How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

Within our opening sequence two social groups are represented, these are young, vulnerable women and men aged in their late teens or early twenties.

Women are represented in our opening sequence matching both the stereotypical and conventional view. Here in this screenshot we see the victim crouched on the floor, looking worried. The camera is low to the ground like her creating a sense of weakness and vulnerability. Her clothing also adds to the vulnerability of her, through the light colours contrasting with the dark surroundings. The idea that she is the victim and that she is wearing a dress with make-up matches stereotypical views.

The male in our opening sequence is the killer and is represented appropriately. His face is almost always completely concealed by either his clothing or the dark surroundings. This gives him the typical feeling of a killer or stalker. His clothing is also dark, matching his surroundings in a camouflage-esque way. He also matches with the stereotypical view that all killers/stalkers are male and reasonably young. The low camera angle also highlights his power and control over the situation and along with his silence this creates the impression we wanted to create.

We chose to match and follow on with the conventional style of thrillers. This was our decision, as we didn’t want to run any risks that may turn the audience away from watching and enjoying our opening sequence. If we follow the traditional and conventional thriller style the audience would also find it easier to understand and will therefore be interested in continuing to watch our opening. Finally by following the conventional thriller style characters are far easier to identify and understand.

Written by Marcus Murdoch

Engaging the Target Audience

Throughout the whole of our opening sequence we feel as though we have really managed to engage the target audience through manydifferent aspects.

In order to make it obvious that our genre is horror/thriller we made the opening black and white so that it makes it look eerie and edgy. We thought that this would have been a really effective way in order to intrigue the target audience as it creates a lot of mystery and suspense. Personally, I think that the black and white looked really effective because it draws you in, and it also makes you wonder why somebody would be out when it is so late at night.

We used a Bad TV effect for the opening credits in order to

make the clip look old and distorted, almost as though what the people are seeing will see again later on in the film as it could make the audience think that history is about to repeat itself. But possibly in a more gruesome way. I think that the Bad TV effect increased the suspense which had already been created from the black and white effect because everything is shaking, it connotes that the audience will be scared and yet quite disturbed of what they are going to see. This would intrigue the audience further as to why this effect is being used.

For our setting we chose to have the crime happen at Beddington Park, we chose this because even during daytime, people get quite scared walking around on their own as it is such an open area but is still covered in forests and trees all over. In my eyes, I thought that this was a prefect setting in order to show that a murder could happen here because it is such a widely forested area if something like this was to happen nobody would probably know for a while and if anyone was to find the body it would most likely be a dog walker. For our setting, we wanted it to be dark, between 5pm and 8pm. We wanted to have this time originally so that it was dark enough to be believable because nobody would create a crime in the middle of the day, especially when there would be people around. But as we wanted to have it so late, it was too dark to actually see anything but because we didn't want to use the night-vision mode as we didn't have any handheld scenes, we just shot the film around 4pm which is why we used the black and white effect and decreased the brightness so that it made the time of day seem a lot later than 4pm.

With our actors, I feel as though we chose people who were perfect for the part. We chose Jazmine Sines to be our leading lady for the opening sequence as she seems really vulnerable as though she would be a perfect target as she looks as though she would be unable to fight back if she got attacked. As Jazmine is a young pretty girl, we think that this would appeal to our target audience (aged between 18-25) because of the fact that she is pretty and in mostly all horror films there is 'damsel in distress' who gets hunted down and chased. For our killer, as it was really hard to find someone who fitted our criteria, we chose one of our own team members, Michael Kealy. We decided to use him because he looks really intimidating and it would be someone you would try to avoid down a dark alley. I think that he would appeal to the target audience as through out the film you are unable to see his face which would create a lot of mystery and suspense and it is also unclear as to why he wanted to kill her, he could be doing it for revenge, or just because he had been bored. This would make the audience really engaged and they would want to see more as they had been gripped from the first 2 minutes.

We used some props in order to create our Horror genre, we didn't use many as we felt as though we may have over done it if we used too many. We used glass in order to cut Jazmine's hand which made her bleed as we felt

as though you can't have the opening to a horror if there is no blood or harm made to the victim. We also used a mallet as the main weapon which was used by the man in order to kill Jazmine, or knock her out the viewer is unsure which would make the audience more intrigued to know what's happened to her.

By Louise Ashena

Editing Process

This shot below shows the effects that we used on all the shots throughout the film opening. We used these affects because it gave the opening a mysterious and Gothic feeling about it.

