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

Task 2 - How does your media product represent a particular social group

The different use of social groups are represented very carefully throughout our thriller, which is accentuated by the use of different camera angles, sound, mise en scene and editing. My Media Thriller is a crime thriller with glimpses of action. The cast of our thriller is a full male cast. The use of a full male cast in itself illustrates that men are more powerful and conveys that men are stronger compared to the opposite sex. The hit man in our thriller uses a gun as a prop symbolises the power and strength the hit man has. Bringing out the fact that men are capable of handling violence and aggression making it seem like a ‘mans job’. The use of characters costume makes the hit man look more professional in that area of field as he is wearing a trench coat and suit trousers. This illustrates to the audience that he has experience as he wears good clothing and his facial expression shows no sign of remorse and remorse. The use of the fine attire for the hitman represents him being in the middle class as he clearly gets paid well, however he isn’t in the upper class as people in the upper class would hire a hitman to do the job for them. The age of the hit man is 29-30 making him just young enough to still be in the field with a lot of experience making him a more lethal/deadly hit man.

The use of camera shots in our thriller are long and monotonous making our thriller very slow paced and thrilling creating more tension and suspense. As our media group wanted to represent the hit man being more powerful through the use of camera angles. Therefore the use of the slight low angle of the victim and the hitman makes the audience look up upon the hit man. This gives the hitman a higher status and control of the situation making the hit man very intimidating. Especially for our victim we used close ups to illustrate to the audience the characters age and emotion of fear making seem of a higher social class as he is educated as he is not to fight back making him weak, which illiterates the hit man as more intimidating. The use of the opening shot being the victim makes the audience feel sympathy for the victim, which subverts to the stereotype of men being brave and masculine. Therefore the two characters are binary opposites to help convey higher status and strength in the thriller

Our thriller consisted of long and slow length shots making it seem more ambiguous and thrilling making the audience slowly reeled into the opening sequence. In the opening sequence we used close ups of the victim panicking staying still in the car, then a shot of hit man staring at the victim. This allowed the audience to understand the situation, making them realise the age and the gender of the characters to see whom was in control and the status they had I the situation. There the use of long shots for the victim accentuates his masculinity allowing the audience to foresee that the victim in helpless. This made the audience focus more towards the victim rather than the hit man as we want to audience to side towards the weak and helpless young victim.

Throughout our thriller it consisted of all diegetic sound occurring in the background. The use of the phone ringing at the beginning of the scene creates enough tension throughout the thriller as it introduces a sense of mystery towards the audience as the screen is pitch black. This therefore makes the thriller feel more suspense creating tension as it made sound make the scene more realistic. The ambiance sound goes against the masculinity of the hit man as it very charm and peaceful. However it also makes the tension more isolated and lonely making the hit man seem more scary and powerful as he is so relaxed. This is also illustrated through the use of dialogue as the hit man is very charm and relaxed as the says ‘no no it alright’ and ‘go on’ in a very soft tone, making the hit man seem more powerful as he has so much control over the younger victim. Making it audience relies the older and experiment hit man is in complete control of the young victim, which subverts to the stereotype of young students being strong and healthy.

Task 3 - What kind of media Institution might distribute your media product and why?

Task 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Age of audience and why they would like your film?

There is a large range of people whom watch Crime thrillers. Most crime thrillers attracts mature audience due to the strong language and violent scenarios (i.e murder). Therefore the age of the audience should generally be 21 years old, this is because most university students enjoy the tension and suspense when watching a movie.

What gender and age range would watch your movie

Most crime thrillers tend to be more male dominated. This may be because most males enjoy the thrill of violence and suspense/mystery. However there are also a lot of female audiences due to the interesting/intriguing plot. Therefore the age range would vary between 15 - 30 years old for our film. Our film would mostly likely be certified 15 due to the content of the film being violent and frightening to younger audience.

Interest/hobbies

• Sports
• Literature
• Thriller Movies
• Psychological Movies
• Exercise - Running
• Reading

Occupation
Student in UCL
Studying business management

What/how would attract the audience to watch my film?

Our film is highly suspenseful and interesting making it interesting for both primary and secondary audiences. Nowadays thrillers tend to be a very popular choice for audiences as they are intrigued by the special effects therefore for our film we include a lot of action and suspenseful scenes for our movie.

To ensure it suites both genders our movie will involve a lot of sad/depressing scenes in order for the movie to have an balance between action/thriller and a little but of romance. Therefore this would suit a wider range of audience. This is because crime thrillers tend to be more male dominated therefore it should have a equal balance to suit a wider range of audience

The trailer would be the most common way for he audience to become attracted to the movie, as the trailer would end as a rhetorical question (used to engage the audience). The trailer would also allow the audience to tell their friends about the movie spreading the audience.

Task 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

When our group made the opening sequence our group members had to decide whom to cast to play the characters to, which this would appeal to our target audience. Therefore we had to take into consideration different social groups to which this opening sequence may appeal to. Our thriller would would target 22-23 year old.

Innocent University student - Gabe Jackson

When casting an male actor to act as center of attention we had to find someone who would fit into the role if being in the university (outsider/geek) social group. The reason for this is because we felt we wanted use people in university whom are seen to be invisible/quite and in our media he is the centre of attention meaning if he went missing only a not many people would notice. Therefore in the shot above our group use clothing, body expression, looks and personality to make him suit a specific social group. The cloths that he is wearing in the shot above is a nice grey jumper which makes him suit the social group (being a geek/outsider). Therefore the use of of the jumper being grey makes him seem more or an outsider as grey signifies being boring and dull, therefore our group used color (mise en scene) to illustrate to the audience what the personality of the character. The opening scene of our thriller shows Gabe Jackson in a closed body position, which immediately accentuates to the audience a sense of danger immediately. The danger element is combined with the use of facial expression as later on the scene there is a close up shot of Gabe face breathing heavily. This allows the audience to automatically sense a danger/panic without even showing any props or anything to proof he is in danger.

