Forms and Conventions
- The form of our media product is that it's an opening to a thriller film. In our opening we have used different conventions like other thrillers. Our thriller is more like the 'Bourne' style thrillers as it doesn't use any supernatural or horror themes. Like this style of thriller we used the idea of conspiracies and government agents. To portray this our characters wore dark colours and our agents wore black. For mise -en-scene we used normal houses to suggest that our main character has a 'normal' life with normal pictures on the walls. Although the front door was open to give the first hint to the audience that something wasn't right. The agent who comes down the stairs has a gun to mirror the American style thriller; but in an English town suggests that she came from a city. This builds up an idea of the main character either being a random victim of a break-in or is somehow involved in something bigger. This type of idea is a typical thriller convention but can be created in different ways. The titles in the beginning of the opening have an official looking seal stamped into the black background to represent the government. The titles were also put into the very beginning sequence to split up the action at the start and also to build tension. The rest of the titles are in the same blue font but put directly onto the video. this helped the video stay short and also helped it move faster, building tension. The lighting in our opening was mostly natural light, from outside and through windows, to look normal. Towards the end of the opening and into the scene the lighting became darker. In someways representing film noir, as the agent leads the character into the 'safe house' and also symbolising the threat of something bad happening to the character, which fits the end of the scene very well.
Social Groups
- Our media product represents particular characters as part of a social groups by the fact that all of the characters are women except the main character. In our opening the women are portrayed from the beginning as having more power. As the women character is running downstairs with a gun and has broken into his house. This doesn't represent women in a bad way as the opening is mysterious and the audience don't know who's side to take yet. Also the women are shown with more of a 'femme fatal' idea as at the end (although you don't see her face) it is a women who has her gun to his head. It is also a women at the safe house door who invites him in. The acting gives away the sinister ending slightly early as the actress had no expression so she didn't laugh, but allowed a more serious contrast from the light of outside to her serious expression and the darkness of inside her house. The actresses and characters are represented as a conspiracy and a community by working together to find and capture the main character. Although they are, in this case, the villains the social group of women is portrayed as effective as they succeeded in trapping him. The main character as a man, is a little typical of this genre, as thrillers rarely have female protagonists but also keeps the idea of men having power, even though this is outweighed by all the other characters in our opening.
Distribution
- Our product would be distributed by a popular but cheap or free organisation, like 'You Tube' or 'my space'. These are mainly fueled by word of mouth and our movie would be very low budget and also very small scale. The internet would broadcast our movie on a worldwide scale but it wouldn't be seen by many unless it was popular. It also wouldn't be seen by mainstream cinemas but maybe smaller cinemas or distributed by a sponsor of the film e.g. the lottery.
Audience
- For our media product rating would be about '12' or '12a'. This means that it would be suitable for the majority of audiences aged 12+ and the main audience for cinema goers is 15-24 so our product would fit into that category too. A the characters are teenagers the movie is more likely to appeal to that audience and also the people who like thriller films and a not-so-obvious storyline.
- From constructing our media product we used new technologies that we didn't used for our preliminary task, like the imac's 'imovie HD' and 'garage band'. We learned how to edit our opening effectively and how to add the titles and transitions to the shots. We also cut shots down for timing or cut them out completely if they turned out to be irrelevant. We did have to re-film a part of our opening as it was way too dark to see what was going on (and the video camera didn't have a light). We also found out how to put a picture I designed onto the imac, and then onto the opening titles. It turned out to work quite well but a little fuzzy. For the main title of the film we positioned it perfectly across the front of the house in the scene, this worked very well. Another new technology we used was 'garage band' on the mac. We decided to mix our own music instead of taking copy-free music from the internet. I thought 'garage band' was very easy to use and also very effective. The music I chose could match the timing of the shots exactly and also add tension and mystery. I think that at the point in the opening where the character is running and then in slow-motion, the music works well. Also at the end where it reaches a climax then the shot fades to black and the music fades with just a drum cymbal, which is the same as how the music starts at the beginning. I thought that really helped the tension and the end of the scene appeared as a mystery, leaving the audience wanting to know more.
Technologies
- To attract the audience we put action right at the start to draw them in first, then as the opening progressed, we slowed it down as the character runs down the street. After the end of the opening titles end, we put a scene in so it didn't look like a trailer. The scene would leave the audience guessing and the rest of the film could be created in many different ways, like him getting out in a fight scene or the movie flashing back to a year earlier. The audience also don't know who is the hero or villain type of character yet. They also don't know the history of the characters and how they are all linked together. This creates the tension, with the music, and also the puzzle of what is going to happen next.
Progress from the Preliminary Task
- Since the preliminary task we have learned how to edit on 'imovie HD' and also how to use different types of shots to create a story. We also used a different setting and how we can use the area for different shots. As there was no music on our preliminary task we used 'garage band' to create music that worked with the shots and tested how different styles of music create different effects for tension and mystery. There is a lot more variety in our shots and ideas in our final piece then our preliminary task, which helps to make it more effective and more convincing as a media product.
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