Rashida Dixon-Question 7

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

When we did the preliminary task it was very difficult for us to use the equipment properly and editing clips was confusing at first as none of us had used iMovie before. We did learn that inter-cutting between scenes helps to speed up the action without having to use jump cuts.

In the preliminary task we used shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180 rule. Practicing this was important as we incorporated match on action and the 180 rule in our final product. we did not used shot reverse shot because it wasn't needed as our characters did not have a conversation. The 180 rule was very important when we were switching from POV shot. we even used this rule in our final product, i think we done this successfully

We also used a range of different shot which we didn't use in our preliminary such as close-ups and point of view shots. In our preliminary we didn’t use tracking shots; we found it difficult to follow a moving object so to solve that problem we decided to use the tracking shot to introduce the setting that the characters were in. In our preliminary we used the tripod to create steady shots however this wasn’t always the effect that we were looking for in our final product so we incorporated a hand held shot.

We found that the sound quality was very good in our preliminary. This help to aid our decision to not used diegetic sound throughout our media product. When we first edited the preliminary we weren’t aware you could manipulate the volume of the sound however in our final product we took advantage of this. Editing was easier and we incorporated different transition such as dissolves into our final product to help make the transition between shot more interesting and to link the shot which seem to have no relation.

Annotated video

Rashida Dixon-Question 6

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Rashida Dixon-Question 5

5.How did your attract your audience?

We attracted our audience by using themes in which they were unable to relate to or which are written about in the news a lot. Because our audience are teenagers some of our actors portrayed the part of a young student like most of our audience are. The storyline of the teacher having an affair with a student attracts a younger audience more because it the sense of something forbidden.

The storyline also attract students because the situations are an extreme portrayal of something that they don't want to happen to them. The audience pay to watch their fears being portrayed on the screen in the safety of their homes/ cinema, this is what attracts our audience to our psychological thriller.

We also made sure that our opening quickly drags the audience in by showing the 'dead girl on the floor. The opening sequence makes people aware that that it was not an accident and this helps to keep our audience intrigued as they want a solution to the mystery. The sense of mystery and something forbidden is our selling point in our media product.

The lack of dialog also drags the audience in as they are left with lots of unanswered questions about who the characters are and their relationship to each other. They have to play a kind of detective role while watching the movie, this helps them stay alert and interested.

Rashida Dixon-Question 4

4. Who would be your audience for your media project?

We decided that the rating for our film is going to be 15+ as most we believe this is appropriate for our film as it contains violence (for example murder) sexual and imitable behavior (for example swearing) which The theme of our media product (student teacher relationship) is not appropriate for children under 15.

Our target audience is both male and female mostly students as they are more likely to go out and go to the movies. The storyline of our film relates to them as it is set in a school with characters who are as young as they are.

Our Target audience are people who enjoy watching independent films. They will appreciated the sound quality and the picture quality of our media product whereas an mainstream audience would like a better quality image and sound, they would also prefer to see special effect in the film which our film doesn't supply. The indie (independent) audience like when things have the home made feel. We believe that our product would most likely be appreciated by an independent audience. The theme of our media product will more likely interest the indie audience as it isn't too complex and maze like.

Rashida Dixon-Question 3

3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Lions gate entertainment is our chosen distributor as they have done films such as American psycho which is also an psychological thriller. We believe that this is the perfect distributor as they do a range of different types of films and they are well known throughout the world. So this will enable our film to be sold throughout the world. It is also well know for distributing independent films as our film is an independent film this is very important.

We also considered to using momentum pictures as an distributor as it is well know independent film distributor in the UK and Ireland however they aren't well known for distributing Psychological thrillers so we decided to go with Lions Gate instead.

Rashida Dixon-Question 2

2.How does your media product represents a particular group?

