Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Distribution

Our media product would be distributed by institutions such as 20th century fox, one example of a movie they have produced is taken 2. We think this would be a good distributer as it's a big conglomerate company that is known world wide and have lots of expertise in the film industries. We feel that it would get our movie known as it will be distributed to more institutions.

If we did have our movie distributed by someone such as 20th century our movie would have high expectations as they are a big company

We also believe that our movie could be distributed by a smaller institutions such as IFC films they have released films such as Fish Tank. We believe that this would be a good distributer for our movie as it distributes small independent films and documentaries. They use distribute movies with unknown or little known cast. The use of our own props and school equipment tells us that we were on a small budget. IFC would be good as they are a company that help movies grow and get there movies more well known rather than trying to achieve a big revenue, movie distributers such as 20th century fox and universal are wanting to make more of a profit.

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product reinforces the stereotype of male teenagers as troublesome and troubled.
We use a black hoodie which the media represent as a favourable item of clothing for hooligans and criminals as they would use the hood to hide their identity. As this is such a big stereotype especially for Britain, we decided to use it to signify an unsympathetic lead character who we suggest is "hiding something" and is also uncomfortable in his surroundings.

Although we have challenged racial stereotypes as there are no black people in our thriller opening (the media represent black teenagers as violent criminals and thugs who are associated with gangs), we have reinforced the media stereotype for school orientated mass murderers (such as in the Columbine massacre) as Caucasian males by casting a white male in the lead role. For example "We Need to Talk About Kevin." We have also limited our representation because all our characters are white. we could change this in our next Media Construct.

In the shot below (a close up of our character's eyes) we try to convey in the mise en scene that his smiling eyes (connoting happiness and excitement) show he has selected a victim. We create sympathy for the victim as she is unaware and the stereotype is complete as the main character has no mercy or sympathy. He is just evil. We use the stereotype to create anxiety in the viewer, which we then would play on later in the story. We would then make the reader feel sympathy for the character by making him more rounded and less of a stereotype.

 

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

Overall, our film opening follows the conventions found in most thriller genre films. This helps our audience identify the exact genre that the film is going to be through the first 2 minutes. We drew inspiration from a range of films, but we mainly took a lot from the Eminem Music Video/Short Film - 3AM. This music video showed a varied amount of thriller codes and conventions which helped us come up with the whole idea for our film.

Used	Un-used
we used a lot of shots that didn't reveal certain things, using shadows and camera angles. for example we did not allow the audience to see the protagonists face for suspense.	we failed to use reflections and mirrors which we had originally wanted to use for more dramatic moments like the death scene.
we used a lot of darkness to keep the film quite dark in its personality.	we failed to use a wide range of thriller-type camera angles and shots which may have made the film opening a lot more diverse.
in our thriller opening we decided to use a knife as our killers weapon. we chose to use this because it is a brutal and primitive weapon so it would make our hooded figure seem more animalistic.	we did not use blood. blood is a huge factor in conventional thrillers, we showed a few dead bodies but we didn't go into much detail with gore.
youth. we decided to theme our film around Youth culture. so we gave our protagonist a black hoodie. this widens our audience because it also includes younger people to watch our film. the hood also represents darkness, the colour and the fact that it creates anonymity for the murderer.	we wanted to use a spotlight/street light to shadow over the protagonist while he watches his victim.

my conclusion to the question in hand is that our film follows a lot of thriller-genre codes and conventions to help the audiences recognise the style and genre of the film, identification is the main factor in film making, along side connectivity. the way that the audience feels when they watch the film, this is why we didn't use some of our ideas that we had for our film opening.

9 Shot

Eminem 9 shot

Here is our 9 shot analysis of Eminem's music video this is because there are many shots that are commonly used in a thriller.

Preliminary Task

Moodboard

We have used the image of the 15 age rating, as this is the age that is appropriate for the viewer.

We have used the black hoodie as this is stereotypically linked with youths of today and this does not reveal the face of the character.

We have used the image of the kitchen knife as it is a good primitive weapon. The knife is iconic in the thriller genre so we are going to use it to annotate violence.

We have used the image of the torch as its a good source of low key lighting and is a great way of creating shadows and its a good way to build a tense atomsphere.

We have used the metal fence as it symbolises containment and security.

We have used the image of the dead body as this is a great shot of a dead victim and it only reveals the body of the victim.

We used the picture of the street light as it is a great way of building suspense as the face of the character is'nt revealed only, as the viewer can only see the hoodie from behind.

We have used the location shot of dundrey view as its a isolated location but has a great view over the city and at night it's a very dark place with a well lit city as the back drop.

We have used the image of the hospital wrist band as this is the way we are going to identify our suspect as this can be used to identify him.

We have used the image of the blood as this connotates death.

We have also used the image of the roof of the school building as this could be one of the possible locations.

We have used the image of the warning sign as it will be on the fence and will portray warning to the victim before the murder.

Codes and conventions of a thriller

These are some of the different shots that are mainly used in the thriller genre and that we may use in our own movie.