Thriller Task - Evaluation: Question 7

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

Thriller Task - Evaluation: Question 6

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

On this link is a Gliffy answering the question. The Glif is too big for the embed so the link is the only way of viewing.

Thriller Task - Evaluation: Question 4 & 5

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?
Question 5: How did you address or attract your audience?



We filmed this using a green screen and edited the video with some little additions if you are able to notice them with our faces over layered into the video using a chroma key to remove the background green screen.

Thriller Task - Evaluation: Question 3

Question 3: What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

Thriller Task - Evaluation: Question 2

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

If you go to Evernote Notebook you will be able to read the response to question 2.

Thriller Task - Evaluation: Question 1

Question 1: In what way does your media product subvert, develop or adhere forms and conventions of real media products?



This is the first question of the evaluation, I used two different theories to help me illustrate how we adhered and subverted different conventions throughout the opening of the thriller and potentially further into the film.

Thriller Task - Production: Thriller Opening Final Video 'Undefined Reality'

This is the completed final version of the thriller opening we created called Undefined Reality. We changed some parts of the video thanks to the constructive criticism we gaged from other students and peers in the media group and from other people online which have watched the video. As a result of this and a lot of hours behind a screen in the media room and one or two fracases, we have produced a final version to the best of our abilities combined.

Thriller Task - Production: Improvements of The Thriller Opening

As the end of the production stage emerged, I decided to show some of my friends who have interests in music and media production types hobbies, what they thought of the initial version. This is the first video I have shown them so they have unbiased views towards the video. I mainly focused on asking for constructive criticism rather than their thoughts as some may not have been relevant.
(Click on pictures to enlarge them.)

Overall as a result of this and the comments of improvement by my media teacher, our group are now able to change parts of the video which people have called out in order to improve the quality of the video and to make the titling easier to read and improved.

Thriller Task - Production: Editing the Opening

During the course of the 2 weeks in which we had time from filming to the deadline, we created a log as we all had different things happening at different times making it difficult for all 4 of us to edit at the same time.

The log contains information on when one of us started editing and what we edited on in order to know the changes that have happened and to work on what one of us has done. There were one or two occasions where we had to reflect back on the changes and perhaps change some of the edits that were made. We did this when all 4 of us were together in the lesson so that all 4 of us agreed on the changes we changed to the edits added.

In addition, Max Bradbury contributed a lot to the sound of the opening and outside of school or lesson, we added little contributions which helped Max able to make the sound to the best of his ability and to make it effective during the opening.

Thriller Task - Production: Filming Day 3 (09/02/15)

We filmed for the 3rd time today, we planned to film for Monday the 9th and for Tuesday the 10th if we still needed some parts to edit. As a result we were able to finish the recording of the shots without rushing or having to return the following day.

Thriller Task - Planning: Development of Storyboard

Over the recent weeks, whilst finishing off the research and planning of our thriller task, we decided to expand and develop some of our ideas for the narrative and plot. As a result we created a new storyboard with the developed ideas on it. (Credit Andreas Lee for pictures.)

Thriller Task - Planning: Soundtrack

Max Br made some music for the opening as a practice, this is so Max could practice on the creation of the music and to find out which sounds work best within the opening. He also did some research into other music which was used during the films such as Se7en and Silence of The Lambs.

Thriller Task - Planning: Plot/Narrative

The plot of the film involves a murderer; a patient with multiple personality disorder called Bruce Stringer. But his multiple personalities take the better of him as he attempts to see the difference between reality and fiction. However, a murder occurs and there was a witness. This witness was David Croft. As Dave tries to convince people of the murder he witnessed, people begin to lose trust in him. As he continues aimlessly to try to prove he witnessed the murder, police begin to hunt him down. Dave better get away, or is it Bruce?

Brad wrote this plot summary of the entire film with research into how other films such as Se7en made an accurate looking plot summary without giving too much of the story away whilst giving enough of the plot to draw and audience into wanting to watch the film.

"A film about two homicide detectives' desperate hunt for a serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world's ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins. The movie takes us from the tortured remains of one victim to the next as the sociopathic "John Doe" sermonizes to Detectives Sommerset and Mills -- one sin at a time. The sin of Gluttony comes first and the murderer's terrible capacity is graphically demonstrated in the dark and subdued tones characteristic of film noir. The seasoned and cultured but jaded Sommerset researches the Seven Deadly Sins in an effort to understand the killer's modus operandi while the bright but green and impulsive Detective Mills scoffs at his efforts to get inside the mind of a killer... " - Source IMDb.

