Evaluation question 1

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

Evaluation question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our thriller is associated with three different social groups, these being business men, drug dealers and lower class girls who dedicate their lives to using recreational drugs. 

My character is a drug dealer, who is portrayed as lower class due to his scruffy appearance, plain room and quite a run-down block of flats. My character represents the kind of typical drug dealer, in a sense that although he may have money, he's quite concealing about his identity, which may be why his mise en scene appears to be lower class.

Ian's character is meant to be seen as quite middle class, due to his suit and briefcase, also in the scene where he is waiting for the phone call, he is standing outside a jewellery store, which slyly hints to the audience the theme of wealth and social class within his character.

Much like my character, the drug dealer, Orrie and Sophie's characters who are meant to be seen as intoxicated women are also seen as working class for similar reasons to my character.

These are some words that are associated with our film, which are mostly to do with social class.

Ian's character is portrayed in a positive way due to his clothing (suit), this makes his look wealthy. In contrast to this, my character and Orrie and Sophie are portrayed in a negative way, my character looks scruffy and Orrie and Sophie look quite revealing.

Here are some words/objects that also present social class, we can see the type of clothing, objects that are used (briefcase) and also the location and scenery.

Evaluation question 3

Evaluation question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Generally, thriller films tend to have an older audience, like over the age of 15 or so. This is because most thrillers are based on making people think in order to get into the film, which is why an older audience best suit thrillers, as they generally tend to be more interested in the complexity. Age isn't the only factor within thriller audiences, there is also gender too. What's good about thriller films is that because they are so alternative, both genders seem to have as much interest as each other.

What tends to happen is that the different sub genres appeal to different age groups, but most thrillers appeal to 15 or over. This isn't just because of the complexity, but also because most thrillers commonly contain violence, and this violence isn't suitable for young ages and quite pyscological topics. An example of sub genre appealing to an audience would be a crime thriller. A crime thriller would typically appeal to a male audience as it contains a lot of action and violence. This isn't always the case, but we generally associate these things with a male audience due to the stereotype.In contrast to this, something like The Drama Thriller might appeal to women more than men as they contain more mature topics, but this all is due to the stereotype, but is also proved to be true.

For our thriller film, I think a younger audience, of about 16-30 best suited it as the drug related theme appeals to a younger age. But we didn't want it too young. e.g. 15 and under as it would be too explicit and we would be sending out the wrong message. I think over 16 is the right age as the theme of drugs should be seen as a mature topic in which the audience of our thriller could maybe relate to at a young age, but we have put the maximum age range as roughly around 30 as we don't think that people over this age would take as much interest into it.


This is a Facebook profile which I have created for a potential audience viewer of a our film. As you can see he studied at a good college and is of a young age, so he is an ideal person to watch our thriller film.

Evaluation question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

A brief interview from a member of our target audience. 

A brief interview from a member of our group.

Evaluation question 6

Evaluation question 7

What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from the preliminary idea to the full product?

Skills learnt in the prelim film

The first thing we had to do was make a storyboard. In the storyboard we used Ian and Sophie as the two characters, but then changed it when it came to the actual film. We used Quark to lay out our storyboard clearly, using a template. We also had to write a brief sentence or so under the images in our storyboard outlining the shot types we were going to use. When it came to actually filming it, we tried to stick to the storyboard as much as possible. 

Our prelim wasn't thought out that well as we tried to do it quite quickly. We were basically given a task, which was to film a conversation between 2 people. As the idea wasn't anything too special, we had to make it better by the shot types we used and the way in which we edited it. We used a lot of close ups, and a lot of match-cutting as it was filming a conversation. The prelim was filmed in college in a small staff room, so it looked as though it could pass for a normal room in which two people would have a casual conversation in. We were wearing casual clothes and the lighting in the room was pretty normal.

Editing it overall was relatively simple as we had the ideas clearly laid out on the storyboard. The titles weren't too fancy as it was quite a straightforward task so we didn't feel the need to make them look too extravagant. The good thing about doing the pre-lim was that we got a good idea of all the technology that we had to use in our thriller, and also when it came down to making our finished thriller, using Final Cut Pro was no where near as hard to use as it was before the prelim.

Final product
Like the prelim, we did a storyboard of what we were going to do in the thriller, using Quark. When it actually came down to the thriller, we attempted to stick to it, but as the process of making it went by we experimented with different shots to see if they would work better.

