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

• Our media product we decided to use a clear theme, which is rape but not a common one
• Our media product follows the genre of thriller and sub-genre of crime thriller, however crime thrillers normally focus on the criminal but ours focuses on the victim and how the police are helping our victim
• We use different methods in our film opening to show the conventions such as:

-settings

-costume

-music

-dialogue

SETTING- we filmed our opening at night time as this is when most thrillers are set, night time suggests danger and a sense of not being seen. So we thought to use a long path with cars around which creates lots of hiding spots for a killer 

COSTUME- we dressed our rapist/villain in a hoody as we were then able to hide the rapist’s identity, and give him anonymity. Also gives him the appearance he is a ‘hard man’ which is a character used in many thrillers 

We dressed our victim quite confidently and in a revealing dress to follow the theme of most victims in that they are naive and unaware to danger, also her heels suggest if she was being chased she wouldn’t be able to run

And we dressed her in a baggy hoody for the recording scenes

MUSIC-  we use two different soundtracks 

http://www.freeplaymusic.com/search/advanced_search_ext.php

We used this as it sounds like a typical track used to create suspense and signify danger, it builds up near the rape so our audience know something bad is going to happen

 http://freeplaymusic.com/search/advanced_search_ext.php

We use this to portray our victims situation, she is in hiding and as a victim, so we have music to make her seem innocent and also the music is sad and slow and we use it to almost pull on peoples heart-strings so they have sympathy for her.

DIALOGUE- short simple script which tells the victims story, she is telling the interviewee what happened in a factual way and doesn’t say much of her emotions but we see, like any victims, she has been affected by it and she has been troubled by the event.

Our film conforms to the classic 3 part narrative of a thriller 

·         However ours departs from Todorov’s Theory because we use flashbacks during our opening- so our film won’t be set in real time throughout.

·         Events won’t be shown in order and the audience already know she is in the safehouse (the victims journey) before they know the full details of the disruption.

·         Use of classic character roles in thriller- victim, villain and helpers of the victim

·         Our film is told in the view of the victim, we follow her story and we know her opinion of the event before it has happened.  To make it look more like an interview to a video we added a red recording sign and a border around it.

·        Similar to The Lovely Bones which is the story of a 14 year old girl from suburban Pennsylvania who is murdered by her neighbour and she tells the story from heaven. It is similar because we also have our main character, the victim, tell the story to her interviewer as if she is telling it to the audience.

In this trailer we hear the main character, Susie, narrating the story of the film.

EVALUATION

Project blogging has now ended and from now on I will be posting my evaluation.

Screening

We just had the screening of our opening sequence! It was very successful and there was around 40 people there. Our questionnaire was filled in and we now have the audience feedback.

View on Props Used

These are images we use in our opening which all help to tell the story. Each one needs to stand out in our opening to help people understand who each character is and it also helps to show personality.
I think we chose a good use of props because they are quite simple and we were easily able to get hold of them but also they are effective.

Hoody- Our victim wears this in the police interview, it makes her appear small as it is a large hoody and also like she is not concerned about her appearance.



High Heels- Our victim wears these when she is walking home, it is meant to seem she has just been on a night out and also she stumbles in her heels as she has had a bit to drink


Cigarette- She will smoke these on her way from the cab and one of our shots is going to be a close up of her stubbing out her cigarette


Tissues- When she is in the interview room to appear nervous she will be ripping up a tissue and fumbling with it


Keys - We show her fumbling with her keys in the lock, she is drunk so she struggles to open her door and this is just before she gets pushed into her flat by the rapist


Balaclava/Hood- The hood is used to show the mysteriousness of the rapist and to make him look more menacing

Groups New Idea

New and Improved Idea.

After looking at our final sequence and speaking to our teachers, we decided to simplify our final idea by scrapping the scenes with the therapist, having less flashbacks (if any) and having less dialogue.


So, here's an outline of our new story for our new film:


There's a victim who after a night out, gets raped. She follows normal 'safety' rules by taking a cab home although the cab drops her off at the end of her road, before her block of flats. She's walking back to her flat along the pathway, lights up a cigarette, recieves a text and everything is quite normal. She stubs out the cigarette and walks through the door and up to her flat. As she's about to walk through the door, she gets attacked as a hooded man jumps her. The rest of the movie would be about her struggle overcoming the rape. The rapist has previously raped many other women and left a 'calling card' in the form of a funeral directors business card, showing that his victim will be killed soon. As she wants the rapist to be caught she's revealing her story on camera for the police but to protect herself, she's gone into hiding.


Here's what we'd include in the opening sequence:


The first 20/30 seconds is her talking directly to the camera in a video diary style, setting the scene from the night out. There will then be a fade to black before the flashback scene starts which will be similar to our test shoot where she walks up the path, has a cigarette, recieves a text etc. She goes to her flat, gets attacked from behind. The last 20/30 seconds of the sequence is her once again, talking directly to the camera about how she's scared, in hiding etc.

I thought this new idea was a very good one as it is much more simple and i feel it will look more effective as a opening of a film. Also our actor is better so i think this will also make the film more believable and realistic.

Rough Edit of Shots that Worked Well

Although many of our shots weren't successful all of the ones featured in this clip show a very good shots that we can now considering redoing and improving.

Test Shoot

We have done our test shoot and also have done the editing for what we have, these were some of our issues:

- Acting

- We forgot some props eg. glasses for therapist

- The lights in the flat took a while to switch on

- Therapist wasn't wearing shoes in some shots

- Swearing isn't allowed, have to change a shot

- A few shots were too dark [indoors]
 
Looking at our final edited test shoot we have decided that maybe we shouldn't use the therapist idea but still base our opening around rape. So we are now at the stage of thinking of new ideas separately and then discussing them in our group before our real shoot.