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

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

Media evaluation question 6

5) How did you attract your audience?

How did you attract your audience? on Prezi

4) Who would be the audience for our media product?

The audience for our thriller are people aged between 16-25 years old, we know this because our thriller is similar to most conventional thrillers and the target audience is the same. Also because people aged 16-25 years old are the age group that most go to the cinema making them the bigger and target market.
We used many methods to think investigate into what our target audience want and what they like to see in thrillers.

First we used woodle to come up with some ideas on what questions to ask:

We used survey monkey to conduct a questionnaire:

After that we had a study group of about 6-8 people which we interviewed:

This process helped to invent and construct our ideas for the coursework, I think that our target audience would want to watch our thriller because it's fast paced and full of action.

3) What kind of Media Institutions might distribute your media product and why?

3 what kind of media institutions might distribute your

View more PowerPoint from Jay Eclipses

2)How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The age range of our actors in the thriller was between 16-late 20s; which is also the age of our target audience. All four actors were male as they were the only actors we could get at the time to film as everyone was busy with their own thrillers, regrettably there were no female actors meaning no female representation. If given the chance to film again we would have used a female actor to play the part of the Mysterious Character.

Even though there was a lack of female characters, there was a range of different ethnicities covering a range of different culturally and class background e.g. middle class, working class etc. Sexuality presented in the thriller was intended as heterosexual, not saying homosexuality is bad, we just didn’t think too much into our characters and their ‘love life,’ our characters were more about self respect and overcoming their personal obstacles. The development of every and any character in any thriller, is what the audience engages and relates to the most whether it being similar personality traits or the situation they are trying to overcome in the film.

Stereotypes

In all thrillers a representation of a character is key to the storyline and the part they play, there is always going to be both negative and positive representations of certain characters depending on what their role is and what kind of a character they are.

In our thriller, our Henchman was stereotyped negatively as his role was to deceive and cause a temporally obstacle for our protagonist. The Henchman blends into everyday society as he is wearing the normal styles and brands people wear at 16-18 years old. He wears dark clothing and a body warmer. From another critics point of view our Henchman character could be stereotyped as what the media call ‘a chav’ because of the way he dressed and the harm he causes to those around him (being our protagonist).

Another stereotype was our Mysterious character as he was dressed in dark clothing; which we associate with ‘evil’ characters.

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

The finished product

Finally finished the thriller after many months, many refilming and hours of editing. It's finally finished, and I'm very proud of all our hardwork as a team.
Here it is, enjoy.

Poster!

Filming

Today we re-filmed and included some extra shots to add to our thriller. The film experiment, that I posted couple of weeks ago, we included to use today which will then fade into the title of the film 'The Search Engine.'
Last time we filmed the lighting was dark; but today we tried to vary the lighting, using natural lighting coming in from the windows as well as using some artificial light. This time re-filming, we also varied the shots to add interest.

When editing we took on board the constructive advice our media teacher gave us when we asked him for advice, so to keep up the pace we kept the editing fast paced.
Here is Ezekiel editing the footage:

The Mysterious character and New scene locations

The mysterious character is the one who lost the information when it was in his possession, he plays a minor role like a plot device.For the new scene we used one of the media rooms (below)

The MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER is a rude and secretive character who rarely speaks adding to the mystery. He is dressed in black; which is a dark colour we associate with moral corruption and 'evil.'

Production Process:Editing

Today we started the editing process! Before editing we looked over the footage, to see what scenes to use, as a team. Most of the clips were good; but there were some desired shots that were missing and would help to show diversity in shots and view points of the characters. Later this week we'll refilm or/and film extra shots using varied angle shots and lighting etc.


The first part of the opening, when the titles are running, fast paced editing was used to create a tense atmosphere, making the titles interrupt the scene helped to enhance this effect. In the opening sequence the effect we wanted to convey was to make the audience feel just as confused, paranoid and tense like the protagonist. 

The titles were created in Livetype; which ha proved a useful multi-use program to use and effective to our thriller.
After we edited the phone booth scene and the antagonist scene, including adding music and titles, the duration of the coursework came to just about a minute. To make the opening sequence longer I suggested to write another scene, so I wrote a scene where the protagonist finds the memory stick. 

This did help to increase the time, and tomorrow we will be filming some more shots to add to the scene; but this time we are doing to vary the range of the lighting instead of just being filmed in near darkness. After filming some the extra shots and edit them hopefully we can add extra features such as sound effects etc.

John le Carre

John le Carre is a famous British writer who has written many Spy Thrillers, he has written many novels which some have been made into films and television shows such as 'Tinker Tailor Solider Spy' (film and tv series) and 'The Spy who came in from the cold.'

