Evaluation task 2: How does your product represent particular social groups?

There is only one character in our thriller; the social group that we placed him in was quite a dark, lonely, bad psychological state social group. The way we represented this was through low lighting to try and make it look like natural light and also we used quite a few close ups to allow the audience to get close to the character and feel his anger. We also used noises in the background like a couple shouting or loud rap music to show the area that he lives in and how it doesn’t exactly sound like the safest place to be which then lets the audience get to know him a little bit more and the dark side to him. This then effected the audience in a way that they felt sort of intimidated by him as he didn’t come across mentally stable due to him walking out of his home with a gun in his bag. It makes the audience feel worried and scared of him because of the darkness we represented his social group as. 

As you can see below, both shots represent a dark lonely social group, with the hoodies up and looking down.

 

    

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

Thriller

Below is our thriller video, the final piece.

Editing process

When we were done with filming all the scenes we needed to it was time to edit. When we were thinking about editing it was all a lot to take in because it was quite over whelming. As we first sat down to begin editing it was quite hard for a few people as they just wanted to get straight into it as they had all these big ideas they wanted to translate onto the computer as soon as possible. Getting each others thoughts across to one an other was difficult because there would be one person controlling the mouse and having ideas thrown at you from every direction can be a lot. As our piece slowly and slowly progressed it started looking better each time, and because of how we finally understood how to communicate with each other it made the process a lot easier. Because we were able to communicate, our project was benefited as there weren’t any arguments. Mat and Guy were able to guide us in the right direction with our piece but was good in the way that they didn’t tell us what to do for every single step. Even though the editing process was very stressful it was also good because it not only built the relationship with our teachers and the people in our groups but also the fact that it helped us understand more about what goes into the editing process when people make films and how much time and effort is put into it. When we first started using final cut pro, it was hard for a few people to get the hang of it because they may not have used the programme before, this goes for me, once I had seen how to use it and techniques within it not only me but everyone else got the hang of it. Overall, the process was tiring and stressful but was still at the same time very fun. I liked understanding that area of media and how to create what we all created. I would definitely not change a thing with our media because it showed our hard work and was a great experience.

Myself and Fady recently found out that Julia in our group had left the school, we were very shocked and surprised but also a little but worried because we weren't sure how we were going to handle creating our thriller with just us two but because we ended up working quite well together so it was all okay in the end.

Changes to thriller

There were a changes made to the thriller on the shoot day, for example we decided to leave the part of the thriller where it was the main actor waking up at around 3 in the morning and then going back to sleep. The reason why we decided to do this is because not only was the thriller too long but that part wasn’t necessarily needed. Taking things like this out will add up to create a better and more effective thriller as it will keep the audiences eyes attached to the piece and not let them drift off. We also decided to push the furniture on the right side of the room, when you look in to the shot, more closer towards the bed our actor was sleeping on. The reason why we chose to do this is because we wanted to make the room look a lot more smaller and cramped and also feel quite claustrophobic. This , in my opinion, all added to the whole effect of what we were trying to achieve. Another reason to why we didn't want the room to look bigger is because we wanted to show that he wasn't the richest person and he is struggling in life. Over all there weren't that many changes we made because we wanted to stick to the original idea and not have massive changes, we believed that this was a good idea because it would then start to drift away from  our whole concept.

Account of shooting day

The overall day started off quite stressful, we were worrying if we had forgotten anything or missing anything vital. Before we left I quickly went and gathered some dirty plates from breakfast to make the whole vibe of the  Once we were sure we were okay we set off. When the day progressed onwards we started to get more relaxed and felt more comfortable, this was once we had started filming, before this it took us the whole morning to shoot, half of our shooting day. This is when we got very worried and stressed because we spent so long setting up everything that we thought we would run out of time. Luckily, once we started filming it all came natural to us and we were able to work smoothly thought the day.

There were changes done to the thriller once we had seen the location in person, these changes weren't big and were very adaptable to the thriller.

Shooting our thriller was a stressful experience due to all the worrying and if something small goes wrong you feel as if everything will. But once you overcome this feeling and work through everything together as a team you are able to accomplish so much in such ease because you know you all have each others back. We worked like a team should of on thew day and all took it in turns to do the tiring job of standing in the cold holding one of the dedo lights to doing the exciting job of directing and filming. If I was in a team like the one I was in at the beginning of being placed into groups then I would of been a bout a thousand times more stressed and worried but because we were able to develop our relationship over time, our shoot day was a lot less stressful then either of us thought it would ever be. We all enjoyed doing what we were doing so it made the experienced so fun and at the same time educational.

When we were filming a few things were getting quite annoying to re adjust, by this I mean the light, because we were using natural light as well this would radically change in the time from 1-6pm. We had to work more and more with the Dedo lights and it was frustrating at times because every hour the light would be completely different. However, I do believe that we did a good job of overcoming it, there are times were light is different but you learn from your mistakes and now we know how difficult natural light can be if your working over a 6 hour period but wanting your thriller to be over a 3 minute period. The experience was definitely something to remember, it helped me grow educationally and because we all enjoyed the process it was a very exciting day.