Sophie Munden - Question One

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

Psychological Thriller:

“A suspenseful movie or book emphasizing the psychology of its characters rather than the plot”

“In a psychological thriller, the characters are exposed to danger on a mental level rather than a physical one.”

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/psychological+thriller

In our media product we tried to use the conventions of a psychological thriller in the sense that we focused our opening scene on the representation of the characters rather than events that take place.

Click on the pictures to go to the opening scenes.

In our product we used mainly close-ups and mid shots of our two characters in order to capture their facial expressions. We edited our product so that it cut to shots taken from different angles of her face and hands to emphasise that she was the focal point of our film and to highlight the importance of her character and the letter she was writing. This was done due to the fact that we wanted to concentrate on the emotional journey of our stalker and her victim (Hip-Hop star, Craze). We see this done in the opening scene of Taxi Driver as we are first introduced to him with close-ups of his eyes and the taxi . It slowly develops to the job interveiw, leaving the storyline ambiguous, like ours.

For the credits of our film we used envelopes dropping onto a table which we had written on. This represents the letters our obsessed fan writes to the star throughout the course of the film. We deliberately chose to have the letters entering the screen from the right in order to create an unnatural and uneasy feeling since reading from right to left is normal. This effect links to the genre of the film.


We got the music for our film from a copyright free website and chose the beginning sequence of ‘Echoing Chemical Reactions’ by Theodore Kalantzakos. The slow continuous build up of tension in this particular song adds to the atmosphere and mirrors the slow build up of tension in the plot of our story. This repetitive music is used in the film Cape Fear. Furthermore, the voice over helps the audience to understand the character’s/obsessed fan’s emotional state, emphasising the importance of this rather than the events taking place. The repeated ‘I’m your number one fan’ (lyrics from the song by The Beautiful South) not only implies an unhealthy state of mind but links to the camera work as we see the obsessed fan writing these words in her letter, intensifying the suspense.

Finlay McGow - Question 7

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

Below is a presentation answering the question above.

Looking back at your preliminary task (the continuity editing task), what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product? on Prezi

The preliminary task was also great at teaching me how to set up the camera and then when I was finished how to transfer it onto the computer. Without it I could imagine the final product taking up more time and the quality also not being as good. If it wasn't for the preliminary task I may not have noticed that whilst filming we were filming into the light, which would have lead to having to film again, which may not have been possible due to getting the actors or the time of day, or weather conditions may have caused further delays.

Finlay McGow - Question 6

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

We used many different technologies throughout the process of this whole project. We had our hardware
-Video cameras

-Computers
-Tripods

Then we had our software
-Microsoft word
-Film editing software
-Photoshop
-Blogger
-Prezi
-Free music sites

All of these technologies play a big part in the production of this opening sequence. However they also provide normal people with the ability to produce films to a decent standard, so they can be based on their content rather than the quality. This leap in technology over recent years has closed the gap between the people who produce media and those who receive it.

There were a few difficulties that I came across with using some of these and that is mainly not getting your desired effect that you want. For example we had to change our project because certain camera shots did not come out as we desired them, such as lighting difficulties, if you look at our preliminary task you will see how the lighting was too dark and the actors came out in silhouettes. Other issue’s would be the amount of time it will take to do a bit of editing, obviously with more practice it will be easier, but starting out it does tend to seem very unfriendly to use. I felt this problem when trying to get the voice over the music to go in time with the film which took up a lot of time.

We then have all the presentation software, such as Prezi. Prezi is a new presentation format that makes a presentation more dynamic and hands on. It enables the person viewing the presentation to move more freely and zoom in and out, very similar to a virtual brainstorm. This technology I found very useful in presentation and I thought was great to get across my point to my viewer. However I found it slightly annoying to use and more time consuming as a result.

I did find that all this equipment we had available to us, became friendlier to use over time and you could constantly improve your skills. Because of this it makes you feel more confident that you are doing a good job therefore making you stress less than we did at the beginning, for example during our preliminary task. This meant your ideas were not so constrained to your ability to handle the equipment and it enabled you to actually produce what you had mind in mind without having to change too much.
The technology that we had in all was varied and fun to use. It gave us the accessibility to do what we wanted to a good standard and quality. I felt my experience of the equipment and software was good as I could do what I wanted after i had learnt the skills to use the properly.

Finlay McGow - Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience through utilising popular ideas. We used a storyline that hopefully appeals to current trends and interests people, as it links in with current issues that people can face and see happening in real life. By aspects of popular culture such as the genre of music that we choose for our music star. We used our market research to help choose the genre of music for our music star, seeing as RnB and Hip-Hop were the two most popular we decided to go along with a Hip-Hop star. We believed that by following our market research, we could attract our audience by relating to what they actually want.



Another aspect from our market research we found was that prefer a villian in a film over a hero. What we did to utilise on this was to focus on Rosa who played our stalker. We focused on her mainly with our camera shots and sound effects. Address our audience by giving them the story from the villians point of view but also attracts them. By focusing on the villian we are responding to our market research and actually giving the majority of the audience what they want.



Finlay McGow - Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our media product is aimed at a wide audience of teenagers to young adults, so from the ages of 15-25. For this reason we gave it an age rating of 15. It is also aimed at both genders as its content does not strongly identfy with either sex.

Because we targeted this market we handed out our questionnaire to them. This helped us to build an image of our target audience's hobbies and interests. From the feedback that we received we used to develop our idea for our final product. WE tried to fit in what the audience had shown us they enjoyed, for example the feedback we received told us that the majority were 'Hip-Hop' and 'RnB' fans.

Finlay McGow - Question 3

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

This film I don’t think will be part of a mainstream distributor, as it does not meet the majority of markets you would say it is aimed more towards a nice area. I see this because mainstream distributors such as New Line Cinema, want big turnovers. This demand for a big turnover means they want the product aimed directly at the mainstream market, so that it is big enough to provide those larger turnovers. This product would not be able to provide a big company with its turnover due to its niche audience and limited release.

 For the reasons above, a much smaller company may distribute this product as they will not have such a demand for high turnovers. As this is aimed at a niche market you would see this film on a limited release in cinemas and then onto DVD. As our product has low production values, quite a lot of viewers may avoid the product as it looks basic and the quality of it isnt as high.

Advertising for this product would not be massive and it would rely on reviews and film festivals for people to learn about it and become interested. For these reasons I could see this product being distributed by an idependent company such as PolyGram, as they have released previous psychological thrillers such as the Usual Suspects.

Finlay McGow - Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Below is a dynamic presentation that you can view which answers this question.

How does your media product represent particular social groups? on Prezi

Looking at our music star we see that he looks very healthy, and is well dressed. You can also see that the way he is acting looks very confident, this is a very big contrast to his stalker who looks very secretive and hidden. The star is also wearing jewelry which shows that he is well off, this also helps him fit into the stereotype of music stars within his genre of music. The stereotype we have tried to fit him into is one about looking perfect and showing it off, for example 'bling' looks of expensive jewelry. This tries to represent the social group of music stars and even wannabes who act like music stars are not.