Phoebe's Evalutation

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

In our media product we really tried to challenge the conventions of ENIGMA. By creating a lot of suspense and mystery in a shot really draws the spectator into the product and makes them focus on what's going on in the scene and this is what we wanted to achieve.

Other conventions which usually are included in Thriller products:
- Characters: stepping away from the STEREOTYPES and challenging that convention by making the identity of the antagonist more mysterious and the female protagonist visually different to what you would usually see in Thrillers.
- Iconography: A lot of visual props you would usually see on set of a Thriller, such as guns, weapons, shadows, wounds etc.

STEREOTYPES:

The first time you see Tom's character, we wanted it to be easy to recognise him as the antagonist. We did this by creating a silhouette so it creates more enigma.

As well as focusing on lighting to create mystery, we also used mise en scene and thought a lot about the characters props and costume. Tom has a scar which shows his character had been previously been fighting (1) and he carries a bag full of weapons, to suggest he is prepared to torture/kill the victim. (2)

(1) (2)

And the first time you see my character, we also wanted it to be easy to recognise, but instead I played the protagonist. As you can see I'm defenceless.

We focused mainly on avoiding the stereotypical female protagonist character, so for mise en scene: her costume was all black and she wore grungy worn out hoodie and some Doc Marten boots (1). For make up she had a very dark eye (2) which we think paired nicely with the costume and over all looked good for the character.

(1) (2)

Both characters had initial looks which we had been inspired by from other Thriller films. I created a couple of blog posts on this earlier on when we were doing our research and development for the project.

Here are links to the three blog posts:
- List of Roles
- Inspiration for Tom's Character
- Inspiration for my Character

ICONOGRAPHY:

This convention is very important in the Thriller genre because it is what is used to show the difference between thriller and horror. For our product we used very iconic thriller examples. Such as the props (1) and shadows (2).

(1) (2)

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
For our media project we decided our target audience would be for teenagers - young adults. There for we rated the film a 15, to make this decision we visited the BBFC website (click here for the link) This gave us all the information about what would make the film a 15 and what the limits were.

5. How did you attract/address your audiences?
To attract the audience we came up with a storyline that was intense and could target at a younger audience. We think the plot was thrilling/exciting and had interesting characters that formed a film which we would go to the cinema and what ourselves.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Camera: Although I didn't do much filming, I feel like I learnt a lot about the process you have to do before shooting. Such as attaching it to the tri-pod, dolly and white balancing. It was good to experiment with angles, shot sizes and movement.

Lighting: I learnt that lighting has a huge role when it came to creating our product. By experimenting with different gels, strengths and positions I think we produced a good mood that linked with our thriller genre. I think our lighting helped improve our product.

Final Cut Pro: I used this when creating different blog posts: such as editing the bloopers together or the evidence post when sorting out locations. When I first used Final cut it was all very new to me and I got very confused, but once I started experimenting with it I found it easy to use I thought the blog posts turned out good.

Apple Mac: I used this to do most of my blog posts, this was so I could edit videos, find images and useful links and creates posts all simultaneously. Because I was used to working on PC's it was hard to get used to the new software, but after a while I got the hang of it and overall enjoyed the experience of using the Apple product.

Blogger: Our whole project was presented onto blogger, so it was more of a visual, multi media product which allowed you to be create with the way you presented your work. Personally I really enjoyed using blogger as I liked the way I could incorporate links, images and videos into my work which linked to the project.

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

Preliminary Exam:
Link to the preliminary piece: http://foundationportfolio1474.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/our-final-prelim-product.html

I feel like I have learnt a lot since the preliminary task. Since it was our first go at creating a project and blogging to record our progress, I feel I didn't do as well as I could have. When filming we didn't white balance as much as we should have, which affected the finished product, and when it came to blogging; I wish I created more posts and more frequently to record our evidence better.

Over all our preliminary product was good, we were all pleased with it as a group, but if you look in great detail you can see there are a lot of errors.

White balance: (Because we did not adjust the white balance in every shot, some of the scenes look an odd colour. This is clear in the product and I feel it lowered the mark for our piece.)

Continuity Errors: (For the two female characters, the first day we filmed we were wearing different clothes to when we filmed the second section of the product. This was very clear in the final piece.)

Lighting: (We planned our lighting to be based around a swinging light bulb suspended from the ceiling, but that was too bright. So on the day of filming we had to improvise with LED to try and create the same effect.)

Final Product:
Link to the final product: http://foundationportfolio1474.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/isaac-finished-final-product-nearly.html
Though out the final project I think we over all improved all our skills. At the start of the project I was very eager to blog all of our evidence for research and planning, because I knew I didn't do as much as I'd hoped in the preliminary. So I tried to make the posts as creative and visually pleasing as I could.

Including pictures, videos and helpful links.

When it came to the actual product: I'm really pleased with the final piece! We really experimented with shots, movement and lighting. We did a lot of research on the Thriller genre and what it takes to make it look realistic.

Here are some pictures of us experimenting with lighting:

And here are some of the scenes were I think our lighting was good:

here are some screen grabs of the scenes were I think the camera movement/shot really worked well:

Another thing we focused a lot more on is the mise en scene. For costume/make up and hair we put a lot of effort into what the characters looked like and tried to create some character development and personalties.

For example:

My make up/costume is more dark and not very typical for a female character: