Task 1:- In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

H:\Challenging Conventions 9 Screen Grabs

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Task 2:- How does your product represent particular social groups?

D:\Social Groups In Thriller

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Task 3:- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I think our film would be best suited to being distributed by a fairly low scale independent institution as supposed to Hollywood. After doing some research on British film companies I decided that the company ‘Red Films’ would be appropriate for the distribution of our product.

www.redfilm.co.uk/

By looking at the website I noticed that the company specialises in very abstract types of film which fits in with the abstract, obscure nature of our sequence. For example ‘Rufus’ which is one of the main filmed distributed by ‘Red Films’ tells the story of a boy with ‘a burning inflamed desire for anything red.’ Because our film is a psychological thriller we decided to concentrate more on the storyline and the feeling of suspense, rather than creating impressive visual imagery which we felt might possibly distract our viewers from the message we are trying to convey. When filming scenes which involved building a wall with bricks, we deliberately chose a plain black studio space in order to really enforce this idea of simplicity and minimalism. We also decided to use unknown actors as our leading roles. Again, this decision was made so that the audience could focus on the actual film rather than A-list celebrities. Furthermore, due to the slightly abstract nature of our sequence, from looking through the footage we got the sense that it might be well received in foreign countries such as France.

Task 4:- Who would be the audience for your media product?

We interviewed Sam Turton,a pschology teacher at Hurtwood House (an independent sixth form school) who enjoys pschological thrillers. He is 25 years old, studied critical theory/modern philosophy at university and his hobbies include reading, creating music. He also enjoys watching movies, his favourite being The Big Labouski. His favourite movie genre is sci-fi and he enjoys thrillers due to the feeling of suspense they create and the uncertainty of what will happen next. I feel that from this interview, we managed to get a pretty clear idea of his personality and interests and we agreed that he represents our target audience.

By complete contrast, we interviewed somebody who we thought would be the total opposite of and ideal audience candidate. Therefore we interviewed Alison Jermyn, a 64 year old librarian at Hurtwood House whose hobbies include reading, gardening and playing bridge. She hates the idea of thriller and horror movies as she doesn't like being frightened.

Task 5:- How did you attract/address your audience?

Media Target Audience Finished

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Task 6:- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

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

H:\Prelim & Thriller

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Final task:- Audience feedback

Good titles

i dont get the whole baby bit but i like the titles and the wall building by what looks like on its own.

Very well lit

gets quite repetitive after a while but amazing titles!!!

I like the way the titles flicker like the title of the film suggests. I'm not sure about the background on the titles though.

nice story, for you never know what's going on. Nice titles.


I love the titles!


In general, I agree with these comments and I agree that the titles are probably the strongest part of the sequence. When watching our piece, I have noticed that sometimes the building up of the bricks does get a bit repetitive but on the other hand, I think this is necessary in order to reinforce the metaphor of isolation. I do like the feel of disorientation that we have created through quick changes from shot to shot although I do agree that at certain points it can be a little too confusing (like with the baby)

Despite our flaws, overall I am happy with our final result. It is well filmed and edited and I like the fact that we have a real story behind the sequence, making it meaningful. We also leave a great deal to the viewer's imagination, rather than just spoon-feeding our audience.

Photos of our filming day

Shoot Day

The first half of our day was spent shooting in the studio where we filmed the building of the wall around the girl who was wearing a long floaty white dress . In order to do this we used real bricks, camera and tripod. Each brick was layed down about every 5 takes (we increased the shutter speed) and this process was repeated until the screen of the camera was covered by bricks. We did this for several different angles and levels as the idea was that the character is being metaphorically buried alive so we needed to make sure that we covered every part of her body, from the feet to the eyes. (which are the last part of her that you see, in order to get a feel of her final anguish and fear before the last brick is layed on) All this was filmed as a close up. For every angle we shot, we filmed an image of the body part which was going to be covered up before putting on the first brick. This was so we could encapsulate the emotions of the character through her body language. For example: fists clenching and unclenching to show fear and frustration. The lighting we used in the studio was fairly dull, which reflected the mood of the sequence. We also filmed shot 6 in the studio which is a shot of the girl standing in the foreground with the ominous shadow of a tall man wearing a hat and trench coat in the background brandishing a rope. First of all, we just filmed a head and shoulder shot of Sarah looking scared and apprehensive in the foreground of the shot. Then Luke (the man) stepped into the background (top left). We put a big white screen in the background which cast a good strong shadow of Luke, which added to the sinister effect. To make it even more mysterious, we filmed it so the audience cannot actually see the man but only his shadow. We then filmed a couple of shots where the man strangles the girl.

After lunch we filmed inside and outside the Lodge: the baby stealing sequence (explained in more detail below) and the bathroom shots (shot 9) which was shot (obviously!) in the Lodge bathroom. This included a few extreme close up takes of Sarah washing her hands extremely vigourously. (until they bled) This represents how metaphorically dirty the character feels so she tries desperately to scrub herself clean and ends up making herself bleed. We used corn syrup as blood.

In order to make sure our shoot ran smoothly, we had to make a few last minute adjustments so it took us a long time to actually begin filming! The actress who was originally going to play our main character was not able to be there. Then Bella (in our filming group) who was next in line to play the role fainted during the filming process (which was quite unexpected and scary!) so in the end Sarah (also in our filming group) played the part of the girl. There were also a few last minute changes in the sequence as there was not enough action in some of our flashback shots. Therefore we made a few alterations around shot 4 filmed outside the Lodge (one of the school boarding houses) where the baby is being exchanged from hand to hand. We decided that instead of filming a simple exchange, we would include some violence by having Luke (who was playing the villain) stab the mother (who I played) and then steal the baby. For this we used a kitchen knife with a bit of HP sauce on it to imitate blood. We decided to use a female character in the end as women tend to be an easier target than men and also it would be more likely to have a mother carrying a baby than a father. I brought in a toy doll which played the part of the baby. The only problem with this was that the doll did not look very realistic so we had to wrap it up in a big pink blanket so we were able to make it obvious that the woman was carrying a baby without the baby actually being seen.

Despite the initial dramas, I think the day turned out to be a success although we did get off to quite a slow start. I think if we had the chance to do it again we would probably have been a bit more organised and made sure that we had all the appropriate props ready and we should probably have got together some back up actors. Overall I enjoyed the filming process and I look forward to editing!