Final Draft

Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our thriller not only challenged conventions but also meets the conventions of a thriller film. Because of this it was a struggle to decide the audience for your media product. Stereotypically thrilers have a dominate male based audience as it plays with conventions which they enjoy. However our thriller has a female protagonist/Antagonist and is more physcologically based. These aspects bring in a higher female audience. We want to attract to both sex's of the audience, however i feel as if women dominate with the viewing of ours.

reasons why I believe this to be true is a previous thriller film made was Gone Girl. Gone Girl is a 2014 American psychological thriller film directed by David Fincher. It was based upon a novel and has a female protagonist. 



The opening of this thriller film shows how they have used a slow pase in the editing, demonstrating that thrillers do not always have to contain such high speed to keep up the tension. Personally I think a slow build is very affective and powefull.
Gone Girls opening audience had a 60% female dominated. Other successfull thriller made whihc had a large female audience was The Maze Runner, Annabelle, The Purge, The conjuring.
This demonstarted that challenging or not challenging the thriller conventions dosent 'set in stone' what type of sex the audience will be. with todays modern society I believe it is best left up to the viewer as to wether the enjoy the thriller film or not.

Inforamtion gained from http://variety.com/2014/film/news/gone-girl-annabelle-female-audiences-1201321880/

Conventions of form - opening sequence

• Titles
• The movie
• The Director
•  The main actors
• Music 
• If the movie is a franchise then the music used within the title sequence will be familar to the viewers. 
• Eg James Bond, changes for the film, creating a more unqiue sound to fit that version of the bond film. 
• Helps to draws viwers in.
• Introduction of characters 
• Establishing shot
• Barthes
• Narrative enigmas
• presents questions and puzzels to draw in an audience. 

Question 7

- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

By comparing the Prelim task to 'Padnapped' to my final draft 'Thirteen' to you drastically see how I have improved in the process of this.  


 My editing skills have clearly developed as I have learnt and demonstrated wider techniques. Titles are more advanced and over all the continuos flow is more pleasureable to watch.Where as in the prlim task the editing is random and dosent have a nice flow with it: an example of this is at (0:06). However we were able to demonstrate a clear story line. When doing the prelim task I struggled with sound, as I was just getting used to the software. Our Final drfat shows a much more professional standard.




Techniques like shot reverse shot (0:28) and a split screen (1:23) are shown which demonstrates how my skills have progessed. The shot reverse shot works affectively as it captures the characters interactions with one another. We followed the 180 degree rule, this allowed for continous editing and flow without having a reverse angle which would disrupt the editing.
The pace of the editing in the final draft in comparrison to the prlim demonstrates how our skills have progressed aswell.  Within our final draft we were able to build suspence with the audience through the pace at which we editied. At the begining it it very slow and building up. In time with the music it begins to speed up with the crescendo. This works very affectively as it creates chaos as the audience have a moment of realisation.
My knowlage of camera angles was fairly wide at the begining of this process, so in both prelim task and final draft there is a wide variety of camera angles.

The mise en scene in the final draft is more thought through and developed than the prelim to create verisimilitude. We also used a larger amount of filming locations and props.

Question 6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?



How to blog
Before as media stuedies coursework i had never used a blogging software before. it taught me efficiency, and how quickly you can fall behind if you dont stay on top of your game. complicated at first, but seemed to pick up it easily once understoff the system platform. Bloggers way of presenting itself is nice and simple for a beginer as it allows you to constantly see how you are progressing. Things like the labels which allow you to see everything clear and organised was helpfull. blogger is a very modern way of communicating as it is controlled throught the internet which is bigger than ever now. using the internet is excellent as it has the ability to be changed qucikly. 

Camera
I used a camera during my GCSE media studies, however we only took still images. This process of using the camera was new for me, attempting to take shots to create continuous futage was a stuggle but after a while it became a fun process. I picked up tricks as to how you could take the same amount of footage within a short time spam. this was by shootting each characters individule line from every angle. Althought we were sticking to the basic storyboard it then allowed us to play around more when it vame to editing. Problems with this came when we wanted some continued footage, it stopped after their line was over.  When first hired out the camera I could get it to focus, after a while of flicking through all the options I had figured it out. After that point we had no problem with the camera. 

