AS Media Thiller

Above, the final thriller of our group;

Michael Hayes
Terry Bridges
Jhabed Abdul
Samuel Nweje

Evaluation: Question 7

7. "Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the product?"



Final film:



Preliminary Task:



Earlier in the year my group created our first short film. Before this my group had little experience in directing or acting, so our film took longer than expected to film as we were constantly altering segments, adding new ideas or eradicating ones that didn't work. As well as this we were prone to mistakes and even recorded half our film before realizing the microphone was not turned on. However this task allowed us to practice and develop our camera and acting skills, as well as allowing us to test shots that we would later need for our final film. The shots that we focused on in our preliminary task were the;

Preliminary Task shot examples

• Match on-action - where one of the group starts an action (walking through the door) and continues it through the next one masking the cut.
• 180 degree rule - where the audience can only see the front of the character's faces as they engage in a conversation.
• Shot reverse shot - where the camera focuses on the face of the characters talking, alternating between all the characters involved in the conversation. 
• Eye line match - where one of the group looks across the room at the other characters as he enters.

Practicing these shots in the preliminary task gave us time to improve our execution of the shots which would later improve the quality of the final film.
In our preliminary task we did not use any non-dietetic sounds which dampened the overall experience. We took note of this and made sure to correct this for our final film. The use of the non-dietetic audio within our final film added to the suspense and tension, engaging the audience more so.

Overall the experience of creating the preliminary task prepared are group for the final film by developing our skills in using the hardware, software and our acting in order to create our film. We also become more decisive when capturing scenes and we had a better idea on what we wanted to create and how we wanted to convey it. This allowed us to be more efficient and productive in creating our final film and produce one of a higher quality than we would have been able to do without the experience.

Evaluation: Question 6

6. "What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?"

 


 Throughout creating our project I had to use a variety of software other that at first I had no experience in using. I then had to quickly adapt and develop my skills in using them enabling me to use them productively.




I have learned how to upload videos and created content to social media sites such as Youtube. At the beginning of the project I was fairly new to publishing videos and exporting files into Youtube where i would upload them. However after suffering some difficulties and problems the first time I quickly learned from my mistakes and was then able to do this more efficiently. Youtube allowed us to easily upload videos without losing quality and quickly receive feedback on who we could improve.

Final Cut Express

Before starting this project i had never used a camera to record and final cut express to edit and therefore I constantly ran into problems and "technical difficulties" whilst recording with the camera and editing with software such as final cut express where I would then receive help from Youtube videos, searching on-line or asking someone who new more than idea which slowed the process of creating the film. I have now developed my skills and awareness when capturing content whilst using a variety of different shots via the camera. I have also learned and developed my skills in editing the captured content and am able to realize if a shot works well or not and how i could improve the clip. Both of these I have done through experience and guidance whilst working on the project. I am now able to add effects such as fading out a scene etc whilst using final cut express and adobe after effects. Being more technically advance in using software than I was at the start allowed me to add more to the film than I would have before and allowed me to help create it more efficiently to make sure we finished before the deadline.



I had to use Internet sites that provided a service that would help me along the way of crating my finished project. For example I had to use survey monkey which allowed me to create a survey for people to answer. I uploaded it to my blog where I asked a small group of ten to answer the questions I put forward. This would prove to be a valuable service as it helped my group receive feedback and put us in the right direction when making our film as we had an idea of what people wanted to see. Throughout this experience I have constantly used the website blogger, to record my experiences on what I learned and have done. During this time I have become familiar with this site and am able to efficiently navigate the website rarely encountering any problems, whereas at the start of this project I had never used this site before and I required help to start posting and then later on importing videos and pictures and integrating created content from other sites such as Prezi, to blogger enabling me to convey my thoughts and ideas in a multiple of ways.

Evaluation: Question 5

5. "How did you attract/address your audience?"

Before making the film I created a survey, using survey monkey, which I uploaded to my blog. This allowed me to interact with the future audience of the film and find out what they wanted as they would answer the questions which would later influence what happened in the final film.

