Coursework evaluation

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

A thriller contains a few needed aspects, most importantly is suspense building up tension pushing the plot along, another important factor is to create an enigma that our protagonist has to solve and finally finishing with a big climax at the end when the situation is over. There are two forms of thriller, historical and contemporary thrillers. Historical thrillers cause suspense and tension produced in the past. An example of a historical thriller can be ‘psycho’, made by the grandfather of the thriller genre Alfred Hitchcock. Contemporary thrillers are modern, and have you sitting at the edge of your seat with suspense filled, sophisticated narratives, however often may contain typical or even stereotypical themes. Examples of contemporary thriller themes can be espionage or political terrorism such as ‘James bond’

In our group we decided to make a contemporary/modern thriller on urban street life, our media product uses, develops and challenges forms and conventions of real media products.
Our modern thriller is about the drug and knife/violence crime in the UK, a thriller theme that we chose to use, often used in contemporary thrillers. For example, we tried to create a similar outcome to ‘kidulthood’ in the terms of the style of its theme because of it great popularity of its target audience. We also tried to incorporate more conventions of the thriller genre such as suspense to keep the audience involved in the narrative and keep them attracted, Quentin Tarentino done this very efficiently in ‘reservoir’ dogs with its twisting plot and sophisticated narrative. Our product is similar to this aspect and forms of thriller in the terms that the narrative is being pushed along by suspense. We used more conventions of the thriller genre, such as using DV cameras to have the grainy video with edgy movements to add the realism of London exfoliating its dispositions. The result of this was a more unfriendly picture, many thriller films use techniques such as obscure angled close ups for a dramatic, uneasy effect during the climax or after to slow its pace .Unlike many media products, Hollywood uses celluloid, the best quality video creating a perfect environment, and this is the opposite of what we wanted. Certain thriller techniques such as point of view shots and over the shoulder shots were used along with dramatic irony to increase suspense to create the tense atmosphere needed with the mise-en-scene and the characters. This is using the conventions of the thriller genre as suspense is a very common technique to increase tension. We used typical conventions of a thriller such as quick cuts with obscure camera angles, uneasy sound, and unfriendly sets to create an edgy feeling.
Our media product challenges Hitchcock’s historical thriller form and some aspects of the conventional form. Firstly it does not follow Hitchcock’s conventions of the historical thriller with his famous “psycho” were the pace is slow until it is increased slowly with a high climax. And it also differs from the contemporary thrillers such as the ‘James bond’ series, were the protagonist just about solves the enigma in a climax. Our media product is almost the opposite were the pace is set fast from the start, ending with a cliff-hanger were the audience can think what they want. We done this to not provoke the audience, and like ‘kidulthood’ and ‘adulthood’ the audience can believe the best outcome.

However our media product does not directly challenge forms of representations such as having a female protagonist but rather develops them. The characters who acted in our film were chosen accordingly making sure they were dressed and spoke appropriately to fit in with the narrative. We chose to use a typical stereotype for the characters to provoke and also to add realism to the fact that any ‘hoodlum’ could be a suspect of this behaviour. These white hooded males fitted in perfectly in the gritty suburbs of London, not challenging conventions, but developing them, creating a stereotype such as hooded males are more likely to commit crime.
We also introduced a score that at the same time as creating tension in the audience would be the kind of music teenagers would listen to, allowing the audience to relate more. The score would be increased and decreased depending on the tension; however this challenges forms of score in thrillers. Hitchcock for example in ‘psycho’ used a slow, uneasy orchestra to build up the tension and for a climax he used loud violin stabs. However in our media product we have an upbeat urban score pushing our plot along with little time to pause, suggesting a state of flux were everything is in motion like the city. The result of this, like ‘kidulthood’ is that the target youth are very engaged with the score and relate to it.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Films that are similar and influenced our outcome were films such as ‘kidult hood’ and ‘adulthood’ that used similar techniques including a score that the target audience would relate to. Our theme relates to two types of crime that are most likely crimes to be committed by the teenage population, our target audience. Our media product represents hooded teenage males directly. We used male ‘hoodies’ as characters showing the stereotypical crime offenders, however most people would argue that young black males are more likely to be represented as breaking the law. We done this to imply that ethnic differences don’t make a difference, however I believe there is a lack of diversity in race in our product. Our media product represents the youth in a negative way; however it is important to remember that the majority of social groups are not represented. The message in our media product can actually educate the youth, and breaking the law will lead to prison. The actors in our product were also teenagers to exaggerate the stereotype of young offenders, if youth is represented; it is much more likely that our target audience would be able to relate to our product and be influenced.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

If produced in Britain it could be a large success to show in large chains of cinemas such as Vue for our under 18 audience, this is the mass market,. We have checked and used regulatory concerns of the BBFC and have made sure our audience is targeted for 15+. It is clear now that the target audiences are teenagers.
If a media institution was to distribute our media product it would have to be mainstream, however it had a low budget and gritty style our target audience is the youth and this is the majority of the market, to distribute it mainstream is most efficient for the largest audience. Our media institution could distribute our product to all cinemas and with recent technology there could be trailers and advertisements on the internet via video sharing sites or even film festivals. Usually mainstream productions have high budgets and are usually involved in high quality blockbuster Hollywood movies such as ‘X-men’; these films are the distributed to all the major cinema chains for the mass market usually heavily influenced by money.

Art house institutions are more concerned in an individuals directing, interpretations and implications of the film, often with a hidden meaning in the media product. Many films like these are distributed to independent cinemas and rarely to mainstream cinemas, this is for the minority of the audience more as art.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I addressed my audience by making our media product represents teenagers directly, we strived for accuracy in these representations so they can be clearly identified. One large factor in attracting our audience that we used was suspense; this pushed our plot along and kept the audience engaged. The increase of the score as tension rose ensured this suspense and apprehension. A second way of keeping the target audience engaged was the use of its original score, mentioned before ‘kidulthood’ was very popular with its scores on the target market. We took this idea and used an urban beat as a score, making our product appeal and address our audience of the youth.

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

During the production we all have learnt about different technologies such as types of camera, types of recording techniques and even distributions of products. For example in our production we used digital video cameras, this is because we wanted a gritty, dull picture creating realism as oppose to the celluloid ‘Hollywood’ films that are much brighter showing a perfect environment, creating unrealism .e.g. ‘matrix’. One problem we encountered with our D.V cameras is that there was a lack of microphone therefore making it difficult to include lengthy dialogue in our sequence. However to overcome this problem, we used the editing software ‘i-movieHD’ to lower our realistic grainy sounds of the scene, increase our dialogue and insert our score. This non linear editing program allowed us to make big alterations and additions easily during the editing We also took advantage of today’s internet, the final cut of our thriller opening sequence are published on the video sharing site ‘YouTube’. The advantage of this is that we can continually receive audience feedback building up our research, on positives, negatives and overall what peoples opinion

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

Compared to our approach to our preliminary task we were very efficient and productive. From our encounter with the preliminary we had many difficulties; we experienced trouble both in filming and editing. Firstly we did not check our set properly, the result of this was lighting had taken away visibility from our video, this problem was learnt and when recording our main product we extensively checked our setting and lighting. Another complication we had was with the technology; we had filmed our preliminary and then could not transfer the data from the video to the editing program. This was very frustrating, so to avoid it happening again we tested our equipment by filming a few seconds and transferred it into the editing sequence, we made sure it worked and we were ready to film. Overall I have learnt a considerable amount since the preliminary task and I believe this is visible in our final media product.