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

The violent and suspenseful elements of our film constitute a gritty thriller/drama piece. It is similar to other Thriller/drama films such as Harry Brown and Kidult/Adult-hood, the reason why we think this is because it shows the troubles and worries of Mark as it does in certain scenes from Kidult/Adult-hood, and contains similar scenic from Harry Brown, which makes it similar to these other films. The way in which we went about making the film similar to these can be seen in the kidnap scenes of the film, we use a bright glare in a dark room on the kidnapped person to create a juxtaposition of good and bad which is a similar replica to the scenes found in harry brown, in these scenes a range of screaming is used to drive terror into the viewers to create a tense atmosphere, but as a group we didn’t want the scene to be too simplistic so we chose to make the mise en scene help the atmosphere in the scene.

The pictures above show a kidnap scene from Harry Brown and from our film, these show were we got the idea for the lighting, whilst the lighting allows the viewer to still see the fear on the persons face it leaves space for the scene to still allow a sense of mystery.

We discussed this thoroughly and chose to use a black t-shirt to symbolize the idea that he had been stripped of his livelihood. Another reason why we believe this is because we use similar shots in our scenic as the films mentioned above, this includes a close up of marks face when being tortured, this is the same as the close up shots shown in harry brown, and in Kidult/Adult-hood establishing shots are used in both movies to let the viewer know what environment they are living in. Although we use similar shots to the ones mentioned above we believe our film shows originality by the use of "Flash Forwards" throughout the opening.The shot below shot a scence from adult hood and one from Pay Day (our film), Adult hood was use for refereance for this shot, both are meeting the thug stereotype with hoodies and have mystery and anger in there facial expressions.

As a group we had watched many Thriller/drama Films and didn’t want it to be a imitation of these films and wanted to make ours a bit more unique and after a bit of discussion we came to the conclusion that the kidnap scenes would be used as flash forwards to keep the viewers attention and keep them intrigued in the storyline. We felt that we had to do this because if we would have left them out of the film intro we feel that the walking scenes (which are frequent), would have subconsciously turned the viewers attentiveness elsewhere.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The social groups shown throughout our film includes a “Thug”, (a teenager who dresses up in black clothing and wears a hoody), Chav (teenager who wears cheap tracksuits and baseball caps with Nike air maxes) and a Mosher (teenager who likes to skateboard and listen to rock music). The thug is played by Matthew Caine-Mckenzie, the Chav is played by Ryan Marsh & the Mosher is played by Mark Leggatt.

The reason the two characters are classed as Thugs and Chav's is because they match the stereotypical look of young and black/white males wearing blacked out hoody's and were wearing them in broad daylight which makes them look suspicious, they met the negative stereotypes of a percentage of the modern day youth because in the film they are seen to kidnap a innocent looking guy. We tried to portray these stereotypes by doing close up shots their faces to show their anger and revolt towards modern-day society.

The Mosher is classed as this because of his laid back dress sense and approach to life, he matches this stereotype when he is seen taking

a relaxing stroll on the local bridge, we tried to get the viewers who aged from 15-25 yrs old to sympathizes with him by making him seem like a ordinary person who is under a lot of stress and peer pressure because there’s a chan

ce they are or have gone through this.

We also made music to set the ambiance and

show what the main character was going through with chilling music, and when it final dawns on the character that he is going to be kidnapped the music changes drastically to show his despair and fear. Due to the fact that he was the main character we maid the music fit in with the stereotype that Moshers listen to rock music and this caused us to make the music have a slight “rock hint” to it.

