For A2 I believe that it will obviously be much harder then AS, this year we will be creating a music video. This task will be difficult yet if I work as hard as I have expected for myself I know I will be able to achieve my goals. The decision of what song we shall pick will, I prefer less of a pop style and more of an organic feel to music, where its about the music and not the image. We will also be creating things like album covers and some of us may be creating websites but we are not completely sure yet. There will be various difficulties within the A2 course but it will also allow us to develop our skills within media and our knowledge of the area we are studying. Improving these skills over the next year will allow us to become more developed with our knowledge and the way we handle things individually and as a team. So far we have already been introduced to theory's such as from Richard Dyer, this is already a step up from what we did in AS and is quickly developing our knowledge.

Audience Feedback

We had a group of our target audience watch our thriller and answer a few questions about it, this gave us a clear idea on how people interpreted our media product and what they thought our plot was about. It also showed us what people thought our strengths were and what we needed to improve on.

Name: Fiona

What do you think the basic plot of this thriller is?  A criminal thriller

What do you think are the key strengths of this thriller and why? Good background sounds

How do you think this thriller could be made even more effective and why? More dialogue to establish story plot

Name: Laila Noeth

What do you think the basic plot of this thriller is? A criminal

What do you think are the key strengths of this thriller and why? Good sounds

How do you think this thriller could be made even more effective and why? It’s quite long, I didn’t really understand

Name: Tom Gass

What do you think the basic plot of this thriller is?  Man goes crazy with sniper or is a assassin

What do you think are the key strengths of this thriller and why? Background sound, continuity

How do you think this thriller could be made even more effective and why? Maybe more actual activity, title font doesn’t fit

Name: Margot Wyatt

What do you think the basic plot of the thriller is? He has a gun and goes and shoots people.

What do you think are the key strengths of this thriller and why? Good camera shots and sounds.

How do you think this thriller could be made even more effective and why? Should show a storyline.

Name: Genevieve Clarke

What do you think the basic plot of the thriller is? Criminal living in a flat and is annoyed by neighbours.

What do you think are the key strengths of this thriller and why? Mise-en-scene and sounds are very effective.

How do you think this thriller could be made even more effective and why? Clearer storyline.

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

For my preliminary task we used the editing suite as our location, the actors used in our prelim were inexperienced and we didn't experiment with shot types. We followed the storyboard given to us and we didn't have any freedom. We didn't experiment with things like panning or trying things like tracking shots or birds eye view shots. When we started editing our prelim, we had quite a view difficulties on learning how to use final cut pro so Matt explained to us all the necessary techniques to use in the program. However, didn't use anything like transitions, instead we just did basic cuts. Within final cut pro we learnt what the time line was, the bins on the left, what the two different viewers do along with in and out markers. Comparing this to the editing process in our thriller, we learnt only the basic tools needed and not all the different ones we used in our thriller. Whilst editing our thriller we added background sounds like a couple shouting and music playing from above. We also has a lot more freedom when filming our thriller because we were allowed to chose what we wanted to do, we used various shots like the shot looking down on Adam and the shot looking up towards the ceiling. This allowed us to broaden our knowledge on filming and it was a completely different experience to our prelim as we weren't given a sheet with exactly what shots we had to get.
In our prelim we didn't have any props, which was completely different to our thriller as we had to collect quite a few different props to create the right mise en scene that we wanted. With our location for our thriller we were allowed to pick where we wanted to film, instead of just finding any available room like our preliminary, and the way we were able to dress the set however we wanted to allowed to us to be as creative as possible.
In our thriller we had the choice to play with the lighting, we used red heads to keep the light natural through out the day and make it look consistent as the light outside was changing every hour. The read head lit through the window from outside, to darken the light we simply used a bin bag stuck to the window. In our prelim it was much more simple then this, we were just filming with the natural lights in the room. Unlike in our prelim, we used the camera in a much more creative way doing things such as panning and focus pulling.
Overall, I think I have improved all round, my favourite part of the process was when I was filming, I found this experience very enjoyable and it allowed me to expand my knowledge in this area of media. I was definitely able to deal with something going wrong better once I had experienced filming, the preliminary prepared me for a beginning look on what I should slightly expect during my thriller but obviously not as difficult. I definitely think I have improved my skills in this area.

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

Below is an annotated version of our thriller to give an inside look on why and how we created it, including technology used.

 

Evaluation; Task 5 : How did you attract/address your target audience?

Evaluation Task 4: Who would be the audience for your media product (film)?

Below is an image of 3 men who are around the age of 20-40 and are shown to be quite proffessional and therefore educated.

Our thriller is about a war veteran who has a turn for the worst in his life when he's left the army, ever since then his life just falls to pieces. In the end he goes on a 'man hunt' and near the end a psychological twist turns everybody crazy about the film. Thinking about our thriller we decided that our target audience would be obviously men due to woman not really being interested in this type of film, we thought that men aged around 20 to about 40 is a perfect age target for our thriller. When we sat down and spoke about our thriller and the type of people it would target is men who are educated, the reason for this is because when watching our film we want people to have knowledge of this happening to men but then within our thriller there's more exciting things happening do we want people to have knowledge of this happening to men that have left the army. The men who watch would be attracted to our thriller and these men would be interested in more psychological films rather then action, films like dead man walking is a perfect example. The way the movie attracts its audience is exactly how we want people attracted to our film. When it comes to economic stability, we would say more middle class; however, you don't need to be rich or poor to watch this film but knowledge about situations like what happens in our thriller is desired. Maybe that way our target audience can get more into the film and connect more to the character.

Evaluation task 3: What institution would distribute your media product?

For the product that we have created, we believe, is most definitely a low key film and would be made by an independent film company, There was nothing extravagant used and we liked how we kept it the way we did. A film that we believe is very similar to our product is Dead Mans Shoes, by Shane Meadows, Warp Films, the reason why we say this is because all the elements of the film is a lot like ours. The way it was filmed and the way they distributed it is how we would want to film and sell our product.

Warp Films is a British independent film company launched in 2001, they are now built up of Warp Records, Warp Films and Warp music Videos & Commercials. They are now expanding their business to other countries, starting off with Melbourne Australia. Some of their movies are shown below.

  

 

Production

The way our product was created is in the same way as dead man shoes, it was a low concept and we would have a low budget so it’s nothing like Hollywood films. Our film would have unknown actors which no one has really seen before and the area we would film it would mainly be kept within homes and very low key. Our production of our film would be filmed in ‘real’ locations, what I mean is we would do more filming in locations in England rather then working in the studio for most of the film. Reasons for this is because not only does it show an independent film but it makes the film more organic, what I mean is that it makes the film more real and breaks the story down to its core because of all the fundamentals working together and allows the audience to relate and connect to the film more.

Distribution

The way our media product would be distributed is through various media fields, such as, television adverts; Advertising on buildings or bus stops ect. Because our film company is very small and is independent this means that we would have to work out deals with other companies to distribute our product without it costing as much as what Hollywood pays to distribute. Because its only small we would work with companies like Optimum Realising, who Warp Films actually work with to distribute their films, as they are a small company and you would be able to afford it for good quality. 

Warp Films is the institution we picked for the distribution of our product because it’s a small film company and there for low budget films are made that are like our thriller. When it came down to thinking about this we instantly knew it would be a independent British film company because we looked at our product and we instantly pointed out key elements like it being filmed in a ‘real’ location, it not being filmed in a studio, it would have a low budget and so on. This is why Warp Films would be the best for distributing our media product.