Task 1 In what ways do our media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1. Our film subverted the traditional norms of film making by not having a full screen and not showing both characters in focus, this reinforces the fact that the opening sequence was filmed on mobile phone which is not typical of hollywood films.

2. We then introduced another character again on mobile phone cameras this challenges the conventional forms of filmmaking that rarely use mobile phone footage to begin a film. This challenges the audience to follow different narrative strands at the same time in the same vein as Mike Figgis Timecode.

3. FilmFour is the name of our production company, the majority of all films have a production company in their title sequence therefore we conformed to the traditional title sequence.

4. In this sequence we introduced the name of our lead actor, this conforms to traditional forms of film making where the actors name is often found in the title sequence. However throughout our title sequence we subverted this however, by having four different screens in our title sequence thus making it difficult to identify who the actor was in the moment in time.

5. In this sequence we conformed to traditional forms of film making where the Director's name is shown in the title sequence. It is traditional to have the role of Director in small text with their name in larger text.

6. After a title sequence in a film that features split screens, the film would generally revertback to type and would concentrate on a full a screen shot however we have subverted this by continuing with a split screen, we did this to give the audience different angles of the action and reinforce that it is being taken by four mobile phones. The light hearted action that is taking place helps to build tension for the violence to follow, this is traditional of film making.

7. For this shot we introduced a fifth screen, this indicates to the audience that there is now a change in the action, this subverts Hollywood style of film making as at this point in the storyline it would revert back to one screen however we have challenged audience expectations and continued to use a split screen, giving the audience five angles of the action from the five different phones.

8. For the final scene of our opening sequence we chose to show the deaths of different characters, this subverts Hollywood as we have continued to show the dead bodies on screentime whereas in traditional forms of film making the deaths are either suggested or we do not continually see the body after the death. We continued to keep all five screens up and allow the audience to choose which narrative strand to follow.

9. Our product developed traditional forms of film making in our last shot by using the conventions of Hollywood. We decided to use the title of our film as the last shot of the title sequence, this gives the audience an insight to the rest of the film and creates tension and drama as to what is going to follow.

Task 2 How does your product represent particular social groups?

Overall our product represents one major social group, young people (teenagers); our main target age that we are representing is 16-18 year olds. However, we are specifically representing two groups within this social group; specifically victims of violence from their own peers and the young people who inflict this violence on their peers. We based the events in our film on the Columbine High School Massacre. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and one teacher. They also injured 21 other students directly, and three people were injured while attempting to escape. The pair then committed suicide. Therefore in our product we hope to represent the young people involved in a non-glamorous way to reinforce the horrific events. Currently there has been a rise in violence affecting teenagers involving gun and knife crime, our product reinforces this and makes people aware that this violence does happen.
The main film we based our idea around is Elephant which is about two high school students Eric and Alex who calmly plan and perform a mass execution of their classmates and school administrators in the course of one day. Eric and Alex are ordinary and very much a part of the fabric of the high school and its array of student actions. In fact it’s hard to distinguish them from all the other students. The school is filled with various students discussing each other, playing sports, and learning about Science and Civics. Alex plays classical piano and Eric plays video games and they are interested in seemingly average things. They calmly watch Nazi programs on TV and purchase and demo automatic weaponry that they buy over the Internet. They seem just as ordinary and interesting as any of the other students. They analytically draw up plans for their killing spree, indicating that they have enough bombs and ordinance to last the afternoon. They walk through the school killing their school peers and there is no rescue from the authorities. Another example of a media product that represents violent teenagers is Kidulthood. Kidulthood is a British film which follows a day in the lives of four poor youths living in an impoverished neighborhood in West London, where the pressure and desperation of poverty propels each of them towards the choice between a life of bleakness, violence, and crime.
The media (newspapers, magazines, television) tells us there are various reasons for the young committing violence on their peers. It could be a lack of education, poor mental health, poor parenting, drug problems, bullying and abuse which they therefore inflict on others; some argue that a fascination with violence (computer games, Nazi history etc) leads to influencing young people to commit violence. Influence of their peers (gang violence) also leads to young people being peer pressured into committing crimes. The media reinforces this, if the media tells a person they are a criminal it leads them to act like one for example wearing a hooded top.

