Media Studies As level“Creative Critical Reflection Of

The Final Video”

Q.1) How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?

Thriller has been a successful film genre since film began. They’re produced to entertain and give people new experiences about life which are always fascinating to their audience. My film is a short sequence of a thriller-comedy movie which develops the genre “comedy and “thriller” that are seen in many other thriller-comedy movies. I made it an opening to a serious murder scene with a jolly background music which is “The Times They Are a-Changin” by Bob Dylan, also used in the Hollywood movie “The Watchmen”. I worked to make this piece of film an unconventional thriller-comedy as much as I could, for the beginning part of the film I don’t think that it is similar to any existing thriller movie, although I was inspired by other action-thriller movies such as : Reservoir Dogs (1992), Escape Plan (2013), 3 days to kill (2014) and most importantly Lockout (2012). I did not follow the conventions of thriller or crime movies you can say, as in almost every crime movies during a murder scene, the atmosphere created is very different and serious supported by diegetic sounds i.e Heavy breathing and non diegetic sounds to make the scene look more intense. The idea of using the background music at the opening scene was inspired from the movie “The Watchmen” and has been used for the same effect, the music that I added was used so that the audience know that this film isn’t serious. However I challenged the location where these kinds of crime investigation scenes are set in. Instead of filming in a police station, I decided to film it in a small grotesque room. Another convention I challenged is that a white man is shown killing a black guy (nigger) and later again a white man is accused for the murder whereas in most movies black man is shown as the criminal.

Q.2) How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?

My audience of young adults and 30+ people will be attracted to my film as it shows what happens in a criminal tragedy and how it is handled later by security agencies which also gives them a lesson to learn from.A media institution produces films. These organizations sometimes fund the films, this usually happens if the organization is a conglomerate. The media organization I used is “Warner Brothers” as it is mostly producing and distributing movies related to crime, action and thriller. It has distributed many movies such as Batman Trilogy, Hangover Trilogy, Clash of the titans, Inception and so on. As my film is thriller-comedy which is produced from a small budget and contains amateur actors I think the kind of media institution that might distribute my film would be “film 4”, “Netflix” and through DVDs. As the distributor of my movie is WB, so I would also like to release it in theatres. Another reason for choosing “WB” is that when it comes to the distribution of my film, I know that it has plenty of experience and so know the best ways to get to the targeted audience. When a big media institution is involved in a film then the audience will know that the film is good therefore my product would be seen as a highly rated film. I also chose this firm as it is a large media institution that is also very popular and highly recognized in Pakistan. My film will work and attract its target audience in a wide of range of ways; through the dialogue of the characters (funny lines), mise-en-scene and editing techniques used as well as the choice made when selecting the soundtrack during the opening scene.

Q.3) How did your production skills develop through out this project?

I think my production skills developed through out this project, this is because after completing the task it gave me a clear understanding of what makes a film successful e.g. the importance of choosing the right camera techniques, location, and costume and when writing the script I had to think about the dialogues of the characters. This is all to make sure that everything fits the scene and what is happening in it. I also gained more confidence in using Adobe Premier CS3 to edit my final film and also learnt how to download sound effects from Youtube and use them in appropriate places. When looking back at this task I can identify the things that I could have changed if I had another chance to re-shoot ‘Holster’ such as the camera techniques used when the security agent says his last dialogue. For that part of the scene I felt like that I should have taken close up shots of both the characters to emphasis that it is the end and that the agent is about to leave. I also felt the need to learn how to reduce background noises.

Q.4) How did you integrate technologies in this project?

I have used the following technologies during my research and planning: Canon 500d dslr camera, Tripod , Adobe Premiere CS3, Tumblr , Slide share, Box Office Mojo, YouTube . I used YouTube as a source for my primary research so that I could look for different opening sequences of films, but YouTube is also a great place to find what the mass thinks about certain films. This is because they leave comments containing specific examples of what they didn’t like in a film/trailer. This source contributed a lot to my planning as I analyzed the amount of views, likes and comments a film got. I used Box Office Mojo to research the most successful thriller-comedy films made in the last 10/12 years, any sequences, total gross and by which studio. I used Slideshare to look for different ideas. I used one Canon 500D with 18-55mm lens when filming my film. The advantage of using this camera is that it was easy to carry around, everything was recorded on a SD card which transfers film footage across different devices due to its size. The cameras are ‘Full 1080P HD’, which meant that we recorded all our footages in full HD not missing out any detail. Adobe Premiere CS3 was the software used to edit my film footage together, this process was straightforward as I have used this software before. The software allowed me to add more dramatic and slow motion elements to my film e.g. sound effects, motion effects etc. The software contained simple editing tools for us to use such as transitions, adding texts, trimming of footages. This all contributed to the creation of a successful film. A good feature of this software was that I could edit the sound using the ‘Audio gain’ tool. I was able to edit the sounds for example adding some echoes. However, this software also had some limitations. One of the limitations of this software was that I couldn’t add any “latest special effects”. Another limitation is the lack of different transitions that look more professional instead of the standard transitions.

BY MAHSAM ZAINLI