Sadie Breed Evaluation - Q2

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Many films portray women as the victims of crime and show them as 'damsels in distress' who need to be rescued by men, for example, the film Twilight (pictured below) in which the female lead is almost killed by a male character. We decided to have male victims in our opening in order to make it less stereotypical and clichéd. We had a few of the male victims' faces crossed out (suggesting they have already been 'deleted') showing that both sexes have already been killed so they are both as vulnerable.

Also  stereotype we did not mean to conform to was that of white people generally are portrayed as the victims and we had an Asian man as our stalker. This conforms to how the media will generally portray Asian men since 9/11. 

Sadie Breed Evaluation - Q1

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our coursework is the opening of a thriller so we had to use the conventions of this genre along with conventions of film openings.
Psychological thrillers often use the idea of a non-linear time line which we incorporated into our opening to disorientate the audience.
We decided that having no diegetic sound during the flashback would disorientate the viewer and leave them curious as to the importance of the scene therefore drawing them into the narrative of the film as is the purpose of an opening.
An opening that also uses a non-linear time line is 'Minority Report'.
The opening uses shots that are not completely in focus to show us that these events are not happening in the present of the film, they are happening in the future therefore they are unclear.
We used this idea to show our audience that the flashback was in the past by using a sepia tone over the clips, a colour that indicates age.

We also took the convention of stalkers and decided this would be the plot of our thriller. An example of stalkers in thrillers is the film 'One Hour Photo'. This uses a more traditional form of stalking, wherein the protagonist stalks his victims in, in the more traditional sense of the word.






However, we chose not to use the traditional stalker but rather decided to build on this idea and have the protagonist stalk his victims through social networks. We felt that this made our thriller more modern as many things are done digitally in modern society. We also felt as our audience is young, this will appeal more to them as it is something they will be familiar with whereas an older audience may not be particularly with social networks.

Talal Shah Evaluation - Q7

Looking back at our preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product.

• When i look back at the preliminary task and compare it to our final product i see a great deal of development in not just our filming and editing skills but also our understanding of the thriller conventions and mise -en- scene. setting up the room to represent the stalker by having a room full of computers as well as having papers lying around and maps of the victims whereabouts.
  

• Getting small things such as continuity where really hard but i realised the importance of it and how much of a difference it can make in a negative way if there is even one little bit of a change in the room you have to film in or the props you use. We had to make sure that the actor wore the exact same clothes at all times.

• The 180 degree rule was something we used in both our final product and preliminary task. We learnt about this rule and how it is used during shot/reverse shots.

Talal Shah Evaluation - Q6

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

• During the process of making our product i personally have learnt a lot and picked up great useful skills such as using blogger and i-movie. I have also learnt how to use professional cameras from setting them up with the tripod to changing the dimensions of the clip. I also never knew how to upload clips onto YouTube which I then learned during the finishing stages of our product. Keeping a blog can also be helpful as it helps you portray your ideas and even get other peoples feedback and personal views on it.

• I-movie was the key and main element of putting our product together as that was where we did most of our cutting and editing. I learnt how to put in transitions between clips and ad music as well as cutting clips to smaller size and slowing them down to create certain effects.

Talal Shah Evaluation - Q5

How did you attract/address your audience?

• We showed clear close ups of the victims and then their faces being crossed out which makes the viewers cautious and catches their attention. We also Incorporated a technical side to the product by using computers which gives the viewer something to relate to.

• The music also attract the viewers attention and builds up tension as it goes along. The music is at a high tempo with heart throbbing ups and downs in it.

Talal Shah Evaluation -Q4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• We thought that our perfect audience would be teenagers between the age of 15 and 19. Most of the teenagers in this age group are signed up to social network sites and can relate to our product as well as take note of the dangers they might be unaware of. The younger generation also tends to communicate a lot using technology and websites such as facebook and twitter.

Talal Shah Evaluation - Q3

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

• Our product would and could be distributed by company's like lionsgate who are known to make thrillers. Our product tends to look low budget and we think that this will benefit us in selling our product to our target audience as they will be able to relate to it. Another distributor we could get involved with our distribution could be Revolver Entertainment as they just released a thriller called shank which was aimed at teenagers within our target audience.