Thriller Task - Planning: Company Logo

As part of our opening for the thriller, I decided to create a company logo to reflect how we as a group are. As a result we made a logo which was very eerie and depicts us as a company that will create a thriller movie rather than looking like we make comedies and children's movies.

I did some research on logos of companies too to see which is the best for our genre of film.



Looking at the Legendary logo I decided to use a very eerie background which makes the audience instantly believe that the film they are about to watch is a thriller or a horror film or something which is dark.




Whereas with the Hammer logo, I decided to make the text colour and font stand out from the rest of the image to make sure people read it but to also give the effect that our company is dominant to make the audience believe that we are making a thriller.

This is the finished product of the logo I created, the colours are effective as it isn't too bright but also makes the dead tree and the name juxtapose to the background making it standout and easy to read without it being too positive looking.

Thriller Task - Production: Filming Day 2 (17/01/15)

Today we went to continue our filming of the thriller opening, however we started from the beginning again as we decided to change the cast around to fit around the group.

I took some pictures using the effects setting on the Nikon camera and i liked the look of Max with the mask with the black background.

Thriller Task - Planning: Character Profiles

The character profiles shown below will help us indicate what each character will be portayed and acted in the opening, it shows what they will be wearing, what their personality will be like and how they will act during the course of the opening and the entire film concept. It also helps us craft a narrative for all the charcters to create the plot.



These are the drawings of the characters costumes which will be used during the opening of the thriller, these are subject to change but the concept will remain the same. (drawings created by Andreas Lee)

Thriller Task - Planning: The First Script for Undefined Reality

This is the first version of our script written bt Max Br but with contribution by the whole group. This may change over the course of filming which will be uploaded to the blog in the future. It shows the scenes and what will happen and be said during the course of the opening 2 minutes.

Thriller Task - Research: Middle Age Representation

On the PowerPoint me, Max and Andreas created, we showed how the middle aged population of the UK were represented in the media and how it affected how they act, with this, it contains the demographics and the ways they are represented and a textual analysis showing how they are shown compared to a younger class.This is useful for the thriller opening as it gives us an insight in how we can use someone of a middle age into our thriller opening to make the opening 1) seem more realistic; and 2) show more of an effect on the audience.

We decided to choose middle aged people as it is an aspect of possible audience we never really looked into. The information present has given us the information to see that middle aged people are a possible audience for our film however with the use of teenage actors within the film, it may be difficult for them to see this film as a success which is why we have decided to reduce the target audience range to a possible 35 and under.



If the video clip isn't available in the slideshare, please view it below.

 

Thriller Task - Research: The Cultivation Theory

A theory we looked at is the Cultivation theory. This is an audience theory that was looked into by George Gerbner and Larry Gross. The theory looked at how people are influenced by the media in negative way. This can be when violence is used in media such as video games and films, and it influenced the audience to commit similar actions. This theory is useful as it makes creators think about what the audience may do in response to the film, and how it should be avoided.

In its most basic form, cultivation theory suggests that exposure to television, over time, subtly "cultivates" viewers' perceptions of reality. Gerbner and Gross say: "television is a medium of the socialization of most people into standardized roles and behaviors." - (Source: Wikipedia)
  
Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli argued that school and religion influenced people, it ws as influential as television now was. Television is the source of the most broadly shared images and messages in history. Due to its accessibility and availability to the masses, television has become the central cultural arm of society. Gerbner observed that television reaches people, on average, more than seven hours a day. While watching, television offers “a centralized system of story-telling”.Gerbner asserts that television's major cultural function is to stabilize social patterns and to cultivate resistance to change. We live in terms of the stories we tell and television tells these stories through news, drama, and advertising to almost everybody most of the time.

This will be beneficial in us understanding not only the positive but also the negative effect our thriller opening might have on the audiences that view our opening. As a result, we will be taking the plot and narrative into consideration to make sure that the effects our opening will have on the audience will not be catastrophic.

