Evaluation

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

Our piece of media coursework challenges the traditions of most thriller openings by it starting the open in a public place unlike most thrillers which usaully start in an out of the way place such as an old abandoned building after a crime has already been committed which shrouds everything in mystery.

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

The main group that is portrayed in our work is the teen/young people of todat as they are the people acting out their respective places in the video. The second group that it could be said that are portrayed are people around the south-eastern area of London due to this area being the main place that the media project takes place.

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

The media institute that might distribute our media would be a group like Film four or United artists due to it being a low budget, British film with a British cast. There isn't much chance of another company over seas taking on the film project because most over seas because it either doesn't meet the standards that hollywood block bustres dish out on a regular basis and that most other countries don't speak English so if they were to go to other countries a dubbing process would be in order meaning that our work still isn't complete.

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

The target audience on a greneral level is those that like the thriller genre while a more in depth target would be someone who likes or would like to see into the mind of a person growing up in an urban area now days, and what phsycotic ideas litter their mind, e.g. crime, murder etc.

5.How did you attract/addressyour audience?

The way we addressed the audience and attracted them was by setting the film locally so most of the areas in the film seem familliar to local people so we would atleast have support from the community around Essex aswell as that of the fans of the genre would regularly go to see it.

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

I have learnt that the technologies used in creating a film wasn't as complicated and hard as it was the first time we used it in the preliminary exercise so the work was done a little quicker this time but we added extra stuff such as transitions once we figured out where they were and how to use them.

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

Looking back at the preliminary exercise I see that I learned to take more time and patience doing the editting. Though a point must be made that the shots in that weren't as good as the could of been because we were missing a member of our group so we had to make do with just a tripod to hold the camera.

Our finished Product

Questionnaire results

Yes we done a questionnaire, and yes I forgot to post the results so yeah kudos to me.the results are that the majority of more people asked were between 10-16 (except one person who was apperantly between 26-30 and didn't know the concept behind circling an answer). The majority of people asked were also female and most of the favourate genres chosen was romance and comedy, is stereotyping of womens' likes and dislikes true? (and feminism marches on). Thirdly people mostly go to the cinema 1-3 times a month. Lastly was that most said the thing that they liked most about films was story line. This draws to the conclusion that a genre that dominates a lot of movie studios in america is a mostly enjoyed genre of film. (sorry for no fancy bar charts or tables like Carla but the information is here).

Final part of the editting process.

The last thing to do now was to find a piece of music that could be played over the video because there really isn't dialogue and the 'actions speak louder than words as the old phrase goes as we tried to incorporate into our video, trying to walk in the foot steps of Cassherns long scenes that contained no dialogue what so ever (go see my look at Casshern which was written a fair while ago now). The piece of music that I have chosen is a song from one of the sites which I put up for the other people in my class to use, www.newgrounds.com . Its easy, quick to use and is full of free, legal songs to use. (shameless plug, I know). the song I have chosen that will play through the video is called 'silence before the hurricane' created by Luuk Meijssen (Saikuya), obviously someone whose very talented so credit to him and his song that I found not to many minutes ago now.

We went, We filmed, We kicked ass!

Last wednesday we finally managed to get the group together and the person we needed to actaully film our thriller "YAY" ( note sarcasm). Jordan from my group chose the location for where to film and because of this we deviated a lot from the story board we had originally made but thanks to his initiative we managed to come up with something that was a lot better than what we he had planned, he also starred in it because I couldn't seem to run fast enough away when being chased so Kudos to him and his great choice in location. Tireni was in charge of the camera work and in my opinion done quite a good job, deciding about where to film in the location and what sort of shots should be used (The establishing shot of the area was great and was supposed to go straight into the next scene but because it wasn't done right it had to be cut in a different way). Today I done the editting of the video where I chopped up the video in a manner of ways. First thing that I did was as each cut occurred I lengthened the transition with a cut to a black background and each of our names appearing as though they were intro credits on a film, as this is supposed to be the opening of a thriller so it seems to fit well. A second thing to add is that the second half of the video is shot from a first person perspective (again a good choice on Tireni's behalf) so in a sense it does put the viewer in the shoes of the victim in a way, (and yes I was the one filming the second half because Tireni needed to be in the frame and so I was the only one left to use the camera). At the last part when the title of the film appears then fades off, the picture changes to black and white as to show that the murderer has got the victim in some way shape or form. This is left up to the viewer to decide how he was killed due to there being no eveidence of a weapon, the screen then flashed out to white after the sun passes in the frame to suggest the victims death, a way to show that the victim has fell but could also be seen as a metaphore for the phrase 'my life flashed before my eyes' as it could be seen that the sun actaully had moved on and it was now night, a representation of the end of life.

Quick update

I haven't been able to get to my blog for roughly a week now due to internet problems so here's a brief summary of what media work I have done over the past week. The first thing to say is that I have been doing homework for one media lesson which is to look at the british soaps that are currently on e.g. Coronation street, eastenders etc. though admittadley I've only really seen coronation street because it's the one my mum watches. Secondly, this weekend I watched the new three episode special of Red Drawf, a british comedy which hasn't had any new episodes or series since 16 years ago, the program is still as good as it's ever been and still grasps what makes a British comedy funny over, most american comedies, the device I'm talking about obviously being humour. Last little things to add is that the group will finally be filming on friday thanks to the help of one of my fellow group members whose persauded a bunch of his friends to act in our project that day also that because my E-mail wasn't working for so long I can finally send in homework that (at this point) is fairly overdue.

One of the biggest factor in a film is the use of music and sound. Give a film to much music or make it too loud, and it begins to get on peoples nerves, don’t give a film any or make it too silent and the film will feel dry and un-entertaining. I was watching a DVD of Cowboy Bebop and found a good example of the use of music (see above). The song ‘Rain’ plays from the beginning and runs parallel with what’s on screen as an organ is playing in the song and the area on screen is that of a cathedral and plays at just the right volume to stay in the viewers mind while not distracting the viewer from what’s being said between the people on screen. At 2:20 minutes in the action begins and all the music is drowned out and is instead replaced with just the sound effects of gunfire and explosions, at 4:33 minutes Spike is thrown out the stained glass of the cathedral as he throws a grenade in blowing up a man he once was partners with in crime, It is here that the song ‘Green bird’ starts playing as he is Vicious is killed, Spike is falling to the ground bleeding everywhere and flash backs are being viewed of when he and Vicious were both in crime together making this use of music contrapuntal.