Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media production and why?

Question 6: What have you learnt about new technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question 5: How did you attract or address your audience?

In my thriller there is a clear anti-hero and this is the character who steals money and a bag from someone yet you want him to get away. This plays with the ideas of your usual hero and i feel that people are bored of the hero always being a good guy and never putting a foot wrong. The audience will be attracted by the idea of an anti-hero as they can relate to the fact that not everyone is always good all the time people can mess up but they can also do the right thing in the end which is how I pictured the main character Harley being as the film would progress.

I also think the audience would enjoy the side to it that is unrelatable as well because it gives them a rush to see things that would never happen in their day to day life. For example the kidnapping scene (on the right) shows how far the lives of these two men are different to the audience members. This allows people to escape into a world which they know nothing about and get a sense of how people may live their lives in the criminal underworld. This also gives the film a very good realism to it and shows the grittiness of some places and people.
The imagination of the viewer is also played with as there are enigmas and a macguffin in the film. The enigma, which is the ring, gets the imagination of the audience going as they will immediately ask questions as to why he is holding an old engagement ring. This allows them to connect with the character as they can imagine that a tragedy has happened in his life which he may still be mourning over. The connecting to a character allows the audience to feel like they are a part of the film as they feel for the young man and his situation.

The macguffin  is the bag as we never know what is in the bag and this creates a sense of mystery and the audience can themselves try and work out the mystery. This is used in Pulp Fiction as the briefcase is never opened and this creates mystery for the viewer and i thought i would re create that mystery and put it in my film as it captured me so i thought i could too capture people with it. The mystery keeps the audience engaged as they want to find out what's in the bag so they will be interested in the unknown and throw themselves into the story to and work it out for themselves.

The style and aesthetics are very important in setting the right tone for the film. In my film i used different colour palates for different occasions to create a certain mood. in the top photo with the car, this is just before the character gets kidnapped and this scene needs to have a cold look to it which is what i tried to achieve with the blue tinge to it and this create a cold and uncertain mood which the audience feel on end for. The bottom photo is of the kidnap scene and the colour palate is very bright and this is to show the conflict and aggression in the film with really harsh lighting so that the mood it set for the scene.

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

Question 4: Who would be your audience for your media product?

This is Teddy. He is the typical person who would be interested in my film. He is aged 24, lives in the UK and the typical age for my audience would be people aged 18-29. Teddy watches various things but his favourite things to watch are Essex Boys, Layer Cake, Dexter, Green Street and Se7en. This means he likes films that are very similar to mine so he will enjoy the themes and genre of the film. Teddy's music taste is Indie rock, Rock and suspenseful which is perfect as my film has some Indie Rock and suspenseful music combined at the beginning and throughout.He has a normal job working as a cashier in Tesco and has never been in trouble with the police in his life yet he has developed a taste for gritty, thrillers and especially enjoys British gangster films as this allows him to escape his boring day to day life into a world of darkness and violence. He is fairly well educated and has a liking for dark themes such as murder or drug related crime as his life is so far away from these ideas that the excitement of being able to watch these kind of films allows him to understand how different some people live their lives to him.


The gender of my audience would be male as you can see from the IMDB website the thriller Se7en has many more males and females rating it and this is probably because of the dark and psychological themes to it and which is why i think my audience would be male because of dark, criminal themes that may seem more glamorous and stylised to males than females. The ratings for age on the website show that the age range for that film would be around 18-29 as i have highlighted and this shows that thrillers appeal to people who are of that age.





However in Layer Cake the audience who viewed it the most were people who are aged between 30-55 followed a close second by 18-29. This doesn't matter as it is still watched by my target audience and shows that the age group of 18-29 is a very general age of people who watch all kinds of thriller films. The gender of my film is shown again by Layer Cake having very male dominant ratings which emphasise the reason why males would enjoy my film. It also shows that males of a young age don't just enjoy one type of thriller like like ones from British gangster to a psychological thriller and this is what mine is a mix between so that is why male is the right choice as to what gender would like my film.

