What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the Entirety of creating this product we have learned several new things about technology, and its uses.

Camera: We have learned how to film effectively using a digital camcorder that saves on to a SDHC memory card, and we found that this had many advantages over the conventional film roll based Video Cameras. For example there were some shots that we filmed and decided were not suitable for use in our final piece so we just deleted them off the card. This had several advantages, as we found that because we could delete the poor quality clips we had more space available on the card to re-film and get better quality footage. The other advantage with having A memory Card is backups of the footage can easily be made making sure that important parts of the film are not lost. We learned how to make a good piece of film with a camcorder, as we leaned different shots that would be good to involve and include in our film.

Editing: For editing our video we used a Mac Pro and the software we used was was Final Cut Pro which is industry standard software. At first it was difficult to Use the editing suite as the majority of our group had never used a mac before. However this was not a problem as we quickly learned and became confident using the Macs and Final cut pro.We learned that we could add effects such as Bad TV. Bad film, add effected texts and change parts of clips that we would not have been able to do if we ware using software such as Windows Movie Maker. We also learned how to add and change other effects such a the lighting and contrast. When editing our media product we changed the lighting in the film and made it seem darker than it actually was at the time that we filmed it. We could also change the colour of the film. An example of this is toward the end of our main task, where the main protagonist is lay in the tunnel. We changed the colour of the film to try and represent death well and add mystery to the film. We felt that changing this scene into black and white would help us to portray a sort of miserable feeling as the mian protagonist lays dead.

Through the use of the macs and final cut pro this has helped make our film opening look more authentic rather than just your average home movie.

We also used the technology of photoshop to produce a poster that we could potentially use if we were to distribute our media product. Considering a few members in our group were new to this technology, we all worked together and now fully understand many of the basic features of photoshop.

How did you attract/address your audience?

During the making of our opening sequence, we considered a number of techniques which would be used effectively to define the chosen genre and grab the full attention of our audience. To start, our audience consists of both genders, varying from the ages of 15 to 25.
The main protagonist in our media production is female and around the same age as the main intended audience. Therefore, the audience are able to relate to the protagonist and makes them feel more involved in the film, as they would relate/warm significantly more towards a person of their own age rather than if the protagonist was an old man for example. Our media product would also make the audience feel connected to the female in the film. This is because she is a young female walking alone in an area of forest. She is instantly seen as very vulnerable, and as she has her hood up there is an element of mystery, which leaves the audience interested and wanting to know who she is and what significance she has in the film.
As our chosen film genre was thriller, we had to use certain techniques to make it represent the thriller genre so it would be easier to attract our intended audience. To do this we used various techniques involving our camerawork, mise en scene and editing.
Our camera work was mainly hand held, as this adds to the scary nature of the film, that we were trying to portray. It also helped us to show that the film had a stalker theme.
We placed our film in a forest as we felt it gave the effect of lonliness and vulnerability to the protagonist. It is also a typical place where someone can be murdered etc, as it is in a secluded area. We also chose to film in a tunnel, because it's a very desolate area that not many people would go by therefore a typical place to dump a body, that wont be found easily.
While editing we put alot of jumpcuts in to show the jumpiness of the film and it also added to the scary nature of the film. We also put in cross dissolves so our media product would flow nicely together.
The title of our film is 'Berore I Wake'. We felt that this title would attract our audience as the title of the film doesn't really give anything away to the audience. We felt that as there is an element of mystery to the title, this may attract an audience as they will want to find out about the film.
We also decided to take in consideration how we would distribute/advertise our product, by thinking what techniques would be good to advertise our product and would be used by more popular distribution companies. We then decided to create a poster for our media product.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media product would be prodominantly young people, but may also appeal to people of an older age also. The young people we list would most likely be from around 15 to 25. As our film is a thriller, it would attract many people and we would be aiming for hopefully a mass audience and not just a niche market. There is no particular gender or ethnicity that we aim for our audience to be, but think it would appeal to all genders and ethnicities. We feel it would appeal to males as it is a thriller and the male audience would be attracted to this sort of film, as it isn't a chick flick, romance comedy etc. We also feel it would appeal to the female audience, as the main protagonist in our film is a female. The female audience would be more likely to warm to her than they would if our main protagonist was a male. As the main protagonist is a female, and is walking in a forest alone, she is automatically vulnerable and almost gives off a 'damsell in distress' sort of feel which would attract a female audience. We have not tried to appeal to a particular social class, but feel like this would appeal to both as we haven;t represented class in the film. We have not represented working class people in this film or middle class etc.

What kind of institution would distribute your product and why?

