Evaluation Question 6

The camera we used in our opening sequence was a 1080p camera. We used a tripod to get a stable camera and to ensure none of the recording was unstable, shaky or at an angle. The tripod we had no problems with and we produced nice sturdy footage with it. The camera also wasn't a problem although sometimes we were told our camera had a 'dirty film head'. When this happened we did have to replace the film and the camera.

Technology used:

MacBook

Photoshop
Garage Band
Final Cut
Cameras
iPhone
Blogger
YouTube

We used the macbooks as our choice of laptop because of all the fantastic applications already for us to use. We created our logo on Photoshop using a moon image and our Production name. We used garage band to find our beating heart backing track which we found easily and put straight on to our film. We used Final Cut Pro to edit the whole film which we had used in Year 11 media so we were very confident using this programme to edit our footage and we knew what effects we would need to put on to our film so not much experimenting was needed. We used HDR Z5 as our camera of choice which produced really good quality filming and we quickly learn the ways with it also! We used our iphones to take recce photos of our locations, blogger to document our work and YouTube to upload our final piece.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address the audience?

We used questionnaires to find out what the public wanted to see from our Thriller film, finding out their likes, dislikes and what they would like to see. From this we could round up the evidence and make some targets to achieve in order to attract our audience. We watched some different thrillers in our lessons in order to observe conventions and decide for ourselves what made a good thriller film! We found this really useful when we began recording as the thrillers were always in the backs of our minds which made our minds jog especially when we needed a bit of inspiration.

We watched Marnie and Seven.

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your production?       I feel a suitable audience would be 15+ only because the nature and the brutality of the film, I wouldnt expect a younger audience to view it as it could frighten them. From our questionnaire we also learnt that main audiences for thrillers were above the ages of 14. I don't believe that thriller films are particularly gender based as we asked just as many girls as boys and we didn't struggle to find girls/boys that watched them as they all did. 

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
A social group is usually a collective of people of the same age with the same interests or sometimes even religious groups. 
In our film we have a young character who appears just an average teenager, we wanted this to be portrayed to create an element of shock when the girl is captured as you wouldn't stereotype her to be a type that would get into trouble. The second character who is seen following wears dark clothing and a hood in order to create a dark, troublesome feeling. A common perception of people wearing hoods in dry weather, particularly teens, is that they are going to cause some trouble. Because of this we felt that we could easily achieve a character to appear threatening. 
We represented the character types mainly by using costume and lighting. The innocent and average everyday type character dressed in a casual light grey sweater to create a sense of normality, the audience we felt would not feel that this character could be the villain because of the look. The color of the sweater also was intentional, we chose a light color because we felt it softened the character and emphasized the darkness of the villain. The villain wore an all black hooded jacket with the hood up creating complete mystery and therefore making us feel uncomfortable and intimidated.

Final Film

Evaluation Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The distribution of a film is the process through which a movie is made available to watch for an audience by a distributor. This can be done in many different ways; for example, with a theatrical release or a home entertainment release.  Film distribution is usually accompanied by film promotion. Films can also now be distributed by online streaming such as Netflix, Love Film and Hulu. 
We don't have a big budget for our film so there is only so many ways we can distribute it, we used YouTube to distribute ours in order to get feedback, however, we could of also used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to also get our film out there. We could of also taken our film to a film festival in hope that it could get recognition by a small publicist who could take the distribution further.

Recce Shots

In this photo we established the dangers of our location so we avoided all of this waste

Animatic

Risk Assessment

Evaluation Question 1

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

Our group adapted the idea that a girl had stolen a confidential document and because of this somebody comes after her in order to plot revenge, we don't learn why the girl is being followed until we are taken towards the end back in time to three days previous. She is followed for a good minute through streets and back alleys, without being aware that it is happening but having an eerie feeling that someone is behind her, she is eventually captured by the enemy and then we are taken to the flashback of why she has been captured.

Location

For our location we wanted somewhere that was relatively quiet but not so quiet that there was no other people in the scene. We chose the high streets of Wem because they weren't too built up and the many roads and alley ways allowed us to create the feeling of being followed when we were recording.
We also felt the high street was a wise choice rather than fitting to the stereotypical location for thrillers EG. old houses or woodlands because the viewer would be expecting something to happen whereas it is very unexpected for something like that to occur in daytime high streets. From our questionnaire we also learnt that people found that being able to predict what happened next was a let down to Thriller films when they were asked "Do you enjoy Thriller films? If so why? If not why not?"

Sound

In order to create a good thriller you need sounds to build tension, suspense and atmosphere. We wanted to ensure our viewers were on the edge of their seats in suspense when watching our videos so we added the sound of a beating heart over the audio of when the girl is being followed. We chose the beating heart because it slowly got faster which was ideal for us as the enemy progressively got closer to their victim.  Not only did the heart beat create tension but heart beats also give connotations of death which we really wanted to emphasise, with the sound combined with the visual we felt it really gave a hint at what may be to come later in the film.  

Character

We only had 2 characters in our film and we didn't want any more than that purely to emphasize the lonely feeling. We kept the identity of the killer hidden until near the end when we had to reveal the story behind the capturing. We did this because we wanted the capture the element of mystery. We wanted the victim to appear as a regular person that you wouldnt expect to get in any sort of trouble to again get the audience to keep asking "why?"

Props

The prop in our film was a piece of paper with "Do Not Open" written on it. This was our only prop and it was revealed by a close up. We did this in order to reassure the viewers that the paper did have significance to the narrative. 

Rough Cut

This is our rough cut of the film so far, after receiving feedback from this film we have decided that there is too many faults to work on and the storyline isn't clear so we have decided to restart our idea and create a new narrative.

Evaluation Questions

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

Who Would be the audience for your production? 
How did you attract/address your audience?