We changed the colour contrast to darken the shots. This went with the mysterious and Gothic feeling to make it spooky and scary. The darkness is also a key convention in the thriller genre.

The desaturation used drains all the colour out of the original clip. Again this was done to give it the Gothic look which creates more tension within the audience. It also helps to hide the killer and emphasise the brighter colours on the victim to highlight the innocence.

This clip below is showing one of the credits. On the credits we used an effect named 'Bad TV'. This effect creates an CCTV-esque image. This gives it an olden look which can be quite creepy and mysterious. Also with the music in the back ground it emphasises the names as they drag out into the next shot.

Michael Kealy and Marcus Murdoch.

Planning the Credits

This is our plan for our credits we tried out techniques and choose the effect bad TV for our names and 'Venture Studios', we chose this effect because we thought that it worked well with our film genre as it's horror. This is because the text shakes and looks as though it is slightly distorted and we thought that this could represent characters in the film. We used Live Type for the title of our film 'Reckless'.

Using Live Type we created the 'Reckless' to zoom in, then bounce out. We chose this in order to make it look as though someone doesn't want to be seen or noticed by someone else as the text appears on the screen and bounces off straight away.

Designed by Ashley Groom, Written by Louise Ashena, Ashley Groom and Michael Kealy

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From the Process of Constructing This Product?

In my personal opinion the filming process of our opening sequence was the simplest thing when it came to the technology; the cameras are so easy to use and pretty straight forward. At first I thought it would have been one of the tricky things when trying to keep the camera steady and filming from all different angles, but lucky enough we had tripods in order to do the hard work for us. I think that the cameras have the biggest impact on how good an opening sequence can be, based mostly on the quality of the camera, not the filming itself. If I was to watch a film and it had bad camera quality I immediately decide not to watch it because it can be really difficult to really appreciate the detail that the director and producers have put in the time for people to notice.

The most difficult part of the process was using Final Cut Express. This is a program which had been designed for Apple which enables you to edit film and videos to an exceptional quality, that’s if you know how to use it. At first I found Final Cut hard to use but after a while we all got the hang of it as a group after help from teachers and some of our fellow peers. But once we knew what we were doing we were on our way to becoming experts. We used the basic cutting techniques in order to put our opening sequence together and once we had done that, we decided to play around with the effects and see which one had the most correlation toward our film genre which was horror. We then came to a conclusion that the thing which looked most eerie was a black and white effect making it look old and eerie. I think that this effect was appropriate because we also increased the contrast in order to make Jazmine stand out against the background as it was really dark and she looked as though she was slightly grey, this connotes that she is slowly having her life taken away, because once you are dead, your body looses colour. Once we had completed all the black and white effects and we inserted the credits from Live Type, we wanted to make the text look slightly uneasy when the title for our film came on, we used a ‘bad TV’ effect in order to make it shake and appear slightly distorted.
Blogger is an internet blogging page which enables people to write what they have been up to in order for other people to see it. We used this process in order to blog the work that we have been doing so that people are able to see how we got to our finished product. Blogger was a simple thing to use which was pretty straight forward as all you have to do is write in what it is you’ve been doing and post it. The awkward thing was trying to post our preliminary video because at first they would take approximately 4 hours to load and after that it said that it was unable to do so. We tried this 3 times again and it still wouldn’t upload so in the end we had to convert our video and then upload and it worked fine. Once we had finished our opening sequence, we wouldn’t have this trouble again trying to upload it.

By Louise Ashena

Focus group after watching the film opening.

This focus group was after the viewers viewed the film opening. We asked them certain question about what the thought and what they liked and disliked.

This was done because then it could help us with our elevations and then we could see what we could have done better and what was our strong points.

Also having piers views can be an advantage because they give the truth about what they think of what you done. Every time we can benefit from this because we can always improve.


Ashley Groom and Marcus Murdoch.

How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

When we worked with our target audience we asked them about different types of films and what genre they liked, and why. The response we got was good, they were detailed and they gave us the information that we needed. One of the question we asked was ‘what is your favourite genre and why?’ the response we got was good they like horror but they did steer towards action and comedy.

We also did some more audience research by doing a questionnaire and handing them out to people, we had a good strong response but again only one person kind of liked horror as they like thriller which is close to our film introduction as we have tried to make it thriller/horror. The other two like romance, which is the complete opposite, but its still research.