 Here is some more information I found about John le Carre on Wikipedia
Films

• In 1965, Martin Ritt directed the first film adaptation of a John le Carré novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, with Richard Burton as protagonist Alec Leamas.
• In 1966, Sidney Lumet directed The Deadly Affair, an adaptation of Call for the Dead, with James Mason as Charles Dobbs (George Smiley in the novel).
• In 1969, Frank Pierson directed The Looking Glass War, with Anthony Hopkins as Avery, Christopher Jones as Leiser and Sir Ralph Richardson as LeClerc.
• In 1984, George Roy Hill directed The Little Drummer Girl, with Diane Keaton as Charlie.
• In 1990, Fred Schepisi directed The Russia House, with Sean Connery as Barley Blair.
• In 2001, John Boorman directed The Tailor of Panama, with Pierce Brosnan as Andy Osnard, a disgraced spy.
• In 2005, Fernando Meirelles directed The Constant Gardener, with Ralph Fiennes as Justin Quayle, set in the slums in Kibera and Loiyangalani, Kenya. The poverty so affected the film crew that they established the Constant Gardener Trust to provide basic education to those areas. John le Carré is a patron of the charity.
• In 2011 Tomas Alfredson directed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley. The film was released on the 5th September 2011 at the Venice Film Festival in the UK on 16 September 2011.

Television

• In 1979, the BBC adapted Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy to television, with Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Two years later, in 1981, he reprised the role in Smiley's People. The BBC did not adapt The Honourable Schoolboy, featuring Jerry Westerby (Joss Ackland in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), because production in East Asia would have cost too much.
• In 1987, Peter Smith directed the television adaptation of A Perfect Spy (BBC), with Peter Egan as Magnus Pym, and Ray McAnally as Rick.
• In 1991, Gavin Millar directed A Murder of Quality (Thames Television), with Denholm Elliott as George Smiley, and Joss Ackland as Terence Fielding.

Radio

• The 1994 BBC radio adaptation of The Russia House features Tom Baker as Barley Blair.
• The Complete Smiley is an eight radio-play series, based upon the novels featuring George Smiley, that commenced broadcast on 23 May 2009 on BBC Radio 4, beginning with Call for the Dead, with Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley, and concluding with The Secret Pilgrim, in June 2010 .^[28]

Writing Style
"the le Carré Cold War features unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work, and engaged in psychological more than physical drama"

John le Carre builds tension psychologically as he builds the story developing his plot creating complexity. As his story progresses the reader is collecting and building a case study; which gets the reader on and helps to identify with characters in the novel. Le Carre includes false heros like in 'Tinker Tailor Solider Spy' creating paranoia and espionage as no one can be trusted. There are political elements to most of his earlier/popular works, which involve democracy and how as humans we can be fallible. His novels contrast Ian Fleming's James Bond which is rather glamorous in comparison, it's not until his later works 'The Naive and Sentimental Love' that he became more mainstream.

Coursework Progress

Two of our original actors couldn't refilm, so we had to recast the main character and henchman. Yesterday we filmed the scene again and it went really well and there were some good shots. Today we finished editing the footage including titles; however the overall time only came to a minute or just under. The maximum time for the opening sequence is 2 minutes 30 seconds, so the overall time being under a minute isn't good enough for the coursework. 
To increase our time and to develop the story I wrote another scene to add.
This is the new scene:

OWEN walks into the room. Sitting at a computer is a MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER who is centred in the middle of the shot; she/he gets up and leaves in a hurry pushing past OWEN. The MYSTERIOUS character leaves the room (match on action), they look in their bag and realise they’ve left something important behind, she/he looks into the room watching OWEN as he discoveries the memory stick. (Point of view shot from MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER)

OWEN goes to the computer and realises a memory stick has been left behind, he turns back but the MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER hides out of the view of OWEN, OWEN then turns back to the computer and the MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER comes out of hiding looking in nervously. To look for clues OWEN looks in the files (and out of curiosity) to figure out whose memory stick it is.

As he is going is looking in the files he stumbles upon something that shocks him and gasps. The MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER leaves and walks down the corridor and makes an important phone call whilst walking to MR G.

MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER: We have a problem.

The scene then returns to OWEN who is typing into Google ‘The Hendermann Deal’ but there are no results. OWEN then types in ‘The Search Engine.’

End of scene.

Production Process:Filming

Today we filmed these two parts, the first part:

OWEN walking fast to booth, clearly tense about something.

OWEN enters the phone booth and tries to make a phone call but the number isn’t available.

OWEN clearly frustrated

OWEN: (frustrated and distressed) Come on work!

