Task 1 : In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

During our media production, we incduced the conventions of real media products such as other horror films like Girl Interupted , The Ring and A Tale Of Two Sisters but at the same time we tried to develop further those ideas and change a few elements in order to make them suitable to the concept which we were trying to to achieve the overall vision we wanted to create for our media product.

We used the simple media convention at the start of the film by using 'Paranoid Production Presents' which is the production company we created to represent a instituation which would produce and distribute our media product. This is usualy done in hollywood , where the company which funds most of the production is shown at the very begging of the film, as it contributes the most to the production. . This acts as an agent to attract people to the film, as the audience may be familiar with other films which that particular production company may have produced and hopefully the audience enjoyed those past productions.

After this we also used the simple media convention of using 'A Davina Thorne film' after the production company. This is to indicate to the audience , the main creative mind behind the film . This is important because as it is a way of rewarding Davina for the ideolgy behing the film. However, in trying to achieve a simple but bold title sequence to make it recognizable and legble. . In reasearching other title sequences of films . In other films which i came across such as 'Sherlock Holmes' the titles of the film are shown over diffrent artistic paintings and drawings of the characters involved in the film . But a similar aspect to our opening title sequence is the Warner Bros Pictures logo as that clearly indicates that they were the main company which funded the production of the film as Paranoid Production did for Elizabeths diary

We also used the media convention of the diary pages as the establishing shot to give the audience an idea of what the film is about. This technique is also used in that of Sherlock Holmes.

This is to show the conventions we used of the set, lighting and properties in our film. We decided to use a brick wall as the backdrop to our scene, we also used low key lighting and used dolls, toys and pictures cut up and coverd in blood. This develops the horror genre convention as stereotypically darkness, blood and mutilation. In addition to this, we hung up burnt and ripped picture of a teenagers faces and dolls on the back wall of our set. this was because the faces shown are terrifying and 'freaky' as they have blood stains over them and have dark cirlces around thier faces sort of how the Joker in the Dark Knight drew over his victims. One of the pictures of an evil looking doll was put up to remind the audience of the famous mass murdering, killer doll 'Chucky

We used the media convention of text in order to describe to the audience the delluisional state of mind of our character , Elizabeth to make evident the fact the she belives she was responsible for the murder of her bullies. When decorating the set of our media product we wrote the word 'Kill' in fake blood on the walls . We used masking tape to make it more legible. Another media product that uses this idea is 'Gothika'.

We also developed the media convention of subtly in our opening sequence only trying to hint what may have happend in the scene to our audience. This is because our target audience consists of teenagers with a really imaginative mind. .'The Blair Witch Project' uses this idea because the murders are not shown on screen but the film still creates tension and scares the audience as it allows them to creatively imagine the events that took place which can sometimes be depicted in a scarier way than it was actually supposed to happen. We used this technique through the rocking of the stoll and the image of hanging feet. This was done to inculcate the idea of her being hung to the audience.

We used the convention of showing the title of the film at the end of the opening sequence. However, in order to show that it was the main title sequence we used a more artistic and larger font which looked like a cursive handwritting to try and make it look like it was an orginal from the handwritting of the character, after this we used to pages of the diary to decorate the text . This is used in Sherlock Holmes where the diary pages are used as a main background design as show above.

Task 2 : How does your product represent particular social groups?

How does your product represent particular social groups?

