Evaluation Question
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media product?
Ways in which we DEVELOPED forms and conventions:
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media product?
Ways in which we DEVELOPED forms and conventions:
Developing Voyeurism
We have developed the convention of voyeurism by giving the feeling that not only the victim but also the predator is being watched. This ambiguity creates uncertainty amongst the audience. Here we see the hit man trying to enter the programmers room, the wide angle shot gives a feeling of being pried upon from afar.
The linear version of this technique is best seen in the film Phone booth, Colin Farrel has been cooped up in this phone booth for some time now and is starting to get rather anxious. This long off center shot makes it look as though he is being watched and the fact Collins character isn't looking directly down the lens alerts the audience this is not a point of view shot.
Developing protagonists and antagonists
In this picture we can see that the hit man character is cocking his gun, this gives a feeling of threat towards the programmer which is suppose to make the audience feel uneasy, and will help to build a considerable amount of tension as he walks up to the programmers door. We as a group wanted to portray the programmer as being a much weaker character with a lot of the angles on him being from a birds eye perspective looking down. This creates a feeling of smallness and insignificance. The more the audience believe this character to be a small weak defenseless person the better the shock will be when he turns around and shows no fear towards the possibility of imminent death. Usually the protagonist will be portrayed as a poor defenseless character totally powerless to the strength of the bad guy. We therefore developed this convention by giving the protagonist a newly found strength right at the end of this sequence.
It is a different story however as to how the protagonist of a film will usually be portrayed, In the film the shining we see a scared victim wielding a carvers knife. However, she is holding it in a very non threatening way with the blade pointing downwards and away from the door. While the hit man is preparing to kill his subject she is not, and is totally succumb to the axe wielding maniac. Ways we USED forms and conventions:
Cross cutting
Our research has shown us that Thriller films cross-cut between two
different scenes. For example 'The Da Vinci Code'.
The scenes repeatedly traverse from a chase scene to the main
character giving a speech. This creates a link between the two scenes even if said connection is not obvious as of yet.
We have tried to use this same convention in our piece, we cross-cut between the computer programmer typing on his
computer and the car arriving and hit man character getting out. This
creates a
sense of mystery and makes the audience realise that the two
are linked. We used this technique as it was quite simple yet
effective. It is a typical thriller convention and I believe that we
made our product more effective by using it. 
We have used the shot composition in a way as to not reveal the identity of the hitman character. This kind of shot composition is really effective as it means that the audience would be compelled ask questions about who this man is and what does he look like. When
researching we found this technique
in the film The Usual Suspects, the fact that the killers face isn't
shown is a major factor later on in the film. We used this in our opening because we believe it is a needed convention
in a thriller as it creates a sense of mystery and tension. This is how we wanted to make our audience feel, initially, so i believe it
was really effective. Ways we CHALLENGED forms and conventions:
Challenging the convention of Setting
A common convention for most thrillers is that they are usually set at night or in dark areas. We have challenged that by setting ours in a light and relatively new apartment block. I feel this is a refreshing change to the typical convention and really helps to create greater uncertainty amongst the audience. Lots of our film will also take part in less built up areas compared to most blockbuster films such as the dark knight.I like the idea of using a much cleaner and less built up environment, simply because it is a lot like the game which the movie is centered around. Everything is uncluttered and makes sense, the real world connotes ideas of a utopia.
Challenging End at the Beginning
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2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
We have each answered this question in the form of a prezi:
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3. You can find out about media institutions at our wiki spaces page just follow this link:
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Our wiki spaces page. |
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4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
From
extensive secondary and primary research I can identify that our ideal audience
member will most likely be a middle aged man with some kind of long term
commitment such as a career or family. For
the purpose of this evaluation question we shall call him Dave.
Dave
considers himself to be of middle class and believe that he has a strong
commitment to whatever he puts his mind to. He holds a strong role in a company which
specialise in selling computers and other technologies; he really enjoys what
he does and likes to implement gadgetry into his everyday life wherever he can.
He lives with his wife and two kids in a house outside of town, it is important
for him to live within commuting distance of a major city in order for him to
get to his job with relative ease, whilst also being able to get back to his
family.
He enjoys
regular bike rides and to go on walks with his wife. When he isn’t working or spending time with
his family you can find him playing on either his Xbox or PS3, he plays online
with his work colleagues and has been enthusiastic about gaming ever since he
was a boy.
Dave is in
a high managerial role therefore his salary allows him quite a lot of freedom
when it comes to spending money on items of interest to him. He buys most technology if he thinks it is
worth buying. Given the manner of his profession he is able to test new
technology before he buys it, he prefers this as it means he doesn't have to
spend a lot of money on something he is only going to use once.
His
preferred genre of film can vary from thriller to any type of action adventure
films, Given that he know has a wife he will sometimes watch romcoms with her
to spend some time enjoying films that she likes. He mostly enjoys films with Liam
neeson in them or Keanu reeves. Although
he has a job in technology; he always dreamt of being in the creative industry
of game design. Dave has some previous knowledge of graphical design and also
has an extensive knowledge of computer programming software.
As far as
visiting other countries and experiencing other cultures goes Dave is quite uneducated
he has never really shown an interest in wanting to visit distant foreign countries,
however has considered taking his family to America next summer.
Although he
enjoys using new technologies he is still incredibly dubious about giving too
much of his own personal information away, and so prefers to make a lot of his transactions first
hand as oppose to over the internet.
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5. How did you attract/address your audience?
As a group we went through our piece annotated it where we thought it was appropriate here is the video with those annotations:
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6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of considering this product?
This audit is a visual interpretation of how I believe I have developed over this AS media course.
AUDIT
Overall Technological competency: 6/10 8/10
Final Cut Express 7/10 8/10
Start End
Overall Technological competency: 6/10 8/10
Final Cut Express 7/10 8/10
YouTube 10/10 10/10
Blogger 5/10 9/10
Wiki spaces 4/10 6/10
Sound / music 4/10 7/10
Photoshop 3/10 5/10
Prezi 3/10 7/10
Macs 7/10 10/10
Camera + tripod 6/10 9/10
Me and the new technologies
Using cameras and tripods...
Using the macs...
Exploring different methods of presentation...
I had a strong knowledge of YouTube prior to the project. This helped dramatically as it meant i could upload videos and implement tags to my videos with out being taught how to do it by my teacher.
This was my first time using Final cut express and i must say that being a PC user coming over to the mac it was a relatively intuitive piece of software. I will admit that there were times in which i needed a lot of assistance from my teacher and from the internet.
I had only used Blogger a little prior to this project, so i felt somewhat at home with implementing text and posting information however i would say that more technical stuff such as changing the design of my blog and adding gadgets was some what more difficult.
Prezi was a totally new experience for me, however i found it relatively easy to use. Creating Presentations was relatively hassle free. I feel that i only scratched the surface with the capabilities of this program, however i didn't feel that the course required me to explore this program too much anyway.
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7. Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
We have done this evaluation by adding annotations to our prelim video, the purple boxes indicate that they are relating to this evaluation question.
