nfgslyra: 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.