Our Media Product, Elizabeth’s Diary is a thriller movie about a mentally unstable character that is traumatized and commits suicide because of the guilt she feels; she assumes she has killed the people who bullied her at school because of threatening diary entries.
Our thriller movies represent a social groups of teenagers, these young people fall under the social group of the ‘outcasts’ and teenagers who are both mentally or psychologically bullied by their peers. Teenagers who are repeatedly bullied are up to four times more likely to suffer delusions and hallucinations than youngsters not tormented by their peers; this may lead to harmful results as represented in the movie.
We have represented teenagers in our product using imagery in the mise-en-scene including posters, toys and clothing.
The effects of tortured dolls, scary posters and the eerie, bloody room represent a disoriented environment that in turn also evoke the idea of a twisted mind.
In modern media today, these problems caused by bullying are made apparent. Results have shown that at least sixteen children in the UK kill themselves each year because of bullying at school; this is not surprising as it is very likely to read about teenagers in the news who have committed suicide these days because they feel they don’t have a sense of belonging or because they cannot bear the trauma caused by these acts of bullying.
An example is the suicide case of Eric Mohat in Ohio, was reported by ABC news. Eric was harassed so mercilessly in high school that when a bully said publicly in class, "Why don't you go home and shoot yourself, no one will miss you," he did.
Scientist today have also discovered that People who are bullied have many common characteristics including an unwillingness to resort to violence to resolve conflict, and a tendency to internalize anger rather than express it outwardly. Focusing anger inward is a recognized cause of depression. This internalized anger builds to the point where the victims develop psychiatric injury as represented by the props we used in our media product.
Some of the world’s most popular film amongst teenagers deals with bullying and they all try and subtly address the consequences of bullying
Movies such as the six times Academy Award nominated Precious, Which deals with and overweight, illiterate African-American teenager in Harlem who was impregnated twice by her father and faced physical and mental abuse by her mother. Teenagers who go through similar traumatic situations can relate to or image the troubles she face, just as they can do they same with Elizabeth.
Other movies which deal with such The Grudge which deals a young woman just like Elizabeth who goes through a sort of distress which people believe to be a mental health issue. as they do not belive that she is seeing some sort of paranormal activity and think she is unwell.
We represented our character, Elizabeth in a similar way.

Task 3 : What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?

Characteristics of Hollywood Thrillers consist of stories and concepts that employ suspense in order to maintain interest, however, thrillers exploit that particular narrative quality as much as possible. Main characters in thrillers are placed in menacing situations from which escape seems impossible. Themes often include terrorism, political conspiracy, love triangles that lead to murder, etc. Often the heroes are ordinary folk who are drawn into danger unknowingly or unwillingly. More often than not, the heroes of these movies are men, but occasionally women take a lead roll (e.g. Linda Hamilton in The Terminator).
In Comparison to the stereotypical characteristics of Hollywood Thrillers, Our thriller depicts some similar traits such as the fact that the main character can be juxtaposed to be a woman ( as Elizabeth Carter is the protagonist of our thriller), our themes include student relationship towards each other that leads to murder, and our main character is placed in menacing situations from which escape seems impossible leading to her death, thus I think our film has the potential to be produced by the Hollywood industry if developed further and have a-list professionals star in it.
If our thriller was to be made my a Hollywood institution, Twisted Pictures would be a perfect production company to make our film as they have been very successful in the production of horror movies of this genre such as the most popular American horror movie franchise, the Saw series and over the last 7 years, has grossed over $900,000,000 with the success of their horror films such as , Saw III which grossed $163,876,815.
Lions Gate, and which was is of the most commercially efficacious independent film distribution company in North America due to success of other horror and thriller movies which it distributed in the last few years such as Saw IV, Transporter 3, My Bloody Valentine (3D) and The Imaginaries of Doctor Parnassus. Therefore these companies would be appropriate institutions that are likely to be interested in distributing and producing our media product as our film would only require a relatively small production budget around $1,200,000 which was the same budget as the original Saw movie in 2004, which eventually grossed over 100 times its production budget (approximately $103,096,345) .

Task 4 : Who would be the audience for your media product?

Who would your be the audience for you media product?


A target audience can be described as an audience or demographic group for which a media product is designed to appeal to.
Because our opening sequence is a Thriller piece, our target audience is inevitably going to consist of teenagers and young adults who can relate to the content of this thriller as it deals with common issues in the environment amongst young adults and teenagers such as depression, social discrimination and psychological and physical trauma induced by bullying.

The typical target audience for our media product would consist of people who appreciate the feelings of intense excitement, suspense, high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension which our film and most thriller movies induce.

Young adults are interested in thrillers as they provide thrills and keep the audience cliff-hanging at the 'edge of their seats' as the plot builds towards a climax. They can also sometimes relate to the menacing situation or mystery, or an escape or dangerous mission from which escape seems impossible that the main characters in these thrillers go through. Sometimes, these menacing situations are sometimes abstract or shadowy and those sort of things interest teenagers and young adults as they are naturally adventurous and have a wide imagination at the age of which the media product its targeted towards (15-25 year olds) .