Hit Man - Mike Niland 

When our group was thinking about casting the role for the hit man we all strongly agreed that we would only cast and adult above the age of 25+. The reason for this is because we felt that having a teenage hit man would ruin the plot of the whole media thriller therefore we chose Mike as our hit man. We also felt that having a teenager as a hit man would seem unprofessional, which would affect the total audience/social group that we would entertain.
The reason why my group felt that Mike suited the role as a hit man is due to his physical and fierce presence he has on camera. This allowed the audience to automatically tell he was a threat to Gabe when Mike is introduced. The use of Mike himself attracts specific social groups i.e young adults and adults as the audience enjoys the movie when a character suits the role of his movies or a specific genre for example Jim Carry in a comedy movie.
 Mikes facial expression through out the plot has been dead serious this illustrates to all social groups as a universal sign that Mike is serious even before Mike speaks. This comes with the general presence Mike has on the screens as the audience can feel the tension he brings accentuated either his emotions/facial expression.The color of Mikes cloths is used to illustrate to all social groups that Mike is a Villain or a professional. The use of dark colors helps to accentuate him looking like a Villain as dark colors signifies evil. Mikes body position in the whole thriller illustrated him as being charm and peaceful. As when mike is in the car he has a wide/open body position and seems to be relaxed, which gives the idea to the audience that Mike is an experienced hit man

We also use different camera angles to adhere and subvert to the stereotype of which social group is in most control/power. As the top left picture (above) illustrates an angle of Gabe (student) being taller, which adheres to the stereotype of university student being a treat society. Nevertheless in this case Mike(hit man) should be the dominant one however in the first shot Gabe seems to be more dominant than Mike which subverts to the stereo type of the hitman being in more control than the victim. However I carefully placed a clip of Mike being leveled with Gabe after the previous shot, therefore the audience only seems to think the only difference between Mike and Gabe is the gun. The last shot is of  Gabe on the ground which adheres to the stereotype of hit man being more dominant and in control. The use of levels (form high angle to low angle) allows us show which social groups are in most control in terms of Adults>Teenager.

When our group was casting for the two actors our group chose to have 2 male actors, which both adheres and subverts to both stereotypes of gender. The use of Mike as a hit man adheres to the stereotype of male being the hit man. The reason for this is because we felt having a female actor as our hit man would change the plot of our movie and having a female hit man would go against dominant ideologies, which I feel our group couldn't challenge due to our low options of casting.

Having a male actor as our victim subverts to the stereotype of having a female actor. As dominant ideology represent female as weak and vulnerable however in our thriller our we subverted the stereotype and chose to make the male the weak and vulnerable one. However this cleverly makes Mike seem more of a professional and more dangerous as he is capable of being taking on men whom are are also seen to be more dominant and strong.

Our group used a lot of universal signs i.e expression, body position, sigmas and clothing as all social groups from around the world understand the general plot line even if they don't understand what the characters are saying.As it would allow our thriller to reach a wider audience worldwide as it wouldn't confuse the audience.

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

I have annotated our Media Studies Thriller of all the technology used to construct the use of this production

Task 7 - Looking back at your prelimary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Editing Our Thriller

Firstly when editing our group had to transfer all the raw footage from the Sony NX5 into the computer. The our group placed all the raw footage onto Adobe Premier, which went into rushes bin. Then our group had to watch each individual shots to determine which ones had been cut early or ones that was not good enough. Then we created a second bin named 'log bin' where we placed the clips we could be using so the original file wouldn't be altered and it made it easier to find clips that we would be using in that scene. The we made a rough timeline where we put all the shots from the same scene bu different angles together to make it more organized.

Then our group started to arrange in order the timeline of the opening sequence, sculpting the shape of our thriller. Then our group started to cut and crop the bad cuts in our shots i.e when the camera move at the end of the shoot or when crew members shouted 'action!'. The tools we used to that was the select tool (shot cut is C) and the razor tool (shot cut is V). In order to find the exact frame to cut we used the arrow keys as it moved every 1 millisecond helping make the cuts more accurate. However if we cut a clip to early we could still drag the clip out to gt it to the scene we wanted.

The we created another layer/timeline for the beginning and middle and ending of our opening sequence to make it more organized.These layers allowed our group to carefully place the shoots together i.e. for continuity. Without over crowding the time line.   

Then after we placed all the scenes in order we used after effects for the gun shot scene. This was easily done as adobe premier has a button, which allows you to automatically jump between programs. Then we had to look through the schools pre made FX i.e the blood and smoke coming out of the gun. The inserted the blood through the use of cropping Gabe (Uni Student) and putting him onto a second layer this makes the blood seem more realistic it looks like he is getting shot in the back. Then we rendered it back to premier


Then we inserted ambiance sound where we had to use headphones as its normally very quite and quite hard to hear. The one lesson I learned it that you cant spend more than 1 hour on ambiance sound as over time you will start to notice every small detail.As when the group listens to it the next day no body notices the small detail however it is still important as it builds a more realistic atmosphere to the audience. Then after that we used the fade in and fade out tools for the sound as it makes the dialogue more natural so it doesn't just jump in.


At last we inserted the titles as titles are a finishing touch to a movie. As it isn't considered as important as the sound or special effects.