Our task was to produce a two minutes thriller clip over a period of roughly two months. There are many ways in which our media product use, develop, challenge forms and conventions of real media products. Before the practical we watched several examples of previous thriller films. In class we studies about the different conventions of thriller movie openings. The short films we watched of previous AS students were mostly good because they had a variety of different angles and good editing elements in their shots, however some of them had too many effects and made the clips seem rather badly planned and little time put in to the whole production and this really showed in their final clips. Our teachers discouraged us not to use clichéd methods like people wearing hoodies because it makes the clip seem a bit unrealistic. We also watched a documentary on Casino Royal; we learnt about sound and effects. I really think I benefited a lot from this lesson because I learnt how adding sound onto clips can make them very effective. Finally, we also watched clips on from watching these clips I learnt how to begin planning our own thriller, adapt ideas and techniques and so on from watching the documentary. The film that inspired our group was Psycho. For example, Intertextually from Psycho. In our clip we used this similar technique when we did the killing scene in the park. We applied it into a low angle shot and I think this made it very effective because it built a lot of suspense.
Our media product represents particular social groups. It features one person who is a young woman (me). It is quite unusual because in a sense I am both a villain and the victim which is quite unusual in real thriller films because the villain often has one character to play. I am seventeen and Black. I am a Christian but in terms of religion the context of our film is a bit negative because of its thriller nature. So it doesn’t really portray what I am supposed to be doing in my religion because it is against that. The kind of media institution that might distribute our media product is Blockbuster because it is something that you could to watch at a cinema and it has all the features a real film has. And our film could also be a small independent U.K release or we could release it via YouTube and on most networking sites because that way everyone around the world will be able to access it, as it is also for free. Like for those who cannot watch the film at cinemas they can just watch it online.
I think that young adults from the age of 16-21 both males and females would be the audience for our media product. Any class would be our audience but middle class in particular. Tasha 18 attends college and works part time in a youth centre and wants to address the dangers of carrying weapons. She is aware that knife crime has risen dramatically over the years and therefore worries that someone she knows may end up as a victim. She knows the consequences of carrying weapons as she herself used to be involved in knife crime. A person like her would be an idea of someone who would fit into our target audience.
There are many ways in which I could address my audience. Firstly I would promote it, to do this I will have to start by marketing our film. This can be done by advertising it on posters or posting clips of it online. And getting people to leave comments to say what they think of the film. Whether they would like to see it and so on. I would also market my film through its genre and I would advertise the trailers online. Sources like YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace because it is free and easy to market.
There are many things that I have learnt about technologies from the process of constructing our film. I learnt how to use final cut pro. It was not easy but it taught me new skills that I would never have imagined learning. The experience really helped me at most times to be positive and work at my best at all times. I learnt how to do work and have a deadline at the same time. Throughout the whole practical I learnt how to log and capture all the shots onto the Mac computers. Even though the Mac computers were a bit difficult to use at first, by the end of the practical I knew how to use them a bit better. I learnt how to add sound and how to cut scenes. On the other hand, we hardly used the internet as we were using the Mac computers to do all the editing. Expect when we had to write our weekly blogs. Watch lesson we had to log onto our blogs and write what we had learnt and done in that lesson. I had to make sure that I blogged regularly as it would have been difficult for me to catch up as there are so many things that you have to put onto the blog as well as filming at the same time. It was great that we were able to release our movie on Vimeo and on our blogs because it really made me feel like our thriller films were actually like real films. And to top it off the fact that our films were then showcased at the Local Vue cinema for all CANDI media students. The internet has widened the potential audience for your product.
Finally looking back at my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a lot in the progressions from it to the full product. I learnt how to work in an under pressured environment. I learnt how to work in a team and most importantly within a group. From the match- cut exercise to actually making the film I feel as though I took this more seriously and really put an effort in. Previously we learnt how to adapt shots from our match-cut exercise into our actual short films. It was really challenging but helpful as we had had a bit of practise. We squeezed every shot in our two min clip. Including match cuts, 180 degree, over the shoulder, close up, point of view shots and pan cuts and many more. The film making process let us explore a lot of things; ideas, different methods, different technologies. Doing a storyboard really helped us because it gave us a base for us to begin filming, because we knew we had somewhere to start. It was like putting our ideas onto paper. From filming I have learnt how to work with the camera and do things within a sequence. At first I was shy to work with the camera but I adjusted and felt a bit more comfortable filming. I had to make sure that everything I did worked with the kind of character I was. And finally, the editing and posting production kind of stressed me out a bit because there were so many things taught me how to always maintain a positive attitude even when it is hard because we had a bit of problems within our group. Some people were not showing up to workshops to edit and not putting in enough effort, so it put a lot of pressure on the group. I wish I had dealt with the situation much better, rather than let it make me feel like everything was going to go wrong. It’s about not letting things get to you. It made me want to work harder on the editing because it felt like I just had to look past all the problems and do the important thing which was to complete the film and all the editing. Overall I have had a great experience and learnt a lot of skills and built some really good relationships with my group members.
