Evaluation - Question 1

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

Our media product that we have created uses the conventions from real media products. Conventions are elements that are common within different films of the same genre and patterns that can be seen in different films from the same category. Before attempting to create our media product we had to research into the conventions that our audience are expecting to see within the thriller sequence. From this we have found a plethora of things that are expected. Shock, suspense, tension and surprise are the main elements that make thriller films recognisable; these for elements are created by micro-elements. I have found that a knife is the most conventional weapon used within the thriller genre. It is conventional as it shows power to the person who is holding it which would create suspense. Following this, I have also found a male antagonist/killer and female protagonist/victim are common within the genre. Another convention is an isolated setting as no one is around to save the victim, or hear them scream. Which leads onto my next common feature of a thriller sequence and that is screaming. Enigma is another convention and this is commonly created by the use of a masked killer as it engages the audience. Also within a thriller we can expect to see a chase scene, fighting/struggling. Blood is also used frequently in thriller films as it has connotations of death/anger. An editing technique that is commonly used within thrillers is timing of shots as it builds up tension. These editing techniques can be recognised in most thrillers- for example in Halloween. A masked is used to conceal the identity of the killer; the camera is placed as if looking through the eye holes in the mask. Through this we see a female victim is killed, which is one of the conventions mentioned before. She is killed with a knife which is conventional murder weapon used.  Or in the very successful thriller scream, the killers are all masked to conceal their identity which creates suspense and they normally use a knife to kill victims.

After thoroughly analysing the conventions in successful thrillers, we incorporated many of these in our thriller sequence. As soon as our thriller starts at 0:03

we can see the use of an isolated setting. We showed this through the use of a panning shot, which pans across from a house to a forest surrounding it. Which shows there is no one around to help the victim who is introduced later in the film. This creates suspense and tension as the audience is made aware from the start that there is no one else around. At 0:47 another convention is seen, this is female victim. As soon as she is first seen straight away a high angled shot is used to show her vulnerability, which makes the audience fear for her life which creates suspense. At 1:11 we see our third convention which is a masked antagonist. This increases the sense of enigma in the sequence through the hidden identity of the killer. We are reminded continuously after 1:11 that the identity of the killer is hidden as we can see clearly the mask, while the killer is chasing the victim. At 1:55 we see our

final convention which is screaming, this shows the audience the victim is in danger, simultaneously to this we see the killer dragging the victim back which implies the fate of the victim to the audience.

Our thriller sequence defines the thriller genre and would be easily identified as a thriller due to our character representations and special micro elements we have included. We used editing to show our sequence is from the thriller genre, specifically by the use of a jump cut/reaction shot when there is a sudden focus on the killer turning around when he hears the girl escaping and the door slam. This would make the audience jump as tension would have been built up leading up to this. This would be commonly identified in the thriller genre as it keeps the audience engaged and in suspense. Also keeps the trying to guess what happens next. Furthermore, my group and I included sound, in-particular non-diegetic sound of screaming, as it shows the audience that the victim has been captured which creates more understanding for the audience. And it also makes the victim more relatable to the audience as she is showing her emotions of fear and being scared by screaming. It also helps to engage the audience and they would want to know why the victim is screaming, which creates tension as they don’t know if she has been killed or not. Along with the screaming sound we used cinematography, specifically an eye level angle to show the girl lying on the forest floor with the killer behind her. This creates suspense as it shows the killer to be more powerful than her and it also engages the audience with the scene as they will be able to see the whole situation and see all of the emotion displayed the victim. We also use panning to show one of our conventions which is an isolated setting. This is typical of the thriller genre as it shows the audience what is around the house and that there is no people around to help. This makes the sequence recognisable as a thriller because it creates tension because it shows nobody is around to help the victim.  Finally, we used MES to help with our character representations to make the sequence recognisable as a thriller. We wanted our victim to be portrayed as a stereotypical teenage girl, we achieved this by the costume and hair and make-up. She was wearing a white dress, the white represented her innocence and we chose a dress as this is what we would expect a girl of this age to enjoy wearing. Also she had some basic make up on which is common of teenage girls and we would expect them to be wearing makeup. Her hair was long and dark, however it was slightly messed up to show the struggle that would have occurred when she got captured. When the girl is in the killer house tied up and when she is escaping we have quite bright lighting to show that she feel exposed and that there is not many places to hide. Also throughout we use high angles and cowering body language to show her vulnerability and innocence. This will make the audience feel empathy towards her as she is clearly weak and vulnerable. We wanted our killer to be portrayed as dominating and over powering; these are common traits of killers is thrillers. He wore dark clothing and a mask, the dark clothing was to represent his dark/evilness and the mask is used to conceal his identity. Through he used bold body language and we used low angles to show this, which shows the audience his power as a character. These two character representations are common within thrillers as the dominant killer implies an unfair advantage to the vulnerable and weaker victim. 

