- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The way in which we approached our final piece was in the style of a horror thriller, so this meant trying to make our final product contain subtle elements from a horror film (such a dark undertone and a tense atmosphere) however we had to make sure that we did not compromise the brief and that the final piece was still in the genre of a Thriller. The most obvious risk with making our opening sequence in the style of a horror thriller is falling too far down the route of a horror film, and aspects of this can be seen throughout our piece, the main example of this is our entire scenario of an unknown character being stalked in the woods by another unknown entity. Fortunately our composition does fit common conventions of a thriller, for example the use of suspenseful music composition to create effect is one of the most iconic features of any thriller.
The use of the costume helps emphasises vulnerability, a key convention in most modern day thrillers. This can be seen in the characters parker coat, that is zipped up all the way to the neck and sleeves that are too long, covering his hands. This is a good example due to the fact the character is showing very little skin, suggesting the idea that the covering up is this character's way of protecting themselves and could metaphorically suggest that this character is covering up and protecting their insecurities. I felt it was important to agree with this convention as one of the main aspects of our piece is the idea of isolation, therefore vulnerability played a large part of making that isolation feel real to both the actor and the audience of our piece.
The use of a young male protagonist in the opening sequence also fits the usual stereotype and convention of most thrillers, this is because usually a male will take the main role and the female may play the secondary protagonist/ love interest. This is usually due to the fact that most thrillers have a largely young, male fan base, and by therefore using a young male protagonist, the piece is more likely to agree, appeal and relate directly to the intended target audience. Again I felt like agreeing with this convention was the way forward, it was a necessity in order to make the sequence as believable and relatable to the audience as possible.
Another convention that we decided to incorporate into our final edit, is Barthes’ theory of scattering ‘Narrative Enigmas’ throughout or opening sequence, to both engage and intrigue the audience. Barthes suggests that by scattering these Narrative Enigmas throughout the opening scene of any media project, they act almost as puzzles that the audience can work on, a prime example can be seen in the scenario we used. The idea of a young male protagonist gasping to life in the middle of a wood, to then cut to a mysterious figure stalking him in that wood raises a few questions in the audiences mind. We decided to agree on this convention as we almost felt that this theory was essential to making our piece as appealing to the audience as possible, and a way to draw them in to the piece within the first two minutes.
- How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The costume in our sequence reflects a slightly alternative emo/indie audience. This can be seen with the dark parker, the fitted jeans and the Doc Martins worn by our actor Jordan Tully, all clothes stereotypically associated with people from that particular social groups. This is also reflected in the tone of our piece, as it has a very dark, gothic vibe, something again commonly associated with this particular social group.
A stereotype we played on during the opening sequence of our piece was the idea that the everyday stereotypically young person thrive better when in groups, as opposed to when they are alone, therefore portraying them as vulnerable. Examples of venerability can be seen in our actor’s costume, which shows very big, baggy clothing, and parker done up to the top showing very little skin. The idea of vulnerability is emphasised by the high camera angles which we used to make the actor appear timid and scared.
- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
- Who would be the audience for your media product?
- How did you attract/address your audience?
- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
A major part of this production was camera work. As I am new to media (not taking it at GCSE) this meant coming to grips with how to use the camera, as I had the creativity and the ideas of what I wanted to film but I didn’t have the know-how. The camera I chose to use was the Nikon D3100, one of the media faculties own cameras, to shoot the footage for our sequence. As I was new to this camera I had to find ways to learn how to use it. The basics were covered by Mr Turner (teacher) and this enabled me to begin to play around with some other basic features such as different lenses, shutter speed and adjusting the FPS the footage was shot at, such as 24 FPS as this is the standard FPS most cinema is shot in. These were the basic skills needed to begin shooting my opening sequence to our Thriller/Horror style piece. In my opinion I feel like our original shots were nice clean shots which needed very little after effects added during post production. They incorporated different angles, and some shots incorporate some handheld to add a grainy gritty feel, typical of most thrillers, however I feel some of the shots taken for the titles are very poor quality as they were last minute inserts shot without a tripod, therefore making them very shaky and in my opinion, very poor.
Another piece of technology I had to come to grips with was the editing software called Adobe Premier Pro. This was a challenge for me as I have never even heard of this software and therefore had no experience and no idea how to use it. The help was there if I needed it but due to the task being focused around individual development, I decided to initially try and ‘self-teach’ myself using YouTube videos, this helped give me an initial understanding of how to start importing and trimming the clips. I was fortunate however to work with someone who had previously used the programme and therefore he edited after effects and titles on to the sequence. However looking back, I feel like there were way too many after effects added and therefore some of the grit and the grain was lost out of our thriller as it began to start to look amateurish. I also felt the font used for the titles was too childlike and therefore took away from some of the seriousness of the piece itself. The titles also in my opinion were to linear and there was no diversity or individualism as they were all the same. If I was to do this piece again I would aim to get more smoother, subtle and more creative titles as I feel like the ones used in our opening sequence are too basic.
- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
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