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

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

Development over year 12:

At the start of the year we were asked to shoot a short film and the requirements were to film a character walking, having a conversation and then leaving. These requirements, although not even close to being as complicated as the final piece, were still very new to me and the aspects of planning it then filming and editing it was to me a very new experience as I had never done anything like that before. The plan was tricky for me because I was not sure exactly how to film the shots or where to place the camera to get the perfect shot so I could not plan very well as I was very much in the dark about it all. However I was excited to be given freedom to try and see what I could come up with and how everything could be put together. 

Looking back I can see how much easier this task really was and how filming in one or two locations and from a few angles was very easy compared to my final piece which I figured out would be a lot more angles, locations and props.

Editing:

When I edited the preliminary task I was nervous to use Premier Pro as I had never used it before but once I started I found I was learning new things very quickly and able to put clips together and cut to where I wanted to quite easily. However looking back at the preliminary task I found that the editing was not as smooth or as effective as I thought it was. 

This helped me learn that I needed to pay more attention when I was editing my thriller as there are a lot more shots, sounds and transitions to worry about. Being in a group for the preliminary task I leant that it is much easier to be on your own to edit as I can make my own mistakes and edit how I wanted to without opinions crossing over.

How is thriller more challenging:

In the preliminary task there was no genre or themes to be met so it was very much just to see how we film and edit a piece where as the final piece was very much about how we can not only edit and film but fill the requirements of a genre and mine was British gangster. In the preliminary task we didn't have to worry about the locations and costumes not fitting or film as that was not what was asked of us and I learnt that if you want to fit a certain genre properly all aspects have to be perfect such as having the right mise-en-scene and location.

There are other details in my thriller that will hopefully link to connotations of a conventional thriller film such as enigmas, language and sound which I hopefully captured in my thriller. I looked at other films and wanted to make sure that I stuck to the genre because if you stray from the genre then it will completely mess up the film.

Production - The shoot:

For the preliminary task the shoot was very basic as we were getting to understand just how to use the cameras where as when we had to do our thriller it was a lot more challenging. This is because we had to think about getting many more angles and even creative shots for example on my thriller I have a point of view shot where it  looks as if you are walking with a character. This means I have learnt that you have to have more than just standard camera shots in different angles to make a good short film as this would just make it boring to watch. Looking back at my preliminary task I can see that all I had were basic camera angles and did not think about having any creative shots so I looked to make sure I had a few shots that would make my thriller more gripping and better to watch.

On the other hand it was harder for us to make sure we could all be free at the same time for the shoot of our thriller as it was in our own time and not in school hours so sometimes we couldn't always be in the shoot together. For example the shots when it is in the house in my thriller they were all shot and acted by me because other members of the group could not make it. This was challenging as it meant that I had to do the acting so I could not make sure that the angles were right or that I was properly in shot as it was all done by myself.

Comparing my thriller:

Figure 1

Figure 2

Looking back at the preliminary task I can see that I have become more creative with shots and shot angles. Figure 1 is from the preliminary task and my head has been cut off and also the shot is very dull and lacks any creativity. Figure 2 from my thriller shows that I have learned how to make the most out of a shot. I have gotten a creative angle and also not cut off either of the heads in the shot. This means I have learnt how to improve my shot quality by expressing myself and thinking outside the box.

Figure 3

Figure 4

In my thriller I looked to make mine a better production by getting ideas from other films to inspire shots. I looked at the film Essex Boys and this film was a British gangster film with a lot of bleakness and grittiness to it which is exactly what I wanted from my film. I then looked at the shots and noticed the use of bleak locations to create a real harshness no the film and I wanted to take these ideas into my film because in my preliminary task I didn't have any other films in mind when I filmed it. In figure 3 it is my thriller film where a have gotten a bleak and wet location just like they used in Essex Boys as you can see in figure 4. This allowed me to see what kind of shots I should be aiming to get as Essex Boys is very much the type I film I wanted to create. 