The film Brick’s main production company is ‘Focus Features’ which is a massive company parented by NBC Universal which has produced very successful films such as Atonem ent, and In Bruges. Another suitable company would be Rogue Pictures, who were the production company for the strangers. As the two companies are well known in the media industry and have experience with working with very similar media Texts. The advantages that this would give us is that the companies know how to market Thriller/Horror films and successful marketing can often be the make or break of a film regardless of the quality of the film.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our main film consists of one character, and is a young girl. We chose to have a girl as the main character as a common stereotype is that girls are generally seen as more vulnerable and almost the weaker sex in terms of physical ability. The main social group our media product represents is females, with our film showing how defenseless they are on their own. This is common of the thriller type films as the victims are usually women. The girl in our media product is white, as this is the only choice we had. However, we did not aim to represent a particular ethnicity. The first shot of the female in our product shows her walking down a path in the middle of a forest. A stereotype of a girl her age, which is roughly around 16/17, is that she would be hanging with friends etc. This raises the question as to why is she out walking through a forest all alone. Also, females around this particular age are thought to want more independence, and think they are more grown up than they actually are. This shows by the fact that she is walking on her own and could represent the fact that she wants to be alone maybe. There is also the possibility of naivety and that the protagonist believes that it is safe to be walking alone.

Also in our film, the main protagonist is wearing a hooded jumper with her hood up. This is to hide her face and to add more mystery to our product. By not seeing the main protagonists face, the audience does not get to know the protagonist or establish a relationship almost as her identity is unknown.

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

The main genre of our media product is a thriller, in many ways our media product compares to many other films of this genre. Firstly because of the way it has been structured and the camera work we involved into our film. Our media project involves many different aspects of handheld camerawork including the effects that the main protagonist is being stalked throughout the woods, which is an important feature within our film. We were able to give this effect by holding the camera behinds the trees and also running whilst holding the camera which although it makes the quality of the film very poor, it distinguishes our film as a thriller and that even though its not clear, something bad is going to happen to the main protagonist.
Before we chose the main genre of our film, we were quite certain in what we wanted to do which was a thriller, we chose this genre because we found it was the easiest to portray in the short amount of time we were given and also that it would be quite interesting to research and conduct ourselves into how a thriller is made. We conducted research into various thriller films, such as The Blair Witch Project, The Strangers, and also Silence Of The Lambs.
Firstly, we chose to conduct research into The Blair Witch Project because it is highly popular and known, especially for its use of handheld camerawork. This feature was a main aspect of what we wanted to include in our media product. We also thought that this film was relevant to our main product because of its fairly similar location, and it also doesn’t fully allow the audience to know what’s going on, which leaves them interested and intrigued into what’s going to happen next after the beginning of the film has ended.
We also researched The Strangers and The Silence Of The Lambs; as these were both thrillers and both have slight scenes of our chosen location of a forest. The Strangers forest scene had a lot more impact on the thriller genre in comparison to Silence Of The Lambs because of the context it was put in. This is because in The Strangers the woman in the area of forest was being followed, whereas in the beginning of silence of the lambs the woman is just running through the forest to give the film an eerie feel.
The final film that we analyzed was Brick. This film influenced the way in which we chose to improve our final media product, and was a fundamental inspiration into the way we edited our product e.g. the flash-forwards of the tunnel scene we incorporated into our main media product. The originally thought features that we thought of ourselves and included into our media project were the various different video effects we used such as the “bad film, and bad television effects” which were basically cut in scenes from the tunnel that involved miniature cross dissolves, dark colored effects which were different to other parts in the film and also we incorporated two clips we had filmed into the one clip we inserted into our media project.

Our initial idea was to film the whole task in one location; that location being Heaton Park. We were going to end the main task with the main protagonist (Emma), being chased from behind and being caught. In our initial idea, there was no plan of showing the main protagonist dead or unconscious throughout the task. We then decided we wanted the film to be more interesting and have a bit more depth that it had in the beginning, so we decided to use one more location to show the transition from the main character being followed, to when she has been captured and is lay in a tunnel. The different and second location we decided to use was Platt Fields as we wanted to add more to the task, as it would be dull if it was just the main protagonist walking through an area of forest. We also did not have much footage, so that was another reason we decided to film parts of it in Platt Fields park in Fallowfield.

We thought Heaton Park would be a good place to film our task as it has a lot of wooded areas, and would be a good place to film the type of film we wanted to. It was a good location to be able to show the main character being followed and watched through bushes etc. Platt Fields was also a good area to shoot parts of our films as it also had some wooded area, and has some deserted parts that mad us able to portray the fact that a body had been dumped, or taken to a particular quiet place, in a derelict area that not many people would pass and see. eg, the tunnel we used to film the main character lying down dead, as it is covered by bushes and trees on both sides and to get there you have to walk through trees and bushes.

We decided that the shots we had filmed in the tunnel at Platt Fields were going to be used as flash forwards throughout certain bits of the film, to portray to the viewer that something has happened, or is going to happen. However, how it happens is not known, as they are only quick flash forwards and do not tell the whole story.