Thriller Evaluation Additions - RE POST FROM THRILLER EVALUTION POST

THIS IS A RE POST FROM MY THRILLER EVALUTION EDIT POST 

Below are edits to our thriller evaluation based on targets set for us.

 Target 1
 Explore how new media services outside of YouTube could help promote and improve (audience feedback) your product. Explain how awareness can be raised using all social media platforms.

According to the website http://video-share-review.toptenreviews.com/ sites such as Break,Metacafe, and Dailymotion would pose as the best alternatives to promoting our film in terms of achieving an audience by uploading our film to these sites free of charge. Furthermore these sites can help us achieve audience feedback since these sites allow comments from our audience. I have chosen theses sites from this website because of the fact that they are listed in the top 3 other than youtube (however i have excluded google videos entry into the list since google video has been shut down). The website goes into detail about the pros and cons for each website for instance the cons of Break.com are that it "lacks a large community, and a diverse viewer demographic." Because of this factor perhaps promoting our film and expecting feedback on this service would not be appropriate however there is still an audience and uploads are free so we would be missing out. In addition if we want detailed audience feedback we could produce a survey on questioning them about thier thoughts and feeling of our film on surveymonkey.com. we could then attach a hyperlink at the description section of our uploaded film and then direct our audiences to this hyperlink. For example we could do this via annotations on youtube. To raise awareness of our film we could target many film based forums such as total film and sfx to raise awareness by creating a post with the appropriate tags which hyperlinks to our uploaded film. We can also raise awareness by targeting media based forums as well such as the escapistmagazine.com and repeating similar steps to the film forums. I have chosen film and media based forums in particular because of the audience these platforms are directed at are a similar audience to ones we want to attract. Using  popular social media platforms such as facebook we could create a facebook page on our film which raises awareness of our film through teaser trailers i.e little clips of our film and also teaser graphics and logos which link to our film. After doing some research on facebook the cost of advertising would depend on the budget available to us and how much awareness we want to gain. Furthermore an alternative to this would be to get our post concerning our film promoted on facebook. This would mean that our post will be seen by a mass audience depending on our payment. After creating this page on facebook and gaining awareness through these promoted posts linking to said page the next step would be to post hyperlinks to our films facebook page on alternative social networking sites such as Twitter, Reddit. As well as targeting film social sites targeted at the "film lover " for example filmburner.com and openfilm.com a film social media website which also allows indie film makers to upload their films to the site, so perhaps we ccould upload teaser trailer to the site to gain more publicity as well as a link to our films facebook page.

Due to some technical difficulties with blogger anything written in orange is supposed to be written in red which means this content has been added after the initial post upload. Furthermore anything in grey is a hyperlink.

Target 2
 Explain how your product was altered in response to audience feedback.

New altered transition

When we first showcased our product to an audience feedback that was received were mainly concerns about sound, more specifically the vigilantes monologue; this feedback altered our final product we handed in. When we showed our rough cut to our audience our film featured the vigilantes monologue running throughout. The monologue was very soft and ghost like however audiences said that it was too soft and they couldn't understand him. Moreover  some felt that the monologue took away from the visuals and they ended up concentrating more on understanding him rather than watching the film and getting engaged in our narrative. In response we altered the length of the vigilantes monologue as well as re-recording some of the voices to make them more understandable. Another feedback that we recieved that change the outlook of our film subtly was the transitions between each of the animated title cards in the beginning. We were told that the transition were too sharp for such a soft and slow animation, so to resolve we decided to add a soft fade in between titles instead of a sharp cut as seen on the right.


   Target 3
Summarise ideas for the first two questions in a very concise format.

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

• We challenged modern day thriller convention mixing them with the more classic thriller conventions of film noir
• We looked at old films such as Out of the past for guidance for these conventions, more specifically sound; this film had some influence on the outlook of our chosen soundtrack.
• We drew from other media texts such as La confidential for influence e.g. La confidential features multiple protagonists a feature we implemented in our initially to show our narrative from different perspectives.

• The vigilantes costume   



The vigilante on the left, Rorschach in the middle, stock detective on the left

• For the vigilante we wanted to blend the thriller stock characters, the psycho and the detective into one character thus challenging genre conventions. To do this we had to conform to some genre conventions of the detective more specifically the classic noir detective with the inclusion of the trilby hat and trench coat. To make him look like a psycho we made his mask in particular look very cheap and gritty to connote this psycho character type. Not only this but we made sure that the hat and trench coat for this character weren't the typical detective trench coat hat, for instance the vigilante wears a tropical trilby hat. Through this we wanted to show how he wants to be the detective character type but he isnt quite thus developing both thriller character types of the detective and psycho by merging both looks together to create a new character type for our film. In addition the vigilantes mask also shows how he is this blend of this psycho detective character by completely covering his face thus taking away his humanity but with the hat and trench coat still allowing him to appear like a man. One character used as an influence for our costume was the character Rorschach in the thriller film watchmen a character who has similar theme to our character the rough psychotic detective.

• The detectives costume
• The detective was more conventional to the detective thriller stock type with the clean suit and tie.



The detective in our film.

•  Our media product used both the verfremdungeffekt and the helmet and nickel to present our characters to our audience more specifically the vigilante and how we could present him as a protagonist with antagonist qualities through costume by dressing him black and white, white representing the good qualities and black representing the possible evil in him.
• Finally we used many media texts outside of film such as video games like the max payne series with its kinetic graphic novel like type and La noire with its film noir like tone.

 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

•  The Region
• Our film was set in La an urban setting with several suburban areas however we live in a rural area. To represent the rural region we live in as a suburban area we used specific camera shot which gave of the illusion of such an area as seen on the right. In the shot we captured a close up shot of a shot row of houses to give off the effect of a long housing block.
• The hero - vigilante
•  We gave him a gritty and sketchy mask to portray him as a ghost like character as well as making him look like a flawed hero with the roughness of the mask. Not only this but he is also represented a strong character through deep and dark voice.
• The hero - the police/detective
• In our film the police more specifically the detective are represented as being weak as evidence by their small role in our intro as well as the fact that the detective has no speech all he does is move around slowly. This was linking with the idea of is vigilantism being favored over the police in response to the governments reform into public vigilantism.
• The victim 
• The victim of our film was a woman which is conventional in film however our film was based on a historical event in which the murder victim was a woman. On the other hand our film has fallen in the trap of women being represented in film as a narrative mechanism. A reason for why the protaginst does what he does.
•  The villian
•  we represented the villain of our media product by presenting the city itself as a villain with our high camera angles and dark shadows which depict the environment as a dark and intimidating place as seen below.