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

For my media product, I drew a lot of inspiration from other thrillers. My genre, being thrillers meant that there should be a lot of action, minimal dialogue and chasing. My product fits all of this criteria as we made the whole scene apart from after the antagonist gets shot a chase scene with very little dialogue apart from where the antagonist shouts at the protagonist. 

The usual setting for a thriller is the city. For example, Batman: The Dark Knight(Nolan:2008) was set in the fictional city of Gotham which is a very built up area with many sky scrapers and a big population. My media product however takes place in a deserted field and forest in the country side. This is very atypical of a thriller. We decided to do this as it would be a lot easier to film as there wouldn't be people walking by a lot of the time, it fit the narrative as the protagonist is meant to be on the run, retreating to a remote part of the country.

During the filming of my product, I tried to use a lot of common camera angles such as the low angle shot of the floor and the feet of the characters as they run past the camera. I decided to use this after seeing Quantum of Solace(Forster:2008) where in the opening credits which is also a chase scene, once the antagonists are introduced and are chasing the protagonist's car, there is a shot of the road and the cars behind. This shot denoted the speed of the chase which made it look a lot more exciting. 

Another thing that I did which wasn't typical of thriller films was during the credits. When the protagonist walked away after killing the antagonist, the pace of the film really slowed down and I used music to set the sad mood. I also used the low angle shot of the feet again, to contrast with the earlier shot of the chase to show how it had slowed down a lot more. This is very different compared to other thrillers as they are about being upbeat and fast. Crammed full of action and explosions leaving very little room for emotions to be shown.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product represents different social groups through editing, sound, mise-en-scene and cinematography. The protagonist played by Ed Brooker who is 17 years old is a man in his mid twenties on the road from an anonymous agency and the antagonist also played by Xiangyu Ge who is 16 year old where as his character is around the same as the protagonist. 


The stereotypical mid twenties man is someone who has started working, just finished university, possibly moving into his first house. He is usually working or middle class, trying to work up the working ladder and achieve success. In our film, the protagonist doesn't any facial hair and is wearing a hoody. The protagonist in the narrative is trying to fit in with the crowd, dressing as a teenager to avoid the agency.


Xiangyu Ge portrays the agency like an anonymous business man. He wears a suit to show that he is from the agency however he uses glasses to hide his identity. He also does not wear a tie and wears his shirt un-tucked. This connotes that he doesn't care about being smart but is just there to do the job. In the film, we introduce the protagonist first as he leads the chase and bring in Xiangyu secondary as he comes around the corner to connote how he's trying to get the protagonist. This helps identify who is on the run and who is chasing. 


Throughout the product there is many connotations of masculinity, the whole chase scene is about who is the fastest and strongest. At the start the antagonist is in control, being the one with the most power as he runs after the protagonist. There is also a single shot of the Antagonist by himself which is the only shot until he stops to get the gun out where the protagonist is not in the shot. This connotes that he is the more important one which is true until the gun switches hand.

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

I think that my film would be like a Hollywood blockbuster, a mostly no risk film that appeals to the mainstream. Possible institutions that would distribute this product would be the likes of Warner Bros. who distributed such films as Batman: The Dark Knight(Nolan:2008) and Inception(Nolan:2010) or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who distributed Casino Royale(Campbell:2006). These institutions have produced many other thrillers and more specifically crime thrillers like my own. 

However, there are many other types of distribution that isn't just through the cinema. The film could be watched on the internet using websites such as blip.tv or Youtube. Along with distributing, these websites could also be used for promotion and advertising my film. Youtube regularly advertise films and other products such as the iPod and Cars on their front page. Both these websites receive a huge amount of traffic every day with a huge variety in audience. Avatar(Cameron:2009) advertised on Youtube for a period of a month before the film was released and in that month the trailer that was hosted on Youtube received over a million views. Today this trailer has over three million views with the total upload views from every video that was posted from the official Avatar channel well over twenty three million.


After the film has been released, it would be released on DVD and then shown on TV too. Possible institutions for this would be ITV and SkyMovies. SkyMovies have a blockbuster feature where you can pay one off to see the film once it is scheduled. This happens simultaneously as the DVD is released as usually it would be a period of over 3 months before the film can be seen for free on the other SkyMovies channels. 

Who would be the audience for your media product?

For my media product, the majority of the audience would be mostly teenagers and people early in their twenties from age 15 to 25, mostly men too. The thriller genre is very popular with young people as it consists of a lot of action, chases and killing. My product is no exception from this as both of the characters get shot and the scene is a chase scene. I would think that my film would be rated as a 12 by the BBFC due to the killings, much like most other thrillers. The film would definitely appeal to the mainstream audience as the film is very much like other thrillers, sticking to most of the typical forms and conventions used in a thriller. 


The audience of my film would be comparable to some films such as Batman: The Dark Knight(Nolan:2008) and Casino Royale(Campbell:2006). Both of these films are thrillers that appeal to the mainstream audience. Both of these films are similar to my film as well, use of props such as guns, many chase scenes and similar camera angles. The audience of these films are mainly male age 15-25, such as my film and both have the 12 certificate. 

How did you attract/address your audience?

Sandy Lee, one of the
participants in the interview.

