Sana Haq - 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progress from it?

Our Preliminary Task -

Our Final Thriller Opening - The Stalker -

Over the past couple since we finished our preliminary task, we found it was a great starting point. By experimenting with different camera techniques and editing skills, it allowed us to have a clear idea about how to plan the opening to our thriller. Whilst looking back at the preliminary task process,I feel as if we have progressed by our camera work,as our camera work was not that imaginative compared to our thriller opening according to the plot lines and final outcome of our shots and editing emerged together. Our thriller opening consists of a variety of camera work such as panning, tracking, point of view shot, hand held etc. compared to the basic camera work used in our preliminary task. Also in our preliminary task we used the same concept as our opening which was the stalker theme, we found it became quite easy to work with when it came to the final stages, as we can expand on our ideas effectively.

 By being able to experiment with the preliminary task during the editing process, it allowed us to save a lot of time as we already knew most of the basics, however reflecting back to the preliminary task our editing was not that effective, therefore we knew that making the same mistakes again was unnecessary. By making sure we did not make the same mistakes again, we paid close attention to ensuring there was continuity, the non diegetic sounds were correctly placed and transitions and special effects were used effectively.


 THINGS WE DONE DIFFERENTLY

• Added a soundtrack 
• Having a voice over as our dialogue instead of having diegetic sounds 
• Adding special effects such as the use of black and white images. 
• Using a variety of techniques to show off our camera skills.
• Setted our scenes in different areas within the school

 Overall I beleive without creating a preliminary task before hand, our group would have found it very difficult to create the final outcome we have achieved in our opening. However I believe with a bit more of practice we could have perfected all our camera shots. Even though i am pleased with the final outcome of out thriller opening,I still believe certain aspects of it could have been better with the help of extra time.

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

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

Sana Haq - 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted/addressed our audience by the following;


Questionnaires. We felt that by conducting our research through Questionnaires was very helpful as it allowed us to meet the expectations and needs of our audience. We did by using a variety of questions about if the following actions we were deciding to convey would appeal to them, similarly if they did not we would then go the majority of the percentage that disagreed and alternatively go with the best option that they have suggested.





Although 10 percent of our participants disagreed with our theme. We believe that if we listened to our 10 per cent then the other 90 percent would be let down as we going with the minority. This then brings in the concept of our product being Mainstream therefore we would have to follow the majority of the research, especially that  the plot line is one the major reasons why people would watch a thriller. We then linked this question with another, asking if our audience would like to see a thriller with elements of realism. We found that 73% said yes, we believe that this would allow us to proceed with our theme of our thriller, which was to have the plot conveying of a stalker. This is suggested to imply realism as in society this can happen to anyone and has happened in the past when overlooking the news from the past few years.

However we did not always listen to our research as when asked about what sub-genre they would like the majority replied back with 'horror'. The reason why we automatically dismissed this concept was because we felt that we included thriller as a sub-genre then our theme would not represent any elements of realism, therefore we went for the next best option with 20% of our research saying the would like 'drama' to work alongside thriller.

Our own knowledge. 

We felt that because we are similar ages to our target audience, we can elaborate on our experiences and know how to connect with teenagers. Therefore by having our theme also based around a social networking site, we felt that we could easily relate to our audience as in society today the majority of teenagers have in some way experienced cyber bullying, random adds and easy communication through the beauty of social networking sites.This then again brings in the concept of realism in an effective way that has been presented in the 21st century as the majority of the time teenagers spend is through digital technology. Originally we were going to grasp the concept of Facebook in our opening as it's the most popular social network used by teenagers today. Due to problems facing copyright we decided to disregard this concept in our opening, however we still strongly feel that with the opportunity of producing the whole thriller we would include Facebook as without it our thriller would not be as realistic as Facebook's ratings and approach to social networking is the best so far. Therefore creating a new concept would not be recommendable as this is the best way to connect with our audience and make our thriller current and modern.

We also knew that by having our central characters based around the same age as our audience, would be ideal as the storyline would not fit if we had an adult playing the role of our characters, or a young child being played a victim. Therefore we made sure all the basics of our thriller were covered as without casting our characters correctly it would result in having a low response rate. I believe that we have correctly chose our characters as it helps the audience to relate with the characters more effectively by being around the same age bracket. Even if we were given the opportunity again I would not cast my characters any different. However with better access to more boys I believe it would have been more effective if we had shown a male character within the opening to get the male audience engaged from the beginning of our thriller.

Sana Haq - 4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Sana Haq - 3. What kind of media institution might describe your media product and why?

As a group we decided to produce our media product as a Mainstream institution.
The reason for making this decision is because we knew that by going Mainstream it would appeal to our target audience as we are not a creating a new concept that we believe would not appeal to the mass audience. By being Mainstream it would encounter our media product to have different segments within our opening such as our own production company, therefore we created 'Innovative Ideas' this would allow us to keep both distribution and production rights. Similar to our 'Innovative Ideas' are Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.

