Mulki Mohamed Evaluation

1.) In what ways does your media product -use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?

With the name of our film is “Till Death Do Us Part.” We attempted to use conventions of0 thrillers, as this was the genre we were working in. Several thriller movie titles suggest what could possibly happen within the actual narrative. Some examples of that is the thriller “The Secret Window" starring Johnny Depp, ‘The Uninvited’ starring Emily Browning and “The Descent” starring Shauna MacDonald. In our opening sequence I suggested we go for a symbolic and ambiguous opening. Here we developed our film by incorporating different techniques such as fades, black and white effects, and manipula

ting the camera angles to create a reminiscent effect. We followed many of the thriller conventions for our film, some examples of the ones we used efficiently is a point of view shot, we used the thriller ‘Rear Window’ by Alfred Hitchcock for inspiration, and we had applied that technique to our own thriller opening. I thought we were successful in that part in addition of the melancholic piano soundtrack in which we developed because we mixed two different pieces together.

The conventions of a thriller we used were non diagetic sounds which was the eerie of the piano creating a spine-chilling effect. We got that idea from certain thriller openings such as “The Secret Window” where the beginning creates an uncanny sound, which was a mixture of dialogue and diagetic sound. We have changed that convention and decided to have Music running throughout the opening sequence. We wanted to make the audience uncomfortable, also on the edge.

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

In our thriller opening the social groups are clearly portrayed as we are seeing two characters that are both adults. Our characters have jobs, from the scenes where (Karen Smith) is in an office, this would convey the Adult social group. Our thriller opening represents a particular social group because the aren’t any other social groups in our opening.

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

I have chosen Lionsgate to distribute my media product my reasons for this is as this company has distributed countless thriller movies, this shows that the audience will be able to recognise my film as a thriller immediately. A Few of the films Lionsgate have distributed include ‘Cabin Fever’ (2003), ‘Saw’ (2004) ‘Hostel’ (2005) these movies represents Lionsgate’s successful thrillers. This is why I believe it would be fantastic for Lionsgate to Distribute my films. Lionsgate is an i

ndependent filmed entertainment studio, the company distributes films that are independent but also movies that are mainstream like the worldwide

movie “Crash” that won a few Oscars, and this conveys the company having a good reputation and success, predicting the success of our movie ‘Till Death Do Us Part’.

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

The audience for my media product would be roughly around twenty to thirty something year olds, but at the youngest 18+. We as a group conducted an audience research to decided what age our film will be targeted at. From our research we have given our questionnaires to sixteen to eighteen year olds, so that was the age that we targeted our movie at. This is because the movie would contain violence and perhaps some inappropriate language that isn’t for a younger

audience. We wanted to target the audience through our characters sartorial code which was professional, as Michael Graham wore a suit.

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5.) How did you attract/address your audience?

We were aiming to attract audience of different sub-genres within a thriller, meaning that w e had not only thriller as our main genre but we also had a romantic narrative. We mixed simplistic ideas like vanishes and fades. We did not want to portray unrealistic camera movement s in our film, for an example an unbearable bright white light (which when used would look surreal and dreamlike ). I wanted to make the narrative as authentic as possible because un realistic narratives do not usually appeal to thriller audiences. The audience want to feel the fear, for in stance in “Momento” the concept of losing ones memory can very well happen in real life, the idea here is to surface the audiences primal fears. We address the audience through images rat her than actual dialogue this I believe made our film more unique, it was almost like one of Alfred Hitchcock’s sile nt movieslike ‘The Lodger’(1927),

this makes the audience try to figure what is happening in the narrative rather than having the whole story handed to them through dialogue.

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

I have learnt many new techniques in cameras and the accessories that come with it. I have learned a lot about continuity editing, like continuing the scene where both characters are linked through the same sequence.
I have gotten better at that from practice and learning from my group. It was difficult for me to use a Mac as it was my first time using it, but soon have come to grip with its programmes like IMovie. IMovie was complicated at first but gotten easier to use for my film, which helped me to edit and uploaded the footage we have filmed as a group onto IMovie.

Another aspect of the technological process we were meant to use was our blogger on the webpage which at first I found hard to keep updating and continue uploading but gotten used to the idea of conveying to our teachers what I was up to and my where about in our project. Overall all of the things I had to learn and practice on allowed me and my group to produce our media quality to the best of our ability.

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 learnt many things from our preliminary task such as, the importance of meeting deadlines. We also learnt using different cameras and the accessories that came with it, like the tripods and the also using tracking shots. Since we were experiencing our first time filming it was a fantastic experience for us to experiment with different ideas and develop for our actual media product. I had also learnt that certain things wouldn’t work to the standards me and my group wanted, I mean that like some of the tripods on wheels where very stiff making the sequence a messy and full of faults that could have been avoided with better equipments. However I have learnt how to manage the time we were given better, which came in very useful as it enables me and my group to hand our work in finished.