Final Edit

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

I looked into the company 'Lionsgate' to use to distribute my product. I thought this would be a good company to use because they distributed other thrillers such as 'American Psycho', the 'Saw' films and 'Hostel'. 'Saw' made $103,096,345 and 'Hostel' made $80,578,934 so their films also make a lot of money which would be a good thing for my product. Another company that I could consider is 'Universal Pictures' because they are a very big successful company, they have also distributed some thrillers including 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstien'. These films were very successful and are still recognized now even though they were both released in 1931 which is good for my film. Unfortunately I could not find the exact figures for these films, however I still think this would be a good media institution for me.

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

My preliminary task taught me the basics of using Adobe Premiere Pro and using the cameras, however the thriller opening taught me to use the cameras and software in much more depth. In my preliminary task I learnt how to import the videos and cut them but i couldn't use the software anywhere near as well as I can now. In my preliminary task I had a number of problems including the fact that our group didn't neccesarily balance out all of the different tasks that well, I did some editing but I didn't get the chance to do much filming, however I did a lot of the storyboards and planning. I learnt from my mistakes and for the thriller we managed to balance it out much better so each of us did a bit of each thing and we were all involved in the whole process. The fact that we got much more time to plan for our thriller than we did our preliminary task also helped and that we researched it using questionnaires and looking at other openings for ideas meant our thriller was able to be much more creative and interesting and if I was to do filming in the future I would definately consider doing questionnaires again.

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

I learnt how to use the video cameras and tripods from filming our thriller. I also learnt how to use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the opening. In Adobe Premiere Pro I learnt a number of different skills, for example adding the different clips of film to the programme and cutting them to make them shorter. I also learnt how use fast colour corrector to make the clips appear darker and adding transition effects between the clips. I learnt a lot of things about using the cameras also, for example how to do the white balance with a piece of paper which I learnt from one of the problems that we had which was that all of the footage we had was much too bright when we first did our recording.

How did you attract/address your audience?

A similar film opening to ours is the opening to 'Se7en', the age rating for this film is an 18 which is within our target audience but as our target audience is 16 -25 we have made our film slightly less scary. Our film will attract our target audience by having an interesting story line and including characters that the audience can relate to and putting them in situations that the target audience could possibly relate to. We have done this by using people within the target audience to act in our opening and dressed them in casual looking everyday clothes. Also, although obviously supernatural things don't happen to everyone they are more realistic than monsters and other things like that and people do report to having them happen to them so our storyline is more believable.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our media product are 16 -25 year olds. We can make sure that our thriller is enjoyable for this target audience because the majority of the people that answered the questionnaire were in this group and we made sure we took notice of the results from the questionnaire when making our opening sequence. Another thing that we took into consideration when choosing our target audience was that a thriller may not be suitable for under 16's, especially as our thriller is paranormal and therefore could be scary for the audience. To back this point up i looked into the age rating of other thrillers and all of the 'Saw' films are rated 18 in the UK and 'Paranormal Activity' is rated 15.

How does your media product present a particular social group?

The results of our questionnaire show that most of the people that answered it were between the ages 16 -25, we therefore decided that we would aim our thriller at this age group. The people acting in our thriller are also between this age group as they are all 16 or 17 so the target viewer should be able to relate to the film. The locations that we filmed are also everyday places that young adults might be around and the clothing that the actors are wearing are very simple, for example just plain blue jeans and and denim shorts.

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

After doing our questionnaire we decided to do a paranormal thriller and therefore we included forms and conventions of a paranormal thriller. We used the forms and conventions from other thrillers by forshadowing what is going to happen in the rest of the film in the opening. We have also used music that helps to build suspense which is another typical convention of thrillers. We got most of our inspiration for the opening from the film 'Se7en' this opening uses flashing images that don't give away the storyline to the audience but they do forshadow what is going to happen and leaves the audience wanting to know more which is what we aimed for in our opening. Below is an image of all of the characters from the opening and what they are wearing.

Improving our thriller

There were a lot of improvements that needed to be made to our thriller opening, the two biggest improvements were how short our opening was and the lack of sound. Unfortunately I was unwell for the week after our group finished our first draught and therefore missed a week of improvements. Lizzie, Emma and Kristina filmed some more footage at Attenborough Church to put into our thriller to make it longer. We then spent a lot of time on Adobe Premiere Pro adding this footage, changing things around and adding music to our thriller. We then still didn't have quite enough footage and decided that we needed to film a bit more, however we were able to do this in college on the field which was more convenient for us. We also decided to slightly change the story of our opening and use the clips we currently have as flashbacks and do some more filming of Kristina talking about her experience to someone else in order to make our opening longer and give it more of a storyline.