1 in what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products?As our film is a thriller we used a dead body because it instantly hooks the audience as they have seen this body and it makes them think how has it got there and so on. We put a card on the body to add more depth to the murders. So instead of there just being a mad man he is actually smart in the way he kills his victims as the card he leaves represents how he killed the victim, like in the film the 7 of spades was used as the person killed was the 7th person killed by the murderer and he used a spade to do the murder. This idea came from the film ‘Se7en’ as the murderer in this film was smart in the way he killed his victims and left clues, in that case the writing of one of the deadly sins. I believe that you can tell what our film is by the use of the conventions in our opening sequence.
Scene from ‘Se7en’ with a detective but he has a rough look to him with the cuts and bruises
scene from ‘Chasing the Pack’ with another detective who also has an informal look with shirt undone.
2 How does your media product represent particular social groups?In our film we don’t have any females as we didn’t have any girls willing to partake in the movie so you can’t really look at it from a gender point of view, but from a class point of view Detective Inspector Sirius Lee Has had a rough up brining. Raised in the Bethnal Green area of London he learned very quickly how to look after himself and learned the area like the back of his hand. He soon realised that he wanted to make the area a safer place so people don’t have to be raised in an area as rough as his was when he was raised. He has no family as there was an accident with a fire at home but some believe that the fire was started after a man was arrested after an inquiry from Sirius. He lives alone in a derelict flat with only a mattress and a shower to his name. He can live in a nice house but believe material possessions are irrelevant in this world; it’s all about how you carry yourself and earn the respect of the people around you. Whereas the other inspector Shaun Massey had a different upbringing and swagger to him, he grew up in a nice house in a nice neighbourhood made Shaun’s life easy. He had a totally opposite upbringing to that of Sirius. He does though have the same motive as Sirius. Unfortunately he is emotionally involved in the case; one of his close friends was killed by the ‘card murderer’. Maybe this could cloud his view at some point in the case and see a chance to get revenge on the ‘card murderer’ but only time will tell. So the social classes are shown with a man who was raised on nothing being a higher rank than that of a person raised in a nice pace and everything at his feet even though they are roughly the same age which is subverting the stereotype that if you a raised with money and in a nice place you get everything.
The people in the pictures above are the same type of character in the films. Both Sirius Lee (Black Shirt) and David Mills are not your average detectives. They have a rough look and sometimes let their anger take over in serious investigations as seen at the end of ‘Se7en’ and also if we continued to make the film you would have seen this in ‘Chasing The Pack’. A difference between them is that David Mills is a family man and has people he loves around him whereas Sirius Lee is on his own and has no family.
The people in the pictures above are also the same type of characters in the films. Shaun Massey (White Shirt) and William Somerset are your typical straight shooter detectives. They like to step back and have a serious look into the case instead of rushing in. Because of their styles their partners Sirius and David get quite aggressive towards them and this makes the relationships more intriguing. A difference between the two is that Shaun is emotionally involved in this case as hi friend was one of the people murdered by the killer whereas William isn’t but does become this at the end of the film.
3 what type of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
If our film was going to be a big budget Hollywood film a possible distributor would be Momentum Pictures as distributors like these would b
e able to give more financial backing on advertising and they would help produce a better film with a larger budget to get our audience into the cinema to watch our film. Although if our film was made into a film it would be distributed by Microwave Pictures. The reason for this is that our film would be a local low budget film or an independent film. Our audience would be a 
slight niche audience as we would be looking for people who love the tension of a crime thriller film but also people who want to think about a film as the murderer's identity is a mystery which makes people have to work out for themselves who this unknown man is. We could do plenty of merchandising with this film by having t shirts, online games and so on to make the film more interactive.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience is teenage/young adults, aged 15 - 25. Our product is not gender specific, so anybody would be interested in watching our film.
We gave our film a rating of 15. This is because our film met some of the criteria on the BBFC website that made a film a 15. These criteria were things such as bad language and violence. It has scenes with bad language in to show the emotion on the characters in that particular moment, this is seen in our two minute film when the body is found. It also will have scenes of violence in the full length feature as there will be a fight scene between our main character and our murderer. Here is a link to the full list of criteria.
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2/
5. How did you attract/address your audience?There are some particular points that would appeal to our audience. One point being that it is a thriller movie. Our target audience is teenagers/young adults between the age of 15-25. People between this age enjoy thrills, and by going to see a thriller movie they will have excitement, suspense and grittiness would results in getting a thrill. Because our film is pretty gritty, it would encourage people to watch our film because it give an insight to the harsh reality on being on the front line chasing a serial killer. Also, in one particular scene, the viewer is being put into the point of view of the person being beat up by our main character as this shows the emotion on the main character face to make you realise how angry and emotionally connected to the case he is instead of having the fear on the face of the murderer, this was done in a cinematic of the game God Of War 3 when Poseidon is killed, although this particular scene is very graphic it still gives the essence of what we would do, the link below shows this scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEQc8n-844k
6. What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
The camera we used was the HD1000 and we also used a tripod along with it. It has some stregnths and some weaknesses. The camera itself has good image and sound quality, which is essential for making the film more professional looking. It is also easy to use, without any complicated settings so the white balance and focus was set quickly, which is good to be able to produce a film quick and professionally. Although, it has some weaknesses, the tripod wasn't very stable as seen in some of our shots which were a little shaky, which also meant getting the camera straight was quite tough. Another thing is it was hard to transport from one place to another as it was fairly heavy.
I have learned a great deal about editing. Before this course, I had never used Final Cut Express before, but now, I am able to use it with confidence, but I am still learning things such as how to put more professional effects on. We used a few effects on our film which made the overall effect better. We used an earthquake effect on the titles to make them more interactive and also fit to the type of film we created.
7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The planning stage was fairly difficult for our final product, it was hard to get our ideas down on paper, but it helped us when it came to making our film. By drawing out storyboards, we were able to know what kind of shots we needed to make our film look professional, which made us able to shoot them right away, have no arguing amongst the group as the shots where already planned, also instead of filming many different kinds of shots and choosing which looked best during the editing stage. This kind of planning made the filming process much easier as the film could be made quickly to a good quality.
My use of specific shots has improved since our preliminary task, as I am better at match on action and 180 degrees rule to make the film flow better through conversations and other points in the film.
I feel a lot more confident with the equipment as I took part in more of the filming but personally I made a big commitment to the editing of the film we made, whereas in the preliminary task I was only just getting used to using Final Cut Express.
I feel our end product is good at fulfilling the task given to us, as it makes the storyline obvious, and it creates suspense which a good thriller movie would do. Although, if I could make any more alterations, I would provide a voiceover of the murderer talking about why he has killed the people and how he feels about killing all these people so then the audience could have an insight to the mind of a serial killer.
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