Evalution

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

Two conventions we have used.
-We used the enigma code in our thriller opening by leaving the audience with questions about our characters and our plot. The protagonist taking the pills makes the audience question why and how that is later going to affect her in the plot. The narrative in the opening itself creates questions as to who the grave belongs to and what the significance of the son.







The scene in se7en (to the left) creates the enigma code because the audience are unaware of why the character is doing these things to himself. We have no developed or challenged the convention of the enigma code because we felt that it was a useful convention in making a successful thriller opening and helping the audience become more interested in our product

-We have also used the convention of binary opposition. There is a contrast in location, by using the very natural outdoor location of the graveyard and the surrounding areas against the very clinical, man made environment of the medical room. There is also opposition with the protagonist's  illness fighting against the hospital and the medical environment and not wanting the be faced with it. The medical room also contrasts the location of the school, as the school would be seem as a safe place for people where as the medical room creates a sinister atmosphere which isn't as friendly



This scene in hard candy (to the left) shows opposition between the old man and the young. We decided to use binary opposition as it creates a conflict and drives the whole narrative forward.



The conventions we have developed

-We have developed the convention of close ups by using interesting angles such as the canted angle in the last shot of our opening. The canted angle gives the impression of the camera lying on the floor and is an uncomfortable angle for the audience to watch.

This is developed from the standard straight angled close up and creates a different impression. A straight on close up just emphasises the action in the shot whereas using a canted angle as well as a close up emphasises that the pill pot has been thrown and gives the impression that the camera has been thrown as well.




- We have also developed the convention of isolation. In a typical thriller the at least one of the main characters experiences some form of isolation where they are alone and vulnerable. We have developed this because we have created a sense of isolation even thought the protagonist is not alone. We have shown that she has a son and there fore a family but she visits the grave alone and is dealing with her mental illness alone creating a sense of isolation.




The conventions we have challenged

-We have challenged the conventions of typical character types by choosing to use an older and female protagonist compared to the typical protagonist who is a younger male character. We first wanted to develop the convention by making the character female, to appeal to a more female audience. We then further challenged this by deciding to use an older female. By doing so, we created a character that our target audience would be able to empathise more with. Whereas a young male protagonist would attract a younger audience, our character would appeal more to an older female character as they would be able to relate to her more. We also challenged this convention as it can be assumed from our opening that our antagonist is also female. Again another contrast to the usual male character that would be seen in a typical thriller. We thought it would be more interesting to have both of our main characters as females, to show contrast between the nature of women.




-We also have challenged the convention of typical credit order as we decided to put the title credit of our product at the end of our 2 minute opening. In a typical thriller, the title credit would usually be after the names of the main actors fairly near the beginning of the opening sequence.We decided to put our title credit at the end for many reasons. Firstly during our opening we have many cross cuts between to different locations and two different story lines and by interrupting the flow of the cross cuts could cause confusion amongst the audience, and although making the audience ask question is good, we did not want to spoil the clarity of the cross cuts. Also we felt that having the title credit at the end of the sequence fitted in better with our music which we have detuning and dying away at the end, much like how the title credit fades away.
The screen shot to the left shows the title credit from the film 'catch me if you can' and although the title sequence for this is animated, it still uses typical credit order, having the title credit after the name of the distributing company, production company, director and the name of the main actors.

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

how does you media product represent particular social groups on Prezi

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
http://nfgsmedia.wikispaces.com/Lyra 

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

Our ideal consumer would be a female aged 25, who was married with one child. She studied at university and acquired a degree in a science based subject, possibly medicine.

She has always been interested in small budget indie films that she could go and watch at her university's arts theatre. She is interested in films where the plot is not obvious and requires thought to figure out the twists and turns. She enjoys realist films where she can relate to characters and has realist locations. She does not like films with huge amounts of special effects and a fantasy setting although she may go and watch these films which her child. 

She likes going to the cinema with her husband but prefer to go late at night as they both work full time jobs and her parent can babysit. Because they visit the cinema in the evening, she is more inclined to watch the higher certified films and thrillers as these are the sort of films shown later at night.

