Reece's Individual Evaluation

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

• We used a few conventions that are used regularly in films of the genre are trying to achieve. In the opening we wanted to reveal as little information about the character with the Koi tattoo so we kept the main antagonists face never appear in shot this can also be achieved with lighting and shadows but we used camera positioning to keep the entirety of the subjects face out we used this as it is a good way of keeping the antagonists identity a mystery to the viewer and making them wonder and try to think what the characters true identity is for the rest of the time until it actually is revealed  this keeps the viewer engaged and thinking so will keep their attention better.
• Our film doesn't actually reveal the antagonist to be the antagonist at first, the viewer may think that the character is the protagonist tension begins to build after he has finished eating breakfast with a quick cut in the sound and a drastic change of music to a more chilling and suspense building tone.
• By keeping the characters face out of shot and have him in a strange costume throughout the piece we are creating an enigma, the viewer questions "Why is he dressed up so much" or simply "what does his face look like"
• the later shot where the female is first shown is shot in a high angle and almost the POV of the antagonist also follows the convention of the victim as the camera is angle as high as we possibly could without losing the view of the victims facial features.

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

Our Thriller opening only shows 2 characters one a Teenage white female who is the victim and one white male whose age and other attributes are not established.

• The social class of the antagonist is middle-class which is obvious due to the style of house and his surroundings but he tries to come off more upper class by dressing up more than the average middle class person to an unnecessary degree in fact. The house is just the average suburb house with modest decorations and not too extravagant.
• Both genders are shown in a negative light in our film as the young female is shown to be weak and powerless at the hands of her kidnapper, this follows the classic stereotype of that men are strong and dominant and the females are the weak victims or are in need of protection, the male is the kidnapper so is obviously the powerful one in the scene and can command dominance over the subject such as when he speaks to her at the end of the opening he is speaking a command rather than a request this shows his power and control of the situation.
• AGE: age in this is not a particularly prominent part of the piece but the female does fit into that stereotype that you generally only see the young damsel in distress (commonly teenage girls in modern pieces) being captured by an older man generally middle aged and perhaps a sexual predator or just a bit more overbearing than the average person or with an obsession for power. 

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

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

There is no specific age group that our film may appeal to it would just appeal to any fan of any age who enjoys thrillers and any kind of film with suspense

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Using a prominent image like the koi to make it more memorable it was also the thumbnail for the video on Youtube and the tattoo would make an appealing and memorable poster and advertisement

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

Lighting is a lot more important than I had first realised and is a lot more difficult than anticipated especially when we were trying to replicate morning sunlight and low key lighting is a lot more difficult to do well seeing as we didn’t want it to be too strong we wanted a softer form of low key lighting to seem like a softer relaxed morning.

We also learnt that the more waste footage you have the better as you have more to work with and you have more flexibility while editing this just improves the quality of the film and makes it less frustrating as if one shot doesn't work you have more options and do not have to go back on set and re-film.

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

Same as the previous section lighting was surprisingly important and also difficult to get it how we wanted it but i feel as a group we made amazing progress in learning the importance of lighting and also how much waste footage is important when coming to the editing stage, speaking of editing the pace was difficult to get how we wanted with the time constraint of 2 minutes on the film as we had so much footage and we wanted to keep the majority of it to maintain a slow pace and build susspence but we managed to cut out a lot of unneeded footage and still maintain the pace we wanted so we learnt the importance of pace and to not be attached to footage so much and not feel bad about cutting footage out to make it look better