This document contains a student's responses to questions about their media coursework project evaluating their opening sequence. The student explains that they drew inspiration from the film Se7en but changed elements to make it unique. They represent dangerous and criminal social groups similar to films like Se7en and Hannibal. The student believes their product would be distributed by small British film companies like the BBC due to its smaller scale. Their target audience is identified as males aged 16-19 based on an online survey. Elements of mystery are used to attract this audience and keep them engaged. The student notes they have learned about using new technologies like iMovie in the process and how their skills have progressed since their preliminary task.

1. Media Coursework evaluation

2. 1: In what way does you media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media products?

3. Answer: As I said in the brief summary on the post of our opening two minute sequence we got alot of our main ideas from watching the movie Se7en in media in previous lessons. We liked the way that the opening sequence of the film had already had the audience drawn into the action on the screen with the certain distorted music and images, also the weird images that were shown on screen really made the element of mystery increase. We did however change certain elements of the opening sequence and made sure that it was not a sort of copy cat version or a lesser version of the Se7en opening sequence. Seven Our’s Seven Our’s

4. 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

5. Answer: My media product presents a particular social group, this includes the dangerous, insane and the criminal sort of social groups. The way we done this was by looking at films like Se7en, Hannibal, and many others. We also represented the hero of films. These are called antagonist and protagonists.

6. 3: What kind of media institution might describe your media product?

7. Answer: I think that it will be with the small British film companies, like BBC, Film 4 and many more. This would be because our smaller films will not be able to match the big multi million dollar blockbusters that the Americans produce so we would never get the backing from the sorts of companies, like Columbia, Universal, Walt Disney, and many more. So there would be less big name actors so not a lot of money will be drawn in from these sorts of films.

8. 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

9. Answer: Our audience would main be males between the ages of 16-19. I got this from a survey I produced on http://www.freeonlinesurvey.com/. We split the survey so we have the same amount of males and females. Most of the females didn’t know what a thriller was, that indicated to me that maybe females so not enjoy thrillers as much as males do. I advertised this survey online and 16-19 was the most popular age, I think this is because I mentioned it was a thriller survey, so only people interested in thrillers took the survey. That is how i came to my conclusion that my target audience was males between the ages of 16-19.

10. 5: How do you attract/address your audience?

11. Answer: We would attract and address our audience in many different ways. One of the main ways was that we always had a certain element of mystery, like for example, when either of our actors were on screen, we always made sure that there back was turned away from the camera. Although we knew who it was the audience did not necessarily know who it was from behind, which made them want to know more, like why was he doing the things that he was doing, why and where did it all take place, with this sort of opening it can lead onto a whole film of mystery's being uncovered and linking up all from the beginning.

12. 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

13. Answer: Some technology is complicated and can get very frustrating like the apple iMac for example, after using windows since I started school I found it hard to work the iMac purely because it is so different to windows. Also iMovie is a new programme for me, and we had to learn it as we went along even now there is loads of things that i don’t know about it, it was a learning process but it think me and my group done very well considering none of use have used an apple iMac before we started Media Studies.

14. 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the product?

15. Answer: In our preliminary task, we got a specific set of tasks on a sheet that you had to follow like camera angles, shot types, what to say how to act etc. But now we have come a lot further in the way that we would do things like the camera angles, shot types and acting. Before it would have just been set up shoot and go. But now it would include like setting up, looking round for anything that would be of bother to actors or directors, also then to look at the lighting, the setting and everything else. So I have come along way from our preliminary task.