Final Evaluation

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





I feel that our media product uses the conventions of real media products throughout, for example as our trailer begins, we are introduced to the production logo at first rather than the title of the film; this is shown as the trailer comes to an end.
We decided to introduce our title of our film at the end of the trailer as this is very common in thriller films, again giving the feeling of suspense and unawareness to the audience at all times, leaving then hanging on to the very end to uncover the truth or get answers, we decided to carry this feeling throughout our trailer, including the title.


The font we choose was ‘courier new’ on Microsoft work format, the design of our font was similar to that of a type writer, we thought this was would be appropriate to the theme of our film, being thriller, as many thriller’s nowadays involve some kind of investigation or solving an issue in order to get the truth or correct answer. So again we wanted to portray to the audience a sense of mystery and suspense in order for them to carry on watching and keep wondering what is going to happen next.

Next our setting/location uses the forms and conventions of real media products by being set in a local college. We choose the location of Havering College in Hornchurch as it went with our storyline and the characters involved. The characters in our trailer are both portrayed as students and therefore the college environment would link with the fact that they are both seen in a college. This type of setting is common in thrillers as they like to provide a sense of normality to the audience before the not so normal action happens, so giving an image of everyday, common ways of living to kind of confuse the audience into not expecting anything bad or evil happening.



Another common convention of any film, not just a thriller is the costume and props used. So in our film we decided to use again, everyday, common costume to give a sense of characters that the audience could relate too. That being the ‘typical teenage student’ and ‘a mature student’. The types of costume that we choose to use were casual wear, of jeans, t-shirt and jackets, typically expected of student.
When we were deciding on what type of props to use we wanted to keep them to a minimum, so the actors involved in our filming wouldn’t become confused and overloaded with remembering which prop to use and when, so we narrowed our props down to as few as possible, those being a wheelchair, notepad, ladies bag and a car.

Our conventions and use of real media product continues into the camerawork and editing used to make the trailer. For example we just to use fade out’s when opening the trailer to make the transition from the film’s logo to the actual film a lot more natural and neatly done. Throughout the film we used shots such as close up’s to exaggerate the facial expressions and emotions of the characters to make it clear the audience just what the characters were feeling. These types of shots a very common in many thrillers, with most thrillers’s not wanting to confuse the audience with too many technical and complicated movements in order for them to fully grasp the concept of the film.

The main story concept and the way in which it is introduced is yet another way that our product uses the conventions of many thriller films.
For instance the trailer begins with thriller themed music, so giving the audience instant realisation of what the film may entail, the music having no lyrics, and a gradually faster paced speed throughout, giving a sense of suspense and the unknown. Most thrillers draw their audience in with the feeling of normality at the beginning, so it leads them to believe all good things will occur within them film, then surprisingly a twist in the story is usually introduced, to confuse and engage the audience into wanting to know what will happen in the end.
Our film goes that exact way, portraying a sense of honesty, normality and a typical, everyday student environment, with typical characters, but then a suspected twist occurs leaving the audience a little confused as to what and why certain things are happening.

Our chosen genre was thriller, so we had to make our trailer instantly shout out thriller right from the beginning in order for it to go along with the typical conventions of modern day thriller films. So we aimed to open our trailer with the instant feel of a thriller film by the use of upbeat and fearful music, isolated locations and very few character’s.
As our trailer begins we are introduced to the main characters straight away, this is done very naturally and maybe not so typically of a thriller film, as many thrillers introduce their characters perhaps individually and not all at the same time, but as we were only producing the 2 minute trailer of a thriller it wouldn’t of been ideal for us to introduce our main characters individually.

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

Our media product represents particular social groups such as middle aged women who study and your average teenage, female student.

For example we choose Jo to play the part of the mature student, as she fit within the type of character we needed to portray the audience; even though in real life she isn’t disabled we decided to add a wheelchair to her character in order to create a sense of vulnerability and the feeling of her being harmless. This would automatically give the audience a feeling that she will play the ‘good’ character in the film and if anything bad happened she would be the last person to be suspected or in questioning for the crime. The use of the wheelchair also paints a picture of being physically unable to cause any real harm or danger to anybody, so therefore when she is seen in the film she is instantly ruled out as to being a suspect or candidate for any crime or wrongs that may happen throughout the film, when in fact it was her plan all along to cause danger and confusion amongst the audience.


We then decided to use myself, Georgia as the young, teenage student.
We decided to do so because I matched the typical look and personality of a college student, we wanted to portray the image of Georgia being caring and helpful but on the other hand naive and gullible too. Although we wanted to give the image of a gullible, young teenager, we still wanted the audience to be able to relate the her, for example for anyone to offer some help to a disabled, middle aged woman in a wheelchair is fairly normal, and would naturally be the automatic thing to do when in this sort of situation, without the thought of danger or harm ever entering your mind.

