Evaluation - Personal Write Up: Roisin

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
 After doing some research into different thriller genres and watching various thriller trailers on YouTube, as a group, we decided that we wanted to make a psychological thriller. We used the film called ‘The Gift’, which centres around a man who seeks out revenge on a former classmate who once bullied him, as inspiration for our plot and used the form and conventions of this film to help us create our own original psychological thriller film which was in itself a challenge for us. In most thriller films, music is used to create tension and suspense, so therefore we incorporated music into apprehensive and tense scenes throughout our film. We also used camera shots such as a low angle and high angle shots which are commonly used in thrillers to show the antagonist’s power over the protagonist. Props such as knives and guns used as murder weapons are normally always seen in thriller films, and so we included a knife which the antagonist uses in order to kill his victims. To emphasise this key object we used a close up camera shot which we also see a lot in thrillers to focus the audience’s attention on this weapon creating a sense anticipation of what is about to happen. Our film challenges the power dynamic of men and women in usual thriller films. Although our film essentially shows the power that men have over women, at the start of the film we learn that the female, Sasha, who for the most part plays the weak protagonist, was actually the one who bullied the male antagonist, Daniel, in the film, showing that actually, Sasha once had power and superiority over our male antagonist, toying with the usual stereotype shown in thriller films of men predominantly being the stronger sex.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents the social groups of race and gender. Our antagonist is a white young male seeking out revenge on his former classmates who used to bully him. Our protagonist - one of the classmates - is black, who is eventually killed by our antagonist. Like in most horror films, this presents a racial hierarchy of white people being on top and black people being at the bottom. The fact that our black protagonist is killed by our white antagonist, represents the idea that white people have power over other races and also illustrates the stereotypical horror film where the black characters are killed off first and the white characters are given a higher chance of survival and are most likely to stay alive until the end of the film.

Gender is also a social group represented in our media product. Our antagonist is male and our protagonist is female which already creates a patriarchal structure to the film. The first female to be shown in our film is killed off in the first two minutes by the male antagonist who seemingly gets away with the murder, this represents the stereotype that men are more powerful and dominant than women. However, power over women in our film is represented in more than one way, in one scene of our film (the picture above), the male antagonist is standing over the female victim shown through a low angle point of view shot from the female’s perspective, which portrays the lack of power that the female has, however, showing the authority and control that the male has over the female.

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

If our film was made on a bigger scale and a larger budget, it could be distributed by a major international company as it follows the forms and conventions of a regular psychological thriller film. The film is also not tied to specific British culture or slang, therefore it would not be hard for other countries and cultures, especially in the US, to understand and follow. However, companies like Film4 Productions, Netflix and YouTube would be ideal media institutions to distribute our film. Film4 Productions is a British film production company owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The company has been responsible for backing a large number of films made in the UK and has developed and co-financed films such as 12 Years A Slave, Slumdog Millionaire and This Is England. Considering Film4 develop and broadcast their own UK-made films to a UK audience, they also broadcast well-known Hollywood films on their Film4 channel, this could help our film gain huge amounts of popularity in Britain and acquire enough publicity to even reach an international audience. Netflix, although a globally popular media platform, could be an ideal institution to distribute our media product as it is an internet-based streaming platform for films and TV shows, which means that with our target audience being primarily teenagers and young adults, we could easily reach out to this market as it is widely accessible amongst these audiences. We could also use YouTube to distribute our film. YouTube is a video-sharing website bought by Google in 2006 which allows you to upload videos for free. This means that this platform could be a cheap, easy and profitable way for our film to reach out to a large amount of people.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

When creating our media product, we researched what themes and what kind of thrillers would appeal to different target audiences. We knew we wanted to make our film for a target audience of teenagers and young adults, both male and female. Therefore we intended to make a film which would be suitable for a target audience of ages 15-24 to watch. We chose this age group as our target audience after examining age demographics for psychological thriller films, finding that most people aged 15-24 watched and enjoyed psychological thrillers. We also found that there was not much difference in the amount of males and females who watch thrillers, so we therefore set out to make a film suitable for both genders. After taking this research into consideration, we decided to make the film age rating a 15 as our target audience is 15-24 years old and we didn’t want to restrict these age groups from viewing our film, we also felt that our film didn’t have the extreme violence and gore that we are most likely to see in an 18 rated film, so therefore felt that a 15 rated film was best suited to our product. However, we didn’t want to expose our film to younger audiences below the ages of 15 as we believe the film would not be suitable for these ages.

How did you attract/address your audience?With previous research we had carried out on our target audience, we knew we needed to make our film attractive for teenagers and young adults aged 15-24. We attracted our target audience by using all young actors around the same age group as our target audience so that people can relate to and sympathise with the characters, especially as the theme is based around bullying which is a common problem for teenagers around this age range. We made sure our plot was quite simple and easy to follow and understand for our target audience, not making it too complex where the film could get confusing for younger viewers. The audience will also be attracted to our film by the enticing plot, they will be eager to carry on watching to find out what is going to happen next and how many more victims will receive a visit from our antagonist Daniel. To help attract a larger audience, we have posted our film on our YouTube channel where it is free to watch our product and any comments made can be used for improvements.

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

Throughout the whole process of creating out film, I have learnt many skills from using the camera and tripod to shoot different shots and angles to using different websites and softwares. When planning and constructing our film, we had to set up a blog on Blogger to hold our coursework on. We had to keep track of what we were doing and conduct research into different types of thrillers to help us determine what exactly we wanted our film to be. Everyone in the group was able to access the blog and so therefore it was easy to share the coursework evenly between us and make any improvements or updates from home or from school. We also used Survey Monkey which allowed us to create a survey to distribute amongst people who would answer various questions about what type of things they wanted to see in thriller films, which helped in giving us feedback about how we could make a film that audiences actually want. We therefore used this to help us make any alterations and improvements to our product. We also used YouTube to watch numerous film trailers and scenes from other films to take inspiration from, for different camera shots and angles that we could use to make our film the best it could possibly be. We also used YouTube to upload our video onto as extra backup and so that anyone in our group can view the film when needed and any comments or likes on the video could be used as feedback. Celtx was another software we used to create our script and plot for our product. Lastly, we used the software Adobe Premiere Pro on an Apple Mac to edit our film on, adding titles, sounds, music and cutting scenes to create the sense of continuity.

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

Looking back at my preliminary task to now, I feel that I have learnt and improved a lot since in regards to time management, using a camera, editing and team work. I have learnt how to work in a small group and managing my time correctly when meeting up for filming days and getting deadlines in on time. I have also learnt how to use software and websites such as Adobe Premiere Pro: editing scenes, adding sounds, texts and special effects, Blogger and survey monkey. I have also learnt that planning plays a huge part in film making and without it, there is no real direction as to where the film is going, so we all as a group found that planning our every scene was very important to make our film a successful product. Our preliminary task was a great way to to introduce us to camera work and editing but since then I feel our camera shots, angles and editing skills have become more complex and intricate in detail and we have now learnt how to overcome any problems and difficulties with using the editing software that we might have previously had.