1) In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The media product i decided to produce for my media coursework was a film, that showed the issues involved with mental disordered such as dipolar. The film was of a thriller genre and the lead character was a girl that suffered from dipolar disorder and other mental disorders. This was convention of most thriller films as they often have a female heroin. This heroine often defeats the enemy and are at first seen as innocent or weak but become strong throughout the film. Some examples of films that show this are When a stranger calls, All the boys want Mandy Lane and final destination 3. Below is a video in which John Papsidera the casting director for final destination 3 talks about why he choose Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the heroine for the film.
Our film goes against the stereotype of the average heroine in a thriller film, as our heroin is not strong she is overwhelmed by the troubles that face her. Another convention of a thriller film is that they often use flashbacks or flash forwards to give the audience more of an insight into why it is happening and what’s going to happen next. It also makes the audience more interested as they want to know how the flashbacks link together. Below is a scene from the film Saw in which you can see examples of flashbacks. This is only a link as the embed option is disabled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW2kAQAg738
Our film follows this convention and has flashbacks to the girls childhood as she recalls it in a therapy session. I cannot split the film to show you specific sections as i am doing this at home and the films is on the college computers, but below is a link to the youtube video and at the time 1.40 to 2.00 you can see a flashback.
Our film also follows convections of thriller films by the use of black and white or greyscale editing to show flash, backs or purely to show something bad is happening to the character in the film. Below is a screenshot from the short film i analysed called ‘Twisted’. Twisted use’s greyscale throughout to show something sinister. Our film doesn’t use it this way our film uses greyscale to show that something terrible happened to Scarlett our lead character.
Often in thriller genre films the characters suffer from mental disorders, some films that show this are Donnie Darko. This film shows a teenage boy that suffers from Schizophrenia and see and talks to an imaginary man dressed in a clown costume. Our lead character also sees an imaginary character, Scarlett sees a clown that taunts her throughout the film.
1) How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
The ancillary texts i created to go with my main product was a film poster, and a film audio trailer. I created my film poster in Photoshop elements 8. Below is a screenshot of my poster in photoshop elements.
I portrayed the main image of the clown and the picture of a scrabble board as the background image, this reflects to the audience the main characters and props that they will see throughout the film. This helps them relate to them later on in the film. The clowns eyes have been blacked out this works well with the film, as it means the audience will already know the clown is evil and there won’t have to be as much emphasis on this at the start of the film. The audience then see the clown as a bad omen throughout the film. I had difficulty creating my poster as the only pictures of the cast i could get where stills from the film, so the film poster isn’t as effective as i’d have like it to be. However this has helped a little as the audience for the film will recognise the stills as they watch the film. I believe my poster reflects the film well and is very effective in showing the audience what too expect. I have used a tagline to try and give the audience a clue into the plot of the film and make them more interested. The poster also has all the necessary information such as actors names production company etc that an audience may be interested in and that may persuade them to go see the film. However i don’t think it is very effective in it’s appeal to our target audience specifically it has nothing on it to signify the lead character in the film is a young adult and therefore the poster may appeal too an older audience too.
I also created a film trailer to do this I used garage band on a mac computer and a zoom recorded to record the necessary voice over.
Our audio trailer had to be completed in a short space of time so it wasn’t as well edited as i would have like it to be, if i was to do it again i would make sure i had more time. I would also have looked into using a different piece of software for the voiceover, as we original wanted to edit the voice to make it sound deeper and more creepy. This would have made it reflect our film better. I would also look into using better recording equipment as the zoom recorder didn’t have very good sound quality. Besides this our audio trailer does reflect our film by using sound clips of the characters from the film. This helps the audience recognise the characters.
1) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I gained audience feedback for the film both on youtube and with a link on facebook. Below is a screenshot of my results.
The audience feedback shows that the audience where confused my the storyline and the flashbacks. As this is our first time using effects in film such as flashbacks it was obvious we wouldn’t get it perfect, if i was to do it again I’d change the storyline to make it more understandable and only have one flashback. One of the youtube comments also say the editing is a little ‘chessy’ to avoid this again I’d not use any overly obvious effects on the film such as any transactions. One of the youtube comment also sad they props and make up needed working on, however we had very limited resources and had to work with what we had
