Wednesday 28 March 2012

Anna's Evaluation for Thriller course work

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

A good thriller opening's main priority is to entice the audience to make them want to stay and watch more. Our production like any other raises questions from the very beginning. The immediate ones being; Why are they there? Who are they? What have they done? As our production progresses yet more questions are asked; Why does he owe him money? Why is there a girl there? Was she involved? None of these are answered in the our opening and many of the characters are left anonymous leaving mystery. The beginning of our production is also the very end. I think of it as the last page of the book being read before the prologue. This is similar to the opening of Mission Impossible (2006).

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

Our final product is an action based thriller opening. In the two minutes 30 seconds you get heart racing intensity, it leaves you questioning what more is to come. As the saying goes "start as you mean to go on." If this was a full lenght feature film the type of audience that films such as MI3 and James Bond attract i.e anybody who craves a good action adventure would be our target audience.

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

Momentum Pictures (also known as Alliance Films UK) founded in London, England 2000 is the one of the many leading independant distributors in the UK and Ireland. On average releasing 20 theatrical films a year, including the recent 2012 Woman in Black making a domestic and foreign income gross of $121,787,489. In my opinion this institution is our ticket. Releasing on average 5 thrilling and popular films a year Momentum Pictures not only is a UK film distributor but release more of our genre of film than any other kind. Action-based thriller. In 2009/2010 alone they released; 44 Inch Chest, Brooklyn's Finest, The Horde, Skyline, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.
     
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

I'd like to think our thriller opening appeals to both genders 15 years old and over. After gaining feedback from the social networking site Facebook, the majority of those who gave me feedback were females aged 15-18 and not only have all agreed for the target audience to be 15 years + but all have commented on how good it was and how they are intrigued to watch the rest. I screengrabbed a few of these comments and is to the right. Being stereotypical this will appeal to boys naturally with violence and action being the main topic.
Even though our target audience is 15 year olds and over I have rated our short production a PG-13 as there is little violence and threat reference. Similar to Mission Impossible III (2006) which holds 'intense sequences of frenetic violence and menace, disturbing images and some sensuality' and is also rated a PG-13.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I posted our final production on  a social networking site to gain feeback from friends; what they thought the target audience was? What improvements could've been made? Aswell as their overall opinion. This was not only constructive critisism but gave us the oppurtunity to promote our opening free of charge. Many of the famous distributors are turning to this aswell. Simply because it's another way of getting it out there free of charge and with social-networking sites dominating at the present time anyone, anywhere will hear of it. Accompanied by advertisements on television and trailers in the cinema, online blogs and newspaper reviews etc.  

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

When simulating the countdown timer we photographed the individual 10 shots and added a bleeping sound with garageband. We had to crop these photographs down on final cut pro as the wiring and box was visible. This gave a far more professional and realistic finish. For the hitting sounds we searched on garageband for a suiting sound but couldn't find the match. We decided on making our own foleys using a voice recorder. For achieving the best sounds we tried lots of different techniques including Dan slapping Josh in the face while I held the recorder.....this suprisingly worked the best and we enhanced the sounds and added bass to it later in final cut pro. The biggest lesson learnt concerning technologies was getting my head around the complex macs to enhance and and create a proffesional finish in all aspects of our final piece.

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

In the making of our preliminary task we found it difficult to fill the time space of the task, we overcame this by extending the duration of our shots. In this case, however, we found we had too much footage and we wanted to use most of it. We were able to use most of it by cutting the duration of the shots and using matches on actions between cuts, not only making for more interesting viewing and showing proffesional techniques but using more footage up. In lessons we have learnt a great deal more since the production of our preliminary task including that of camerawork, editing, sound, mise en scene and the effects they portray. We were able to use these and understand the meaning of these.

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