People’s general idea of a school girl is that they are young and innocent. We tried to portray her in the stereotypical way by making our character dress in school uniform as this helps the audience identify with the character as they are of a similar age. We have made her seem like the victim in the first extract, this is a typical view that young girls are the target for criminal. Young girls who are targeted by criminals are normally portrayed as a normal teenager who was living a good life until they were killed or hurt for example Milly Dowler. We portrayed this by showing the young girl 'having fun' with the male teacher which is a contrast with the situation she is in at the start of our media product. We would have gone on to challenge the view that young girls are innocent victims by showing her manipulative personality.

We have a Male teacher in our product. There are many stereotypical views of male teachers and we concentrated on the extreme stereotype; that male teachers have ulterior motive for being a teacher which is to be around young people so that they are able to manipulate them. There is also extreme view that male teachers are tend to be more maternal than other male because teaching is considered a “female” job. Most male teachers are portrayed negatively in the media; they are normally villainous or portrayed as someone with a secret (most of the time the secret is that they are having relations with a student). They are also portrayed as paranoid in some show as they are aware that the danger of getting too close to a student could cost them their job. Our media product plays on the idea of teacher student relationship by making the teacher seem in control of the whole situation which in part makes the female character (the student) look innocent and naive. This make the audience put all the blame toward our male character as they see him as an authority figure taking advantage of someone without any power.

Rashida Dixon- Question 1

1.In what way does your media product used, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before we began our project we did some research. We gave out questionnaires and then collected the information to help us decide what we were going to do in our media project. We also watched some psychological thrillers to get an idea of key things about the character, setting and sound that we needed to incorporate into our on psychological thriller.

Setting

We had to consider what we could or couldn't incorporate into our media project, because of restriction on where we were able to shoot we had to either find places around the school that didn't resemble the school or we could shoot in the school. Our result from our market research had shown us that majority of the people liked psychological thriller shot in school so we decided to base our opening sequence in the school; we then built our ideas around this. The opening sequence establishes the setting. The fact that the thriller is set in a school gives the idea of the norms being disrupted which is very conventional of a psychological thriller; this also enables the audience to identify with the characters and themes. Not many Psychological thrillers are set in schools as they tend to be set in a home environment.

Characters

Our characters are to some extent typical of a psychological thriller as they are ambiguous; the opening sequence makes it confusing about what to think about the characters this is conventional of psychological thrill for example Blood Simple. The school girl represents a femme-fatale character. This type of character is an archetype of psychological thrillers; we tried to imply that her relationship with the other character by the use of body language. Body language is very important when portraying a femme-fatale character. She is dressed in school uniform to give the idea that she is young and naive girl in a forbidden relationship this is unconventional of a femme-fatale character as they are normally dressed very seductive; this contradicts the typical way femme-fatale are usally dressed which tend to be seductive. We also have a villainous/corrupted character; we chose to make him a teacher as male teachers are portrayed negatively in the media. The male character is in a way like a detective character you see in some psychological thrillers, we portray this by focusing on him snooping through the classroom; he isn't dressed like a conventional detective character however his actions are quite conventional of a detectives.

Convention Characters

1. Femme-fatel

2.villainous/ corrupted

3.Detective

Mise-en-scene

We used both coloured and black and white to show the difference between the past and the present; this is very common in psychological thrillers for example in Momento. It also helps to confuse the audience about the order the events should come in.

Camera

We used a lot of close ups to help confused the audience of who the characters are, it is also used to draw the audience attention to certain details that we wanted to highlight. This is a convention of psychological thrillers as it helps to create confusion about an object or person. It is also used to draw the persons attention to something specific, we used the close ups to emphasize the body language of the characters and show facial expression. We also used a lot of mid shots to establish the setting.

Editing

We decided to stick with black and white for our title as we thought that using any other type of colour would take away from the action going on. We decided to uses lions gate entertainment as they have distributed psychological films such as American psycho. We used dissolves to help to link scenes together this is conventional of psychological thriller as it leaves the audience disorientated about what is really going on in a sequence.