In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventional media products?
Our film uses lots of conventions of the thriller genre. For example, our protagonist is an ordinary working man who keeps himself to himself although he has a violent side to him. (Such characters as James Bond are created in this format. Also the film has a mysterious element about it and it follows the conventions of thriller films confusing the audience and making them think and work things out. Such as, who the charcter is and what he is about, and the visions. They also have to work things out with the protagonist. We also wanted our thriller to thrill and be slightly scary like most disaster thrillers. It did come out this way as we have found out through the comments we've had on our film. Thrillers are usually quite tense and we have tried to create the same effect through a few long lasting shots and the music.
We have challenged the convention of hero vs villain by having hero vs his own mind. This crosses the border to psychological thrillers and added another dimension to our film. This is good because we can attract a wider range of audience and have a more popular film. The idea of hero vs his own mind was an original idea of ours and gets the audience to think about what is happening and lets them create different things about him and the film in their own mind, so it works into another boundary. Barry, his mind, and now the audiences mind. This has been enhanced by the use of music which has challenged the use of conventional thriller music which could relate to rock music. It links to the first point because I tried to create the noises that were in Barry's mind.
Some of our camera shots varied from conventional thriller shots by developing basic shots. Such as the hand held shot low angle shot has been adapted from a basic low angle tracking mid shot. It allows us to create our own meaning through the shot and to build upon the meaning of the original basic shot. This basic shot is conventional to thrillers as many of the thrillers I have seen, and a few of the films we analysed included it. A completely new shot that challenges conventional thriller shots is one that is hand held and circles around Barry. This is not a usual shot, but the meaning of it is conventional of a thriller. It creates tension and shows Barry's emotions and unsureness to the audience.
We have also used the convention of having a fairly dark plot to our film. Pretty much all disaster thrillers are dark, therefore we used this to be conventional.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film only has two characters, so not many social groups are represented. The two characters are very different in social class and we used lots of techniques to show this. One technique was costumes. This was a big part of our preliminary task and really helped us to show the classes of the two characters. Thus, we decided to use this technique again. Barry represents the middle class, socio economic group C/B I would say. He is a white collar worker. (So obviously he wears a white shirt.) He wears a black tie and smart shoes and trousers. He also has an expensive looking coat. He also owns a rather large house for a man of his young age. Most men at this age would be living in a flat or with his parents. He has a big TV and good quality furniture. This represents the middle class/socio econimic group C/B as hard working and take pride in themselves and what they own. They are willing to work hard to get to where they want to get. To emphasise this is a shot of his shoes in the film.
On the other hand, you have Gregg. At the start of the film, Barry is on his way home from work, although Gregg is already at home and in casual clothes. This shows that he does not work hard for what he has, and somewhat 'mooches' off of Barry. He wears an 'official beer tester' t-shirt. (this is all you see.) And he holds a pot noodle during the film. Gregg is of the lower class. Perhaps socio economic group C/D. He is the sort of man who would drive a white van and read the sun. Gregg represents this group as lazy couch potatoes. As he is holding a pot noodle, it also represents this social group as having a bad diet, leading to obesity, a big problem in the UK at the moment. It shows that this group will take from other people, but not give back.
You could also mention the cars outside Barry's house. The majority of them are nice, expensive cars. This represents the middle class as somewhat show offs, and that maybe they have not a lot else on their mind other than looking good infront of others.
What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?
The institutions that would distribute our product would be: The cinema such as Cineworld, Sky Box Office, Youtube, TV and DVD companies such as Warner Bros.
The cinema would distribute our product as a teaser to the feature length film that would follow. They would put it on during the adverts before the featured film starts to generate a buzz for the whole film that would come out later on. It would make people wonder what the film was and make them want to find out what happens, making them watch the full film.
Sky Box Office would do the same as the cinema, create a buzz for the film, then play the whole film. It's the exact same process.
Our film could start out on Youtube to get it noticed and watched by other people out of this area. As its only an opening, people would want to know what happens next, therefore would want to see the whole film.
DVD companies would distribute our product in its entirety so that people could watch it after it was out at the cinema so people could watch it if they missed it, or watch it again if they liked it.