When we asked for the audience feedback we tried to incorporate it into our film introduction, although we had already planned what we were going to do we used some of the comment made onto our film for example we tried to make the film flow but at the same time a bit confusing for the audience as they don’t know what is happening.

We have tried to make the introduction confusing as the audience dose not know what is happening. We also tried to make it creepy by cutting one big clip and changing it around. The music helps to play a big part as it what brings the piece together. We have also tried to make it look like a horror by filming in the dark but it did not look that good so we used an effect on it to make it look dark and scary.

We have tried to make the film engaging for the audience, to do this we have made the introduction jumpy as we have cut different pieces of footage and put them in different places. We have also stuck with conventional thriller characters. We have purposely made it confusing for the audience so they have to continue to watch to understand the film.

By Ashley Groom

What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product and Why?

For this evaluation we choose to do a PowerPoint presentation to try and make it more interesting instead of just having seven different word documents.

Written by Louise Ashena , Ashley Groom, Michael Kealy, Marcus Murdoch

Who Would Be the Audience For Your Media Product?

The target audience for our opening sequence are males from the lower middle class or working class that are aged between 18 and 25. This is because they would be the typical male film buff that would watch these type of films. This audience would be mainly be interested in the thriller or horror genre, however they may also be fans of crime and mystery films. Although our target audience is not strictly males we believe that they would be more attracted to our media product due to the gruesome nature of the genre.

In order to find out about our target audience and initially form our target audience we created some questionnaires and filmed a focus group.

Some of our questionnaires are now posted on our blog. We based our questions around finding out information about our target audience’s gender, age, favourite genres, films and what they dislike in films. We found the questionnaires useful as it helped us narrow down our target audience for us to finalise.

After conducting some research through the use of questionnaires we used the focus group to build up a wider understanding of peoples thoughts, likes and dislikes about films relating to our genre.

Written by Louise Ashena, Ashley Groom, Michael Kealy, Marcus Murdoch.

Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To The Full Product?

Looking back at when we started our coursework I feel that myself and the whole group have learnt so much and worked so well together. The preliminary task was our trial if you like at filming. We had a laugh whilst producing our preliminary task but when it came down to it we worked very hard to make sure we followed the criteria such has the action match shot and make sure we followed the 180 degree rule.

The preliminary task was our first real test as a team to see how we would work together and see if it was either going to be great or a disaster. Lucky we all got on and were able to speak openly between each other. We all were able to contribute in the group.

The preliminary task we signed each other’s to certain roles whist producing the preliminary task. This gave others and us a chance to see were some of us were strong at and was our weaknesses lied as well. We knew that this would be able to determine who would be doing what when it came down to the real thing.

After the preliminary task came the hard part, all the pre production work that had to be done before we actually could film. There was twenty different assignment’s that had to be done in order for us to complete our pre production work. This is were we all put as much effort in because we knew we had to have a good enough blog to be able to back us up. Even now you could see that we were all improving within ourselves.

The pre production work was being done whilst there was a half term holiday. Over this time it would be fair to say that the group didn’t put as much effort in as we could have. This left us with a lot of work to do when we got back from the holiday to be able to be finished in time and start our filming. We were able to complete our work in time and were strong enough to give us a reliable blog that we knew would back us up.

The filming was a real test for us because we didn’t want to copy someone else’s from the past and we also didn’t want it to be predictable. We made a chart of ideas to do with our genre (horror/thriller) and tried to come up with the best ideas that would make our opening scene our own and better than similar one in the past.

As a group we planned everything we had to do, we had storyboards and prop lists and also we knew the location of were we would film. This showed that we planned everything really well. We knew when we began we could do it; it was just a matter of time to see if we actually would do it.

During the filming we had some minor hitches we delayed us from carrying on filming but as a group we all arranged times that we could meet and do the filming. We had to work on getting effects for a opening because we couldn’t film at night, but we couldn’t leave the opening in daylight because it wasn’t scary and wouldn’t of fit the purpose of the opening sequence.

All in all after going through all that talking about what we did and how we did it I think it just showed that we worked well as a team and was able to get alone. We started off, many of us new to media and at the end I think we all have learnt so much about the world of media.

I think that we would all agree that sometimes it has been stressful trying to get everything in on time and to perfection, but we have had a great time working together and making our opening sequence. We were a weird mix at first and now we have become one and the how team has just grown and worked so hard and hopefully it all pays off.

By Michael Kealy

Film Opening

By Louise Ashena, Ashley Groom, Michael Kealy, Marcus Murdoch