Question 6 - What we have learnt about different technologies while constructing the product

During the course of researching and creating this media product, we have learnt a lot about different technologies and how they can be used to produce media products such as our film opening.


Firstly, the use of blogs has been crucial in all areas of planning, research and evaluation as it has helped my group to organize schedules around our timetables and keep track of when each individual activity is happening - an incredibly important point as we found during filming, as sometimes we were unable to film on a scheduled day. It also served as a place to show what we had found during our research, which was helpful as we constantly referred back to our findings so our final product was kept as close to the conventions of a typical thriller as possible.
Equally helpfully, the blogs are interactive and can be used by anyone, so audiences outside of our project can look at our research and comment on it, telling us how we can improve or what they enjoyed about it - which is a two-way community, enabling us to get answers and feedback and reply to these comments quickly and easily. In addition to this, lots of information can be hosted in many different forms - for example, in files embedded from Youtube; audio podcasts; etc - which makes the blog look more professional and interactive.


The user of different recording devices has also helped us immensely. We used digital cameras to take and compare pictures of actors and possible locations that we could film our product in; we also used them to see how different angles would look and affect out film, which saved us time as we didn't have to experiment while filming. We used miniature 'DV' cameras to record our video footage of the prelim task, a rough copy of our film and the final product, which was used in conjuncture with a fresh DV tape that our films were recorded on. We could rewind and watch footage directly after filming it to make sure it looked okay, and if not we could film those sections again instantly. Both cameras used USB cables to connect and exchange information with computers, that was then uploaded to our blogs, and both devices taught us about framing skills and how we should position the camera to achieve the perfect shot or angle, which we also used a tripod for.

As well as this, we used microphones that were installed in the computer monitors to record some sound bytes that we couldn't record through the camera. This was extremely helpful as it meant that we were able to get the sense of a phone conversation actually happening, so the audience could tell what was going on and it seemed realistic at the same time. If we had used the camera to film it we would have had to shoot images as well, which wouldn't have worked for the storyboard that we had set out.


One of the most important technologies used in this entire project was the editing software iMovie. Because of it, we were able to edit all out clips into one singular, coherent media product, take out any scenes we didn't want or need and give the film and overall professional look. We were able to use it to directly cut video clips so we only used footage that we wanted instead of having lots of rough cuts and clips, and we were able to use lots of different clips that we had shot, instead of one continual shot that had been filmed in one sitting.
iMovie also allowed us to import clips and videos that had been downloaded from other websites and then edit them to our own needs - for example, the MyTherapy clip was edited from a much longer presentation, and using the editing software we cut it down to something that we could use.
Additionally, we could insert titles and transitions so our film wasn't constantly and awkwardly changing scene without a smooth transition. We used fade-ins, which we thought were the smoothest and most professional-looking, and created titles that were typical of the thriller genre to make it look like an actual film had been produced.
Finally, we were able to export our finished product and compress it into a single file that could then be uploaded or sent to another website so that we could attempt to reach our target audience; we used this to gain criticisms and comments on our finished product which we can use to later improve on our film.

Overall, each technology has been indispensible to this project, and without them we would have been unable to research, plan and make our media product as thoroughly as we have been able to.

Question 3 - Which media institution would distribute our product

As noted before, we feel that the company most likely to distribute our film would be Warner Bros. Pictures, a very well-known company that deals with many different media products and distributes a wide variety of successful films each year. They produce many different genres of films from comedies to action/adventures, and included in this list are several thrillers that have had lots of publicity and been successfully marketed.
These include The Dark Knight (2008) and V for Vendetta (2006), films which show the main character as someone that disobeys or rebels against the generally accepted view of the world, which is significant as our film deals with a similar storyline. Major Hollywood production companies often do not produce 'dark' storylines and prefer to show the main character as adhering to the rules at all times, so we would have to choose a distributor that produces films that shows an unappealing side of life.


Although Warner Bros. is an American distributor, we feel that it would be a better choice for producing our film than a British company - this is because it is well-known for producing successful films (including thrillers), and would enable a much wider audience than just British viewers. V for Vendetta, a thriller similar to ours due to the storyline and female main character, is also set in Britain and yet was produced by Warner Bros., receiving many positive reviews.