My group also employed the help of a focus group at the planning stages where we put forward our ideas and they helped us decide which ideas we should have pursued and how we could improve them. Here is the video I recored of our focus group;

Evaluation: Question 4

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Before filming our opening scene we made sure to carry out research to ensure that we were making the film in mind of the appropriate audience. To do this, our group created a survey using survey monkey and added it to my blog for people to answer allowing us to collect data for our film. I used a total of 10 people's answers to complete my survey.
Below is the data I collected in relation to choosing our audience;

The first question I recorded in order to to find the best suited audience for my groups film was the age range. From the results I received it was evident that the majority of the people watching would be from the ages of around 16 - 25. From this data our group concluded that our target audience would be late teens and young adults. Therefore we decided to create a more "gritty", urban film that highlights the darker side of teens and young adults lives from a lower, poorer social background.

The second question I recorded in order to find the best suited audience for my groups film was the gender of our audience. From the results just over half of our audience is male, however the results are fairly mixed. This means that our film has to appeal to both genders.

The third question I recorded in order to find the best suited audience for my groups film was the main aspects and conventions we would apply our film. The results I received from this question are fairly shared between Red herrings, Cliffhangers and tension as being peoples favourite aspects of a thriller. We then made sure to include these in our thriller. For the opening scene we decided to create tension and a cliff hanger at the end of the scene to optimise the viewers experience and ensure they would continue watching our film.

From these question and the results I received from all three of them, my group has concluded that our target audience will be late teens to young adult (16- 21), our film would be "gritty", dark and be set in an urban environment. We then made sure that our film would be suited for both genders and that a cliffhanger and increasing tension would be part of our opening scene.

I could have asked more people to answer the survey to receive more reliable results, for example 50 or 100 people.

Evaluation: Question 3

Created with Padlet

The microwave scheme

Our film is on a low budget and focuses on the acting instead of "fancy" effects and therefore it makes scenes to use this method of distribute our film in this way.

Film: Shifty 2008 

We took inspiration for films like Shifty that have operated under the same scheme and have been fairly successful!

Youtube Social media site

We decided using you tube to promote our film is our best option as it is free to do so and millions of people have signed up to this site and are regular users. This will allow us to present our film to a vast amount of people easily and efficiently. However the site is considered over saturated with videos making it harder for our film to be noticed.

Here is the hunger games: Catching fire teaser trailer that was uploaded to Youtube. The trailer has accumulated over 24 million views just after two weeks since it was published. It is evident that Youtube can develop massive amounts of interest for a film through this example. Our film would most likely never achieve these feats, however it may still gain some interest.

Twitter: Social Media Site

We have also decided to use twitter to help us promote our film as we believe the use of cross media convergence can be a great asset for us. This will allow our film to develop more interest if we are able to get it trending or mentioned by higher authority figures in the community. Millions of people use this social media site daily and we feel this could be a way of getting our film more "hype" increasing our following and viewing ratings. However, like Youtube this site is over-saturated making it harder to do this.

Hunger Games 2 twitter account

We took inspiration from films such as the hunger games to attempt to promote our film using twitter. Shown on the left is the HungerGamesUK twitter account. This allows them to interact with their audience and display upcoming events that they feel their following should be aware of, such as trailers. This also allows them to develop interest for these events making them more known. The hunger games shows that this can be successful in promoting a film as they have over 80 thousand people following their account and watching out for their tweets.

#CatchingFire

Here on the right is another example of the hunger games success in promoting their film. They have their second film Catching Fire trending on twitter, meaning that everyone who follows someone that tweets mentioning the hunger games or using the hash tag #CatchingFire, will see this and research the film, take note of the film or even re-tweet or tweet about the film themselves for their followers to see. This shows that interest for the film can spread to many people in a short period of time. This is especially effective when figures of high authority and people with many followers in the community tweet about the film, as their vast following will see the tweet and they may tweet about it allowing even more people to take note of the film and so on, which can encourage a huge amount of interest for the film to develop.

Evaluation: Question 2

2."How does your media product represent particular social groups?"



Woman are not represented as any main character's as either the high status police officers or criminals. This furthers stimulates the stereotype that woman are weaker and subordinate to males and thus are not in any dominant positions within the film. The men in the film are presented as both heroic and powerful as they are involved in dangerous antics throughout the film. The use of a multi-cultural cast is not always present in most typical thrillers of today. The same can be said for the character roles as their are characters of both Asian and Black ethnicities are in higher roles, Jhabed Abdul, playing the "criminal mastermind" and Samuel Nweje playing the detective in the police department. We decided to challenge certain norms in order to make a fresher experience for the audience.