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

'The antagonist in our film is Alice; she is a little blonde girl who is seen multiple times in our opening wearing a gas mask. This is contrasting as little girls are meant to be cute and innocent which makes our opening mysterious and surprising which is conventional to thriller films. At the beginning of our opening Alice is singing nicely playing with dolls, this use of a sharp transaction of playing to being possessed will shock the audience and make our opening enjoyable to watch as it has generic conventions of thriller films in it. Our protagonist is a baby sitter whose name is unknown, she is a conventional victim as she is innocent, vulnerable and home alone. This makes her open to any attack or danger, this is again conventional to thriller films as a female victim is very stereotypical as they are seen as less able to defend themselves compared to men. This use of character choice in our film and other films are used to appeal to the audience as they can make an emotional link with the characters because they can see their fear and also see them being in a similar position.

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

.Every successful thriller film team uses cinematography, mise-en-scene and editing to ensure that their film follows the generic conventions of shock, fear, tension, mystery and many more. This is so that the audience can create an emotional relationship with the characters and enjoy the film they are watching, this can be specifically seen in ‘Paranormal activity’. The use of the home-made camera effect allows the audience to relate to the characters as they seem like a normal family and that the scary happenings could occur to the audience, making them feel afraid. This can also be seen in ‘Insidious’, the use of a mysterious hidden antagonist creates tension towards the audience as they don’t know what could be hiding behind the black vale. Similarly in our thriller opening, our antagonist (Alice) is hidden by a gas mask, this also creates tension as the audience can’t see what she looks like and why she may be hiding her face. The use of a young antagonist may shock the audience as they would not expect it to be an innocent looking girl which adds the mystery to our opening thriller scene. This element of our thriller specifically resembles ‘Sinister’ by the use of a young female child who turns evil, this creates again, tension and surprise as the audience is shocked by this unusual happening. These elements used in my thriller opening, and real thriller films are generic conventions that are purposely included into the films to make them stand out and have an emotional link with the audience.

Final Thriller - Miss Georgiou

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuerHg6fws4

Thriller comparison - Miss Georgious

I think we have made a successful thriller sequence because we used the conventional thriller aspects such as mystery. This is specifically seen by the gas mask on the antagonists face, this hidden identity leaves the audience curious of why she is wearing a mask and what she is going to do. Also the element of surprise is used when the door slams behind the babysitter protagonist, these conventional thriller elements appealed strongly towards our target audience so I believe we have a made a successful thriller sequence.

I think the micro element which shows my creativity most is the little girl antagonist, the contrasting features such as; scary staring and evil laughter manipulates the audience as they wouldn't expect a little girl to be so evil. This is most specifically seen when the babysitter looks out of the window and Alice stares at her with the mask on and doesn't say anything, this is very mysterious and creative as other thriller films have a male killer.

Our thriller film and 'Sinister' have some similar thriller elements. For example the little girl antagonist, in Sinister the little girl turns out to be a killer and kills her family, in our film she turns viciously to the babysitter and the audience are left in suspense. Also, the use of a big house is used in Sinister just like our thriller sequence, this allows the audience to relate if they feel their house is big and allow the film to appeal more to them. The sounds used in our film are mysterious and creepy, for example the slow song with laughter over the top is used during the credits of our film, and in Sinister there is slow music when the homemade clips are showing creating the same mysterious effect.

Audience feedback - Miss Georgiou

Audience feedback is the comments and criticism you receive from making a film. This is very important as it is the comments from your target audience, the success of your film depends on if your film appeals to your target audience. The feedback will determine our success on our film and help us with the improvements we will need to make for it to appeal more to our target audience.

We received our audience feedback through questionnaires, we had 10 varied questions, mostly multiple choice questions about which characters they would like to see featured most, what gender antagonist and protagonist they would want to see in our film. This allowed us to focus specifically on the aspects that our target audience wanted to see in our film so that we could aim it directly to them to achieve our goal of making a successful film.

One positive comment we received was about the gas mask we used, it was said to be mysterious and scary and draw in the audience as the little girls identity is hidden. Another comment we received was about the low key lighting, the lamp post outside the house was "creepy" and conventional to the thriller genre. Finally, we received a positive comment about the chosen characters, the female babysitter was relateable to the audience and the little girl antagonist was different and unexpected.

A negative comment was received was the camera shots, some of them were too still and needed more movement, maybe a zoom in shot instead of a close up. Secondly the last hand-held camera shot was very fast and jerky which was hard to notice what was going on. Finally the editing at points was over-done and reduced the fear factor slightly but this can be easily fixed by Joe our editor.

In our two minute opening scene, we followed the brief by using conventional thriller aspects such as mystery and surprise, we also had eerie looking text for the credits whilst creepy music is played in the background. We also used a conventional female protagonist allowing our target audience to relate and create an emotional link with the characters, also a little girl antagonist manipulates the audience as they would expect a little girl to be nice and cute but contrastingly she is a possessed killer.

Technologies Prezi

Media Institution Prezi

Rough cut - Miss Miller

A rough cut is important as it is when the film first starts to look like the final product so that any changes and improvements can be made and the cast and crew can change certain aspects of the film if they think it doesn't look as good. In our rough cut we realised that the sounds and effects could have been improved to make the thriller aspects be evoked further towards the audience, also, more transactions needed to be edited in to make the film flow better. This is why a rough cut is important as it shows a clear indication of where improvements can be made to make our thriller opening better and appeal more towards our audience.

Audience feedback is very important because they are the people that the film is aimed to, so our thriller genre must appeal to them in order to receive positive comments on our opening. Also the target audience can comer up with better ideas that we can use in our thriller opening to make it more satisfactory to watch. Audience feedback can also boost confidence in our group if we receive positive comments which can allow us to try more effects and sounds without worrying if the audience will like it or not.

We received our feedback from questionnaires given to the whole class which included questions such as; what went well?, what could be improved? and an overall mark out of 60. This allowed us to see what our target audience (teenagers) wanted to see in our thriller opening that we may not have included, it also shows us what we done well so we know what aspects to keep in our opening when we alter it.

Our feedback had good marks out of 60 from everyone who done the questionnaire which was helpful as it indicated to us that we were on the right tracks with our editing and shots etc. Also, in the 'what could be improved?' section the answers were small things such as: 'don't repeat shots too much' and 'sound was too loud' which is easy to alter and doesn't need any re-filming. Also the comments in the 'what went well?' section were very positive and morale boosting for our group with comments such as 'editing was good' and 'iconography was scary' which was our aim in our opening thriller scene.

This feedback from our peers will help us improve our thriller because multiple peers have written specific comments which shows that it is a fault in our opening which can be easily fixed by our editor Joe. When finalising our thriller opening we will not be changing our positive comments as we know those aspects appeal to our target audience making our opening a success.

Planning group storyboard - Miss Miller

A group storyboard is important as it allows everybody in our group, (Me, Joe and Cara) to understand exactly what is going on and not to get confused as it is one storyboard for all of us which also reduces the chances of us making any mistakes or doing something in an incorrect order. It also creates a guideline for the group to follow and make filming and editing less complicated and make sure everyone of us is on the same wave length.

Before our group storyboard each of us in our group made an individual storyboard of our own ideas and shots. When told to make a group storyboard we had to put all of our ideas together taking different aspects