Some counter stereotypes included in our film is the wa

y we portrayed the Mosher after a while, this is because we hint at the idea that he has got himself into the trouble by the phone call shown at the begging. Another stereotype that we oppose would be the stereotype rendered by the media that “Chav’s” & “Thugs” don’t get on togeth

er, the reason why we belive that we oppose this is because during the film you can clearly see that the “Thug & Chav” work together to catch the “Mosher”

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

If our film were to be distributed by a UK British film company, we as a group believe that the most realistic and ideal distributor would be Film4. A film that has similarities to the film we made includes the stereotypes, this is because a lot of the stereotypes shown in “This Is England” can be seen in our film which includes working class Thugs, Chavs and Moshers .Film4 are a production company (owned by channel four) who produce low-budget films in the UK and the majority of them have been successful, for example: East is East, Happy go lucky and the most successful partnership, Slumdog millionaire.The reason why we think they would distribute our product would be because there is a big niche market out there that are into Thriller and Drama films, and due to the fact that our film includes both of these if they chose to distribute our film it could build a unique fan base.

Due to the fact that they produce low budget British made films, (which our film is) they would be suitable to getting a lot of publicity and money made from a movie like ours. In addition, another Production company that would be appropriate to producing and distributing our film would be Working Title Films, this is because they are a highly successful British film company that has a partnership would the world renowned Universal, and if they were to distribute our film because they work with Working title that would mean the possibility of not just a blanket release in England but possible in the USA which is where the most expensive and biggest blockbusters are released.

However, there are other distribution and production companies which would be a good match for our film. Optimum Releasing, Optimum Releasing produce low-budget films and they are versatile in terms of the genre of film they distribute. So either production company would be suitable to distribute our film. Optimum Releasing are also a UK production company. The reason why this comapny might distribute our film would be because if the movie took off it would help advertise Optimum Realising and could possible bring in more buisness.

So out of these companies the one we would choose would almost certainly be Working Title films due to the partnership they have with one of the biggest film conglomerates there is. This would be helpful to get the film opened in as many cinemas as possible which most likely would mean a high profit.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our film sequence is targeted at an audience of teenagers to adults (ages 15-25) of both male and female sex of all races and classes, although this is the case we expect the majority of the audience to be male due to the scenes of a freighting nature and a fairly butch storyline due to the kidnapping scenes, the reason we have chosen this audience is because similar films such as Adult/kidult-hood and Harry Brown attracted the same spectators. We also think that the very people we have stereotyped in the film would be interested in watching it because it may relate to their everyday life.

The violence and tone of the film constitutes a gritty drama/thriller. The film adulthood features some elements of the scenes shown in out film, and is rated 15; this seems relevant for ours as the violence is not necessarily graphic but more psychological. Basically the audience we will reach out to would be someone into intruige and mystery with a tint of a twist, a person that would try to guess the storyline but with clever twitsts cant quite get there and thrives on the element of suprise.

As a group we believe the potential finished film would attract a much wider audience such as 15-30 yr olds as the overall storyline wouldn’t just consist of violence and kidnapping but would include subtle scenes of caring and an unanticipated twist to the storyline. But due to the fact that our viewers would just be watching the opening they wouldn’t be able to get a full feel of the film which would result in a smaller target audience.

Our sequence is mainly targeted at a niche audience for people who have an interest in social realism/drama and also like thriller themed films which they can relate to which consequently give a feeling of the unknown.

The pictures below show the average male and

female viewer that we think our film would attract:

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

The genre of our opening sequence is thriller/drama, this reason's in which we think we attracted our audience is by including a slight amount of violence but not too much so that it is open to 15 year olds and older, another technique used to draw in the audience was by making the very start of our film to have a tense and on edge starting scene, and to emphasize the tenseness of the film we used daunting music at the very start.

Also with the storyline consisting of a troubled teenager it gives the movie a sense of drama, (such as Eastenders)which has a similar audience range we are trying to aim at, so by adding a bit of drama we hope to reach out to this specific audience.

The protagonist (being Mark the main character), reaches out to a particular audience via empathy, we try to make the viewer have sorrow towards the stress he has and draws viewers in to see just why he is so stressed and as a group we believe the best way to get/keep and audience is to “keep them on their toes” and keep them intrigued

A particular shot we use to do this (above) was an close up on Marks face to show the distress he was in, this would draw in an audience because people could emphasise with his feeling. Also the music that we have used appeals to a wide range of genres which would make the viewers feel comfortable with was the film.