  

Pitch/ Treatment

The film starts with a black screen and the sound of footsteps and the character Harley is shown putting a stack of money away and picking up a phone, watch and an engagement ring. He then puts a bag to the side and also puts a jacket on and leaves. There is then a shot of a masked character holding a bag and then a point of view shot of Harley being kidnapped. There is then the title of the film and Harley is tied to a chair, when the bag is taken of his head and he is confronted by another character who is called Tommy. They then have stern words with each other and when Tommy's back is turned Harley hits him round the leg with a metal pole, grabs the bag back and runs away only to be chased by Tommy.

This is influenced by films such as Essex Boys, Layer Cake and Legend. The thriller seeks to establish character and this is done by showing Harley as a over confident, arrogant young man who has got himself caught up in the criminal underworld. This is achieved by using British gangster themes such as the typical use of gritty locations or the mise-en-scene associated.

How do directors establish the openings of thrillers?

The graph shows just what directors like to establish in the beginning of thriller films. In a conventional thriller there are a few things that must be established. The themes must be established early as they can allow you to understand the film and get to understand what may happen in the film. Character and tone are very important because they set the audience to the right frame of mind and allow what the should feel or expect from the film and what characters are like and how they may form an attachment to them. However the plot is not important in the opening of thriller films and these traits can be shown in films such as Essex Boys and Alice Creed.

Essex Boys

Figure 1

Essex Boys creates a sense of bleakness and entrapment in the opening of the film and this is to establish certain key ideas. The location is established very well in Essex Boys and in turn that establishes the character to show how bleak and cold their lives are and how they are too. In figure 1 there is a vanishing point off centre to create a sense of uneasiness and the vanishing point being in a tunnel shows that the location makes you feel as if you are going into the unknown and it allows the location to show you how the lives of the characters is from the start. How they are always travelling down dark paths never knowing what's at the end of the tunnel.The use of a dimly lit tunnel connotes the idea that Billy, the young man, is not very weary about what is to later come as the tunnel doesn't show any signs of hope because the lighting is green and green connotes envy or greed. The location shows how bleak the lives of the two characters Billy and Jason are as the only thing to drive to is a dark tunnel, which implies that they live very bleak lives with very little attachment to anything such as people because they are cold and raw men.

Figure 2

In figure 2 the bleak locations connotes the ideas that this is Jason's mind. Jason who is a hard hitting British gangster takes a man to this location and beats him up. Jason does this without flinching or caring at all which could show that this location could be a representation of Jason's mind and how he is so bleak that he has nothing left so just turns to being cold and angry. The harsh blue tinted lighting also gives it an effect of being cold and establishes how the need for locations such as this shows just how Essex boys is trying to portray the ideas that character and location can go hand in hand. 

Essex Boys in a perfect example of how the opening of a thriller will establish some things very much in detail and not cover other aspects at all. The plot and the themes are not established very much as they are not as important in the beginning of this film because the director wanted to show just how connotations of bleakness and moral ambiguity can establish the opening of a thriller film. 

Alice Creed 

In contrast Alice Creed seeks to establish themes and tone in the opening of the film. The constant feeling of entrapment and a very menacing tone continuously remind you of the themes of the film and how the mood is going to be throughout it. The rule of thirds is also used very well to establish the themes as the two men are very much in the rule of thirds at all times and this shows that they know what they are doing and how kidnapping and crime comes very easily to them almost like it comes second nature. This is shown in 

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

figure 3 as the two men and getting the room ready for the kidnapping and are very calm and very much in control of the situation. The use of close ups allows you to feel trapped and very much involved in the crimes that they are about to do. In figure 4 this is in a sequence of extreme close ups of them getting the room ready and how it shows you the detail that they put in but it also again establishes the theme of entrapment but also establishes the tone as being eerily calm and this is reinforced by the men never speaking to each other so the character is never shows of these two men but that is very much to set the tone/ mood of the film very quickly. In figure 5 it is another extreme close up but not of them being precise and in detail of them being very orderly and in routine with their profession. This establishes the themes very well as it shows the theme of violence and makes the audience think about the men as nothing has been given away about them or about why they are doing what they are so the sense of an enigma here really allows the viewer to see how the film is going to be violent and ruthless while always feeling trapped and always having a edgy, eerie and cruel tone and mood to it.

Final cut

Font Ideas

Rough Cut

Locations

Characters, costumes, props

Prezi mood board