Question 4 - Who our audience is

We found that our audience would be most likely to be young adults by asking 10 people from 3 different age groups what they enjoyed most in a film. Younger teens (13-16) mainly responded that they enjoyed comedies or romantic comedies due to the light-hearted humour and lack of complete realism; older teens and young adults (17-21) generally told us that they liked thrillers or horrors as they enjoyed the uncertainty and often complexity of the storylines; and adults over the age of 21 tended to enjoy a wide variety of films (mainly thrillers or comedies) which suited their moods at the time.

This graph shows the overall amount of people who enjoyed which films the most, with blue being "young teenagers", red being "older teenagers" and yellow being "adults".
From this we understand that our primary target audience by age will be older teens, who we feel will enjoy the film as they like to be kept at the edge of their seat wanting to know what happens next in thrillers. One recurring theme in many thriller movies is political conspiracy, which our film also contains, and we hope that this will attract a wider audience.

We also feel that a large proportion of our audience will be female, as the main character in our film is also female. Often in most films, women are shown to be weak characters who constantly need saving from themselves or the villain; by having a female as the lead in our movie we hope to portray her as being strong, capable, and able to fend for herself - by doing this we hope that our audience will be able to either relate to her or understand that there is more than one very stereotypical role for females to play in any kind of media product.
Although our film is not necessarily realistic, many people look up to characters played in films because of their actions or how they make the audience feel, and we hope that our main character will inspire the audience in this way.
However, many men will also be the audience for our film as we feel that men watch thrillers more than women due to their natures (women tend to watch comedies or romantic films while men prefer action or suspense films). Although our main character is female, we think that

In conclusion, our overall target audience are young women as we feel they will be able to relate to the main character and will enjoy the conflict and mystery that our film hopes to portray. Even though the scenario our film explores is not particularly realistic, we think that it will appeal to the younger generation's sense of adventure and rebelliousness, and in doing so will inspire them to achieve their personal goals:
Our secondary audience are adults of most ages, who we feel also enjoy thrillers due to the tension that they can induce, and who we think will be able to relate to other characters in the film as well. Still we hope that the women will watch our product in particular as they will still be able to relate to the main character, but we think adults will watch our product more for the storyline and its ties with the political world rather than to relate with the characters.

Question 5 - How did we attract and address our audience?

We hosted our final product on the popular video sharing site Youtube, where thousands of videos are uploaded every day for the rest of the world to watch and comment on. Because of its popularity and use by all generations - especially our target audience - we felt that we would be able to get a variety of good feedback if we hosted our final media product on this site and invited people to comment on it, as well as linking it to other videos by using 'tags', which show similar search results together.

The comment we received on our video was helpful as it contains both constructive criticism on points that we could improve - for example reducing background noise - and also tells us which part they liked, which tells us that we were able to interest our audience.

We received other comments on our final product through the social networking site Facebook, by privately and publicly messaging to people of our target audience that we knew the link to the video on Youtube. After watching the video, we received a lot of feedback which we were able to use to get a clear idea of what our target audience thought of it.

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The overall opinion of our film is positive; all the feedback we received told us that the audience enjoyed it and wanted to learn more about the characters and storyline. We also gained some criticism along similar points - we were told that at some points of the product, the background noise (wind in particular) was too strong and so the actors couldn't be heard properly, making the storyline a little confusing, and that the cutting rate was slightly too quick, so the audience didn't have enough time to concentrate on the credits and the story.

We also invited a small group of people from our target audience to watch a screening of our video and filmed them watching it and answering questions about what they thought the genre of the video was, what any points of improvement could be, etc:

The general consensus was that the film was good, but could be improved by speaking clearly so the actors could be heard over the background noise. However, all the people watching felt that it was typical of a thriller movie and wanted to know what the rest of the story was and how it would unfold.

To ensure that the future quality of our product is better, we will need to change different parts such as the sound to achieve a high level of professionalism. We will have to film in a more secluded area and on a calmer day so that the wind does not interfere with filming and appear louder than the actor's lines, and also change the sound of the background music while editing so that the audience can concentrate on the dialogue properly.

Overall, we are happy with the product but feel that it could benefit greatly from several changes such as the sound quality (as noted above); the location of the film to make it look more urban and 'dark'; and the time of day filmed at to change the level of suspense.