To attract and address my audience, I initially asked them what they wanted. In an earlier blog, I posted the results of a series of interviews. We asked people that would be the potential audience for the film what they wanted to see from a crime thriller film. The response was very uniform, with most people stating that they would expect to see a complex and tense storyline, chases, guns, fight scenes and plot twists. With this knowledge in hand we knew exactly what we had to do to create a film that would appeal to the target audience. There was also a couple of things that the interviewees asked for such as car chases and gadgets but we ruled out these for the final product for a number of reasons, such as time constraints and overly complicating the production.

One of the interviewees, Jacob Stevenson, said he wanted to see "massive forest and a quiet forest." To address this, we decided film in a field in Clavering which had a wood surrounding it. This setting was not that typical of a thriller, usually in a city or a built up area. However we thought that this setting fit with the narrative of our film, with the main protagonist being on the run from an anonymous agency, pushed out of his usual way of life and forced to flee to the most remote places in the country. This also attracts the audience because it adds something new to the crime thriller genre, not the normal setting of a city. The opening shot also denotes a house in the background and a public footpath in the foreground connoting that the setting is actually very close to the people watching the film which relates to them, making them feel that they are more involved with the film. 

Opening shot with the house
in the background.

When we set out to make a chase scene, we wanted to make it look as fast as possible. To do this we used a lot of shots that lasted less than a section to build up speed right at the start as the agent makes his presence known to the protagonist. Doing this keeps the audience interested in the film with the fast start and then settling into a moderate pace of shots with low angle shots of the characters running to keep the pace up and then stopping everything together when the agent pulls out his gun. This changes the situation and stops the chase from dragging on, keeping the audience still engaged. We repeat this until the agent catches the protagonist, adding in different shots such as extreme long shots, medium and side on shots.

I attracted audience by using actors of similar age of the target audience. Xiangyu Ge who is 16 who plays the agent and Ed Brooker who is 17 who played the protagonist. The actual age of the characters is actually supposed to be around 20-25, for both the protagonist and the antagonist in this scene. This would also then appeal to the rest of the majority of the target audience.

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

For filming our project, we used a cannon digital video camera. The camera requires and SD card for storing the clips being filmed on in the process. This presented me with the problem that my particular SD card was only 512mb big which meant that it did not hold much film on it. This meant that I had to navigate through menus and delete bad takes out on location. This is something that I have not really ever needed to do before, but doing this, gave me much more experience with the camera. 

When we edited our film, we used a Macintosh and a software package called Final Cut Express. Prior to this work, I had never used a Macintosh extensively or used Final Cut much, apart from in our preliminary task. Editing in final cut gave me a lot of experience with the Macintosh systems and I learned how to trim clips, use fades and slugs effectively, create titles and sync music and sound effects.

Screen cap of our final project opened in final cut.

Screen cap of the use of fades and titles, along with sound levels.

Screen cap of sound syncing with the gun shot.

Blogging is also a completely new thing to me. I’ve never had to organize a web page or add content to one before. For our early work I needed to add pictures and embed videos onto the blog. This was quite a challenge sometimes as I was embedding from http://www.youtube.com/ and not every video is able to be embedded as it can be disabled by the user. This meant I had to spend a lot of time finding suitable clips that I could embed. Posting images on the blog was also new, I knew how to but some images were drawn and written on in pencil, meaning that they did not show up properly. To get around this, I had to opening up the image in Macromedia fireworks and increase the contrast so that it was legible.

Overall I think that I have learnt a lot about the technologies used in film production but also in other areas of ICT in general. The use of Final Cut was essential in the production and without the knowledge that we gained a long the way of doing the final task, we wouldn't of been able to use many of the things that we did in the film such as sound syncing and slow motion.

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

Our preliminary task was a very basic challenge. It introduced us to editing on the Macs and using items such as our storyboard for filming purposing and using the cameras but it was very basic. Progressing from this, we built on our knowledge of the Macs and the editing software that was available and some of the tricks we could do with this, such as syncing up the gun sound effects and the music. We also learned how to create titles and fades which we ended up using effectively in our final project. One of the things that we though we did very well in our preliminary task was match on action shots. The part where Xiangyu Ge jumps over the chair and Ben Perry puts his hand up and then we change the shot from behind Xiangyu to behind Ben and the two parts matched very well. 

This made it very easy for doing such things like the initial gun shot where the agent pulls out the gun, puts the magazine in, aims and then fires. 

Some things that we did not have to do in the preliminary task was think about different social groups. The preliminary task was just two teenagers walking into a room, sitting down and exchanging dialogue where as our final project is an opening to a feature fiction film. When we made our preliminary task, there was a particular transition where the shot changes only very slightly from looking at one actor to an over the shoulder still looking at the same character. 

These two shots are 1 second apart. Me and Seb weren't happy with this shot and made sure that when we made our final task, we didn't make small mistakes like this that could make it look less than satisfactory at times.


Overall I think that I have learnt many new things and also built on a lot of previous knowledge that I gained from doing the preliminary task. Doing the preliminary task and reflecting back on it helped me a lot to see what I didn't want to do right and left out completely, highlighting mistakes that I really shouldn't of made in the first place. I feel that it helped me make the right decisions in the final project that I wouldn't of done otherwise.