Furthermore, because we know the audience would like the intense drama we created a scene where Mark is trapped on the bridge and is about to be caught, so to appeal to the Thriller fans we made the music more intense and did eye line matches to let the viewers feel what he feels, by approaching the making of the film in order to not leave the Drama/Thriller genre too much we believe this will capture the audience and draw them in.

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

As a group we have learnt that using the cameras and editing software wasn’t that straight forward, when constructing our film sequences we needed a good amount of preparation to get good enough footage to edit, this fact meant that we had to scrap are first set of footage and film new and improved footage to get a better chance of good editing and more chance of making a good film.

For example, the first time round we didn’t use a shot list and this caused our footage to looking amateurish and unprofessional and this improved when we put planning into action. However, when it came to editing we struggled as a group but Matthew knew exactly what he was doing with the footage we had captured. When Matthew was editing the film sequence, we found out that we had to re-film the whole sequence, this was not due to Matthew's editing it was just how we filmed it that was the big problem, and we had too many similar shots which were all long/wide shots. We thought that it might have been easier to film using the cameras, but it seemed that we got frustrated after a while when re-filming, however we did re-film successfully and now we have a better sequence than originally planned.

The way in which the software allowed us to make a good film piece was because it allowed us to match cut and allow the viewer to get into the characters feeling, this had a bit to do with the good camera work done by Alphonse, but was greatly increased with the great display and acting skills shown by Mark Leggatt, also no amount of technology could amount for unnecessary shots and filming but Ryan Marsh was a great help when we were coming up with a story line.

All in all, we have learnt that using cameras, also editing can be a hard process - if we would have been more prepared for filming then it may be that some others in the group would've been able to give Matthew more of a helping hand when using Final Cut Pro (the editing software), Alphonse also did some editing along with Matthew so he had some help now and then. As a group we also learnt that it is crucial to use a good program like funal cut pro because if not the difference in quality can be seen below with final cut pro being the left one.

When it comes to Final Cut Pro, it was very useful in adding certain effects to the film sequence, for example: fades, the transitions were also very helpful in making the film flow and be more aesthetically pleasing. The editing software which we used was professional and has had a massive impact on our film sequence; if we didn’t use this then we wouldn’t have such an easy-flowing sequence.

7. Looking back at the preliminary task, what do you think you have learnt from the proggression from it to the full task?

The preliminary task was crucial for us as a group to be able to develop and learn new skills in the world of film making, we learnt new skills and filming rules such as the 180 degree rule, which although we didn’t really need to worry about it as there are no scenes of shot reverse shot, (another technical term learnt from the preliminary task), is helpful when filming because if we were to break the rule our filming would have looked dilapidated and tacky.

As a group we had to learn and use a wider range of shot to make the film move exciting because we only used a limited amount of shots when filming the preliminary task which meant that if it weren’t for the preliminary task we would have used a lot less shots which consequently would have led to a potentially boring and uninteresting film.

The preliminary task additionally showed us that something so simple as sound/music can brighten a boring scene up, this was because the preliminary task was dull and boring but upon adding a sound track it seemed to liven up the scene and make the shots stimulating.

This then allowed us to spend a generous amount of time making a suitable sound track for our film which in effect meant our final film was greatly improved.

If it were not for the preliminary task we believe our film would be as attention grabbing as it is, we believe that upon watching both the preliminary task and the Final film you can see a leap of quality in contrast to one another with the final film having much higher eminence.

Moreover, we made many mistakes in the making of the preliminary task, we believe that these mistakes were crucial in order for us to make a good film. This was due to the fact that upon making the mistakes and noticing them you can then make greater checks in order to make sure and avoid the previously made faults.