It could also be distributed through mobile phones. It could be sent to people on certain networks such as Orange or Vodafone for free. This would get people to watch it even if they weren't planning to. This would make people want to watch the film, generating money to the cinemas after the whole process is complete.
Who would be the target audience for your product?
As we have found out from research, our preliminary task, and comments from people who have watched our film, a wide range of people would be the audience for our film.
From the preliminary, we found that if you put a small element into the film for a lot of different target audiences such as good music, or a complex plot, a wide variety of people would watch it because of that element. We found that the use of costumes attracted a lower class audience, the music also attracted a lower class audience, however, the story line attracted more intelligent people as it made you think. We tried to advance on this in our new film to attract a wider audience. (This would generate more profits if more people wanted to see the film.)
Mainly however, our audience would be boys and girls aged 15+ of working/middle class, socio economic groups D,C and B. The lower of the classes would be attracted due to the action of the film. They would want to see whether Barry saves the world or not, also because they can relate to Gregg and have him as a favoured character. The middle of the selected classes would enjoy it because they would enjoy some of the action involved and would enjoy thinking about the plot of the film plus they can relate to both characters. And the higher of the selected classes would enjoy it because they can relate to Barry and would enjoy the thinking required to work out the film.
For example, a 17 year old boy who left school to go to college and whom is of lower class would enjoy the film because it is about a simple thing, the end of the world. The film only goes as deep as you want it to. You can either get right into the depths of Barry's mind and really think about the film, or you can just go along with it and see what happens. This means that many different types of audiences would enjoy this film, but mainly the ones described.
How did you attract/address your target audience?
In relation to this question, we used a young cast. This would allow the young people we were targeting to be able to relate to the characters as they are of a similar age. They may also have a similar lifestyle to one of the characters so they can imagine being in their shoes.
We got this idea from our preliminary task as we used the same two actors and were searching for a young audience in that.
We also tried to attract a lower class audience by having lots going on in our film and a lot of sound involved. This would keep them interested in the film and would not lose it like the would in a film that they found boring. We also did this by having a lower class character; Gregg is your typical lower class person, therefore the lower class audience can relate to him and follow his story.
We tried to attract a higher class audience by making the audience use their mind and think about the film. We also created Barry in a way that allows them to relate to him by making him a higher class than Gregg. This allows them to think like Barry and make it easier to know what he is thinking.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We have learnt how to create a blog as this was the first time we'd ever done it. I have learnt how to create a Youtube account and upload a video to it. I have also learnt about using another type of imovie. This was because we used a different type of camera during some of the filming of our film. This camera only allowed us to upload the footage to the new imovie so we had to work out how to use it and then transfer the footage from it to the old imovie that we were originally using. We have learnt how to use Livetype which we used for some of the titles in our film. Hopefully we can advance on all of this in our next project.
We did this from our preliminary task. We learnt a few new things about editing the film such as effects and changing colours of shots when making the preliminary and advanced on that during the new film. We put an effect in the final shot which worked really well.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression of it to the new product?
After making the preliminary task, we brushed up on certain aspects of our filming skills
in particular. When making the preliminary, we did not use a tripod very much at all and just held the camera in our hands, the caused an unprofessional looking wobbly shot. We did however take some experimental aspects from it into the new film. For example, we had a shot of the characters legs through a cat flap. This aspect has been adapted in the new film by going even further by having shots such as the hand held close up that circles around Barry, it is an uncontventional shot but works well in this use of it.
We also learnt from our first film that having good mise en scene, such as a bottle of Jack Daniels, gives the film a realistic look getting the audience more into it. We went on to do this in the second film with the setting, costumes and props by trying to make everything look as authentic as possible.
We also found from the preliminary that costumes can attract different audiences of certain classes. In this film, the character was dressed in a hoody, a cap and baggy trackies. This attracted the sort of person who wears these clothes and the lower/working class to the film. This is because they can relate to the character well and enjoy finding out about his story. We adapted this is the new film by going a step further and having to characters from different classes. This was used to attract a wider range of audience.
We have also learnt to use music creatively in our films. This is because we did so in the preliminary, but not a lot. So we tried to advance on it and make it more complex in the new film.
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