Evaluation Addition

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

The conventions of a thriller are the violence, crime and murder by showing society in dark dangerous ways. The ending of a thriller film usually ends with the antagonists being killed or arrested and justice is usually brought. Plot twists and cliff hangers are usually common features, which are very effective in creating it to be tense and gripping. To challenge this convention, our thriller showed a more psychological aspect, but still had the feature of blood which then leads to fear and murder (injustice). We still followed the convention of suspense with the music and the shots transitions which did increase with certain parts of the opening sequence (Bus scene). We followed the psychological thriller conventions but also developed in some mystery in our opening sequence. We did this by hiding the antagonist and only revealing him right near the end at the bus scene and with the bloody hand after time had past. In each scene the audiences opinion on the antagonist changes, at the telephone box and the bus scene the antagonist is hidden and is calm and quiet. He is portrayed as a tranquil being and isn’t thought as an antagonist until the bloody hand scene, because the blood makes the audience think, “Oh, that’s not good. He’s obviously the bad guy”.   

2. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? (In particular, discuss how you used social media to gain audience feedback).

Most students including our College use YouTube to share projects online to others. YouTube is free and everyone can view it. This is appealing to those with little to no money and has more of a chance to get views from others, even if they do not leave a response, but even the views from each video does determine the popularity and the success of the video. There is also a gain if your videos are so popular and some people make a living out of it and class it as a job, for example Tom Ridgewell (TomSka) and Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (PewDiePie). Production companies also promote material on YouTube and so do musicians. Some independent companies can use YouTube as leverage and publicity for their companies. Runaway Planet, for example, is a new production company which is using YouTube to connect with audiences and therefore reaching out to a wider audience. Despite seeing YouTube as just a place to view your favourite clips or music videos, it does become people’s lives.  YouTube has 800 million users and gets 4 billion views per day.

Social networking sites such as Facebook has 1 billion users with 9 million apps. Especially with the young active population Facebook is very popular to communicate to friends and family. This also plays nicely to companies within the media field. Pages of bands, films and celebrities are constantly active and they can use this to inform their fans on new developments, such as band updates, what new film an actor will be starring in and social trends which are spread globally will most definitively reach you in some form, be it a comment from a friend, a news feed or a advert.  When you share a project on Facebook friends are able to comment on it and share it to their friends, and cause a chain reaction if it is successful. Then it would get well known and possibly become an internet sensation. One example: Gangnam Style    

Film studios such as Hammer Film Productions might be interested in our Thriller because they produce mainly horror, science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies. Our Thriller would cover both thriller and horror due to the blood and psychological violence we were aiming for. And of course the bigger production companies who cover all film genres would have some sort of interest such as Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Working Title and Warner Bros. Film studios such as Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks would not be interested due to their children/family target audience.

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

Our audience is aimed at teenagers and adults and of course those who like thriller film especially the psychological.  From our audience research the films we gave from the list, the top rated film was ‘Pyscho’ which is a psychological thriller.  In general Thrillers aren’t the most popular genre and are very ranged into sub-genres that nearly any action film can fit into. Most films want to create suspense it just varies on what the type of suspense is and concentration of it.

Evaluation

 

 

Our Thriller Evaluation in a audio commentary style

Thriller Evaluation: Recording

We recorded our speaking parts of the evaluation on Thursday lunchtime. 
All 4 of us were present, and we recorded in the sound room.

Sophie and Myself, went back in on Friday lunchtime to go through the recording and edit it into different parts we talk about. Sophie cut it all on Garage Band and I redid some of the speaking because mine needed a touch up. 

Then in Fridays lesson, Sophie finished cutting the audio track and we are ready to put it in with our Thriller opening. 


UPDATE:

Did Strengths and Weaknesses in Mondays lesson, and me and Sophie edited the speaking and cleared it up Tuesday morning as we both had frees. 

Thriller Opening

Our Completed Thriller

(Available on Youtube.com) 

Thriller Evaulation: Planning

Instead of writing a boring report to evaluate our thriller we are filming a directors commentary, explaining what we did, why we did that and how it would appeal to our target audience.

Within the double less, we broke up each question and highlighted what we would need to say to cover all parts of the seven questions.

- Setting/location
- Lightning/Soundtrack
- Cast - Who/Why - realism
- Funding?
- Shot types - Panning difficulties, variety
- Real Thrillers in relation to ours - aspects of other thrillers that are similar
- Bus scene - Continuity issues and fixtures, time - weeks worth of attempts
- Fades - time passing, sharp cuts
- Group Effort
- Individual effort
- Curtain scene - blood red
- Titles - Why we chose that? Unstable, emotional and instability
- How will it get around - Youtube, Media Blogs, Social Networking
- Strengths and Weaknesses 

Currently planning a college lunchtime to film it, when the sound room is free and we are all available and not in lessons.

I have constructed a timeline to estimate at what points to pause the thriller opening and to talk about a certain aspect.

We still have one more lesson to completely finish our thriller, which is tomorrow (Thursday 13th).

Thriller Development #16: Further Editing

Wednesday 5th December

In class we watched the remaining thriller rough edits from other groups and filled in their questionnaires, before continuing to edit.

Additions:

1. We added in opening credits of our names and those who took part in film making on final cut express.

2. With successfully filming the bus scene we were able take out the bad shots where the bus and driver didn't match. So all continuity errors in our thriller opening are now eliminated.   

3. We took out the wind effect we originally added in to make it more dramatic because the fade cross over didn't work entirely well. So we left the music to drone out as it was ending.

4. On the bus scene I cut up the scene and made it change angle frequently so it wasn't boring and still for too long. It also fixed a problem we had with the driver jumping forwards slightly when we cut the footage down.

5. Did a general trim or extending of some shots. We trimmed down a shot of the antagonist so you only see them for a spilt second before cutting to black.


Dialogue still hasn't been recorded because we ran out of time and Abi is still against recording it just to see what it would sound like, because it will sound naff.  

This would also help us improve the narrative of the plot line as some students found it , "Hard to follow", "Bit Vague" and someone even asked "What is it?"

Thriller Development #15: Rough Edit Screening

Monday 3rd December

In Mondays lesson we exported our rough edits so far to premier to the rest of the class.

We designed a questionnaire that questioned each section of the marking citera. So then were are able to improve and make nesscary changes to our thriller to make it more conventional to the genre and any adaptions to our effects.

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What we found...


POSITIVE:


SHOTS AND TRANSITIONS: All those asked said the shots were steady and there was a good variety of shot distances. The shot transistions were smooth in most places and worked well.

TITLES: When asked about the opinion on the titles, 1 person said very good (unique) and 7 people said is was good.

SOUNDTRACK: The majority said the sound track works well in setting a solem mood and along with the thriller content as it as a creepy atomsphere.


NEGATIVE:

SCENES: 3 people said the scenes should be darker lightning to set the mood. 1 person suggested more close ups.

NARRATIVE: 2 people couldn't follow or understand the narrative plot line and suggested there should be some sort of dialogue to explain it, (which we attend record and test).  

TITLES: 1 Person said the font doesn't work with the setting and mood as it is too gory even though it was intentional. I think it doesn't seem to fit because the narrative its clear enough.

TRANSISTIONS: A couple of people suggested that there should be more transistions between shot and the transisition between the wind sound effect and the music should be a lot smoother. We know it isn't smooth because it was a sudden Idea we thought of and didn't have time to sort out because we had t export it for the showing.
   
CONTINUITY: One person noticed the bus drivers were different in the bus shots, (as we filmed on different days). We are currently refilming it to get a better angle and have less of a continuity problem.