Evaluation - Amy Leadbitter

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

In the process of planning our piece, we made sure to pay attention to the typical convention of a thriller.

• In our thriller, we chose to have many enigma codes. There are many questions that could arise; such as 'where has the childe been taken?' 'why did the mother leave him alone?' 'who is the kidnapper and what is he going to do with the child?' Enigma codes are very important to a thriller such as this because they help raise the feeling of suspense. Unrestricted narration has also helped us in this situation. Since the audience can see everything that is going on, it opens up more enigma codes which in turn makes it more suspenseful. I also think that our opening is slightly similar to that of Face/Off (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119094/) as it begins innocently but gradually becomes more sinister until we see the title of the film and then the empty seat.




• Mise en scene can make or break a thriller. We paid close attention to costume and character in this thriller. We made sure that the antagonist was dressed in dark clothes, and that we could never see their face to keep the element of suspense up. We used ambient lighting for most of the film, but we sometimes needed a redhead light to create shadows. Shots inside were harder to light, and some of them were darker than they could have been.

We picked this setting for our thriller because we thought that an enclosed setting would be good for our story. We also saw the door as an oppertunity for some good shots to build suspense and surprise.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our product, our characters are seemingly stereotypical.

Child

We have made our victim a child in this product to show innocence and vulnarablilty. This can also show stereotypes for age; children are stereotypically naive and are easily manipuled in these situation. The dialogue in the film also shows innocence. All the child says is 'Are we there yet mummy?'. The child is also seen fidgeting in the car when his mother is away, which shows absent mindedness and boredome.

Kidnapper

We have kept the kidnapper's identity a secret here, but we have kept the ideal of a dark/evil antagonist by having him dress in dark clothes (eg. long sleeved black jacket) and keeping his identity a secret by only showing shadows and never seeing his face. We have made the antagonist to be a secretive person.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?/Who would be the audience for your media product?

As a group, we decided that our film would be a 15 certificate. This is because the nature of the film would not be suitable for anything under a 15, but was not severe enough to make it an 18 certificate. Our target audience would mainly be 15-25 year olds, because through posting our video on social networking site facebook, we recieved replies from this age bracket saying that they enjoyed it and would be interested in this type of thriller if it were a full film.

How did you attract/address your audience?

With the nature of the film being the 'loss' of a child, I believe that we would attract more of a female audience because it could be relateable in a sense of the audience asking what they would do if they were in that particular situation. We also planned to attract the younger audience through the excitement of this type of thriller and using the enigma codes (where is the child/who is the kidnapper/why has he taken the child).

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

• I have learned how to use iMovie sucessfully



• I have learned how to better my skills on garageband, and how to use foley



• Adobe Premier Elements played a large part in this project, and learning how to use this program will really help me in the future.



• I have realised how important lighting and continuity editing is

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

I have noticed that we have progressed with ideas, and how to put them forth and carry them through, but I have noticed that our skills at creating music for our films was better in the preliminary task than it was in our final thriller piece.

In conclusion, I do think that there are some factors that could have improved in our product, but overall I am pleased with what we have done.