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

Our thriller would be distributed by a well known media institution who could promote our product on a large scale. Taking into account the age range of our target audience, media convergence could be used to promote our film in places like myspace.com, forums and other social networking sites. The internet would be somewhere where our product would be promoted the most as this age range are those who are most likely to use the internet as opposed to the older generation for example. It would also be advertised in previews in the cinema before a thriller/horror movie plays. This way it focuses on a more specific audience – those who enjoy watching more frightening/scary films.




4. Who would be the audience for your media product?



These would be the ideal audience that our film is aimed at, your typical, everyday, college teenagers. This type of audience is typically found in thriller movies, and we wanted to continue this into our film trailer. We tend to use these type of characters in order to engage the viewers into the realisation of our film and helping to relate to the characters also.
So our media product would be aimed at teenagers aged around 15 and upwards, mainly students in college or university and can vary up until mature adults, depending on their preferred taste of film. Our audience would have hobbies such as meeting with friends, sports, going to the cinema, clubbing and drinking. We decided to target our film at this particular age group as we feel that they are much more prone to go to the cinema or actually take time to watch movies, and in particular thriller's, horror's and comedy's all of which usually always have main characters based around the same age as our target audience, again portraying to the audience a sense of them being naive, immature and reckless.
We also chose to suit our film to teenagers and to both sexes as we feel our film can relate to both gender's, but even though we haven't chosen one particular sex we feel that females may be able to relate to it more as the main characters and storyline is based around women, but overall i feel that both male and female will enjoy it, as we feel the male audience will enjoy the twist and psychological aspects of the film rather than the concept of the story compared to that of what the female audience would do.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

In order to attract my our audience we came up with questionnaires aimed particularly at our target audience, asking them basic questions on what their preference’s are when it comes to movies and genre’s in order for us to get an idea of what they like and dislike and so we can put as much useful information into our planning and filming so we can gain as many appropriate viewings from our desired target audience. Taking into account the results we received from the first questionnaire we able to find out certain things we needed to put into our film, for example we found out that majority of the people that completed the questionnaire favoured the thriller genre, were aged 15+ and enjoyed the ending for our film compared to the beginning. So given this information we were able to aim our audience to the majority of people that filled out our questionnaires that was teenagers aged 15+, also from the questionnaire results we were able to decide on which genre to make our film, that being a thriller.
In our thriller we also created a character that the audience could easily relate to, Natalie who was played by myself was your average, everyday teenage college student. We chose to pick this type of character in order for her to relate to the same ages that would be watching our film, so they would understand the situation and the setting in which our film was set.
Another thing that would attract our audience is the realistic settings and locations featured in the film, that of a modern day college, set in an up and coming area that is home to many young people, again tying in with our desired target audience of teenagers and young adults.


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

Throughout the whole process of the making of our thriller trailer i feel that i have learnt loads from the software and equipment that we had to use when making and editing our films. Before we got set this coursework task i hardly ever used software as detailed and complexes as some of the things we had to use in order to make our work the best quality possible.
Firstly we had to get used to using Apple Mac computers rather than our standard Dell computers that we had, at first it took quite a bit of getting used to, but once we were given a few important tips and had our own trial it became second nature.

When it came to actually filming our trailer we were given top equipment to use, a PD170P Video camera and an extending tripod. At first this equipment was all new to us, and seemed very difficult to use and more importantly to use correctly. To help us get the hang of using the camera's we done a preliminary task, enabling us to use the camera equipment, knowing that we would be using the same things when doing our real task, this helped us become much more confident and better with using such expensive and high tec equipment.



Final cut was the main programme we used. We learnt how to fade in/out; transitions; how to build up our editing skills; adding sound; importing clips from the video camera; and also arranging clips etc.



These are the main sites and different types of equipment we used when constructing our film:

1. Sound Cloud: We made our score music on this software.

2. Scribd: We uploaded images and text onto scrib format to make it more professional.


3. YouTube: We uploaded our finish film onto YouTube to get views from the public.


4. Facebook: We created our own account, inviting people to watch and comment on our finished piece.


5. Blogger: We uploaded each section of our work onto a blog.


6. Final Cut Pro: We edited all our filming on this programme.



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

When planning and filming our preliminary task at the beginning of this project i felt as if i would never be able to complete an actual real task of filming a 2 minute thriller trailer. So when we given our preliminary task it gave me a feeling of practise and a trial run before actually having to do it for real. I feel that from this task it helped me to know how and what to use and how to use it effectivley. Just simple things such as making each shot flow naturally with each other, shooting form different angles and keeping to rules of filming, such as shot reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.
It was also a great opportunity to edit before we went on to film and produce our media thriller.
This task also helped our group determine each of the roles we will play in producing our thriller (director, camerawoman, editor) and helped us to get a general idea of whether our group worked well together. This is when I became the director of our coursework.
Our preliminary task also helped me in terms of our thriller research, and finally deciding what kind of path to go down and what will be appealing to our audience, so knowing typical codes and conventions of thriller films and learning how to incorporate some of those into our production.