Skins is a British television drama set in Bristol purely based on young people. It explores themes of violence, death, love, drugs and substance abuse, bullying, sexuality, friendship and personality disorders. Skins explores perhaps exaggerated (to create entertainment and set it apart from soap-operas) situations that teenagers in reality face but also the consequences of ‘living the fast life.’ On the whole Skins represents teenagers dissimilarly to our media product as we focus specifically on two teenagers who choose to commit violence on their peers. The rest of the teenagers in our product are portrayed as happy, ‘normal’ young people up until the actual shooting. Cook, a character in Skins is perhaps a similar representation to the characters in our product. Cook represents a violent teenager who cannot control his emotions and therefore lashes out and causes harm to his peers. However Cook is less extreme as we do not witness him committing murder in Skins.

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

For my film I would try and use Warp to produce it I would do this because they have a very good reputation for making quality British films that deal with serious subject matter an example of this This Is England. My film is about teenage killers in a Britsh high school who have gone off the rails and decide for a multitude of reasons to kill their class mates. Our film looks at the sociological reasons behind this insident. These include the killers being victims of bullying, childhood neglect and disfuctional family life.
Warp make low budget films but have a reputation for high quality they have also got consistantly got films into the cinema and continue to promote them onto DVD to produce after sales. I feel they would be a good company to produce our film because our film is low budget, it deals with serious issues and would align itself to the ethos of Warp.

Task 4 Who would be the audience for our media product?

Our target audience is 15 – 24, this is our target audience because this age has the most disposable money and have more free time than any other age group because they have freedom for the first time and no responibility, many are still in education or are starting their first jobs and are most likely to be interested in the thriller/horror genre.Their interested in thriller/horror genre because it appeals to them through the subject matter and because the film features young people. Teenagers would be interested in our film because it is based around people their age and they can relate to the situations that go on in high school.

Task 5 How did you attract/address your audience?

Task 5 Media Presentation

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Task 6 what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing our product

Task 7 Looking back at the preliminary task

Looking back at our preliminary task, I feel that I have progressed a lot comparing it to our final media product. Our final product was much more thorough and complicated than our preliminary task. This was because our prelim task consisted of a narrative which was the same as every groups narrative and only took us an hour to film and a week to edit. However, our final product was dissimilar in which we had to come up with a plot ourselves, which over the course of 6 weeks we wrote and filmed and another 3 to 4 weeks just to edit. Also, for our preliminary task we were given a storyboard, whereas for our final product we had to draw out our own storyboard.

My film making skills have also progressed since the preliminary task I feel much more familiar with editing etc. although because our thriller was filmed on camera phones I didn’t have much opportunity to develop my camera skills. We had more guidance with our preliminary task compared to our final product, because our prelim task was guidance towards knowing how to do our final product on our own.

Our final media product was very quick to film, because it was filmed on a sequence of camera phones and we were only allowed limited time to use the canteen to put together a rough cut of our film. In our prelim task, we used final cut but not to the extent that we used it in our final media product. In our thriller, we used final cut to add the title sequence throughout which listed the names of people involved with either making the thriller or the actors.

The sound we used in our prelim task compared to the sound in our final product are very different, this is because we had a set dialogue for our prelim task between two actors and nothing else. However, in our thriller we had unrehearsed dialogue between 3 different groups of people, this was so that it would seem the conversation was natural and real. We also used sound effects for the gun shots.

We were more concerned about the lighting in our preliminary task than we were with our thriller this was because we used 2 lights that were shone upon our actors to create shadows etc. However, because we were in a natural environment and wanted natural lighting we didn’t need to use any other light on top of the light already provided in the canteen.