Evaluation - Planning

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

• title - development
• how 'Se7en' and 'Negative' helped my group
• abstract and narrative filming - differences between, why changed, etc
• photography and town scenes and idea
• looking at the theme of 'Gender' withint thillers - how we changed the stereotype, how does it still apply to a thriller conventionally
• As we worked through our group’s photography and town theme, my group decided to change and take a more narrative, rather than abstract approach, without giving to much of the plot away. Therefore allowing us to film scenes, rather than random images as done in an abstract, to make it easier for us to get our thriller idea across, still without giving to much of the plot away so questions could be raised during the narrative to confuse the viewer, which is a typical thriller convention.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• Teenagers (-both genders are equally vulnerable – boys taken first – but then girl left to defend herself. –drunks – vodka bottles and being loud – makes them even more vulnerable to attack -anti-social behaviour from teenagers - steroetyped underage drinking - therefore believeable?)
• Gender (Men – more powerful – killer is a man.)

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

• to show generic conventions of a thriller film (list generic conventions – in red book)
• to show how stereotypical themes such as ‘gender’ can be challenged (female vulnerability)

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• people aged between 15 – 30 years of age (teens featured in sequence – more depicted on teenagers lives and understanding – drinking, vulnerability of strangers)
• Both have one word titles about the films. For example, ‘Se7en’ represents the seven deadly sins within the Bible, which ultimately causes the killer to choose his victims. However, even though we gained inspiration for our idea from ‘Se7en’ I do not think that the content has turned out the same as we changed from abstract to more narrative.

How did you attract/address your audience?

• By using scary but upbeat music to attract a youthful audience
• relation to photography – very popular hobby amongst youth culture today – fashionable
• opening sequence feature teenagers – can relate to characters lives which makes it more scary for the viewer (it could happen to them sense of thought) – going out drinking at night with mates
• ‘Development’ was aimed at young adults of 15 – 25 years of age.

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

• garage band – music
• final cut express – editing video footage
• day for night plug in – used the colour filter to give the appearance of night (or at least dusk)
• Never used an apple Mac before – easy to use
• list different frame shots I have learnt (and used in the sequence)
• to use the tripod for steady, close-up shots – as used in my close up shots of killers hands and camera - gives professional effect
• I have learnt to use the tripod for steady, close-up shots, (such as what I used when obtaining close-up shots of the camera flash). This gives a professional effect to the footage.
  

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

• to make sure you have a steady, solid plan that can easily work before starting
• need to be careful of outside conditions before deciding to film – brightness outside when filming night scene (colour filter wouldn’t work as well – difficulties, yet were pleased with end effect (clear film as filmed in bright conditions, yet gives impression of dusk still)
• make sure everyone has a clear idea of what they are doing within each scene (filming, acting, editing, etc) – I helped our team by creating a structured plan of who was doing what for both the ‘Town’ and ‘Photography’ scenes.
• Before starting our thriller project we had to create a preliminary task which I enjoyed, as it made us comfortable with the equipment and with the different camera shots we could use and was simply fun to create.
  We created an animatic before beginning the project to make sure we had a steady plan that could easily work, before starting. Our animatic was questioned about the amount of plot given away, so we shortened the amount of narrative storyline in our project so questions could still be raised.
• During the planning we updated our blog with all of the information we found out as well as notes to help us. I created a task structure on the blog for the group for people to follow and stick to, however, this was altered throughout the project because of people’s absences.