My thriller compares to Halloween as the both include the similar conventions such as a female victim and male antagonist, who is masked. Also both use a house as a location as it is very relatable to the audience as it is a location everyone will recognise as its a realistic location. However, Halloween does not include a chase scene and the victim gets killed in the house, whereas there is a chase scene in my thriller sequence and the victim gets killed in the forest. I made sure that I imitated the generic conventions used in Halloween such as low key lighting, as it makes it look like a real thriller film. I noticed the success of Halloween I decided to use this to inspire my thriller sequence. 

Final group thriller

Westhatch high school 

Center number: 16807

Jessica Mccullagh - 9353

I also worked along side:

Meghan Stone - 9373

Kerry Boyne - 9311

Thriller rough cut- Miss Georgiou

It is important for our group to get feedback from our audience as it will allow us to see if our thriller opening sequence is effective and show suspense, tension, surprise and shock. It will also let us see the positive and negatives of our opening sequence, which will mean when we do our final cut we will be able to change our sequence to make it more appealing to the audience. Furthermore, our sequence can be seen by a plethora of people meaning we will get a range of different views and opinions on our opening sequence, meaning we will be able to identify and develop our sequence to what we think more suitable.  We collected this audience feedback from our target audience by a few different methods. Firstly, we done a screening of our sequence to our class and teacher. They watched the sequence through once and then the class told us what they thought was effective and done well and then what we needed to improve on. After this the teacher gave a summary of their thoughts on our sequence. We then showed our clip to a focus group of our targeted audience and they gave their opinions on the clip. Also we uploaded our clip onto youtube, and made it available for anyone to see, feedback was given to us by people viewing, commenting and liking the sequence. 

    This feedback is beneficial to my group and I because it shows us what parts of our production we have to go back and work on and also what parts are effective. It also gives us a different range of opinions as us and our teachers have seen the sequence quite a few times therefore have gotten use to seeing it so it has all become similar to us. This feedback will help the film industry as we will innovate our clip to make it the best that it can be meaning they will have the best product to sell. 

The positive feedback that we got as a group was that the low key lighting that was used frequently through out is conventional to the thriller genre as it creates enigma that the killer is using the low lighting to hide in the darkness. Fortunately, it wasn't to dark that you couldn't see what the actors were doing. We layered filters on top to create this low key lighting effect as well as thinking about what time in the day we was going to film.When adding the filters we made sure that they were all the same opacity so there was a flow to make it look like it was all filmed on the same day.

The second piece of positive feedback that my group and I received was that we had a very interesting narrative as well as being complex enough to make the audience want to watch more. They really liked the idea that it finished on a slight cliff hanger so that they were left in suspense. We stuck closely to our story board which meant that all of our planning and research was effective.

The third positive piece of feedback we received was about our transitions which are effects that we put in whilst in the editing stage. They are used to make the sequence flow from one frame to the next. The feedback showed us that they thought the transitions helped guide the narrative and keep the engaged.

The first piece of constructive feedback we got was to change the ending because although they liked the suspense of not knowing what was going to happen to the victim it also is quite confusing as we have not clearly shown that the victim has been killed. As we inserted black screens after each of the last few frames to try to increase the suspense however because they are fairly long it loses the audiences engagement.

Another piece of constructive feedback we go was to change the font size of the opening scene narration as sometimes it is too big and sometimes covers too much of the screen.

The final piece of feedback was the font should be placed in a certain style on the screen because a lot appeared in a certain place and then the odd one in another so we should either create a pattern or stick to one side of the screen.

The changes that we have decided to make to our thriller sequence are based on the comments we have received. We are going to make sure that all the font is the same and that it is the same size. We are also going to create a pattern for the text to follow as it appears on the screen, making sure it doesn't cover anything important. Also we are going to re-film the ending so that our killers face isn't showing and so that its filmed on an actual camera not a phone so that the screen sizes match. Also we will reduce the gap between them in order to maintain the audiences interest. 

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Production roles - Miss Miller

Before filming we had to allocate production role to the members in our group. We done this because every person would then be able to focus there attention on specific parts of the production process which will allow the areas to be watched in detail, this will result in everyone making there areas the best that they could be. The roles would include a producer, this person is in charge of the location of the filming. Also we have the director, who is in charge of changing and adapting original ideas to make the sequence run smoothly and they also position the characters. Then we have the actors, who act out the narrative to show the storyline of the sequence. Following this, we have the dieter of photography, this person is in charge of the camera and enforcing the shots and camera angles that we chose to have in our sequence. Next we had the music producers who is in charge of what music/sound is layered over the different frames. Then we have a screenplay writer, who is in charge of the narrative and deciding if it needs changing or adapting. We also have the MES co-ordinator who's is in charge if the hair/make up and iconography in the sequence. Finally we have the editor who is in charge of putting the sequence together and making it run smoothly.

