- In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We used these basic conventions to establish our crime thriller where the criminal has done something bad which the audience wants them to pay for. Yet as a crime and psychological thriller we also use psychological conventions, causing the audience to try and identify with the character’s, questioning their motive etc.
We developed these conventions as it was not only the motive of the criminal that was questioned but the idea of the crime as a whole whether they were guilty or not. We also challenged conventions of thriller films by having a female antagonist, as thrillers can tend to have male antagonist who is physically stronger and more threatening. However when there are female antagonists she generally has male accomplices who exert more physical strength against the protagonist on her behalf. Or in some cases she is working on behalf of a male.
- How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Women conventionally are given secondary class roles, being viewed as innocent and an easy target which our film does abide by to an extent. In out opening alone a woman and a and teenage girl have been captured, but, they have been captured by another woman. This represents women realistically as you see them from both sides of the spectrum, being innocent and helpless as the damsel in distress and as a sinister villain who they need rescuing from.
The Police are also represented realistically from both sides of the spectrum. With two of our main characters being detectives you see they both their personal and professional lives. This is represented realistically with our protagonist Detective Joe Watson having a stable family life and career (until his family is kidnapped). And our secret antagonist Sarah Daniels, who has a stable career, but an unstable social life, focusing on her career, partially because she has feelings for her work colleague Joe, and partially because she has no children and feels no need or responsibility to pay attention to her personal life.
Our media product represents some other social groups quite accurately yet in a slightly stereotypical way. People with a marital and family status are portrayed as having stronger morals and being more empathetic to detective Joe in his situation than those who are not. Detective Sarah Daniels and another police officer who are both single try to keep him off the case; appearing not to understand his grief, although they try to but not successfully.
Teenagers are viewed idealistically in a positive light in our film with our main young teenager, Clara Watson although underestimated is quite smart to using her initiative to attempt to get out of her situation. We purposely did this to allow parts of our target audience to identify with her as a young person. When making attempts to escape we knew they would empathise with her wanting her attempts to work and for her to escape, building tension for the audience.
- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
- Who would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience for our product is 16+ (perhaps until about 34). We did research into or target audience through questionnaires and being of this age bracket ourselves we decide that it would be suitable as we could use our own opinions to evaluate whether we would be interested.
- How did you attract/address your audience?
To attract our audience we used characters of this age group with our main characters – the detectives – being in their late 20s too early 30s, and as casting director I had to ensure the cast fitted this age bracket. We did this in order for our target audience to identify with the characters and possibly their situation. To attract our target we also started our film in medias res in order to capture their attention straight away, and make them instantly begin questioning what is happening and watch intently t see the story unfold. To attract them to watch the film we created a Facebook page knowing that social networking is popular way our generation communicate, making it a suitable way to advertise our film. We also made a teaser that could be showed in cinema’s to attract cinema viewers to see the film as that is obviously where most of the income comes from. The teaser can also be found on You Tube as this is a modern and popular way of advertising and promoting the films through use of the Internet.
- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Through the process of constructing this product I have learnt how to use to present my work on the Internet effectively through a blog, making it accessible to others who want to see and more interactive by adding pictures to see and embedding videos to watch. There are also links to other websites if they wish to do further research or see some of my sources. I have also leaned how to create a thriller film using just a camcorder and a movie editing programme. As Director of mainly the pre-production and production process I have learnt to make an effective film through filming a range of shots, editing them and putting them together in a sequence.
I know also know about Media convergence, using other forms of Media to view, market and promote your film through the use of the Internet, through social networking sites like Blogger and facebook and also through sharing Videos on Youtube.
- 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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