OWEN forcefully puts down the phone, brushes hand through hair, he then rips a page out of the phonebook

Camera zooms out, point of view shot from HENCHMAN 1’s view

Firstly did a long shot of the protagonist walking to the booth getting straight into the action and establishing the urban settings and the ‘hero.’ Using a panning shot to follow the protagonist as he enters the phone booth to keep continuity, by following his continuous actions making it seem more natural. Stopped recording and got into place to do the next shots which were a mixture of close-up and extreme close-up shots so the sound was accurately captured. Stop recording again and then set up for a medium shot to capture the protagonist’s frustration and him leaving the booth. Due to amendments of the script the “he then rips a page out of the phonebook” was taken out. Then the camera zooms out gradually, stop recording and moved into place of where the HENCHMAN 1 is and capture a shot from his point of view.

And the third section:

HENCHMAN 1 (hesitates and then answers): Yes, sir

End of call.

OWEN comes out of the phone booth. HENCHMAN 1 approaches him pretending to be a normal citizen so he doesn’t give away his true identity and cause panic.

OWEN: Have you got a phone, I need to make an important call

HENCHMAN 1:  looks in his coat pocket looks up (Reverse shot) HENCHMAN 1 punches OWEN

Close-up of HENCHMAN 1’s face then of him saying his line and he then hangs up. After the camera was repositioned, so we see HENCHMAN 1 approaching OWEN the protagonist. Repositioning the camera again to capture the first shot of OWEN talking, then repositioning again to capture the reverse shot of HENCHMAN 1, to show him looking in his coat pocket then pretending to punch the protagonist. For this shot, firstly took the ‘pretend punch’ shot with the camera on HENCHMAN 1and then to get another shot/reverse shot and diversity of angles we re-filmed that part with the camera on OWEN.

The second part of the script was filmed last:

HENCHMAN 1 is on the phone, on the other end of the phone we hear MR G his superior speaking on the other end.

MR G: The Hendermann deal is going through. It’s too much of a liability to keep him alive. Get rid of him. No evidence.

The name and character of Mr G was inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s villains as I am a big fan of his films so I persuaded the rest of my group for ‘Mr G’ to be this cool, sophisticated and ambiguous villain. To capture the speech clearly a microphone was placed just underneath the camera. Making our mastermind villain still mysterious, the scene was shot with the antagonist facing the opposite way so all we see is him speaking on the phone, keeping his identity still hidden.  

Filming experiment

Whilst filming the opening scenes and titles we tried many different ideas, even though we are re-filming, this clip I especially liked when he's typing the title of the project on the computer screen. For the thriller coursework we were going to include this but when we started to film, our ideas took a different path.

Titles Font Ideas

Now the filming is getting on, it's time to think about what fonts to use for the titles and the title of the film. Using this website, that let's you download free fonts, on www.dafont.com helped to give us an idea of what kind of font we wanted to use for the titles. Because our thriller is about computers etc, I suggested to use a standard recognisable font then adding to that Luke suggested to use a type effect using LiveType.

Revisions

When filming to make actions smoother and to improve quality as a group we decided to change a few things within the script. After editing this is now the new imprved script!

OWEN walking fast to booth, clearly tense about something.

OWEN enters the phone booth and tries to make a phone call but the number isn’t available.

OWEN clearly frustrated

OWEN: (distressed) Come on work!

OWEN forcefully puts down the phone, brushes hand through hair

Camera zooms out, point of view shot from HENCHMAN 1’s view

HENCHMAN 1 is on the phone, on the other end of the phone we hear MR G his superior speaking on the other end.

MR G: The Hendermann deal is going through. It’s too much of a liability to keep him alive. Get rid of him. No evidence.

HENCHMAN 1 (hesitates and then answers): Yes, sir

End of call.

OWEN comes out of the phone booth. HENCHMAN 1 approaches him pretending to be a normal citizen so he doesn’t give away his true identity and cause panic.

OWEN: [close-up shot] Have you got a phone, I need to make an important call

HENCHMAN 1:  looks in his coat pocket looks up [Reverse shot] HENCHMAN 1 punches OWEN

Black shot (text: 24 hours earlier …)

Updated planning details

Originally published 26/01/2012, updated 16/02/2012

The characters that will feature in the opening titles are:
Owen- the protagonist
The voice of Mr G- the antagonist
Henchman 1- who is Mr G's right hand man who does the 'dirty work'

Locations, locations, locations...
Ict room 2 for the Mr G filming and then we're going to use a public phonebooth for a more modern day realistic effect.

Music and sounds:
Decided for the sound effects we're going to use Final Cut Express, for the ident and the anamatic I used Garage Band to create the music it was really easy when I got the hand of it after a few learning curves. For the music we signed up for mobygratis.com and we're looking and seeing what would work well and give the most effect to the coursework.

Blog Poll results

Finally got round to reviewing the poll results on my blog and here they are,

And the winner is the Spy Thriller, so love the fast paced action and violence hey? Well then guess you'll just as excited as me about the new Bourne film coming out in August, uncovering more information about the anymonous operation Bourne and others like him were enrolled in.