The Running Dead

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

Our plot involves themes of death, mental illness and also includes a central villain. We could compare our thriller to earlier productions such as Dracula,Dark Knight , The Matrix, Jaws, which are all thrillers movies. We used little obvious narrative in its place of the action occurring, this leaves the audience having to guess what would happened, e.g. at the end of our sequence there is a shot of the girl running and then falling down, before starting to scream and then the title of the movie immediately appears.

The implied violence in our film is resonant of old controversial films such as Scream (1996). As in Quantum of Solace we also used a brief shot to add more tension such as the brief shot of the villain’s feet slowly walking, helps to create a nervous and tense atmosphere, leaving the audience anxious to know who the killer is.

The use of a frightened female character in our opening sequence could compare to recent films which stereotype females to be the more frightened and weak characters, such as in Scary movie, Scream an d Paranormal activity. Male tend to be more villains as females are seen more as the victims in movies.

Our production brought the viewer straight into the action, with the use of a long shot showing a bus then straight away we zoom in on the girl on her phone. This demonstrated an everyday situation to suggest to the audience that "it could happen to you." As with classic thrillers, this leaves the viewer wanting more...

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main character was a black young female (victim), and the other character (killer) was a black young male . The female character represented many of the stereotypes of young females being weak unreliable and afraid, and also the female stereotype of always being the victims. The male however are seen as the dangerous, violent and unstable ones.

The clothing of the female character suggest that she was a young female coming back from college as she held a bag and was dressed quite casual. This represents our young teenage of today and could also appeal to the young audience as it is an everyday activity which therefore illustrates that it could happen to them.

The audience will be more likely to expect a female to be a victim rather than a male as she was young and also on her own, which suggest she was more likely to be a victim. The very little speech in this production creates an ominous atmosphere

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

A U.K television station such as channel 4 might be interested in showing our thriller as the downbeat of the story might put off a major Hollywood studio as it loves “happy endings.” Hollywood films are seen more as fantasy type films, whilst our film is more realistic with a more pessimistic view of the social environment within the U.K.

It is likely that our production would attract a BBFC rating of 15; this means that no one under the ag e of 15 would be allowed to see the film in a cinema or even rent or buy a 15 rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game. We believe our production would attract a BBFC rating of 15 as there is no violent literally shown to any degree but the imitable techniques might cause this film to be classified as 18 (depending on context).Distribution could be in digital format too; for example through the Digital Screen Network and also by using website and posters, this could advertise our film to the audience.

Government organizations such as the police might want to use the film to warn viewers about the dangers of girls/ young women walking home alone. It was shown in 2007/08 that the risk of a person being the victim of a violent crime was 3.2% but for women aged 16-24 it was 6.4%. Also it showed that single people were more at risk than other marital status groups (7.8%).

Who would be audience for your media product?

The production is mainly aimed at 16-25 years old and uses a cast from that age group. Our research it indicated that this group would prefer a fast moving plot with tension building. For example throughout the production, instrumental music (string instrument and piano) was played which puts the audience on edge. Also, at the end of our production the female character screams then we suddenly fade to black which builds up tension, leaving the audience anxious about wanting to know what is going to happen next.
Our production has the ability to attract the attention of teenage audience as it feature s this age group predominantly. We used characters in the age group of our target audience, which allows the audience to identify with them more easily.

Our production could also appeal to people who like the horror genre, as our produ ction builds up tension which is what the audience tends to expect in a horror genre film. It would also appeal to those who prefer the typical understanding of gender in films, such as female being the victim and male the pursuer. Many women would relate to this situation as an almost everyday occurrence e.g. coming back from college but then suddenly being aware that someone is following you, a situation which then becomes very frightenin

g. As the main character was black in our product, we believed that it could also attract other ethnic minorities as it could also represent them, and making them feel comfortable as it could relate to them easily.

How did you attract/address your particular audience?

From our interviews and questionnaire we found that most people liked thrillers most preferably thrillers which are believable rather than fantasy. Therefore this could relate to our production around an everyday situation of a young girl coming home from college, who just suddenly aware of someone following her. the audience could easily identify with this situation. Our findings illustrated that the viewers liked horror thrillers more than action thrillers, due to the suspense and tension building, as well as the ‘stork’ factor associated with the horror genre.

Our plot tries to draw in our audience through allowing them to identify with the main female character for ex ample when the female character got off the bus, we could easily identify this to the audience as it is seen as an everyday routine. The everyday situation that turns into torture, allows the audience to further recognize their fear. This production would be suitable for younger viewers age 14-15 due to the violence implied, whilst the guarantee of violence might attract an older audience age 17-18.

We used a hand-held camera which was chasing the young female, which makes the audience tenser and also makes it more realistic as the use of the point of view shot makes it as if it is them in action. The audience was kept in futher suspense as the girl's death was not shown in the scene "off-screen" which leaves the audience on edge, and nervous to know what would happen to the female character.

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

At first they were some complication regarding the location were we wanted to film our opening sequence, so we decided to do it in an area/location were every member of the group will be able to attend. The location we found had a nice lighting coming form the outside which made our scene more realistic and also added atmosphere, from this we learnt that using natural lighting could also be very useful.
For our shot of the girl getting off the bus we used a long shot which was then zoomed in. this made the audience focuses more on the girl. The camera color balanced was adjusted a couple of times, as we were trying to make the lighting as good as we could. From this experience, we learnt that it is important to be trained properly with the use of all equipment before hand.
When looking back at our finalized shots I concluded that it would have been much better if we filmed during night time as it would have made the scene much scarier. Therefore to prevent this problem during our editing I tried making the whole sequence black and white to try and make a more frighten look.

We experienced further complications when it came to the editing part, even though the editor tried putting the scenes together it was found that we needed more shots to make the sequence flow better, from this we learned that we needed better coverage on the shoot. However I learnt how to create enough effects which would help the shots flow much better. Also I learnt how to insert music to our production, which enhanced the scene more and created much more tension.

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

When planning the preliminary task, I found it challenging to work as a team as during the preliminary task only two members were at the filming which was Nathan and I. However as a producer I though that we would be more organized when it came to the main shooting, but it seemed that whenever I asked for some work to get handed to me, it would always be handed in late, which therefore delayed the whole group. We can see from our shooting that not everyone was giving their best as only two members of the group attended which, yet again, were Nathan and I. from this we learnt to plan things better and to try and learn more about our own role as it would of help to make the production much better.

I believe that there was a big challenge for us because during our preliminary task there was a lack of expertise from members of the group as we had never filmed before and also lack of planning and actor arrangement for the production. Nevertheless by us doing the preliminary task it help us practice how to shoot better and also help us to know more about how to edit our work better. When coming to editing our main production we learn how to organize the rushes so that editing them on the timeline was quite straightforward.

There were fewer problems in the thriller production as by this stage I learnt to plan in more detail but it seemed like we didn’t perform to the best of our ability. From the preliminary task I believed that our editing improved, we were more confident in using the Final Cut Pro software.

Overall from this experiment I have learnt that planning earlier and trying to work more as a group than an individual, would have made our group on task and also there would have been more time for putting stuff together e.g. more ideas and more editing on our production. We also learnt how to use blogger which is where our evaluation was posted.

Here is the link to my video: The Running Dead!