Main Task: Our 2 Minute Opening: Kate's Silence

Main Task: Evaluation Q1

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/13327932/media-evaluation-question-1

Main Task: Evaluation Q2

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

http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/536622/evaluation---question-2?pk=99c1-ad1c-2e26-70c0-8c45-4289-7e0b-4754

Main Task: Evaluation Q3 + Q4

Q3) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Q4) How did you attract/address your audience?

Additionally, we also put a link onto tumblr for people to watch our film and answer some questions:

Main Task: Evaluation Q5

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

Main Task: Evaluation Q6

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

At the start of this project we researched different film genres for our Opening Two Minute Film before starting the filming process, also looking at the conventions of the different genres. For example, romantic comedies would have high key lighting, with usually a young attractive man falling in love with an unpopular girl, with complications along the way. A classic 'boy meets girl' story.

We looked at other genres such as action which uses fast paced editing, with lots of stunts and crane camera movement shots to entice the audience. After looking at the action genre, we moved onto the horror genre and watched films that included The Woman in Black, which uses non-diegetic classical music to create tension and suspense for the audience. As much as a Horror Opening would be interesting many people have done it from previous years and many had similar plotlines, so we decided against this. However from our research into horror genre, we wanted to challenged the audiences' mind, and made them be an active audience. After much discussion we decided to choose a Psychological Thriller genre for our own film.

Stereotypical conventions of a psychological thriller;

-  - A main victim.

-  - Classical music to create tension.

-  - Editing throughout the film to create a story, which creates enigma for the audience, leaving them guessing what will happen next.

- - The fonts are stereotypically white on a black screen.

- - The main character or ‘victim’ has a real illness or mental disability which makes she/he do unlikely things.

Two great examples of Psychological Thriller’s are Jonathan Demme ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and Christopher Nolan’s ‘Memento’.

When filming our Opening Two Minutes we stuck with these conventions of psychological thriller genre by having the main character with a real illness or mental disability, classical music as well as diegetic sounds of heavy breathing, which creates enigma by not showing the audience who this character is. The audience are left in the dark.Apart from this we stuck to old classical music, Johannes Brahms,Lullaby as it connected well the women in the film; due to the close connect with her child.

In addition to this, our audience feedback questionnaire was successful as the audience had liked the heavy breathing, as they thought it tied in well with our psychological thriller genre, which shows that sticking to the conventions worked well.

However, in our film we wanted to be more creative and different, so that we didn’t just stick to traditional and stereotypical traits found in psychological thrillers. For example, our film was set in modern day similar to The Black Swan.  

Finally we looked at the conventions of the opening sequence, to create a film that was accurate and realistic, the conventions included;

-Heavy breathing of unknown character

- Introduction of Production Company, London Films Productions

- A HJA Film

- Title of Film; Kate’s Silence

- Shots of location with introduction to key characters (The Silence of the Lambs)

- Shots of a house, uncertainty on the audience to where they are being lead to

- See some parts of the character (Opening of Black Swan)

- Classical music to create tension (Black Swan and The Silence of the Lambs)

Main Task: Evaluation Q7

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