Servut Beg

Servut Beg-12:2Media Studies Evaluation

1.In what ways does your media product -use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?
Our film developed the ideas of thriller conventions. Our film uses non-diegetic music creating suspense and tension; this engages our audience from the very beginning. Creating suspense using music is used in many psychological thrillers to show the uneasiness of what is going to happen next. We used non-diegetic music as we thought this is common in thriller movies and also creates a good atmosphere and works very well. The main focus is not on the actual killing, but focuses on how it all happened showing the intricate detail of each stage rather than rushing into the storyline in chronological order. We start off with the climax intriguing the audience with the main action and then show detailed clips of what happened before. In other psychological thrillers this is also used, as bluntly showing the main action does not leave the same effect as implying what happens, which also creates a thriller effect. In our piece the main character is a “dumb blonde” as in thrillers women are often used as the innocent victims. We took this one step further by using close ups and different camera shots and angles of her to give the audience an insight into her life already creating an understanding and relationship with the character. This immediately gives the audience an impression that she is innocent and they already side with her. We purposely gave the audience an insight into the action at the very start to show what previously happened. We used an effect and we also used black and white to show that this was in the past and the effect used creates tension and uneasiness in the situation. The scene of the girl and the male sitting opposite each at different heights shows who has the power and who the audience are lead to believe is the killer and who the victim.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our main characters were an innocent young female and an older male, which engages our audience as both sexes can relate to the thriller. Another audience that were targeted were teenagers and this was done by showing that the innocent young female is normal and enjoys doing “girly” things which the audience can then relate to. Males were mainly targeted as they are more intrigued by the thriller genre and we also used the attractive female to do this.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
20th century fox would distribute this film as they would be financially stable to distribute it worldwide. They are also well-known and have distributed many thriller films.


4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience are people aged 16-25 mainly males as through my research I found out they enjoy the psychological thriller genre more than females. We used a young female as the main character to attract our male audience and also so that the female audience could relate to and understand this character.


5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We used thriller conventions to attract our audience a few examples of this were first the effect used at the beginning engaged our audience as the black and white creates a sense of it being unusual and we also used non-diegetic sound which highlights the action going on. The non-diegetic sound also created suspense which again captured our audience’s attention as these thriller conventions targeted our audience well.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I first used an apple Mac to load all clips we shot onto the software and then as a group we decided which clips to use in our film. My experience with using an apple Mac at first was a bit different as I am usually use windows XP although I have used an apple Mac before and this experience has enhanced my knowledge. I also used Imovie to edit and create the film and I learnt a lot of new things as I was able to play around with different effects, sounds etc. I was able to use these skills and share ideas to use in our film. For example I learnt how to mix different sounds and understand the different sound layers and lines. I also was able to upload our movie onto You Tube which I haven’t done before and it was very simple to get to grips with. Overall I learnt a lot throughout this project and my main difficulty was learning how to use Imovie although after practise it was easier to understand and it was a little time consuming.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I learnt that planning is very important as if it is not done the task can become very time consuming as we didn’t have a strict plan therefore we were making it up as we were going along and if we had a plan we would have saved a lot of time. It was a fantastic experience as we were able to play around with camera angles and shots. I also enhanced my skills with working in a team, which showed me that everyone has different opinions which can be a good thing as long as it is used positively towards our work.