She uses 'lovefilm' to rent films on-line to watch at home and during breaks at work on her laptop. This allows her to watch large amounts of films without having lots of DVD's in her house where her child can get at them. She likes to rent DVD's that are made by new directors and those that have been nominated for awards or shown at film festivals

As a user of facebook, she notices any 'sponsored stories' that may appear about films and 'likes' official pages of films and directors. She owns a smart phone which has many apps for cinema's and upcoming films so she can check what is on at her local cinema whilst out and about. She also subscribes to a cinema magazine app where she reads lots of articles and reviews about new films and new directors.

She doesn't watch trailers on youtube as she does not like the advertisements that now appear before the video starts. However she does watch trailers that appear when she is watching television of films that she is interested in seeing.

She speaks to many friends about what films they have seen recently and she values their opinion. She would tend to avoid going to pay to watch a film if lots of her friends had told her it was not very good or not worth the money.

 5. How did you attract/address your audience?


 6. What have you learn about technologies from the process of constructing your media product?

 After constructing my thriller opening, I have learnt and developed many skills with many different aspects of new technologies.

-Firstly, we were introduced to blogger, which at first was difficult to use as I was not use to doing all my work on a blog. I found it easy to pick up basic skills such as how to create a new post and edit existing posts as well as adding titles and tags. What I found more difficult was creating a layout to our blog and I found the template designer more difficult to use and slightly confusing. With help from my teachers however, I was able to get used to the designer and create a blog which was pleasing to look at. 

This is the design page and template design, which allows you to change how your blog looks, how to add gadgets and sidebars and the template design helps you adjust width of posts and colours of fonts and boxes.

-The next thing we had to become use to using, was the HD camera and all the equipment that goes with the camera such as the tripod. During our preliminary task, we had not used the cameras at all, so it took a little bit of getting used to, but I soon became accustomed to it and ended up filming many shots in our preliminary task. We did not have to use a tripod for this task. When filming our actual product for the first time we were more used to working with the camera, but we had trouble with the tripod as it was a piece missing so we had to hold the camera on with elastic bands, which meant that it was less stable, and we had to be even more careful whilst filming. However when we filmed in the medical room we were able to film without any trouble and now I feel very confident about using the cameras and the tripod.

-The main piece of technology that I had to learn to use from scratch was final cut express, the software we would be using to edit our opening. I had never used this before and found it quite intimidating to start with. Editing our preliminary task gave me quite a lot of practice using final cut, and I learnt the basics such as importing footage and putting them in the timeline, cutting the footage and adding cross dissolves. This gave me sufficient understanding to edit our preliminary task and the first rough cut of our final opening. When it came to editing our final finished opening, we wanted to use more advanced editing techniques, such as slowing down footage and adding more advanced fades between shots. To find out how to do this we watched many tutorials on youtube and followed instructions on different websites. We also used tutorials on youtube and other members of our class to help us add credits of final cut express as well, as at first I could not get the credits exactly how we wanted them to be.

-I had previously used the online presentation website prezi.com but I had not understood it that well and found ti very confusing to use as I was so used to creating presentations on Microsoft Powerpoint. However having to use it for one our our evaluation questions, I became used to using it and realised that it was very simple. It became useful as a means of creating mind maps for some of our planning posts and an easy way to create an large presentation. I taught myself how to embed pictures and draw paths between text boxes and now I am competent in using the website.

I am really confident in using prezi now and will continue to use it to create interesting presentations.

-We used livetype to create out title credit and again this was a piece of software that i had never sued before and I used tutorials to help us add effects and change the size and colour of our text. I had a little of trouble at first getting used to how to use and even after being able to create a title credit found ti difficult to then import it into livetype to use in our thriller opening. Although I can use this piece of software I am not completely confident in using it, and would have to look at more tutorials to become completely competent in using it.

-Having used youtube previously and already having a home account, I was familiar with how to upload and add descriptions to any of my videos. I did however learn how to add speech bubbles and tags to our videos which i didn't know how to do.

This is one of the speech bubbles we added to our final piece. I found it easy to understand how to add tags because youtube made it very clear and easy to use and understand.



- I had never used wikispaces before and had never really visited any website that was part of wikispaces so I was very unfarmiliar with how it worked. Working as a group, we managed to get used to how it worked as were able to produce one of our evaluation question using it. We did have trouble at first inserting images that had been saved onto our desktop. We are still unsure as to why this happened but managed to overcome the problem and insert some images onto it. I am more comfortable using wikispaces now, but I think further use of the website would help me become more competent using it alone. 

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

Evaluation

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

In our thriller opening piece we have used Enigma code due to our main character taking pills, the audience do not know why this is. This would lead to the audience questioning the story line and character in order to figure out what is going on. To enhance focus on this we highlighted the pills by using a close up of her taking the pills, we also used a close up of the pill pot when its on the floor at the end. This increases the viewers fear of the unknown, which is why it is a typical thriller convention. Not knowing what is going on makes the audience feel uncomfortable. We related this to close ups of someone cutting skin off their fingers in the opening credits of Se7en, this creates a fear of the unknown for the audience as they want to know why the character is doing this. The focus on the hands in both our piece, and the clip from Se7en creates an uneasy atmosphere which we linked to our piece as the audience will question what our character is doing.

In our piece we also used binary opposition shown with the contrast in location between our shots showing the school and the medical scenes. There is also binary opposition as the protagonist has an illness but is trying to get away from the hospital. We related this to the thriller Hard Candy as there is binary opposition used due to the male playing the vulnerable one, and the girl being in control. This links to our product as there is a contrast in both our film, and Hard Candy. Binary opposition adds a sense of mystery to our piece, but also reveals that there are two story lines running alongside each other as we cut between them. The protagonists split personality is shown between her taking her son to school, which is a normal day-to-day activity. On the other hand taking the pills and the hospital scenes reveals a twist.

Our piece has developed close ups as we have shown a close up of the pill pot at a canted angle. This is developed as the canted angle is not very common. Usually close ups are straight on, which makes them look professional and neat, we aimed for the opposite effect and wanted our close up to reflect the protagonists mood - stressed. This image is at the end of the opening meaning the idea of the protagonist taking pills will be lingering in the viewers head, creating a sense of uncertaincy. We linked this to the film phone booth, where they use a close up on the gun. This makes the viewer feel uncomfortable, but also draws their attention to it, this was our intention when using a close up.

We also developed isolation in our thriller. This is when the main character Elise is alone in the grave yard. It is developed because she is alone, but you get the feeling she is being watched, or isn't actually alone. This links to the film, The Resident, as the woman is on her own, but she's being watched also. This builds up suspense as the audience want to know whats going on, making them interrogative. Isolation is a typical convention of thriller films, as the feeling of being alone leads to the character appearing move vulnerable. Isolation can lead to voyeurism as the character is alone but being watched.

In our thriller we have challenged the typical character types as we have used a female protagonist. She is slightly older than the normal main character in thriller films. This is how we have challenged this convention, it makes our film unique. We have compared this to the typical protagonist Bradley Cooper in Limitless as he is a young male. This is more common in thrillers as women are usually portrayed as damsels in distress. From this the audience may infer that there is a underlying issue with our protagonist, they may feel although there is something wrong as she is not the typical character type. This would again cause our audience to feel uneasy and question our story line.

We also challenged the typical thriller convention of the credits and title of the film being shown at the beginning. Ours on the other hand, is at the end of the opening first two minuets, we did this to make it different from most thrillers and to add more suspense as the viewers do not know the title till the end. This would also be as we have a lot of cross cutting, so it is fairly busy, meaning its easier to have the credits at the end. Our credits also are at the end because they fit in with the music. We compared this to the Catch me if you can film title, which is shown at the beginning, as most thrillers do.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
This is my prezi which explains my response to this question with examples and screen shots from our Thriller opening.

How does your media product represent particular social groups? on Prezi

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
http://nfgsmedia.wikispaces.com/Lyra



4.
- Our ideal audience member is female as our protagonist is also female. This means the audience can relate to her and what she does in her daily life.
-The age would be 25-35 and could be aimed at a family orientated woman as our thriller questions family relationships. 15 is the youngest our audience member would be as our film is certificated at the age of 15 due to the content of drug taking and death.
-The location of our ideal audience member would be somewhere like Cambridge as indie films would be shown in cinemas such as Cambridge picture house. As our film is indie, it would be less likely to be shown at the cinemas for a long period of time, Elise would be a film that is more typically viewed on DVD.
online shopping.
- The audience member would ideally be a mum, as our protagonist is. Due to this she may talk about the thriller in the playground with other mums. The audience member would be someone who would go to the cinema but would take her children to also see Disney films. Our film would be watched when the children are in bed, with a glass of wine to wind down from the day.



5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We added multiple tags to our final piece to answer this question.