Another reason why this media product would be targeted towards young adults between the ages of 15 to 25 is because they have disposable income which they can spend on watching our media product. Most of these target audience members consist of Male teenagers who are statistically more interested in movies with ultra-heightened expectations and movies that deal with a lot of tension and suspense. These young males may have girlfriends which they may take to see these horror movies and these young females who are their girlfriends can be a sub-target audience. It is also assumed that horror and thriller movie fans also like genres of music such as heavy metal , punk rock and alternative music which also bring about the same feelings thriller movies gives their audience as mentioned above.In our media product we used sounds which is likely to appeal to our target audience as we know what kind of sound appeals to them.

Task 5 : How did you attract/address your audience?

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Task 6 : What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

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

This is the video of our finished media product on youtube. The annotations show the editing process of our film and the technologies we used to construct the finished product.

Task 7 : What do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back on our preliminary task, i have assessed a significant change in the quality of work produced due to the amelioration of our media production skills, preparations and post production techniques. It was also easy for me to recognize the affluent enhancement as i worked with the same group of people as in my preliminary task.

The Time span we were allocated for our preliminary task was relatively short in comparison to the duration of time given to us in order to complete preparation for our final piece. This longer time duration enabled our final piece to consist of the creation of a project folder which contained storyboards we drew up ourselves, cast list,props list , location and lighting denotations and shooting schedules which where not evident in the planning of our preliminary task where we were provided with working storyboards and did not have the incentive make any specification towards the physical appearance of the characters to match the content of the working storyboard unlike 'Elizabeth's Diary' not only to depict imagery to vivid effect because of her natural dark hair and look similar to that in other horror movies such as 'The Ring' . She was also casted to attract our main targeted audience (15-25 year old males) unlike our preliminary task which had no specific assigned target audience.

Our preliminary task , another aspect which was absent was the specific choice of location as we just tried to use any space available at that moment in time for the shoot unlike 'Elizabeth's Diary' where we had to build a set and use all sorts of props. On The morning of the shoot , we set up the dolls we burnt and scorched in order to create imagery to vivid effect, images where also mounted on the walls of the set to evoke the idea of the twisted mind that was on the precipice of committing suicide or murder which one of the components of a stereotypical horror movie.However, in comparison to our preliminary task where we unintentionally used a 'shabby' abandoned class room which would ironically be appropriate for the depicted a sort of 'dodgy' situation where two people are meant to be arguing over a stolen item.

Also, In our final piece we had spent an adequate amount of time where we had enough time allowing us to customize outfits and props to suit particular situation. We also decided to create an effect through the lighting of suspense and tension. In order to do this we used two different forms of lighting; within the main studio space, we had a bare bulb which allowed us to create a sense of darkness and foreboding within our mise-en-scene. This created the stereotypical horror effect that is featured in a lot of Asian cinema such as the original ‘Ring’ and ‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ unlike our preliminary where costumes where not allocated to casts and we had to improvise the usage of props on the spot an example was the camera case we used to act as a brief case which contained money and the lighting sources was a central florescent light and natural sun light from the windows.

The camera techiniques used in our preliminary task differed from that of our final piece as we decided to have camera tracks and we had to sllocate the tracks to a shape which would allow the appropriate movement required for the image of the room we wanted to capture ( conintious shot) unlike our preliminary task which had many different shots types. we also had the opportuninty to experiment outside the shots allocated in the working storyboard we used shots such as , extreme close up, bird's eye view shot, worm's eye shot,high angle shot and a low angle shot .
Another camera skill we learnt was trying to stick to the 180 degree rule. Which we broke a few times in the production of our preliminary task. However, after we realised our error changed position of the camera in order to make those shot work. This correction was essiential as we tried not to break the 180 degree rule . This is an example of how our camera techiniques and skills had improved over time.

In terms of our sound production , we learned to blend both diagetic sounds and soundtracks together using final cut pro in post production as we sourced for diffrent sounds using sound library's and in order to make those sounds seem heightened but still realistic to build up tension and suspense throughout the sequence, we carefully made sure the sounds matched the images unlike our preliminary task where we only used diagetic soundsd (dialouge).

We also had more lessons which helped us improve our use of final cut pro during the editting process to add after effects our piece. Our editting process was less complex as we did not need to cut anything unlike our preliminary task as we had one continous shot. However, we also learned how to make the sequence shots more fluent and lesarnt to insert texts and fade them into our piece.