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

of film openings of a similar genre to your own). ( TAHMOOR ALI)

Our task for this piece of assessment was to produce the opening two minutes of a thriller sequence. Throughout this sequence we had to include many

generic conventions to make it authentic and also to make the sequence more entertaining for the audience. Generic conventions are conventions which

you would mainly expect to be in a film genre of which you are watching. For example, in a thriller film you would expect the cast to use props such as guns

and sometimes wear costumes such as dark clothing with a mask. In this short essay my aim is to explain how my thriller uses generic conventions from a

thriller.

One generic convention which we used was the use of weapons. Weapons are used in a lot of genres to connote many different things within the film. In

our film “ACE” we used only one type of weapon which was the gun. The gun was used to add violence to the sequence as guns are used to hurt/damage

another person. The gun in this sequence was used by the protagonist to help defeat his enemies. The film starts of with the protagonist taking out good out

of his bag. One of which is the gun. The shot used to show him removing the gun from the bag was the point of view shot. This was used to place the main

focus on the gun. This was deliberately done to foreshadow an event later on in the sequence; in this case it was the death of two of the antagonists. Also,

the point of view shot is used to place the audience in the shoes of the character. One film which uses weapons such as the gun is Denzel Washington‟s film

of The American Gangster. The gun in this film is also used as a weapon to kill antagonists. The affect off the usage of weapons such as guns has on the

audience is that it keeps them interested in the film. Also it can build up suspense as it can cause the audience asking themselves who he is going to kill

with the weapon.

During the opening sequence we thought we would use another generic convention. In this case we thought we should use the convention of basing the narrative of the film around a crime.

Our opening sequence is based around three antagonists gambling for some drugs. We used a crime narrative due to the fact that the film‟s genre is a thriller and the narratives for most

thrillers are based around crime. For example, in the opening sequence of the Dark Knight, the narrative is based around the crime of a bank robbery. The affect that this has on the audience is

that it gives them an introduction to the film. This can build up tension and also start entertaining the audience as they don‟t know what is coming up next.

The third generic convention which was used in our opening 2 minuet sequences is the convention of the protagonist fighting the antagonists. We decided to use this convention as many

successful blockbuster thrillers such as the dark knight have the main narrative based around these two sets of people. The narrative around the protagonist and antagonist is used to introduce

the characters and clarify to the audience who is the antagonist and protagonist. On the audience the effect of having the protagonist fight against evil is to make the sequence a bit more

interesting for the viewer. The protagonist in this case is a young man which is connoted through his appearance such as a dark hoodie. The mask is used to hide the identity of the character.

The mask is also used to create a narrative enigma. In this case, the audience doesn‟t know who the masked man really is and this generates suspense for the audience while they wonder who

it can be. On the other hand, the antagonists were much older than the protagonist. These was used to put the protagonist in a difficult situation as they were much more of them and also are

much older than him which can be an advantage for them. The clothing of the antagonists was very smart. This was used to signify to the audience that they are very wealthy and also at the

same time very classy and intelligent. During the sequence the antagonists were playing cards while sniffing/smoking drugs such as cocaine. These were used to signify to the audience that

they are enemies of the protagonist.

How does your media product represent particular social groups? (

TAHMOOR ALI)

Our main character in our thriller sequence of “ACE” is the protagonist of the film. He is not believed to be the conventional representation of a protagonist. This is due to the fact of a wide

variety of audience imagining a protagonist to be dressed very smartly such as James Bond who is dressed in a suit and tie. James Bond is seen to be a very intelligent character due to his

attire in the film. In our film sequence the protagonist is dressed in very dark coloured tracksuit. The reason why he is wearing this is to signify to the audience that he is a young person due

to the fact that mainly young people are seen to be wearing a hooded tracksuit. Also, you would not mainly see old people wearing tracksuits. The tracksuit which he is wearing connotes to

the audience he is of the working class as stereotypically the working class are seen to be wearing normal clothing compared to the upper class who would stereotypically be seen to wear

posh clothing such as suits. The mask which was used was a black mask. This mask was used deliberately to blend in with the rest of the attire as different colours would cause the person to

stand out. We wouldn‟t want the protagonist standing out much as his identity is hidden and bright colours wouldn‟t help him keeping a low profile. We have taken one character to idolise our

protagonist around which is Batman. We chose Batman over any other protagonist due to the fact that Batman is a well-known character within the world of thriller films. The similarities

between these two protagonists are mainly about the attire they are wearing. They are both wearing dark clothing which matches. Also, they are both wearing masks which are used to hide

the identity of one another. The differences of the two protagonists are that you can tell one is older than the other. You can see Batman is older than the protagonist in our sequence due to

him having more muscular features.

