section 12: Analysis of completed sequence

Coursework Evaluation

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

Our thriller film Psychotica has used a number of thriller codes and conventions like keeping the audience in the dark and being set in an urban landscape. As you can see from this still image from our thriller film, our thriller was set in an urban landscape and ties in with the thriller theory by G K Chesterton of the extra-ordinary happening in an ordinary place and being able to find excitement in ordinary places. The urban landscape also makes the film more realistic, which means that the audience can easily relate to the characters as the story is more believable. Because our film is more realistic this creates more suspense for the target audience because the threats in the film could happen to them.
Another written thriller code and convention which we abide by is Pascals Bonitzer's theory of "partial vision". This can be seen from this still image because at this point in our opening our main character is having a vision for the first time. The audience do not know what is happening but they can explicitly see that something odd is going on. It is this uneasiness and confusion that keeps the audience in the dark and unsure on what is happening, which makes them want to keep watching the film. The next still image links to John Cawelti's
theory that thriller films transform the city from a modern centre of commerce to a place of enchantment and mystery. This can be done by introducing the exotic, the exotic in our film is our main character Lorraine and she is the exotic because without her and the powers she possesses then the film would not progress and it would be boring for our target audience. This still image also shows show we have created suspense in our thriller film, we have used Nole Carroll's theory of the moral factor. This theory says that suspense can be created by having the hero as a person who may have done bad things, or in our case have them look menacing. This then creates suspense because the audience do not know if it is morally right for them to survive. This shot also shows our main character who is a girl and this challenges the thriller forms and conventions because thrillers are usually patriarchal (male dominated) with the girls being included mainly for victims or damsels in distress. An unwritten code of thriller films which we have included
in our opening sequence is the prop of a large knife which itself has connotations of death, murder and pain. We have done this to make the audience think and have their own image of how the thriller will progress, this will make it easy for us to add in a twist later in the film. This knife chopping the meat shocks the audience and excites them from the very beginning. Some thrillers start with a murder to excite the audience and create suspense from the start, however we have challenged this code by making the audience expect a murder. But in reality someone is just cutting meat in an unconventional way. This also creates suspense by playing with the audiences emotions and getting them to feel suspense for no real reason. Because we have done this in the opening sequence this should then make the audience want to watch on and continue to feel scared.


Question 2- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We have tried to incorporate a wide range of social groups in our thriller film, however we found this challenging because of the limited cast and locations we chose to portray in our thriller extract. As you will be able to see from the video below we have chosen to show a very stereotypical mum in our opening. You can see that she is a stereotype because of what she is doing, whilst the girl is drawing her mother in the foreground of the shot is making the dinner. We have chosen to have a very stereotypical mother because then the audience would easily be able to work out their relation without much explanation. Also from the clothes she is wearing the audience can tell a lot about her character for example she is wearing fairly old fashioned clothes.This could then connote to her values being old fashioned also like she wants everything in her life to be neat and tidy. This could then add some character development throughout our thriller as her daughter is anything but ordinary. From this extract we can also see patriarchal values, male dominated, because the woman is looking after the child and doing the cooking and there is a man nowhere to be seen.
The other character that can be seen in this short sequence is the main character Lorraine, Lorraine is a young girl and we chose to have her in the background drawing. We chose to have her drawing because this then makes our target audience think that she may be an odd person as drawing is not a normal activity of someone of her age to be doing. This then shows the immaturity and youth of our main character Lorraine. We told her to wear dark clothing which connotes as her personality being dark, this links in with the moral factor we used to create suspense, also in the light room she stands out which connotes as her standing out and being different. Lorraine is our main character, which does break the thriller convention as it is usually the males who are the main character in a Thriller film. However, Lorraine does depend on the detective to save them from the terrorists at the end. It could be argued that the detective is just using Lorraine for her powers, which could connote as men just using women for their own benefit.
In the video below we can see Lorraine and her mother and we can also see from the scene that they are completely opposite. Because we have one old and one young, one is wearing dark clothes and the other is wearing light clothes and one is in the foreground with the other in the background. This shows that the the two characters may have some contrasting views.
The people in this extract are meant to be seen as the working class and this is a stereotypical view as it says that the majority of working class have problems and are run by a single parent.




