knew that it was a very important part of our media AS level, this meant that we spent a lot of time after school, in our media lessons and at lunch times trying to finish the filming and doing all the editing.
I am very proud of myself and my partner because we done all the camera work and editing on our own, which was a lot of work because there was only two people in our group which meant there was a lot of messing about pressing play and running to the place we needed to be for the scene. But all the hard work has paid off, because we feel the finished piece is very good.

One of the main things that has changed from when we started the preliminary exercise to know, and that is that we have really come forward with our camera angles and being more experimental. Will the preliminary exercise we was only really getting used to using the cameras and trying some shots, but when it came to doing our thriller we tried different angles placing the camera in different places, doing things like high angle shots to create tension. I feel we got more confident from doing our preliminary exercise which we could use in the thriller.

I have learnt that, from doing the thriller, it is much harder than it looks. With the preliminary exercise was much easier because we only have a little list of things that we had to include but when it come to filming our thriller we had a big list of things to include, lots of rules to follow, editing to do, and time limit of about 2 minutes.

The only thing I found really hard was the time limit; it meant that we couldn’t add all the shots that we wanted. One of the shots that we would have used would have been a close up of my face to show my reaction to the door shutting “on its own”, and another would have been an extreme close up on my eye, to show my reaction also. But due to the fact that we were already over the time limit we had to keep them out of the piece. I feel if we would have had a minute longer we could have made our piece even more effective.