Evaluation - Question 1

Evaluation : Question 1

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

real media products?

Our chosen genre for our film was social realism/thriller. We decided to pick this genre as we thought that it was quite a challenging concept to merge two genres together into one, and also because these two genres are popular in present day. Although we wanted to follow some conventions of a thriller on the basis that our target audience will understand that thriller is the genre, we did not want to make is too stereotypical, as we felt that our film would then become too predictable and therefore less exciting for the audience. Having said this, we did use conventions of both social realism (semi-improvised scripts, everyday situations, working class, natural & dull lighting) and thriller (stalker, tense music, quick cuts and dark shots.) When making our short film, we had to follow certain codes and conventions to help make our film look as professional as possible and challenge forms of real media products. Researching narrative, genre and different types of cinematography, helped us understand what the film industry looks for, before starting my own short film.

Creating tension is one convention that is used a lot in typical thriller films today. This is a good way of keeping the audience interested as well as being 'on guard.' We felt that this should be a convention that we needed to add into our film. We used various different music tracks and sounds to build tension. We also used a range of different camera angles, shots and the use of flashbacks to create suspense. Our narrative was planned in that we did not give to much away about what happened to our protagonist. This gives the audience a slight mystery as they do not know what happened to her. This helps create a bigger audience fan base, as if we were to make a sequel, the audience would want to watch it to find out what happened to Marnie Ranger. However, one way we challenged this convention was by having limited dialogue. We decided to do this to create more tension and to also add impact of the unknown. In present day, seeing films with limited dialogue is very rare and we felt that this would give the audience an exciting appeal.

To make our film as professional and as real as possible, we wanted to incorporate as many angles and movements as possible. In films such as 'The Women In Black' the audience only experience fear when watching. We wanted to enhance this convention and try to get the audience to experience what the characters are going through. For example, when the protagonist is jogging back home, there is a point of view shot to put the audience in her shoes. We did this with the antagonist too, when he is stalking Marnie. This is a technique that most thrillers use.

For editing, our aim was to create the sense of fear, tension and suspense. We used flashbacks for the majority of our film, a technique that was effective and necessary when working with the constraint of a 5 minute running time. Because we only had such a short running time, we had to make sure that the flashbacks ran effectively and quickly.

Within our ancillary texts, there were also many conventions in that we needed to add. For example, on real film posters there are many features that need to be included. For example, start ratings, quotes, list of media, institution company etc..

One way that we challenged the convention of not making our poster give too much away that it is a thriller was by the light colours used and the more basic text.

In my poster, we had to make it look very professional. I therefore researched various film posters to help us with our imagination. We added the producers/editors and actors names as the audience would recognize the famous names and would be more likely to go and watch the film.

We also have a subline underneath the title to give the audience a teaser message of what is to happen in the film and the message our film gives. We also have a age certificate and good reviews in our poster, and we also have a large picture of the protagonist in the middle of the poster to attract the audience.

Large picture in the central of the poster

to attract the audience.

Star Ratings.

Institution company.

Actors, directors and editors

names.

Name of the film and subline underneath.

For our radio trailer, we decided to add a more hip hop sound track to go away from the norm of having a suspenseful soundtrack which is very stereotypical. We also have audience feedback, letting the viewers know that other people that have already watched the movie would definitely go and see it again. This helps our movie become more attractive to the audience, as it is being talked about in a good way. We also have little snippets of audio clips from our film to create suspense for our viewers and to give them a bit of a teaser of what is yet to come in our film. This creates suspense and anticipation for the audience, leading them to want to watch our film and see what happens.