Question 3- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

If i were to distribute my film i would use Film4 Productions because I think that my thriller film relates to many of the other low budget productions they have produced. I also think that Psychotica belongs in their catalogue because it has great pace to the film and it creates suspense in many ways which I think that Film4 would understand as it fits in with its other projects. But it needs funding so that it can be filmed and distributed and then gradually go up the ladder to be seen by our target audience. Channel 4 is mostly viewed by 13-20 year olds which is our target audience so it would be easy to advertise our film to them. I also would pick Film4 Productions because they have great resources with them having their own channel which they often do show low budget films which means that it would be easy to get the film shown. If i couldn't use film4 productions i would choose an independant production company like Evolution Entertainment because they have made all of the saw films. So they would be able to relate to my thriller film and make it better.


Question 4- who would be your target audience for your media product?

Below i have a number of images of people who would fit the definition of our target audience. Our target audience is people from the age of 15-25. Although we gave the film a certification 0f 12 that was only an attempt to get rid of restrictions so many people can see our thriller and to widen our target audience and so our film would make more money. However, our actual target audience would be slightly older. We asked people from the age of 15-20 to take part in our questionnaire and this was our main target audience we were aiming for. The photographs of the people below fit the definition of our target audience because they are between the ages 15-20 and they are both males and female and all enjoy thriller films.


Question 5- How did you attract/ address your target audience?

From our audience research I found out that our target audience would be mostly 16 year olds, also we found that they didn't like action thriller and they preferred psychological or supernatural thrillers. So we decided that we should have a supernatural storyline but use links to psychological thrillers to create suspense. When we asked the audience which type of music they think would be most beneficial for our thriller they said that rock and orchestral would be the best and so we have addressed our target audience by using orchestral music but with a rock edge to add pace. Another way we responded to the audiences feedback is the choice of a setting because they thought that an urban or suburban setting would be best and so we set our thriller in the suburbs.
This video shows our target audience giving us feedback on our thriller film and some suggestions on how to improve it, which we then tried to respond to.






Question 6- What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing a product?


In this picture i have labeled Premiere and said how I have used all of the tools and software in my thriller.


1- This is the editing window which we used to edit the clips down and cut out any sound or framing errors.

2- This is the viewing window where we looked at the whole video we created

3- This is the timeline where you can see how long your video is.

4- This is where you can choose between different sequences and we used a separate sequence when we wanted to make complex clips like when Lorraine moves her head around rapidly

5- These are where all the tools are kept like the razor which we used to cut out repeated credits and the hand tool which we used to move our clips around

6- This is the zoom button and we used this to match up the music precisely with the video and to get fine detail on edited clips.

7- This shows the video and audio tracks and we dragged and dropped the edited clips into this slot to create our thriller film.

8- This is where you can add effects like ghosting to the video and we used this a lot for the end of our thriller with the terrorist attack to make it look more interesting and exciting.

9- This is the new item box and we used this to add such items like credits into our thriller film.

10- This is the project bin and this contains all the clips that we shot and we dragged them across into the editing window.

Question 7- looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?


Looking back at tasks i have done in the past I feel that I have made very good and quick progression to the full product I have created today.
When doing tasks in the past I had a few issues with contenuity, but I feel that I have learned from this and I feel that the thriller which i created does not have any issues similar to those ones in earlier tasks. Also in older projects there was some issues with framing but in my thriller i used my time management well and managed to get the shots I wanted.
I feel that over time my knowledge of shots has progressed and this has benifited my thriller because it allowed me to include shots with meaning for example high angles showing vulnerability and dutch shots showing madness.
I now have a good understanding of premier and I can comfortably do complex tasks such as adding effects, making credits and editing down clips precisely.
I think that the mistakes I made in these older tasks has helped me to be more cautious and has helped me to create this thriller film and over time i will continue to progress.