When it came down to filming, we had some experience with using the camera so we were able to experiment with shots in order to make them better. As the time went by for filming our thriller, I became much more confident with filming. Honestly, I wasn't involved as much in the editing for our final thriller piece, so I can't really compare it with the skills I learnt in the prelim, what I can say is that the contribution I did give enhanced by skills quite a lot and I have become much more confident in using Final Cut Pro, although I would much prefer to learn more about it.

13. Orrie Jimack, Ian Keserue, Sophie Larkin-Tannett, Luke Zelkowiicz from 283goswell on Vimeo.

Constructing Titles

Titles

We changed the titles at the last minute in order to make it more aesthetically pleasing. We did this by choosing a new font called Base 02 and we decided to make it flicker in order to show the dodgyness of the situation.

 There was trouble because we the titles would run over the next scenes to it was quite time consuming to make all the titles shorter.We've changed the size so its more easy to read as the font is sort of unclear.

-We put the ident first which was candi media 

- Then we put the main star which was Ian

- After went the second important in the movie which was luke 

- And after that we had the two less important characters , Orrie Jimack and Sophie Larkin-Tannetta

- The producer was put next which was Max Walker

- Then we put editing by Emma Smith

- Music is by Ian Keserue

- Then lastly we have the director who is Tom Carroll

Why I liked the filming locations

Drug house location
I really like the location for this as it had very low lighting which gave it an eary feel to it and actually look like it could pass for a drug den. This was filmed in Ian's house, we had to rearrange some of the things in the room such as little things in the background on the shelf. Also, in order to make the room look darker we blocked the light from coming into the window. By convincing the audience that it looks like a drug den, we had a little light on to make it look very discrete, much like drug dealers tend to be. (The picture on the left doesn't really present the lighting very well, when filming the room looked much darker.)

Block of flats/street location
I also really liked the location of the flats, as it didn't have much to it, which is what we intended. We were able to capture some really good shots at this location of the man in the suit (Ian). I also liked the bit outside the flats where Ian had to be waiting about to receive a phone call, this was filmed outside a jewellery shop and the theme of money could be subtly linked to this.

Final film feed back from audience member

Rough cut feed back from audience member

PLANNING-pitch feedback on rough copy

 This was our rough copy feedback from Dan.

Feedback from target audience member

PLANNING- title inspirations

Blow (2001)

We looked at this title sequence as part of inspiration for ours we found a drug thriller called blow (2001) and analysed the way the titles approached the screen which was through the effect of typing. The titles were discrete as they featured over images of marijuana and the effect of smoke continued also, this portrays the idea already that the film will be about drugs however does not completely give it away.

Pusher (1996)

The opening to this was quite typical as the titles were super imposed, the sequence in the background consisted of the characters slowly introduced fading in and out. This was effective as it added suspense and mystery and gave the impression of something bad.The font is bold giving the illusion of it being more masculine and adding depth.

Dan's feedback to our soundtrack

A short clip of Dan's feedback on the soundtrack for our thriller. 

Use of flour (cocaine) in our thriller

A brief talk about using cocaine in our thriller.

Pusher - Storyboard

Storyboard

Part 1

Part 2

PLANNING-TARGET AUDIENCE

From the start our group agreed on the target audience being 15-25, even after our pitch presentation and the feedback we received as a group we have all agreed we will keep the current age range as we believe it is suitable for our film. The fact that our thriller opening includes everyday props and items will attract an audience as they will be able to identify with the characters within our opening, by using this strategy will hopefully attract the target audience we want.

Production schedual

Before we started to film , our group made a production schedule to keep up on track with what needed to be done before hitting our deadline.Personally we think we stuck very well to our schedule , we got the drug house scene filmed all on the Thursday like planned. However although we got the scene of Ian walking done on Tuesday like planned , there were some complications as some of our footage came out blurry so instead of spending the Saturday focusing on the drug scene again , we were able to use that day to re film Ian's scene which was more convenient as we had extra scenes to use and were able to choose the best to put in.

Once all filming was finished we began editing on the days stated .We found the editing difficult as our scenes kept getting lost so it was time consuming to redo them but due to our free week for evaluating, we were able to use some of those days as editing took longer than planned and still be on track to get everything finished by the deadline.

Inspirations.

Before making our final thriller project , we were influenced by a few films. In Arlington road there were close ups of the little boys feet walking which we thought was good enough to place in our film when Ian is making his way to the drug house also the Mise en scene used such as the setting , outside , was used in ours too. There was also a film called 'Protege' which we used the Mise en scene from. The famous scene of the drug taking inspired us with its dark lighting and small room which we then put into our thriller in the scene of the drug house. We thought that what we took from each film worked really well with our film.