6. What have you learnt about techniques from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout making our media piece I learnt to use many different technologies, some i had never heard of before. The first piece of equipment I learnt to use was the Mac's, I had never used an apple computer before, so I had to familiarise myself with the aspects of the Mac. Here is a picture of me using the mac.

The next thing I was introduced too was blogger, which I could not get my head around. As I used it more, I started to understand the ease of having all your work in one, easily accessible place. We added posts of our work to the blog and made it look suitable for our media product. Here is a screen grab of our blog.

I next learnt how to use the HD cameras through our preliminary experiment. This task was very helpful as I gained a lot of knowledge about how the cameras work, and how to hold a steady shot. With this came learning how to use the tripod with the camera. The extendable legs had to be changed to make sure the shot was straight, we used the green indicator on the tripod to make sure our camera was level. When we started filming, we realised our tripod was missing the clip we needed to hold the camera onto the tripod. This was a dilemma as we could not access it, we had to improvise using elastic bands to hold the camera in place ans straight. Here is an image of me using the camera and tripod. 

As I started editing our preliminary piece and our actual opening I began to familiarise with Final Cut Express, this is the programme we used to edit. I had never used it before meaning it was a new start, it was easy to pick up and our whole group were editing parts of the piece. Here is a picture demonstrating the use of Final Cut Express.

In the process of editing and creating our piece we used Livetype to create the credits, and Photoshop to make our logo. These were fairly simple for us to work out as a group and we managed to find a perfect font for out titles. The logo was easy to create as we took a design of a bird from our blog and edited the name of our company on top. Here is a screen grab of an example of one of our credits, and our logo.

Once our video was complete and uploaded to Youtube, I learnt how to use Youtube tagging, which we put on our preliminary experiment and our actual piece. We used the tags we explained how we addressed and attracted our target audience. Youtube tagging is a good way of analysing our good and bad parts as we can place them exactly where we're talking about on the video. Here is an example of our tags on our final piece.

Also in our evaluation I learnt how to use prezi which is like an online, moving spider diagram of your work. Here is an image of my prezi.

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

Evaluation

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


One way our thriller product uses forms and thriller conventions of real media products is by using the Enigma Code. This is where the audience do not know why a character may be doing  something, or being uncertain of knowing what a particular part of the film is about. For example in our thriller piece the woman protagonist consistently takes the tablets- so the audience may wonder why is she taking the tablets? does she lead a stressful life? Or may be does she have an illness that needs to be controlled? We think that this works well, the more questions the audience answer the better because then it makes the audience member want to want more. It also represents the protagonist as stressful but mysterious as there is a reason behind the tablet taking. The thriller film that also uses the Enigma code is Se7en. The use of close ups with the fingers is something that the audience tend to find uncomfortable as we do not know why he is shaving skin off of his fingers- it also asks questions. 

Another way our thriller product uses forms and thriller conventions of real media products is by using Binary position. We have used a contrast between a school which is generally a nice environment with children playing and friends all being together. We used the opposite of this by filming scenes in a graveyard which tends to have a negative effect from people as we associate graveyards with lost loved ones. Another contrast of the school was the hospital scene which we also associate with sick people and not a very nice place to be. One film which included Binary opposition was Hard Candy as the screenshot shown has a contrast between the younger woman and the older man- quite an obvious contrast but still effective nonetheless. 


One way in which out media product develops the forms and conventions of real media products is close ups. We used a range of close ups which tend to be effective in actual thrillers so we developed this even more by introducing a canted angle at the end. This would be a strange angle for the viewers which they are new to. The film which we have got our screenshot from is from Phone booth. It has a typical close up of a gun which is similar to the effect of our thriller which is making the film tense. 


Another way our media product uses conventions of actual thriller films is by showing Isolation throughout the clip. We showed this clearly by having the protagonist go to the graveyard by herself and the majority of the clip is her alone. It seems as if the only person she actually has in her life is her son which the viewer may find quite sad and feel sympathy for her. The fact that she is also visiting the grave may be the reason why she's alone, because a loved one may have passed away- this also brings the enigma code into it as the viewer asks questions as to why she is so alone. 

One way our product challenges the usual thriller conventions is by using an extremely a-typical character type. The typical main character in thrillers tends to be males in their twenties. However our character is the opposite- a 37 year old woman, a mother. Although we have challenged this convention, we feel that it has worked remarkably well as our female character is relatable to many women in Britain so for this reason would have many viewers. 

