Amanda Wan - Question 3

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

Our media product "Broken Beauty" would be very suitable to be distributed by an independent distribution company such as 20^th Century Fox or Entertainment Films as our audience group is a niche one due to the fact that the content of our story line such as the issue of stalking is mostly related to young teenage school girls between the age of 14 - 18. 



Another reason as to why an independent distribution company would be our choice to distribute our media product is because our media product deals with more "real" issue in reality which our audience can relate to in contrast to the bigger issues in society which mainstream movie production companies tend to incorporate into their films to make it much more interesting and can therefore attract a bigger audience group would seem much more distant from the audiences normal daily life. The issues which our media product has targeted which audience could actually relate to would be a less interesting storyline for commercial viewers and will therefore only attract a more niche audience group.

We have decided to create our own distribution company which we have name it "Smashed Mirror Productions", the image which we have chosen to use for our logo is a smashed mirror which ties in with the exact meaning of the name of our production company.

Through my "Credits Research", I have also learned about the importance of credits within the title sequence of a movie. The order of names and job positions usually depend on their importance. Generally in a mainstream film the names of the lead actors would appear before the director as they will tend to be well  known actors or actresses as mainstream movies are usually a very big production which costs millions, but as our media product is an independent one, our director plays the most important role and was therefore the first to appear on the credits list. Other important names include the producer. 

Amanda Wan - Question 2

Question 2 – How does your media product represent particular social group?

Our media product portrays the typical social group of teenagers /students in particularly teenage girls in two different sides of the spectrum. Within our media product, our character Chloe transformed from a typical popular teenage student to a psychotic and mentally disturbed victim.

Famous chick flick movies such as Mean Girls and drama series such as 90210 have adapted stereotypical teenage characters in which they are glamorized and are portrayed as being attractive, privileged and popular amongst their peers. Their behavior are often presented as being self centered, irresponsible and sexualized, we have adapted a few featured of this stereotype of teenage girls in our media product to make our character Chloe easily identifiable to our audiences.

For the majority of our media product, our character Chloe is presented to be very collected and confident; this is shown through her perfect hair and makeup as well as her fashionable clothing which directly tie in with the typical member of a popular teenage social group.

On the other extreme end, the stereotypical representation of teenage girls is that they are often troubled, which often leads them to become mentally unstable and are constantly in unsound state of mind, television dramas such as Skins have successfully portrayed such character. During the first scene of our opening sequence, our character is shown to be in a isolated psychiatric centre, her messy hair and smudged makeup visibly shows that she is in an unstable state which furthers the idea that she is vulnerable and fragile which is generally also seen as the characteristics of a victim in a thriller movie.

Amanda Wan - Question 1

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

From my product research of looking at the opening sequence of “Se7en”, it uses the convention of having mystery characters which keeps the identity of the villain/murderer hidden to keep the suspense going. Throughout the opening sequence, the killer’s face is not shown, instead the audience can only see his hands crafting away. I have incorporated this convention into my opening sequence, in which the stalkers face is not shown during the opening sequence, by doing so it can keep my audience engaged to the opening as well as to keep the anticipation going.  

Another psychological thriller convention which I have integrated into my media product is the use of lighting. From looking at “Blood Simple”, it uses the contrast of lights as well as shadows to convey suspense.  The contrast between light and dark lightings creates a mysterious and dark setting, giving a sinister feel. We have developed and interpreted this into our own media product, which we have used a dark photography room to replicate. The dark lighting had a very effective result in creating the mysterious and sinister atmosphere.

The choice and use of camera shots is also very important in creating a conventional psychological thriller opening, one of the most commonly used camera shots which we have used are close ups.  Tension are usually created in psychological thrillers through implications, facial emotions of characters as well as iconography are effective tool for creating tension. The facial expressions of our character as well as the suspicious footsteps of our mystery character is captured and presented through close ups.

Conventional character types are another thriller feature which we have used in our media product. Many thriller movies uses archetypes of female presented as sex appeals which are usually portrayed by beautiful blonde female, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is the perfect example as it uses blonde female lead to attract his target audience’s interest. Femme fatale is another typical archetype which are frequently use, they are shown to be very dangerous and seductive and will tend to lead the male character to chaotic ends.

We have combined both conventional female character types to form the character in our media piece, our character Chloe – is a combination of  both, she is shown to be very seductive through her makeup, especially her bold and loud red lips. However her dress code presents her as more of a sex appeal as she is shown to be wearing revealing clothing.

  



Ellie Grainger Evaluation Question 7

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

In our perliminary it was very rough compared to our final peice. We had many problems for example the sound was very low, there was aslo irelevant things within the show like our bags. In our perliminary task we shot alot of footage to choose for the best of our footage to then edit. However, what worked really well in our perlminary task was our match on action, so as it was a skill we was confident with we also added similar match on action to our final thriller opening 'Broken Beauty'.

This is our Preliminary Task, in which we have experimented with the use of continuity editing. The techniques of match on action is used to create a sense of continuity as the action in  shot is completed in the following shot. Match on action is used to generate a smooth transition between two shot when an action is taken. This is what we found worked very well in preliminary task and wanted to also use it in our final peice.

By our final peice I learnt how to use the equipment properly inorder to achieve a smoother camera shot and link different shots into one another without it being shakey or distorted in any way, like in the perliminary when we didnt have a tripod to turn the camera we put the camera on a bin to see if it would help but was still very shakey. By our final peice we knew what we had to do to get it right so we used a tripod, tracks and a crane to acheieve much smoother shots.

 

When we learnt how to edit our perliminary helped us have more skills in order to make our final peice to the best of our abilities we was able to make smoother cuts from different scenes and make it smooth for when we produced our match on action. Istead of our final peice being really long we was able to cut it down  to make it look much better and have things go from one shot to another to keep our audience intrested.  However there was some shots that we didnt cut down to much to our narrative would be hinted to our audience and our main characters was introduced.

A big problem in our perliminary task was the sound we had trouble with as we couldnt hear our characters very well as they was both was talking quietly and there was other digetic sounds within the footage. In order to improve this in our final peice we made sure our characters where louder and we eliminated all digetic sounds that were not needed on i-movie. We also added in some non-digetic sounds such as music so there would not be no empty spaces of sound throughout some parts of our final peice, as it was a thriller the music was used as a build up and to create tension.

 

 

 

I think that our perliminary task was useful in helping us learn how to use all the equipment and learning how to do the editing. It was also useful so we could see what skills we was good at in order to use them in ur final peice and what skills we had trouble with in order to build on them or not use them at all. Also by doing our perliminary task we learnt the rules of filiming for example the 180 degree rule. Our perliminary task made us learn from the mistake we made in our perliminary task, such as by our final peice we moved everything that was irelevant for our film out of the shots so we didnt have to reshot again after we relised. 

Ellie Grainger Evaluation Question 6

Copy of Question 6 on Prezi

Ellie Grainger Evaluation Question 5

Question 5 on Prezi

Ellie Grainger Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product and why ?

The audience for our media product would be teenagers from the age of 15-18 as they can relate to the characters within the film as they are at a similar age and could have similar lifestyles. Our audience may also be some young adults looking for a fright, mystery and a sense of realiztion.

 

 

 

The girl within our film wears make-up this shows us she wants to make herself  look glamorous as many young women want to do and the boy is very hidden and wants to keep himself away as many boys can relate to this as they may have multipul personalities. The satorial codes of our main character is a young girl who is shown with little clothing making her vunerable and seen to some in a sexual nature. This may relate to many young girls as they like to wear skirts and show some flesh. Our main male character wears baggy clothes mostly dark, this can compare to many boys now days.