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

Our opening in many ways conforms to the forms and conventions of real thriller openings. The use of camera is conventional for a thriller film, and at times is voyeuristic, for example when Ruby waits at the train station, the camera zooms in to focus on her, the camera is also slightly shaky which gives the impression that it's a handheld camera and she's being filmed by someone.

The music is typical of the genre and helps to create suspense and an eery atmosphere throughout the opening.

Another convention we use is the protagonist having a fatal "flaw" in which the antagonist exploits, in this case Ruby's "flaw" is her naivety and her trusting nature.

We think the use of conventions in our opening is quite broad and so it would be hard to identify a specific sub-genre, however the opening is quite ambiguous and so audiences can predic the narrative in various ways. This helps to add to the mystery of the film because audiences can compare what they thougjh was going to happen, with what actaully did happen, amongst other audiences, creating a word-of-mouth effect.

The conventions we used did relate slightly to that of Hard Candy. In saying this the ideas we used from Hard Candy were mainly taken, not from the film, but from the films trailer and so the way we sequenced our opening was completly different. Therefore there are not distinct parallels between our opening and that of Hard Candy's.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The girl in the middle is from the film we based our opening from, Hard Candy. The first girl is from the popular thriller film Taken.

We chose these two girls because they are very similar to our protagonist (third picture) and were in similar productions.

The social groups represented in our thriller are:

White, working class, teenage female, and white, middle class, mid-aged male.

Gender is presented very sterotypically in our opening, (though perhaps not the rest of the film) with the dominant male, and the passive female. Ruby is almost presented as "The Damsel in Distress".

In the opening scene, the audience only meets Ruby and Larry, but in no real depth. Ruby appears as a sterotypical teenager, with her makeup, laptop and Web Messenger, however she also shows a certain indepenance and has an almost mysterious air to her. She travelts alone to go and meet Larry, whom she has never met before, or so the audience would assume. She enters Larry's den alone, but doesn't seen afraif, she even takes off her coat, as though she's going to be staying there for a while, she appears comfortable. She discovers her picture, but she takes her time, she's in no rush. We think this would confuse an audience as typically speaking, a young girl travelling alone, finding strange things in a man's home, she would be very tense and afraid.

It's hard to represent Larry in the opening sequence. There is no dialogue in the opening and this makes it very hard to relate to the characters. Larry is presented as the pervert, the predator, and this is through music and audiences prejudice's about an older man and a younger girl, as well as the internet.

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

Our film is an independant, low budget film, and so the institution distributing it would have to have a similar reputation, not a big hollywood institution like Working Title films. It is most likely to be produced by a company like Film 4. It would most likely be shown in UK based independant cinema such as Pheonix Cinema in London, in order to make a substantial profit, and then aired on Television on Film 4's freeview channel, whilst also being released on DVD.

The mise-en-scene on the film in terms of lighting and setting reflects our low budget production, though this doesn't necessarily mean low quality. This type of visual style is typical of films producedby Film 4. The UK film marked need to create a disticnt style in order to compete, and set them apart from the typical American blockbuster institutions and therefore Film 4 is very suitable institution to produce our film.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The demographic for our Thriller is a 15 certificate.

Through stereotypically, from the opening scene, you could say that the demographic is mainly the younger generation due to Ruby, and her typical teenage intrests, like make up, and web messenger services. However the actualy storyline of the thriller, with themes such as peadophilia, make the narrative more sensitive and therefore appealing to older generations. Also the fact that our questionnaire revealed that people were most interested in psychological thrillers, meant that our narrative had to be quite challenging, again appealing to the older audiences.

In terms of gender, our thriller is quite wide spread. Although stereotypically boys are most likely to watch a thriller, the protagonist is Ruby and therefore, having a heroin would appeal to teenage girls and women alike.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We based our Thriller on the exisiting film Hard Candy, and so audiences may or may not be aware of the similiarities. The effect use of music and shots effectively appeals to a range of demographics.
The protagonist Ruby appears in the opening scene as a typical, young, teenage girl. There doesn't appear to be anything unusual about her. In some shots we used the popular messenger Window Live, this will relate to modern audiences, particularly those of the younger generation.
The settings in the opening scene are to a certain extenet recognizable. The train station of course is very typical and mondane, whereas Larry's den is very unusual. It's outside, it's dark and dusty, it has no real layout and is filled with abstract props, including the table of pictures.
We used the conventions of eery music to help create suspence throughout the opening. We also used the conventional "male predator", older and darker, and a universally recognized threat to young girls.
The close ups of Ruby place her in an intimate light and therefore help her relate to other young girls watching the film. The use of voyeuristic camera shots also places her in a position of vulnerability and encourages audiences to watch the rest of the film to find out if their heroin survives. The 'train station scene' is likely to intrigue audiences as it's very ambiguous as to who is filming Ruby.
It's not only the camera that is voyeuristic, the audience is to. Throughout the opening the audience sees the parallel of Ruby going to meet Larry, and Larry going to meet Ruby, but in two very different ways. The audience is almost placed in a position of responsibility, they want to warn Ruby that Larry may not be who she thinks he is.

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

We used: Final Cut Pro, Hand held Cameras, and a Tripod.

There are several strenghts and weaknesses in terms of the camera. One of the issues we faced was trying to track the characters. We didn't have the proper equipment in order to do this, and so as a solution we had to put the camera on the tripod and zoom in to follow the character. On the other hand the camera was very good to help create a sense of voyeurism, as it was able to be hand held whilst also working perfectly with the tripod, creating professional looking shots.

One of the problems we faced was filming in the dark. Whilst out on the street it was perfect with the ambient street lighting, however once we tried to film by Larrys "den" it was too dark. We couldn't light the scence fully because it would be too bright and take away from the darkness of the scene. Eventually what we did, was use sound as the main indication of movement in the dark, for example the sound of gravel as Larry approaches Ruby in the den. We also placed the light inside the den from one specific angle. This meant that the whole room was not in light and created an almost "spotlight" effect on the characters.

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

The preliminary task helped us to develop the skills we needed in order to make the thriller, and also helped us identify which areas we were most uncertain with.
The editing for us was the most difficult thing, as none of us had used Final Cut Pro in great detail in the past.
Using the preliminary task we knew what shots we had to use in order to make the Thriller Opening look professional, we knew how to storyboard effectively and the research helped us develop key idea for the Thriller.

The main progression from out prelimary task to our Thriller was our confidence in shot types and use of camera. We used many different camera types such as close ups, match on action and point of view shots, though many were taken out in the editing process.

We as a group, feel much more comfortable with the equipment. We are all able to use the camera effectively and are all confident in using Final Cut Pro to edit our work.

We think that our final product was succesful. We used a range of differnt shot types, lighting and sound in order to make our thriller as professional as we could using the limited resources that we had. We were able to use our research, such as the questionairre results, to appeal to our key demographic and we were succesful in doing so.