- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product both challenged and conforms with typical conventions of media products. It challenges conventions in the sense that we haven’t used any special effects and our sequence isn’t modified at all, it is not at all superficial and it is all natural and very lifelike. We understand that this challenges conventions because with all the bid budget films that are so popular currently it was a high risk move to make our filming so bland and real. However we could compare of sequence to that of paranormal activity, which is all shot through a video camera and was a huge success, so we felt that it could be easily achieved without using a range of effects and a different technologies to create our representations and meanings.
However on the other hand our product conforms with a real media product in the sense that we have copied a few of the conventions of a full length thriller film. We have chosen to have our titles and names at the start, set upon a blank screen which is something stereotypically associated with thrillers. So hopefully by doing this when the audience is viewing our product and they see the first opening seconds, they will automatically know what genre our film is which will then help with our representations later on. Also before any actual footage is shown we have created a quote about insanity made by a doctor, this also conforms to real media product because we have taken this idea from the film “insidious” and it is also associated with the “paranormal activity” films. So hopefully by doing this we have portrayed the genre of our film, and the audience will then have a more clear perspective of narrative and representations later on.
- How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film is based around the mentally deranged, and we portray people with mental disabilities in a bad and dangerous way. Our character with a mental disability is shows wearing an all grey outfit that resembles that of someone from a lunatic asylum, which is coupled with the use of a baseball bat. We believe that by doing this we represent people who have got mental problems as being dangerous and even threatening. We know that society’s views of people with disabilities is very fragile as it is, and a lot of films tend to go for these types of characters because it is more disturbing for the audience. For example in “the shining” which is one of the most famous horror/thriller films ever the character is portrayed as going insane. And we thought by including this in our sequence it would represent mentally disabled people as being fragile and volatile, which would ultimately mean that it would have a greater impact on the audience because of the way the characters are represented.
- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our sequence is obviously aimed at the film industry, but more specifically having done some research I would aim our sequence at a company such as “hammer film” who in the past have specialised in making psychological thriller films. I think this would be a great institution for our product because it would be the best way to distribute our product, and if we were assisted by people who specialise in this genre of film it would therefore maximise our products potential.
- Who would be the audience for your media product?
Due to the fact that I am a teenager/young adult, we thought that it would be a good idea to focus our attention on this specific age range, because we obviously know what is popular with teenagers at the minute. More specifically we decided to focus on males, because they are a large percentage of the audience for psychological thriller, so we felt that if we focused on the 16-25 age range for males. It would be the most successful because that audience would be more likely to relate to our storyline and pick up on our representations, especially if our sequence is the genre of film that they regularly watch.
We thought we would attract our audience ( young males) by having our main character as a young male, hopefully this would make our sequence seem more relatable, and therefore the representation would be more real, henceforth making our product more successful because it would have more of an impact.
- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During our filming we realised the gravity of how difficult it was to actually film and direct something with proper equipment. At first it took us some time to get used to how to use the camera properly, and filming with a tripod was a new item for us so we had to do some adjusting. However we learnt most when performing our editing, we realised how long it actually took just do edit together a small sequence. And having done most of the editing myself I learnt how to use effects and transitions, which took a while to get used to because we had never used final cut express before.
- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I felt as if the man difference between these two tasks was the efficiency in which we competed it, we knew how hard editing would be, so we made sure to get all of our filming done as soon as possible. This is something that we learned from our initial task, we definitely managed our time better so we had the maximum amount of time to focus on our product as possible.
