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

2. The title of the film The title of our film is displayed in the first frame. It is in relation with our film as it is set in a dark room which is very isolated. The Gamble has been typed in red bold lettering to give it an effect so it will stand out very clearly This is fairly common to see this type of title sequence for example the film “Seven”. http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews44/se7en%20blu-ray/title%20seven.jpg

3. Setting/Location The reason I have chosen our 2 characters to establish our possible setting/location is because it gives off a real dark and disturbing atmosphere that you would expect to see in thriller film. It is unusual to see such a important scene in very limited lighting in some thriller films. However, in Saw 1 they do this very well.

4. Costume and props This particular image of our character in a XCU camera shot does emphasise his importance and is very revealing in his good costume that blends in well for our overall film as his appearance is needed to be somewhat hided. An example of our character in a film would be the phantom of the opera where the particular is also hiding part of his face. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NYsgMMAenkY/SRhhnc5CxUI/AAAAAAAAAss/opnYeiuQxIE/s400/phantom_of_the_opera_ver6.jpg

5. Title font and style The title and font style for any movie is very crucial as a bad title and font style can indicate bad research and design. However, a good title font and style shows that your team has thought ideas through well. We decided that the title font and style below was good in relation to our genre type. We felt that the use of big bold red lettering would address our potential audience to take notice

6. Story and how the opening sets it up I have used the fourth shot we see for this frame because it sets the story up. We are shown the “La Familia Productionz “ image at the beginning of our thriller opening it then cuts to our film. This is similar in many other films. For example the famous Warner Bros sign and Universal

7. Genre and how the opening suggests it I think how our opening suggests that the genre of our film is a thriller is the way the shots are very quick and snappy. The fact that they are quick and sharp to the point is very similar to most high action thriller films as there are many different shots. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PPboMHbmkk&feature=player_embedded ( Opening our film) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY ( Opening of Seven) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BWA1T78WpI ( Opening of Jackie Brown )

8. How characters are introduced/established Are characters I believe are introduced very quickly as you see it is almost a torture scene as Isaac is tied up in rope on a chair. Our antagonist ( Dylan ) is also introduced in our film very quickly as it is clear to see he is the villain as he is looking down on our protagonist who is in a torture position. This is very similar to the film Reservoir Dogs where there is antagonist torturing the protagonist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtxR1aiORqk ( Torture scene in Reservoir Dogs )

9. Special Effects In our Thriller opening we did not use special effects but we did use some transitions as follows Fade in Fade out Expansion of time

10. How does your media product represent particular social groups? Social class and status plays a crucial part in our film as our protagonist ( Isaac ) is a business man who is very high class in society. Whereas our protagonist ( Dylan ) is somewhat very low in class and status as he is a villain who likes to take revenge. The gender of our characters also plays a very important part in our film as men are the dominant gender and there are no women in our production.

11. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product, and why? I think our thriller film could be produced by a major Hollywood film studio ( i.e. Universal, Warner Bros, Paramount etc) for worldwide release through a major distribution company ( i.e. Sony etc ). A distributor is someone reliable who would get the film out there and support it fully. Paramount Pictures would be the most reliable - as they've been going for years and have already got films being produced for 2013. Our film would hopefully would be mass produced across the globe for DVD release so that our film and its quality could be shared worldwide. The funding for our film could be funded through the UK film council ( the national lottery ) who have funded films that have been a big success. For example they have funded This Is England, Kidulthood and many more. I think there could be some potential in our thriller idea which could attract interest from distributors. Our film has been influenced by many other similar films such as Seven, Saw 1 and Fight club. Our BBFC classification we were aiming at was an 18 due to explicit violence and the extreme use of language which would not be appropriate for anyone under the age of 18.

12. Who would be the audience for your media product? After creating a questionnaire then collecting the results as primary research I then created some graphs that display what sort of audience our film would attract As you can see from my primary research above, firstly out of a sample of 15 people every single person does go to the cinema. Secondly the majority of people when asked what age certificate they enjoyed most it was an 18 rating. Finally more people preferred a horror sub-genre thriller.

13. How did you attract/address your particular audience? Our conventional protagonist ( Isaac ) has been encouraged to appeal to our audience as he has been taken hostage by crazed psychopath. I think this appeals to our potential audience as it gives an exciting nervous atmosphere. Whereas our antagonist ( Dylan ) who is somewhat abnormal appeals to our audience as his appearance is faded so it gets our target audience guessing who could he be and why he is doing this to an innocent man. Using these ideas about our characters appearances I have designed costumes for our characters. http://www.slideshare.net/guest86e3214/costume-for-protagonist ( Costume for protagonist ) http://www.slideshare.net/guest86e3214/costumes-for-antagonist ( Costume for antagonist )

14. How did you attract/address your particular audience? The particular camera techniques we have used in our thriller film make our audiences take sympathy with our protagonist as our camera angles are predominately looking down on him so that our antagonist has the power and is ruling over him. The mise-en-scene we have created for our thriller film has an intense atmosphere within the set of the film. We decided to use a very dark setting so that our antagonist appearance is somewhat disguised so that our target audience will be constantly asking themselves questions.

15. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product? Location The college equipment enhanced our ideas a great deal as we weren’t restricted in what we could do. For example the preliminary exercise we could only film in college whereas with our main film we could go anywhere. With the equipment we were able to use the dolly which was vital with a scene in our film as it allowed as to track which makes it seem more professional. The use of lighting was extremely crucial for our film as we were filming in a dark environment. We used 2 lilliputs so the light would not be too bright and not to bright at the same time. We also used a redhead with colours attached to the light so that it would give off a better brightness and add to the atmosphere. Lilliput Redhead

16. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product? Editing software For our editing we were using a programme called Final Cut Pro which is incredibly good for editing and we found this software fairly easy to use as we had already experienced the basics when doing our preliminary. The bid advantage of making a longer film meant that we could fully explore the software’s potential. For example we made our film look very realistic as we could use fade in/out very effectively. We also made full use of the wide variety of sound we had available to us to add to the anxious atmosphere in our film.

17. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? In our preliminary exercise I felt that we were restricted in what we could display in our film as we were confined to a particular area and therefore could not display our best. Our preliminary exercise I believe was also very amateur as we had never used this type of equipment before, so therefore as you can imagine our camera shots were very basic in comparison to our Thriller opening. The preliminary exercise and its camera shots within the exercise were lacking quality as we only had a tripod unlike in our Thriller opening were we had a dolly track. As a group I feel that our big improvement overall was our progression in our editing skills as we had much more time and could play around with the software a lot more frequently. For example our editing in our Thriller opening I think looks professional and realistic. We have included many more effects to add tension and atmosphere to our film.

18. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? We included fade in/out which becomes very effective in our Thriller opening as the sub-genre in our Thriller opening is horror and this gives the film an eerie atmosphere. As we grew in confidence after learning downfalls our preliminary exercise such as using the camera hand held which gives very poor quality. The reason the quality is very poor when using a hand held like we did is because the camera is not steady and is off balance which only results in 1 outcome! Overall I believe that the best part in our Thriller opening is the fade in/out when our antagonist ( Dylan ) is talking about money and power. This is really good editing as our film cuts and restarts after he said 1 word for about 5 seconds which really adds to the tension of our film. These shorts are really short and snappy which we have influenced by the film Seven in its opening title sequence were each shot is no longer than a second or two THE END