In our group we decided who was going to do the roles by looking at the strengths and weaknesses of each person so that everybody was allocated roles that best suit them. 


 I am  responsible for being the director of photography, we chose me for this role because i was the one who filmed our sequence for the preliminary task and isn't one of the actors. I is also responsible for being the director as the other members of the group are actors so i can give an over view of how everything looks and how it is coming out on the camera. My final role is the mise-en-scene co-ordinator because I'm not an actor so will be able to see everyones costumes clearly and did photography at school so knows what type of materials and colours look best on camera. The tasks that I have done within these roles are to make sure that the camera is charged and works, made sure that the correct things are seen on the camera and telling the actors where to stand so that the camera captures them well.

Kerry is responsible for being the screen play writer because a lot of her individual storyboard was included in the group storyboard and she has a clear understanding of what she wants the narrative to include as  she has helped create a narrative for an opening sequence before because my friend had to do it for his media at gcse level. She is also responsible for editing because i was the person who edited our preliminary task due to the other group members not being in and she found it fairly simple so have a better knowledge of how to edit on the mac computers and because she has the same computer at home so She is more familiar to it. The tasks she has done so far with these responsibilities is to adapt the story board slightly so that the antagonist looks more threatening, start editing the opening sequence by making the opacity of the picture darker so it imitated the low key lighting we wanted and making sure that the credits don't cover the min parts of the sequence.

Meghan is responsible for being the producer as she has a wide knowledge of our local area because she has lived here the longest so knows where different locations that we can use are. She is also responsible for the actors because she knows the character roles well so will know who is best suited and can help advise them on what they need to do to make the sequence more successful and realistic. Her final role is the music producer because she has seen many thriller films and when we were creating our group storyboard she was able to describe certain sounds from films that she had previously seen that would be effective to use in our sequence. So far Meghan has changed the location of filming so that we could all get to it easier and said who would be best suited for the acting roles.