Our media product particular represents the upper class who would buy/gamble to gain an increase amount of drugs. This can include such people like drug lords. It does through the

mise-en-scene and also the props used. The three antagonists are undergoing the drugs exchange and the garments which they are wearing are shirts with ties. In everyday life, the

suit mainly signifies the fact that they are very wealthy. In the world of the film this could means that there are a lot of money/drugs being exchanged in the drug deal. The suit tells the

audience that he is of high class as he is wearing something very posh. A suit also signifies a high status as you wouldn't mainly see a person of a lower class who is always wearing a

shirt and tie. The props which are used are crushed paracetamols which was used to signify the use of crack cocaine. This was used in this scene due to the fact that cocaine is in the

category of the class A drugs and in the drug market is of high value. This is why we used this to show their status in such way by using drugs. Another prop which was used was cards.

The cards which were used were also used to signify to the audience that the antagonists are of high class. This is because in casinos cards are used to win big amounts of money. In

this case no money was involved as it was strictly drugs. Our media product represents the upper class in a negative way. The reason why I make this statement is due to the fact that

this sequence shows the bad side of males having large amounts of money as they are using their money in advantage of harming themselves and others by selling/gambling drugs.

Also, the sequence also represents young males negatively as the protagonist was thought of being a young person. This is because he was in possession of a gun and also used a

gun to kill someone.

In this sequence we are representing the male gender in a stereotypical way as males are more likely to get into drug dealing than females. Also, young males are

more likely to take part in killing someone rather than young females. This is mainly down to the lifestyle they are living in such as the protagonist may have been

living in a poor living state with a poor job. On the other hand, the drug lords are also represented stereotypically due to the fact that they are gambling drugs for more

drugs. This is stereotypical because drug lords I would believe would want more drugs at a cheaper price. This is why I would say gambling is one way they can get

the drugs cheaper. I would believe that the highest proportion of people who would watch our film would be from the ages from 16-24 who are lower class and are

male. This is because the lower class would want to get in the drug dealing business more than upper class because drug dealing would mean getting money fast and

without doing much. Ethnically, I would say more black people would watch this film due the fact that stereotypically they are represented to be doing a lot of crime

and our film has a lot of crime with in it.

who would be the audience for your media product? (Joe Brooke)

When we were looking to target our audience we had take not of 3 main factors; Demographics, Physcographics and lifestyle. From these 3 we can identify

what target audience we want and use this to our advantage and use all the resources we can in trying to get the biggest audience possible to view our

opening scene.

DemographicsThe target age we want our target audience is around the ages of 15 - 25. This is a 10 year bracket so out we needed to make sure our advertising was young

and up to date with what people in this age range were using.

The gender it is mostly aimed at is Male but we also wanted female attraction to view our film so we want to have a 60-40% split between male and female.

This way if we have female attraction for our opening scene we will gain a lot more views than just the males watching it.

As we have such a small target audience we tried as hard as possible to make sure it was suitable for all ethnic backgrounds.

The social classes we chose that were suitable and thought would view our opening scene is E,D,C1,C2,B. We think that these are all suitable to target our

audience because in lower classes tend to abuse alcohol and drugs and tend to be in the situation the girl in our opening scene is put through a lot more than

in upper classes.

Psychographics This comes into 7 groups; The Explorer, The Aspirer, The Succeeder, The Reformer, The Mainstream, The Struggler and The Resigned.

On our research on Psychographics we have established that The Strugglers and The Mainstream are our top priority when target audience comes into place.

The reason we have chosen „The Strugglers & The Mainstream‟ is because the strugglers are always living in the moment and trying to make it as good as

possible and sometimes the use of alcohol and drugs can influence their day and make it better. The mainstream because they like to get out and have a good

time, always up with everything that is new. they base their lives around family and friends and always trying to have the best time possible.