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

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

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

There are a wide array of distribution institutions that would choose to distribute a film based on their different philosophies and criteria, for example Pixar usually work with Disney to help produce children's films but Lionsgate go more with the route of thriller films which is beneficial for us. However for a small group like us Lionsgate are too big a company and distribute indie films in the higher budget range and an example of one of those films is 'The Hunger Games; which grossed over $670bn worldwide from an $80bn budget.

In our case a realistic choice of distributing institution would be 'Vertigo Films' and the reason for this is that during research I found that they've distributed the likes of 'Sweeney' and 'Bronson' which follow similar themes based around crime.
Due to having a similar target audience this is more reason for why Vertigo Films would be more likely to distribute our film.

There are a few more institutions that could back our film such as 'The UK film council' who've backed over 900 films and aim to support upcoming British films or even 'Film4' who have also produced many films themselves such as '12 Years a Slave' and Ex Machina'. These are all great companies that all help indie film developers and assist in making sure any problems regarding budget are taken into account.

Other than cinema online distribution of films has become more and more popular and one company that has been doing this is 'Vimeo' with their on demand service. They allow filmmakers to directly sell their work to a target audience, and in turn receiving a 83-96% cut of the revenue. Furthermore our content would be distributed not only onto computers and laptops, but widely accessed online onto phones, tablets and TVs.


Additionally we also have the possibility of promoting our film through film festivals who specifically aim to support independent film creators all over the world. The more well known festivals come as The Sundance, Raindance and BFI and even online submission sites which send your requests to over 5000 different festivals. More suited to us however is The Cambridge Film Festival who focus on Action, Thriller and Crime films and they work to "reveal new talents" who they feel will "shape the future of cinema". An example of this is the exhibition of a short film directed by Christopher Nolan who is now well known for his role in films such as Interstellar, The Dark Knight Trilogies and Inception which have grossed a total of over $1.6billion.

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

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

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

In our preliminary task the opening scene involved our character running up a set of stairs into a building and our idea was to use the tripod to minimise the shake as the camera operator ran with the character, however this wasn’t enough but by using stabilisation features in the editing program this reduced the amount of shake at the expense of the video looking a bit blurry and also cropping the framing which is why the character gets cut out of frame quite often during that shot. Another mistake that we didn’t take care of was any errors popping up during filming and an example of this was the camera not being in focus as it tracked in towards the sign on the door. What we were able to learn from this was that we should film our shots multiple times over and also coming together and creating a plan in advance to make sure we all know how a shot is meant to go. Furthermore we invested in purchasing a handheld stabiliser which allowed us to capture the more faster paced shots seen in the final scene.

Referring to the quality of the framing of shots there were a few mistakes in our preliminary task in which the tracking shots resulted in our character being cut out of frame. And as said before we were able to address this issue by using a stabiliser. Additionally with the creation of a well planned out storyboard that included everything we would shoot this lead to there being no reason for there to be any major mistakes in our final piece. We also took note on the correct use of the rule of thirds on how we should keep each point located on a character's face and the idea of motivating our camera movements which would help make our edits more seamless, keep the audience immersed into the film and help express any emotions a character is feeling.

We were given a set of script instructions we had to follow during our preliminary task which required us to use reverse shots and use specific camera angles. However we didn't take enough time out to understand what was required of us. This taught us the importance of thorough preparation and research and so one thing we took time out to do was find out the common codes and conventions of thriller films and this allowed us to understand what information we needed to represent to our audience and how. Leading on to mise-en-scene one key element in our film was the use of guns to convey the danger the protagonist is in and also the fact that it checks off one of the thriller film conventions of using weapons as props. Similarly, having our film set in a busy urban area further checks off another common code and helps emphasise the mood and tone of the film.
As we were filming our protagonist was running out of the tunnels we noticed the RGB lights changing colour and so we decided to use these colours to have some significance and meaning to the scene. For example the protagonist left the tunnel under purple (blue pre-edit) lights which can be used to represent isolation or calm and the chasers entered the frame into a red light signifying violence and danger.

The quality of editing in our preliminary task was quite simplistic but as the editor I felt that I did the best I could with the captured footage. We did have a problem on one occasion where although we filmed a shot multiple times we didn't notice an error in one of the shots where the camera was not focused on the sign. So to fix this I had to grab a frame from another clip and use that as a replacement. In the end multiple takes of a shot saved us a bit but at the same time poor planning resulted in this mistake. One major limitation that we had for the prelim was the fact that I wasn't able to show the group what I did whilst editing. But as we had around 2 weeks to edit, rather than 1 day this allowed me to render drafts of what I had done which meant we were able to decide if there were any changes that we needed to make.

We found audio in our preliminary to be at a level where there wasn't too much wrong with it especially as the location and time we shot at was very quite. However one thing that we had to learn from was to check our audio during filming as the mic may not pic up the dialogue well. In my case I had to increase the volume as the 'boss' was talking due to the camera being a bit further away, this left the task with a slight hiss during his lines. When it came to our film I brought along a portable mic to hide and place closer to any action meaning we were able to pick up ambient sounds much better. Additionally I also made sure to capture room/environment tone to place over any unwanted sounds but to also build a sense verisimilitude. Lastly due to the tunnel being quite busy and having too much echo the dialogue was recorded on a phone and implemented that way.

In terms of movement and positioning I felt our prelim actor did his best to convey that he's in a rush (running up the stairs, swinging of the door open) and he also signified being nervous (trying not to make eye contact and rubbing his face and similarly the 'boss' was able to do the same, showing his authority (sitting upright).

As a group there was a lot more harmony between us as we all had roles and knew what each other had to do as well as ourselves.
Concluding this the preliminaries have deemed to be extremely useful in allowing us to analyse our work and see exactly where we need to improve