Lighting

Lighting 

lighting

Was not used as much on my opening thriller sequence, However during my prelium task i was able to play around it more. Filming in the studio with the stand alone lights shows how much of an effect can be made on camera, with just some lights. During our filming we had no use of specialist lights, this I regret as i beleive the lighting could have been a good aspect of building the tension either during the stair scene or the therapy room. 



Adobe Premire Pro

Adobe Premier Pro

My only real expeience of editing would be on photoshop, which i used during GCSE a lot and during my younger years where i found entertainment through it. Adobe Premire Pro is alot more advanced and complicated. I still get confused when going onto the software. However, I am able to download videos and edit them with sound and successfull export and upload onto youtube. Tools which I have learnt are putting titles ontop of footage, cutting, editing sound. Including pitch, pace. To create the incidental music used in our opening sequence, we combined two songs to create a suitable crescendo which we disired. 

Question 5

- How did you attract/address your audience?


Meeting The Conventions
When deciding the narative of our thriller we decided that including lots of conventions of a thriller was vital as it would meet all of the thriller criteria and draw in audience's more. Meeting all of these conventions would allow us to appeal to thriller audiences and enage them more.
Suspence
To do this we focused on elongating the suspence. The suspence never drops in our opening scene as the ending still leaves the audience with questions, wanting to continue watching the rest of the film.  The continuous editing and face paced cutting towards the end of the extract allows audiences to see something new in each frame and keep them interested.

Audience Feedback
I asked a range of audiences to see what they liked and disliked about our final opening thriller edit.
After reading all our our audience feedback, I was delighted at how engaing and enjoyable the audience found it. 

Question 3

- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


Difference between production company and distrobution company.
The production company is the company which produces the film, then distrobution companys work towards advertising and the method by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing.

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups from joelle riley

Absence Of Refilming

Throughout my blog I have been talking about how Rachel and I wanted to re film before the deadline so we could work with better shots. This was because after our first draft I wasent completely happy with the outcome. I believed it was unprofessional and just looked crindgey. However we were not able to refilm due to running out of time. We then decided to use the footage we had previously had and adapt our editing skills to create a better extract as out final draft. Changes we made made me happy and confident in our work.

Question 1

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

Final Draft

Thirteen First Draft Evaluation

 Overall I am not particularly happy with how our opening to Thirteen has turned out. I don’t believe it looks professional and as to what I had imagined inside of my head, it doesn’t live up to the standard I had desired. Also this first draft video is seven minutes long, obviously we don’t want it this long just at this point Rachel and I hadn’t edited the music fully yet, so it stretched out to 7 minutes when the actual clips end at 1minute 40 seconds.

Titles
I think the titles actually work really well affectively in our extract. They come in slowly and when working in time with the chimes it gives a haunting affect that can draw the viewer in. I really like our logo, I think it works really well with myself and Rachel and looks professional. I think there could be a longer drone between each of the titles to create a more stretched out affect. However, if the titles are too long then we could go over time and the video would be too long.
When the videos start the tiles which play over the video are black and white. The problem with this is you can really see them as clearly as I would like because the almost blend into the background. When we re-shoot and re-edited I will make sure to have the titles so they are very visible.

Camera Angles
I think the camera angles work really well with our extract. We have a large range of angles which gives it a professional feel. Whilst filming the conversation between Jasper and Benjamin we filmed from three different angles, this gave us a lot to work with. The shot reverse shot works really well. However, during this conversation I think it would be better if we embedded some close up and more varies of camera angles, just to mix it up a little.

When re filming I want to experiment with all different kinds of shots so we have a lot to play around with and choose from to create the best piece possible.




Editing
With all of the editing overall I think it’s too quick, there is not transaction between quick editing and fast editing. Because of this the whole thing looks slightly poor. I want different atmospheres created. At the moment with the clips we have shot, the editing cuts off when the finish speaking, to create more affect I want to include more sound bridges and longer takes.
The editing towards the end I think needs a lot of work, as does re shooting the videos.