AS Media Coursework.

Task Brief: Create the opening sequence of a new thriller including titles, aimed at a 15 certificate audience. My sequence will approximately 2-2.30 minute duration.

Genre: Psychological/ Crime Thriller

Working Title: Deceived.Length: 2:01

Group members: Callum E, Will H, Callum A

Roles in the group: Callum E- Director, Camera man, Producer Callum A- Lighting, Actor, Sound, Producer Will H- Camera man, Editor, Producer

Candidate Name: Callum Elson Candidate Number: 7314 Candidate Name: Will Hawkins Candidate Number: 7083Candidate Name: Callum Amos Candidate Number:7000

Deceived.

• This project was a huge challenge for our team. When we began the project we had huge ideas for our film but then when it came to reality we discovered some things were too complex to take on with a small budget.

• Never the less we worked well together, making group decisions and managing our time so our Thriller was filmed earlier, giving us lots of time to edit. We made many changes to our opening but it was all for the better and we are happy with how Deceived has turned out.

C.E

Deciding on the title:• To begin with we named our thriller If You Were There Beware, but after constant

meetings with our focus group and the opinions of others we decided to change. We thought of these names and asked our focus group which they preferred:

• Deceived• Deceived Me• Revenge• Faithless• Kiss of Death• Framed

The group voted equal winners to Revenge and Deceived, so as a group we discussed which one we preferred and decided on Deceived. We decided to call it this because throughout the whole film James deceives the audience, the police and even himself (playing the innocent), it isn't until the end he is revealed to be the murderer of his ex-girlfriend which should be a shock to everyone! Anna also deceived James into thinking she loved him, when really she was having a romantic love affair, this relates to the new title also.

C.E

• Our thriller doesn’t follow a linear structure as it starts with the murder, which usually comes in later on in the film. This links to it being independent as a normal mainstream film wouldn’t have such a unique structure. It contains a lot of flashbacks which disrupts the normal storyline and ends on a bad cause, rather than a happy ending.

W.H

Does Toderovs theory link with our thriller?

• Todorovs theory was the typical thriller structure. It would begin with a state of equilibrium (all as it should be), but then a huge disruption happens to that equilibrium(usually caused by an villain), a recognition that this disturbance has occured, an attempt to repair the damage of the disruption, and finally ending as it started, (a new equilibrium). Our thriller is very different to Todorovs theory and does not follow it at all. We begin with a disruption, then leading to an attempt to repair the damage and ending in a bigger disruption. We didnt want to follow the stereo-typical Thriller structure, we wanted our thriller to be unique, and remembered.

C.E

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• Our media product is targeted to a age group of 15 – 25 males, the social groups that are represented in our product are age and gender, for example, our main character and detective are considered very strong characters who have a large impact on the storyline as opposed to our female character Anna who is insignificant and dies in the opening sequence, age is also represented as our detective character seems to be more perceptive and dominative over James as a result of him being older and wiser.

W.H

How did we attract/ address our audience?

• We addressed our audience by representing their social group in a very good way e.g. young men being strong and powerful, we also made it typical to the thriller genre with certain use of the mise en scene using props such as guns and costume to differentiate between our characters and the power that they possess, there is also the use of blood to raise the sense of danger and the red filter represents danger with the connotations of red.

W.H

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

• Our Media product uses a non-linear structure instead of a standard linear film structure; this is quite common for a Thriller as the majority of them follow this type of film structure. This means that our Thriller doesn’t flow like a normal story but often flashbacks and jumps to different parts of the film, for example in one of the Thrillers we studied, Usual Suspects, it starts with the end.

C.A

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

• A Linear film just tells out a story in chronological order. Again common to Thrillers are film starts in a state of dis-equilibrium, this means it’s in a slight state of panic, that something bad is happening. Our Thriller starts off with our main character James being questioned by police for the murder of his girlfriend. Unlike in a normal film were it often starts in a state of equilibrium, with things often being calm, relaxed and nothing wrong. Our Thriller does use the forms and conventions of a Thriller and does develop them into a more extreme version by starting off with in the opening two minutes a flashback to his girlfriend being murdered.

