Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Q2. How does your media product present particular social groups?

Q3. What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

After much research into various film institutions during my research and planning period, and on the theory side of the course I believe that a film company such as Film 4 may be a company that would distribute our film. This is primarily due to the British themes of the film i.e. cast, setting, plot etc.
After having distributed several British films in the past, 'The Inbetweeners Movie' for example (while this is not a thriller it is a good example of a film which they have showcased on their channel, helping with the distribution aspect), Film 4 seems like the perfect candidate for a role in the distribution of our film. Our film could benefit from the help of film 4 because, regardless of whether it did well in the box office, the company could then put it on their TV programme which will make the film available to a wider audience, such as people that didn't want to see it at the cinema, or people that want to see it first before paying any money towards the film (to buy it on DVD for example).
We could also benefit from this because of Film 4's  previous success which has made it quite a well known label without becoming as huge as companies such as Warner bros. or Universal. This would be a good way to advertise our film and make it appeal to a wider audience of people who may be fans of other Film 4 releases.

Another institution which may be appropriate to distribute our film would be Warp Films, another British company which has proven very successful in the past with films such as 'Four Lions' and 'Dead Man's Shoes,' two British films which were considered to be quite successful amongst the British public in particular. This previous success would, again, help with the advertisement of our film by giving the audience a company they know and trust to make good quality films. another reason for my choosing of Warp Films is by looking into their history of thriller films. These films include their first success 'Dead Man's Shoes' and a more recent release '71' among others. These films link quite well with the themes and plot of our thriller and give evidence that  Warp Films are more than capable of handling a film of this nature.

Out of these two companies however, I would choose Warp Films to help with the distribution of my thriller. This is because of their experience in dealing with thriller films including films they have made themselves. Film 4 are a good choice in terms of a using different method of distribution (i.e. allowing films onto their own TV channel, however they lack the experience in dealing with thriller films.

Q4/5. Who would be your target audience? How did you attract/ address your audience?

Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Hardware:

• DSLR- The DSLR was the only piece of equipment that we used to capture footage. We chose this over the other cameras available due to its high resolution and ability to accurately focus on specific objects and blur the background, something we did quite frequently throughout our film.
  
• Scanner- We used the scanner a couple of times throughout the research and planning stage of our project to present the work that we had done on paper on our blogs, this was useful as I found it quicker and easier to make several drafts of different pieces of work on paper and scan the best one.
  
  
  
   
• Voice recorder- While we didn't use the voice recorder too much it was quite useful for me when creating different sound effects in the film itself i.e. heavy breathing etc. It was also helpful when we realised that some of the audio could need some polishing and so we simply replaced the original audio with the freshly recorded version rather than having to re-shoot the entire scene.
  

Software:

• Adobe Premiere Pro- Other than in our preliminary task this was the first time i had used premiere pro and after alot of research in my own time and a fair amount of playing around with random video clips, I eventually managed to gain a good knowledge of how to created different effect for both the visual and audio aspects.
  
• Adobe After Effects- I personally spent a lot (maybe too much) time using After Effects to create our main titles which I wanted to animate in a way which would suit the genre of our film. After several hours of work, and a lot of restarts, i began to understand the way in which the program worked and was eventually happy with what i had created, even though it wasn't exactly how i waned it to look.
  
  
• Adobe Photoshop- I didn't use Photoshop too much in the making of our project however my partner did when making rough drafts of or production logo, which he eventually created in After Effects. we had initially intended it to look as it does below, with the Crooked Spire, a local church, and significant part of our local area, incorporated into it however we decided against it as we couldn't make it look as good as we wanted it to. 
  
  
• Microsoft Powerpoint- While I have been using Powerpoint for many years now throughout school, the time I have been allowed on this project has allowed me to find much more effective and organised ways to compile my noted and work.
  
• Slideshare- I was not aware of Slideshare before this project and found it very useful when it came to embedding my Powerpoints into my blog posts which made conveying my work to a viewer much easier.
  
• Prezi- Prezi was another useful way to present my work other than a simple Powerpoint or Word document, however, I was not a fan, which is why it appears to be quite scarce on my Blog site. I have however used it for a couple of other evaluation questions to make my evaluation multi-modal.
  
• Mixcraft- I have used Mixcraft a couple of times in the past and was able to use both custom music made by myself and my partner, and a few presets on the program itself to create the score for our thriller. I would have liked to have made the entire score from scratch, however, due to lack of time, and slightly poor time management, we had to compromise.
  
• Blogger- We have been using Blogger throughout the entire course and it has helped me to understand the idea of blogging. It allows me to upload work from several different sites and programs and allows me to log each action that I have taken towards this project.
  

Q7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the main task?

I have answered this question in the form of a 'Gliffy' please scroll down to see my response.

INCOMING EVALUATION!

The following few blog posts and attachments will make up the evaluation of my Thriller task and will be presented in several different forms (Prezis, Powerpoints, ordinary blog posts etc.)