Textual Anaysis- What Lie's Beneath

We are introduced to two main characters, Claire Spencer (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford), who play a happily, married couple, living together with Claire's teenage daughter, who is leaving to go to college. Both characters 'everyman' qualities are established throughout the film, with their everyday home, the typical husband and wife setting, Norman being a very successful and wealthy man, in a top position job and in turn providing for his family. Whilst the wife (Claire) is busy being a housewife, taking care of the domestic things, cleaning, cooking and gardening but in turn providing for her husband. The audience could easily identify with these characters due to their everyday, normal lives that are very realistic to actual life now.

The character played by Michelle Pfeiffer, is shown to have been given flaws at the beginning of the film. These flaws being the fact she doesn't work, which allowed her to have time to what seemed to be a reflection period on her past. The actual events of her past aren't shown to the audience clearly at this stage, but whatever has happened obviously had and still has a big affect on her. We know this because we are introduced to her flaws through her looking at old, boxed up photo's, when photo's that she wasn't expecting to see fall on the floor-providing her with a shock, that causes her to have what seems to be an anxiety/panic attack, due to the unknown meaning behind the images.

Throughout the film, many enigma's are created. For example, as the film starts the first few scenes create questions such as Claire's past. Why she gets so anxious when she looks at old pictures? What is she hiding? Another enigma created is involving Claire and Norman's suspicious neighbours, Why does their house looked like it isn't lived in? Why is there a shoe with a blood stain on on the porch? Why is the woman crying alone in the garden?

These are created due to the sound in the scenes, pictures we see and the suspicious actions that the neighbours portray. The information given to the audience create questions like, Are the neighbours involved in the strange actions going on in Norman and Claire's house? And is Claire hiding something that has happened in her past? As the narrative progresses the enigma's created don't really get answered fully, if anything the enigma's first created deepen and make the audience think they re true. Although the previous enigma's created do not get answered, as the narrative goes on, further enigma's are created, foe example, are the strange going's on to do with ghost's or have some spiritual relation?

As the film moves on, more suspense is created. This is by the diajetic sound used, the shots including many close-ups to create and show emotion and blocking out the setting, making it unclear to the audience what or who is in the scene. This suspense makes the audience think that the neighbours definitely have a part to play in whatever is occurring in their house, which leads them to believe that the man living next door has killed his wife and is plotting to kill Claire too. This assumption is made due to the clues and hints given, for example the continuous suspicion created around the neighbours behaviour linked with the weird behaviour things that are going on in Claire and Norman's house.

What the audience think is going to happen doesn't actually happen, in fact what the audience were made to believe was going to happen doesn't even come into what actually does. That being that the neighbours have nothing to do with the odd things going on in the house, instead Norman is the reason for all the scary things his wife Claire has been experiencing. It is all due to him having had an affair many years ago with a girl he used to teach at a university, who had been the missing persons list for years after Norman had taught her. We later learn that Norman actually murdered Madison (Student Norman taught) by pushing her car into the lake with her trapped inside. So it had been Norman's dangerous past that had been haunting Claire all this time.

When the audience realise what is behind the stranger antics happening, it leads to further suspense, asking questions like Why was the student never mentioned to Claire? Why did Norman kill her? As the film comes to an end, we learn more about Norman and his capabilities. For instance we learn that Norman doesn't stop at just having killed Madison, he also tries to kill his own wife too due to Claire knowing through her extensive searching for the answers that ieMadison isn't missing, but is actually dead and was killed by her very own husband. This information is revealed to the audience at the same time that it is revealed to the actors, so we are seeing the action unfold through the character's eyes, as if we are the ones experiencing it.

The main theme in 'What lies beneath' is seen as an investigation. Where by the hero must uncover a series of enigmas to establish the truth. So for instance Claire had to carry out he own, private research on the 'missing' girl in order to work out the reasons why and who was really behind the strange going;s on in her home. Also another theme evident in this film is that the hero discovers a secret that puts her in danger, the secret being the affair that Norman once had with a student and the murder he also committed. Both of these themes aren't explored fully until the end, where both are made clear to the audience. When we discover the secret, and the answers to many of the enigma's are answered in order to discover the real truth.