Soundtrack (unfinished)

In our thriller Evito we decided not to use a soundtrack. This was because our thriller didnt seem to fit having it, the long periods of silence that stayed as a result of having no soundtrack made it more enigmatic and creepy, it creates an unsettling feeling while watching it, making it feel more realistic. The errie silence that is created works perfectly with our thriller and the genre in general.

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

Men: In our thriller men are represented as both weak and strong. This seems odd as most films like to show men as being dominant, mainly over women. However this stereotype does not apply to our thriller as there are no female characters. Never the less the stereotype of men being predatory still lies within our thriller, one character is clearly more powerful and is following the other one with harmful intentions.
Class: Class could be argued to be represented in our thriller. The two characters obviously are from different classes based upon their clothing, our thriller could be seen as the upper class looking down and being more dominant than the lower class, Gerhard representing lower class and Karamel as upper class, one is wearing trampy clothing while the other a suit.

Q6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project?

Research and Planning:

For much of our research and planning we used blogger. This site enabled us to be able to share all our work to the public and each other  while also being able to take inspiration and ideas from other peoples blogs. The simple format made it easy to write and upload our work and then respond to feedback from teachers, this helps also improve our work to a higher standard. The use of blogger also meant the use of other media services as well, for example prezi. Prezi allows users to display work in a mind map format, this is useful when coming up with ideas as other users can also be invited into your prezi, this was key when coming up with ideas for props and shots when initially planning our thriller as everyone in the group could collaborate and input into it with ease. The finished product can then be embedded into a blogger post like so 

and now when this is posted everyone else can see it and possibly take influence from it to further improve on their own work.
Another great site for research and planning is youtube. If you didn't know youtube is a video social media site that allows users to upload videos and for others to watch them. This was great when planning our thrillers as we could watch other peoples work and also real media products to help influence what our thriller could be based on and what it would look like. It also gave a platform for our final products to be presented on. After this the video can be embedded onto blogger just like the prezi

it can then be viewed by everyone who checks this blog and then the cycle of influence and better quality products continues.

Production:

To film our thriller Evito we used an Canon HD camera. The benefits of using a camera like this are far more vast than just the HD quality of the footage, although this does give our final product a much more professional finish than it otherwise would. One of these benefits would be the simplicity of the camera, unlike more expensive and better quality cameras the one we used was effortless. When filming all we had to do was press record and occasionally zoom for certain shots, by having this ease with filming the whole process became smoother and the shoot took less time than it could have if a more complicated camera had been used. Another benefit also is that the camera had an attached screen which meant we could watch back footage on site and act accordingly, if a shot wasn't good enough we would know there and then and could re shoot it to the standard we want. Without this feature we would have been clueless about the quality of our raw footage and it would have been to late to re shoot if we only found out when we got back to school and watched it on a computer as our location was quite far away and would have been inconvenient.

To help store all the footage we used SD cards, these go into the camera and can be plugged into the computer and then put onto the editing software, they are light, small and very portable, this makes using them easy and they're very convenient.

Post Production:

When editing we used Adobe Premiere Pro, this software allows us to easily edit all of our footage in a non linear way, this means that any part can be edited at any point in time, this was essential when editing as if we realised something wasn't good enough or it didn't fit in our film then we could remove it even if it was at the beginning of the thriller. This meant we had full control when editing, making the whole process easier. Another benefit is the program can edit the footage and produce the HD final product, this meant that our thriller looked more professional, not only this but the software also comes with other editing tool other than just being able to move the footage into place. Some of these include colour correction and grading, this enables us to change how our raw footage looks, for example to look colder and nastier. Another option is the ability to change sound levels and to add non diegetic sound (sound effects). Having the ability to change sound levels made it so that we could make the thriller smoother and less jumpy, if one clip has loud wind noises then that clip can have that reduced as to fit the next clip, this makes the thriller flow better. Sound clips can also extended from one clip into another, this results in a seamless transition. As well as being able to edit the diegetic sound recorded on scene we can also add sound effects to further improve our work and give a more professional finish. This was effortless to do, we simply went onto a sound effect website, searched for what we required, downloaded it and then import it into Premiere, at this point we can then do what we want with it.

Q5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

For fans of scary thrillers like Se7en we added the enigma and the jumpy flash-forward scenes in an attempt to scare our audience. The enigma was achieved through the use of the mask, the lack of detail for the characters, the reasoning for the location and the unknown locations, eg: the forest and dark room. The mask kept the antagonists face hidden from view to the audience, this makes the viewer want to watch further to see if thy ever find out the true identity. The characters lack of information and back story further develops this as not much is known about our two characters or where they are, there must be a reason and also a story behind the person. This attracts audiences as it gives them a chance to not live their lives but more to be involved in someone else's, to learn about their problems and to lose yours. Both characters are also quite unrelateable to our target audience, one being higher class and the other lower.

Our opening ended on a cliffhanger, by doing thriller conventions like this we have managed to keep the familiarity of a thriller. By this I mean that there is nothing abnormal about our thriller, we have stuck to a certain structure and this means that the audience know what to expect when watching the film. This familiarity is good in all media products as it means that your target audience is wider as people like to watch the same thing over and over again. 

The font we used for the opening of our thriller suited the genre we were trying to portray, this addresses the audiences desire for the thriller they are expecting to watch, simple things like titles and, in the case of real media, DVD covers/posters, help to build the whole movie experience so it is important to get them right as to not distract the audience from the fact that they're watching a thriller, everything needs to flow accordingly, without the audience questioning it.

We targeted our thriller towards a young (teen young adult) slightly more male market, we addressed this by making our thriller verge more over to the horror scary side of thriller, the key demographic of horrors is younger and male so this helps our thriller a lot. We accomplished this by having the flash forwards to scare the viewer and the enigmatic antagonist as a way of making our thriller seem possible, like in se7en, unlike films like alien where is just made up.

Evito - Thriller Final Cut

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

Q3 - What kind of media institution might

More PowerPoint presentations from Julian Popely

Q4 - Who would be the audience for your media product? (unfinished)

This is John. John is male, 19 and loves horror/thriller films like The Blair Witch Project and Friday the 13th. These films, though quite big, have all been targeted at specific audiences  unlike comedies or dramas that go to a broad target market. John enjoys small films as he feels them to be more original than money driven.

We believe that our thriller appeals to men slightly more than women, and for ages between 16 and 25, teens to young adults. It will most likely appeal to people who like smaller films, like people who go to cinema city. But also people who prefer the more jumpy horror side of the thriller genre. Below is the ratings for the blair witch project, this reinforces some of our demographic. Men, especially younger, vote it higher than any other group of people.