C.A

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

• Before the course began, none of us were familiar with Adobe Premiere Pro Cs5 and we have all learnt how to use it to develop and edit the product and make our product much more appealing to our audience. We also learnt the mechanics of the camera and how we managed to record the sound. We also faced some problems on set that we overcame to learn in the future, for example our camera battery was low when we began filming one day so we had to use our initiative to quickly charge the battery whilst setting up our set, lighting and sound.

C.A

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

Our Media Thriller film wouldn’t be considered as a mainstream movie as its very British, and would be aimed at a smaller, specific target audience. We would apply for funding such as the BFI and National Lottery but would most probably be given a low budget, therefore edging towards the indie side, being distributed and theatrically released into fewer UK cinemas. Based on this fact, we would choose a company like “Optimum Releases” because we discovered they are well known for distributing films similar to ours.

C.E

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

• If “Deceived” became a huge success, we would then transfer towards a more well known, mainstream distribution company such as Universal Pictures.

• We would also create our own website to help promote and market our thriller to persuade audience members to come and watch it. We would create a Facebook Page for users to ‘Like’, as it free and efficient. Millions use Facebook so it would be the perfect market strategy to get our film seen by the public, giving information on release dates, where it can be viewed and of course, casting and plot summary.

C.E

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• Our Media Product “Deceived” was originally aimed for members of the public over the age of 12. As we continued to create our Thriller we discovered we wanted to be more explicit with our murders, and dig quite deep into James’ past which includes drugs, alcohol and abuse. We felt our storyline may be a little to harsh for children at the age of 12 so the most reasonable target audience age would be 15+. Our reasoning for this is because it includes real life issues, they soon may be starting to discover such as neglect, drug abuse etc.

• We feel although we are certificating our film a 15, our type of thriller would usually attract a target audience of young adults, so usually people 18 years and over. We did question whether to rate our film an 18 but that would then limit our audience to adults only, therefore extracting the money teenagers could be bringing in to support our movie, as your teen years are when the cinema is in most use.

C.E

Who would be the audience for your media product?

• Our specific audience would be people who are interested in Thrillers, crime and murder mystery's, psychological movies, and horrors in come cases. We wouldn’t relate our film to a rom-com for example because it has no relation to our film at all, we could relate it to a film such as Shutter Island (which was originally our inspiration) because we know that viewers that enjoyed that film, would most likely enjoy ours.

C.E

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

• The transformation from our preliminary tasks to our full media project is huge. To begin with we weren't focused on camera angles and their meanings (e.g. a high angle shot viewing down on a character makes them look weak and powerless), we didn’t take into consideration the different setting we could use and didn’t produce a film in depth with a detailed storyline. We didn’t consider target audience, whether our film was mainstream or indie, and our editing skills were beginner-like. Since then we have learnt so much. We have created a product with a deep storyline, considering others opinions by holding focus groups, questionnaires etc. We have made continuous changes trying to consider our target audiences thoughts but also staying true to our original storyline. We have used a variety of camera angles to keep our film fresh so it doesn’t seem repetitive, and have brought out the best in our actors and how they should be viewed from an audiences perspective. We have researched into typical thrillers, found inspirations and also looked into codes and conventions, considering what we could use in our project. We’ve considered props and costume which didn’t cross our mind for our preliminary task, and have also chosen actors we can rely on. We have worked as a team to produce, film and edit our thriller to its best standard making group decisions and helping each other out when needed. Overall, since our last preliminary task our media skills, teamwork skills and overall project has improved a lot. We consider others thoughts, still getting our point across and finally producing a short opening that we are more than happy with.

C.E

Deceived By Callum Elson, Will Hawkins and

Callum Amos.