If we became an Independent institution, we would have had to face many difficulties that would not be found if we went Mainstream. These are having to go with the concept of releasing our thriller in a niche rage of cinemas, which may cause low revenue that would lead to a loss made from the film as we believe that our thriller follows the conventions of a thriller which involve's a lot of expenditure to create the best out come possible. Also if we became Independent it would restrict us from releasing our thriller worldwide/international as we are only targeting a small range of audience who our theme would appeal to.
 We then went on to believe that if we became Mainstream we would be able to please our target audience as they would have better access to it, therefore they would not be limited to the whereabouts they can view our opening as it would be available in mainstream cinemas such as, Odeon, Cineworld and Vue. 

Sana Haq - 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our opening sequence we have decided to represent different types of social groups such as;

1. Students; the reason why we have chosen to represent students is because we felt as if it would be easier for us to relate to and that we knew there would not be any issues with the locations we decide to set our scenes in as we were only allowed to shoot within the school. As well as all these issues we knew that by having our central characters as students it would appeal to our target audience (which is highlighted in  question 4.), this is because it would be a simple but effective way of allowing the audience to connect with the characters. As we our students ourselfs we knew it would be easy to plot the story line by having our characters and audience similar ages to us.

2. The Asian Community;

we have decided to focus on using our central characters representing the Asian community because we felt that this would be the perfect opportunity to go against stereotypes and show Asians in two completely different ways.

First;

As most people would see that a different ethnicity other than the white community are suggested to be outsiders (foreigners) and a threat to society, therefore we decided to centralize outsiders in our opening and allow them to dominate our thriller to make a different ethnicity the 'norm'. We felt that we could break the concept of 'outsiders being a threat' by going against this term for one of our characters. The effect of this is that it would allow the audience to see a variety of personalities and life culture. In the shot above, the victim has been shown as wearing no makeup this allows the audience to fully understand from the very beginning that there's a clear difference between both characters. Even though our initial reaction was to have the victim being played by a white teenager, we decided to dismiss this concept and keep it interesting for the audience and not to make things too cliche, therefore having an Asian play a victim role was simply intriguing.


Second;

By having the victim being played by an Asian, we felt very strongly to also have the culprit (the stalker) being played by an Asian. By knowing the stereotype of different ethnic groups being shown in the film industry we felt that we could play along with this and have our culprit shown as an 'outsider'. By listening to the voice over the audience begin to see the deceitful side of the stalker as she has been said to be from Texas, however adapting to the British culture and picking up on the accent very quickly. This gives the audience a feeling of the sense of secrecy by hiding her true identity from others. Also by being Asian, her voice represents her to only be an outsider by her actions, not by the ethnic group she's from.

Sana Haq - 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media products?

I believe that our final outcome of our opening consists of many conventions that occur within a Thriller such as;

Orchestral Music

We found that during our research we commonly found that almost every opening used orchestral music, therefore we felt obliged to follow this tradition, as we did not want to make an error in choosing a different type of music. I also believe that this music suited very well with the theme of our story line, as it doesn't sound too aggressive and gives the perfect feeling towards its viewers. We also noticed that in our opening that after every other title there's a dip in the sound of the music just as it begins to fade away and arises again as the title is shown. 

Use of Fonts. 

We had decided to typically represent our title sequence as white on black, because we felt it gave off a thriller vibe, and as before we researched many thriller films that have used this same concept of white font on a black background.

Although some of the modern thriller's we researched had their title sequence running throughout scenes. However a majority of the old thrillers didn't use this concept. Therefore we felt that by going with a old tradition would be a better decision as we wanted to keep our audience engaged with the story line and not get distracted by the text that is shown with it. 

The reason why we have decided to go for a basic font compared to the title of the thriller is because we felt that the simple font begins to represent the life of the victim by showing she is an ordinary person. We then contrasted this with the title 'The Stalker' by being in a font which is named Cracked. I believe that is effective as this implies to the audience that the life of the victim gets disturbed by a person who is not right in their minds, therefore the font was perfect to reflect on the stalkers character. 

 Editing. 

The use of black and white images in our opening follows the conventions of a thriller as it gives the audience a sense of the past. They are inserted into our opening as jump cuts, which emphasizes the importance of the images. We decided that by portraying these images as black and white implies that she's already taken these images in the past. We developed the idea of using black and white by also showing colour images that are shown during the jump cut through a pan shot. The reason why this works well is because the past is clearly distinguished from the present by the use of colour. However we decided to try something a little bit new by having a clock over the stalkers face, this was to also suggest something in the past as the clock is moving anti-clockwise which. We used this concept because we wanted to show a varitey of ways showing the same thing so that it remains interesting for the viewers. 

We decided to have a voice over during our opening, even though it doesn't match with the conventions of a thriller as usually the only time dialogue occurs is when there's a coversation, therefore we decided to battle against it so the audience get a better understanding of the life of the stalker. I believe without our voice over the opening may seem a little bit boring therefore dialogue was the perfect way to overcome this problem. Although we understand that during our research the majority of the thrillers we viewed did not have any dialogue, we decided as a group to tackle this and have some different features to our opening.