Thriller Task - Research: Before I Go To Sleep (2014) Textual Analysis

We decided to do a textual analysis of the film "Before I Go To Sleep" as it is a thriller film based on someone who is mentally disabled, which is what we want to contain in our thriller opening. As a result of this textual analysis, we will be able to recognise how the director was able to make the woman with amnesia so effective and how the use of sound, editing, camera angles and mise-en-scene would be used to make the woman show specific emotions and specific ideologies behind her as a character. We will be able to utilise this into our thriller opening to give our character with the disability the most emotional and engaging mind in the opening to make an effective character for the opening.

Thriller Task - Research: Audience Expectations in the Thriller Genre

Target Audience Expectations
  

Thriller is a popular genre for film within mainly young adults aged 18-25. This is because people this age are usually drawn in by the intense story lines and graphic action, which is commonly seen within the thriller genre. Unraveling the narrative as it plays out in the film, and working it out whilst watching the films attracts older audiences them to this specific genre. As a result of this, people who go to watch thriller films, will want graphic action and an intense storyline which most films of the thriller genre have developed on over the years from Hitchcock.

Different genres of the thriller genre appeal to different ages and audiences. For example, a horror film would be more directed at the developing ages of young adults such as 16-20 year olds and it is also directed at people who like story lines which induce jump scare. For example, psychological/crime thrillers such as Se7en and Silence of the Lambs attract a male dominated audience of the typical young adult age. This is because they’re drawn in by the conventional male leads, and can relate certain characters to people they know or even themselves by the use of stereotypes that are expressed by the conventions of the film.

The target audience for a normal thriller film will always want a regular start for everyday life but then progress into something which is impacted negatively. This is something that an audience now expects as many films now use this intro-storyline and many people will have gotten used to having it in their thriller viewings.

Target audiences expect to be thrilled to the edge on many action themed genres of thriller, this is evident in the film industry as the James Bond films are directed to be as action packed as possible to meet the expectations of the audience who will view their film and to make them be pleased with the most recent Bond film as if they were with the previous ones and that they aren't let down.

One of the conventions which the audience expect to see when watching films from the thriller genre is for the antagonist to have something which belongs to the protagonist which is used against him. This is used in the television series of Under the Dome where the main antagonist has an "egg" which will lead to everyone's freedom from the dome.

From the information I have found from my research into the film industry, the production process and the types of genres there are in the thriller film. I was able to produce the information and theory on what the audience expects from the types of genres in the thriller film. As a result this will help us when it comes to the creation of our narrative, plot and types of characters and their mentality during the opening of our thriller. This will also help us in our decisions for how we can make the plot and narrative to be similar to other types of thriller films in the box office and to meet the expectations the audience of our thriller opening will have.

Thriller Task - Research: Appropriate Audience Theories

Audience theory provides a starting point for many Media Studies tasks. Whether you are constructing a text or analysing one, you will need to consider the destination of that text and how that audience will respond to that text.

Over the course of the past century or so, media analysts have developed several effects models, such as theoretical explanations of how humans consume the information created by media texts and how this might influence a persons behaviour. Effects theory is still a debated area of Media, as no one is able to come up with indisputable evidence that audiences will always react to media texts one way or another.

The Hypodermic Needle Model

Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It suggests that audiences passively receive the information created via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data.

The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciousness of the audience, for example the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive.

Two-Step Flow

As the mass media became an essential part of life in societies around the world. Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet analysed the voters' decision-making processes during a 1940 presidential election campaign in the US and published their results in a book called "The People's Choice".

Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts expressed by the opinion leaders, this making them influenced but not by a direct process, but by a two step flow.

Uses & Gratifications

During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society; surveillance, correlation, entertainment & cultural transmission.

Researchers Blumler and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes for example the Uses and Gratifications theory shows diversion, personal relationships, personal identity, surveillance and a wider list as ways of consuming media texts.

Reception Theory

Extending the concept of an active audience still further, in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their individual circumstances (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading.

This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and decoded by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognised codes and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of stars, the producers can position the audience and thus create a certain amount of agreement on what the code means.

Thriller Task - Research: Marketing & Promotion

The information I found on marketing and promotion will come in handy as it will help us when it comes to promoting our thriller opening when we complete our task, it will also help us in how we will be able to create the thriller in a sense that with the use of marketing and promotion, it will make us reach a wider audience and possibly a wider variety of audiences.