Question 1:
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?
There are many codes and conventions of media films- some which are listed in section one of this blog, but, not only does our film use some of these conventions it also challenges them and goes against the 'norm' for most films.
Firstly, we based our film on Noel Carroll's 'question and answer model'- our film has the audience guessing as to what's going on, building the suspense as throughout the film, every question that has been answered, opens up another. This is seen in many films and an example of this is in se7en, whenever the detectives find a body and answer a question, the dead person always leads to another question with a clue. In our film, there are many questions such as 'Who is the person reading the letter? Why are them girls getting killed in the woods? and the question which finally gets answered at the end- who is writing the letters and why?' Some of the answers get answered during the middle of the film but the main question is seen at the very end when the 'missing piece of the jig-saw puzzle' is put together. This is good to keep the audience hooked onto the film.
Other conventions our film fits in with are; Pascal Bonitzer's partial vision and Lars Ole Saurberg' Concealment and protraction: the audience never see the killers face until the very end of the film.
However, all the way through the film we lead the audience to believe that the killer is a man- like most other thrillers. Unlike most other thrillers our killer is actually female. This twists the usual codes of a thriller- females are often seen as helpless, innocent victims in films.
Below is a clip from the 1933 thriller, the invisible man of footprints going through the snow. This is like the shot in our film where the two girls are walking through the snow but we just see their feet leaving footprints in the snow.
Question 2:
How does your media product represent different social groups?
In our film, Eve is in her young twenties, goes out a lot, drinks a lot and often has one night stands with men she doesn't know. This is the typical view of a late teen/early twenties girl from this age group and is seen in many thrillers, such as the blonde girl from Taken.
We portrayed Detective Milton as a middle aged man with no feelings- he never married and his only love is for his job. As time progresses however, we begin to see a change in him- like Detective Somerset in se7en. Both Milton and Somerset are detectives and this is because it is the typical view of a detective- hardworking intelligent hard faced etc.
For our killer, we completely flipped the usual; view of a woman from the helpless victim to the deranged killer. There are only few films that do this the blair witch project being one of them.
Question 3:
What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?
When looking for a media institution that would distribute our films we have to take many things into account like budget- our was a very low-budget film so universal studio's is hardly going to distribute it. However, i feel institutions such as Goldcrest, hammer film productions and LionsgateUK would distribute it. Lionsgate Uk focus on British low budget films (like ours) and they have previously made thrillers like ours. Hammer film productions also do low budget films and have a well respected history of films such as Dracula etc. They have a partner with warner bros. and so this would be really good for our film.
Question 4.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
As our film is a 15 I feel the audience would be suitable for 15-18 year olds as it would suit what they like to watch as well as fitting in with BBFC's age range guidances. There are mild references to Eve's one night stands and heavy drinking but we feel that 15 year olds would be able to cope with this and it fits with the BBFC standards.
How did attract/address your audience?
To make sure we were making what our target audience wanted to watch, we gave out questionnaires beforehand -audience research- to get their opinion on everything. Once we had our results we began making the film incorporating it into every aspect of our film. This way we knew we were giving our audience what they wanted so we were addressing our audience. Below is a clip of our classmates giving us feedback on our film. They are all aged 15-18 so perfect as our audience. From doing this, we knew what they liked/disliked and s ultimately, what we need to do to make it better or what we should take into consideration next time.
Question 6:
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing a product?
Question 7:
Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
On our first task, we didn't realise how much work was actually involved in making a product with no editing and even hardly any sound. Because of this we didn't do too well in this task as we didn't comprehend how hard it would be. However as we got on to the thriller filming, we had a better understanding of the work and so we were more prepared when starting it. Our planning within our group wasn't our strongest point but we did mange to pull together and get everything done in time. We all had a turn using the camera's and editing and so we all learnt every aspect of making a film. Overall, I believe we all learnt a lot from the experiance and our group was pleased with our final piece.
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