Another way our media product challenges the typical thriller films is by actually putting the film title at the end, after all the credits. We feel that it would have a better effect as the woman is mysterious throughout and we do not even know the woman's name. For us it was a good idea to reveal bits at a time in order to make our thriller surprising for our audience. 


2. My Prezi- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups? on Prezi

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
 http://nfgsmedia.wikispaces.com/Lyra

4.Who would be the audience for your media product? 
Our ideal audience member would be as follows: 
- We would have an audience of mostly women because as it is quite a realistic setting and tried to keep the characters as down to earth and real as possible it will be easier for the audience to empathise with the main protagonist 'Elise'. 
- The audience would also be around 16-30 years old so we will have a variety of viewers.As it is family themed we imagine that many mothers would watch this or people that are interested in this particular topic. 
-We thought that because we are aiming for the typically British, small budget more realist setting, we thought that it would be best to have our film shown in less known chain cinemas and more independent cinemas such as arts picture house in Cambridge.  
- The class would be people of middle-class, possibly part-time working mums that earn money but still come back in time to pick up their children from school- more family orientated people. 
- We believe that their interests or pastimes would be spending quality time with families which would include going to the cinema, bowling and other typical evenings out for all the family. I also think that they would enjoy going out to restaurants and having quality time with other people not only their children.
-Money would be spent on children mostly and only things that they possibly need, so people that are quite wise with their money and are careful how they spend it in order to be able to have enough money to buy necessities.
- Due to their tiring working lives they aren't able to get down to the cinema often so watch movies on-line or buy them on Sky+ to watch in the evenings. 
-As they are film lovers, they would probably check frequently what is showing at the cinema and find out about new films through various adverts on-line.
5. How did you attract/ address your audience?
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6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the construction process of making our final piece, i came across many new technologies that i had never used before, so overall i think it was a success because of the different programmes we used. 

This photo shows me using an Apple MAC computer. It is so different to what I'm used to which is using a Windows computer however it wasnt the first time i had been on one. Before i'd only used one briefly for the internet but just by browsing on the different programmes made me realise how much i really missed out on.

This photo shows me using a HD camera. I learnt a lot just by filming our preliminary piece and our final piece. I found that the more confident i was, the less shaky i was and the better the footage came out. I learnt to do various different shots, for example a canted angle, cross cuts and even learnt the rule of thirds which made us conscious of the shots we filmed. This was useful because not only did i learn new techniques, but i learnt about how much work and effort gets put in making a real film and how difficult it is to get perfect- so it would mean taking shots again etc. I also used a tripod which attaches to the camera. I had never used one before so setting it up and adjusting it was all new to me, this is another thing i had learnt. 

This screenshot is of our Opening title which uses the programme called Live-type. Before using live-type for our title and fonts for opening credits i had never even heard of the programme let alone used it before. I didn't even think that there was such a programme that could make credits so i was surprised at that. From this i learnt how to change the different fonts, how to place them in different parts of the page, how to make them bigger/ smaller and even using effects on them to make them animated. 

Final cut Express played a massive part in the making of our piece as it was the programme we used most for editing scenes and cutting parts of our footage and so on. Like livetype i have never used Final cut express before and i went from not even hearing about the programme to knowing how to cut parts off of footage, how to add music in, how to add cross dissolves/ fades and how to lower saturation of the piece. 


I used the on-line website YouTube too. This came in very useful as by using YouTube we were able to find tutorials on how to do transitions on final cut express and even got ideas by watching other schools final thriller pieces to see what works and what doesn't. I learnt that YouTube can have useful videos to watch as well as music and other things i watch in my spare time.

Blogger was also one of the main online websites we used. I had never made a blog before so it was a first for me. I learnt how to not only post on the blog, but also linking in various videos and pictures which could be shared to whoever may view our blog. 

Another online programme i learnt how to use was Prezi. This was a very useful website as it used a more interactive and exciting way of sharing my ideas and was a different method of posting on the blog as well as normal posts. It came in useful as i made a presentation on there and it was very easy to pick up. 

An offline programme that we used on the macs was Photoshop. I had also never used Photoshop before but easily enough we made our 'LYRA PRODUCTIONS' logo. We learnt how to add layers and to type text on top of an image. 






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