Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Q2. How does your media product present particular social groups?

Q3. What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

After much research into various film institutions during my research and planning period, and on the theory side of the course I believe that a film company such as Film 4 may be a company that would distribute our film. This is primarily due to the British themes of the film i.e. cast, setting, plot etc.
After having distributed several British films in the past, 'The Inbetweeners Movie' for example (while this is not a thriller it is a good example of a film which they have showcased on their channel, helping with the distribution aspect), Film 4 seems like the perfect candidate for a role in the distribution of our film. Our film could benefit from the help of film 4 because, regardless of whether it did well in the box office, the company could then put it on their TV programme which will make the film available to a wider audience, such as people that didn't want to see it at the cinema, or people that want to see it first before paying any money towards the film (to buy it on DVD for example).
We could also benefit from this because of Film 4's  previous success which has made it quite a well known label without becoming as huge as companies such as Warner bros. or Universal. This would be a good way to advertise our film and make it appeal to a wider audience of people who may be fans of other Film 4 releases.

Another institution which may be appropriate to distribute our film would be Warp Films, another British company which has proven very successful in the past with films such as 'Four Lions' and 'Dead Man's Shoes,' two British films which were considered to be quite successful amongst the British public in particular. This previous success would, again, help with the advertisement of our film by giving the audience a company they know and trust to make good quality films. another reason for my choosing of Warp Films is by looking into their history of thriller films. These films include their first success 'Dead Man's Shoes' and a more recent release '71' among others. These films link quite well with the themes and plot of our thriller and give evidence that  Warp Films are more than capable of handling a film of this nature.

Out of these two companies however, I would choose Warp Films to help with the distribution of my thriller. This is because of their experience in dealing with thriller films including films they have made themselves. Film 4 are a good choice in terms of a using different method of distribution (i.e. allowing films onto their own TV channel, however they lack the experience in dealing with thriller films.

Q4/5. Who would be your target audience? How did you attract/ address your audience?

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Hardware:

• DSLR- The DSLR was the only piece of equipment that we used to capture footage. We chose this over the other cameras available due to its high resolution and ability to accurately focus on specific objects and blur the background, something we did quite frequently throughout our film.
  
• Scanner- We used the scanner a couple of times throughout the research and planning stage of our project to present the work that we had done on paper on our blogs, this was useful as I found it quicker and easier to make several drafts of different pieces of work on paper and scan the best one.
  
  
  
   
• Voice recorder- While we didn't use the voice recorder too much it was quite useful for me when creating different sound effects in the film itself i.e. heavy breathing etc. It was also helpful when we realised that some of the audio could need some polishing and so we simply replaced the original audio with the freshly recorded version rather than having to re-shoot the entire scene.
  

Software:

• Adobe Premiere Pro- Other than in our preliminary task this was the first time i had used premiere pro and after alot of research in my own time and a fair amount of playing around with random video clips, I eventually managed to gain a good knowledge of how to created different effect for both the visual and audio aspects.
  
• Adobe After Effects- I personally spent a lot (maybe too much) time using After Effects to create our main titles which I wanted to animate in a way which would suit the genre of our film. After several hours of work, and a lot of restarts, i began to understand the way in which the program worked and was eventually happy with what i had created, even though it wasn't exactly how i waned it to look.
  
  
• Adobe Photoshop- I didn't use Photoshop too much in the making of our project however my partner did when making rough drafts of or production logo, which he eventually created in After Effects. we had initially intended it to look as it does below, with the Crooked Spire, a local church, and significant part of our local area, incorporated into it however we decided against it as we couldn't make it look as good as we wanted it to. 
  
  
• Microsoft Powerpoint- While I have been using Powerpoint for many years now throughout school, the time I have been allowed on this project has allowed me to find much more effective and organised ways to compile my noted and work.
  
• Slideshare- I was not aware of Slideshare before this project and found it very useful when it came to embedding my Powerpoints into my blog posts which made conveying my work to a viewer much easier.
  
• Prezi- Prezi was another useful way to present my work other than a simple Powerpoint or Word document, however, I was not a fan, which is why it appears to be quite scarce on my Blog site. I have however used it for a couple of other evaluation questions to make my evaluation multi-modal.
  
• Mixcraft- I have used Mixcraft a couple of times in the past and was able to use both custom music made by myself and my partner, and a few presets on the program itself to create the score for our thriller. I would have liked to have made the entire score from scratch, however, due to lack of time, and slightly poor time management, we had to compromise.
  
• Blogger- We have been using Blogger throughout the entire course and it has helped me to understand the idea of blogging. It allows me to upload work from several different sites and programs and allows me to log each action that I have taken towards this project.
  

Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the main task?

I have answered this question in the form of a 'Gliffy' please scroll down to see my response.

INCOMING EVALUATION!

The following few blog posts and attachments will make up the evaluation of my Thriller task and will be presented in several different forms (Prezis, Powerpoints, ordinary blog posts etc.)

AS Thriller Final Product

Final bit of filming!

We had previously intended to finish our filming yesterday, and so did to the best of our ability. A small complication being that my partner, who had the tripod was too ill to film. this meant that I had to improvise and strap the camera to a tree and record myself on the other side of a small stream. This caused some but not too much complication.

Weather problems

Due to the snowy weather we were unable to shoot for our thriller. This was a problem as we could not make it to the location and it would affect the continuity of our project. We have planned to re shoot on the 7th and 8th of February.

Titling work continued

First day of filming

We have just begun filming our first shots for our thriller along our planned route which we had previously planned upon. We kept the exact date for this filming session unknown although we had decided that we were definitely going to shoot shoot at some point this week. This was because we wanted to plan the shoot according to the weather report. We waited until the sky was cloudy enough to suit our genre and create the perfect lighting conditions. We also decided to shoot all of the scenes with the sky in the background to help maintain continuity.

I took a few pictures of our location and setting in between shots:

Audience theories appropriate to our Thriller (Mass vs Niche & Uses and Grarifications)

Our thriller will appeal to a much more niche audience as opposed to a mass audience. This is because our particular genre is something that appeals to only a specific audience who are interested in the themes brought forward. For example corrupt governments and conspiracies. This makes the Mass vs. Niche audience theory applicable to our thriller..

Our thriller also relates to Blulmer and Katz's 'Uses and Gratifications' theory. This is because the audience can use our opening in several different ways. for example, our audience may use our thriller for diversion and may want to escape from their everyday lives and look into the potential future mentioned in the thriller.

 

This will allow us to plan to use open and modern locations that still look as though the thriller is set in the present to give the audience the impression that the near future is not too different from today. This makes it easier for the audience to escape into the world that we have created.

Audience Expectations of the Thriller Genre

Audiences tend to watch thrillers for their highly intense storylines and their gripping action sequences. This is reflected through the average age of people that enjoy watching thrillers is around 18-25 as these much more mature ages can fully grasp the often complex themes often raised by the genre as well as appreciate the mature content involved.

However, the various sub-genres of thriller films can appeal to a much wider audience. For example, one of the more popular, thriller sub-genres, the action thriller, appeals to a much wider, audience. Younger people around the age of 15 may be drawn to this particular sub-genre due to its fast paced edits and camera angles typically used throughout.

Distribution of film research

My research into the distribution of films has helped me understand a lot more about how films are released.

When a film is being produced, there are always people who work out how and when the film should be released to the public. These people are the film distributors. Their job is to determine a marketing strategy, the media by which a film is to be exhibited and may set the release date etc.

The film can be exhibited to the public through many different ways. For example, a cinema or movie theater, where someone will pay for a single viewing of the film (often prior to its release on other types of media.)
Television, where different network stations may purchase the rights to show the film to the public on one of their channels.
Personal home viewing, this includes releases on DVD, Blu-ray disc, download etc. And also includes streaming sites such as Netflix, LoveFilm and Blinkbox where the viewer can own their own copy of the film permanently or have inlimited access to it by subscribing to streaming sites for as long as it remains up.

Marketing and promotion of films

I have started to research the various ways in which film studios and production companies promote their products (films, tv shows etc.) The knowledge I have gained will help us when we come to promoting our thriller when it is complete. It can also help by possibly allowing us to further think about our target audience while we are still shooting and open us up to a wider potential audience.

There are several different methods involved in the marketing and promotion of films. These include advertising campaigns, press releases and other methods including those involved in the production of the film/ tv show. Interviews with the actors, directors and producers for example.

In the early stages of release, production companies will invest a lot of money in marketing campaigns in order to maximise their revenue. Around half of the production budget is spent on marketing which highlights how important it is.

Other ways in which different companies promote their films are through film posters seen at cinemas and sometimes in city streets which advertise the films to any movie-goers that happen to be in the area. Trailers are a vital way to advertise films and are the most popular and most effective way to get a film recognised. These trailers show short clips taken from throughout the film and are used to persuade the viewing audience to go and see the new film. Trailers are very common in cinema and are shown just before the film they are about to watch.

Storyboard

We have created a storyboard to roughly show the plot and direction of our thriller opening. This includes camera shots/ angles, directions and actions for our actors and the order in which each shot will take place (as a lot of our scenes are in a slightly random order on the sheet)