Opening scene narration - Miss miller

Our opening sequence will start with a establishing/long shot of the house.  We will layer natural/low key lighting over this. And there will be an eerie whistling sound of the wind, which is a non-diegetic sound. We will then begin to zoom into the house, then use a straight cut to change into zooming down a hall way of the house. We will see conventional iconography on the walls such as a knife and blood. Again low key lighting will be used, however we will have brighter lights of the main iconography. None of our characters will be seen yet. We aim to use contrapuntal sound of this frame of creepy but happy music. A wipe editing technique will be used to go to the next frame which is a point of view, going towards a door as if they are the antagonist going into the door. A non-diegetic sound will be used for this and that sound will be the creaking of a door. A dissolve shot will be used to go into the next frame which is a stedicam shot of the sideboard in the house. The iconography seen will be a broken picture of the killer and his mother when they was younger with blood on it. Non-diegetic sound will be layered over this of child hood music and playing sounds. A spot light will be on this photo to highlight it from the rest of the frame.
Following this, a jump cut will be used switch to a long shot of the antagonist, in a room in his house, looking at polaroid photos of presents and previous victims on the wall. We are going to layer low key lighting over this frame. One of our characters, the antagonist, is going to be in this shot. He will be wearing all black and dark clothing with gloves on. Mumbled speech is going to be layered over this frame which is a off screen sound. Furthermore, we will use a linking shot to go to an over the shoulder shot of the antagonist looking at the  images and circling the last photo. This will be in the same room as the previous frame. The screeching of the pen will be heard in this shot, which is a non-diegetic sound. Another linking shot will be used as the camera begins to zoom into the photo of the current victim. Obviously, the photo is the iconography that is seen in this frame is the photo. The danger for the victim will be show be low-key lighting being layered over this frame. A whoosh noise of non-diegetic sound will be used over this frame. A jump cut will quickly change the frame to a close up of the victims face and this will slowly begin to zoom out to reveal more of the victims circumstances. It will go from the photo of her to her in real life. The iconography used will be duck tape over the victims mouth. Harsh lighting will be used above the head of the victim, looking down onto her. Our victim character will be seen in this frame. We decided that we was going to use no sound over this, complete silence. A dissolve editing technique will then be used to go to the next frame.
Which will be a long shot to show the room and surroundings of the victim, it is also going to reveal blood/previous victims clothing/photos, which is going to show the audience that the killer has killed before. We decided to use bright harsh lighting to expose the victim, the lighting will be similar to that in an operating room. Also we will use an on-screen sound of breathing over this frame. To follow this the long shot will remain the same to show the victim escaping from the rope she was tied with. The same iconography will be seen as in the frame before as it is going to be in the same room. And the lighting will remain bright and harsh. Then it will fade into a long shot of the girl tiptoeing out of the killers house. No iconography will be seen in this shot. Also the lighting will be low key as the girl is trying not to get caught. We will use a non-diegetic sound of a floor creaking in this frame. We will then use linking of a section to go into another long shot of the girl opening the door in the abandoned house so that she can escape. The lighting will remain low key.
Then we will use a mid shot of the antagonist just after he has realised that the victim has escaped, he will be wearing a mask and dark/black clothing. In the background the polaroid iconography will be seen. To show the darkness of the situation will are going to layer low key lighting over this frame. The sound will go from silence to a high pitch screeching noise to show the panic rising of the antagonist. We will then use a jump cut to go to the next frame. We are going to use panning to show the victim running out of the house and through the forest, as this will show her situation. We are going to layer low key lighting over the frame. The music that we are going to layer over this frame is going to be face and slow pace to represent the victim and the antagonist. Similarly to this we are going to use a straight cut to show the antagonist walking quickly through the forest. No iconography is going to be seen in this frame, apart from the antagonist himself who will be wearing dark clothing and a white mask. We are going to continue the fast and slow pace music in the frame. Another straight cut in going to be used to change to a point of view/handheld to show the scene from the victims perspective. From this shot we will see what the victim would be seeing and too add to the effect of this frame we are going to layer heavy breathing and footsteps as the sound in this frame as this would be the sound that they would hear.
Similarly to the following frame we will the switch to a point of view/handheld from the antagonists perspective, which will show the victim running in front of him. This frame will be set in the forest. Natural and low key lighting is going to be used in this frame. And we will be hear the footsteps and heart beat of the antagonist, which will be considerably slower then the victims. A straight cut will then be used to switch to a long shot of the victim falling over a stump in the forest. The lighting will be low key and dark in this shot to show the danger for the victim. We will hear a gasp and screaming in this shot. A reaction shot will then be used to switch then frame to a close up of the girls face showing her reaction to falling over in the forest. The lighting will remain low key and dark. Also the sounds will remain similar of heavy breathing, gasping and crying. Following this a jump cut is going to be used to switch to a mid shot/ over the shoulder shot of the girl getting dragged backwards in the forest. The lighting will remain dark and low key as like in the frames before. No iconography is going to be seen in the frame. Both of our actors will be seen in the frame the victim and the antagonist, however not all of the antagonist. We will only hear a scream from the antagonist.
Our final frame is going to be similar to the first frame which is a long shot of the killers house, it will start zoomed in and slowly zoom out. No iconography will be seen in the frame. We will have natural low key lighting. The sound that we will layer over this frame is going to be an eerie whistling of the wind.

Risk assessment- Miss Georgiou

It is important that we consider all possible risks when filming our opening sequence to ensure the safety of us and the surrounding public. Therefore while writing up our risk assessment we covered any possible risks for us and the public. The risk assessment has also given us some guidelines of what will be appropriate to do when filming and what is to dangerous to do. The risks if not identified could lead to injury of our actors and the public. As a result it is vital we consider everything that could go wrong. An example of a hazard that we considered is that is going to becoming dark very quickly and as a result of this our actors could fall and hurt themselves or run into things which would result in injury. The prevention that we decided on for this hazard it to become familiar with our surroundings before it gets back and then when it is dark be extra cautious of tour surroundings.  

Filming schedule- Miss Georgiou

The purpose of the filming schedule is to make sure that our group is organised, and that we know exactly what and when we are going to film. Also it is important because it gives us guidelines to follow therefore we would have a good idea of how long it is going to take us to film and what is going to be filmed when. As a result of this we can insure that we have all of the iconography we need which will make us more organised. Additionally, we will know where we are going for the location, that will stop any arguments that could delay  our filming. We will also have guidelines of what shots types we are going to use, as a result we will have a good idea of what each frame should look like.
We also wrote what costume/hair/make up we want to use, this is ensure that whoever is in charge of this will no what the the scene should look like. Which will make our filming run smoother.
By doing the filming schedule we also have a list of the different iconography and equipment we are planning to use and as a result of this we can make sure that we have everything we need.

Unfortunately, the first date that we planned to filmed did not go to plan, as Kerry forgot to collect the camera from our teacher. Therefore we could not start our filming. Also kerry was ill as well on the day we planned to filmed, therefore we have altered this day to the following wednesday.