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

Our thriller opens in a similar way to thrillers such as Seven and also filmed in the same way as Cloverfield as it introduces the two characters in an environment, limited knowledge of that location and are being filmed by a handheld camera. This is key to maintaining the atmosphere of the thriller, and therefore conforming to conventions of equilibrium and disequilibrium. It relates to the thriller opening seven, as  it consists of many short cuts and does not give too much away.

The title is one word – ‘GONE' and does hint to some extent the plot of the thriller and how the film will unfold. Different to the thrillers ‘Cloverfield’ and ‘saw’. Our title does give an initial idea of what the audience can expect; much like ‘Paranormal activity’ and ‘The Blair Witch project’

The camerawork in our thriller was all handheld footage and a tripod was never used. This kept with the convention of a thriller film being that it builds and builds to a final climax of events or to one heightened area of suspense.

Another convention used in our opening. is the protagonist having a flaw in which the antagonist takes advantage of, for example when the main lady character enters the woods on her, this makes it easy for the antagonist to approach, resulting in her being chased. The music is also typical to the genre and helps create suspense and an eery atmosphere througout.

We think the use of conventions in our opening is at first not clear, as to what sub-genre it falls into however as the scene progresses, it is clear that is is a psychological thriller. At first this helps to add to the mystery of the opening as the audience are made to come to their own conclusion of what may be the story line, when what the thought becomes incorrect, they are then able to compare waht they thought was going to happen with what actually did happen.

  

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our opening we mainly focus on only one social group, that being of women. We have obviously a carer or mother figure with a young child, this co exists with the stereotypical value that caring after children is only a job for a female figure. We also have the stereotypical idea of a female character in distress we play along with the typical values of Hollywood and classical tales. Unlike the film Hard Candy which is a huge turn around with the male being the protagonist.
 Many could say that the premise of our film is a female's nightmare scenario of a child going missing. Also with the young character one could relate this back to the recently highlighted news of Madeline Mccann, without exploiting the devastating disappearance of the young girl. It highlights the problems and the effects that it can have on family's and victims.
Gender is presented very sterotypically in our opening, (though perhaps not the rest of the film) with the dominant male, and the passive female. Ruby is almost presented as "The Damsel in Distress"

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

The job of a production company is to make the film including: hiring a director cast and crew, props, location, it's also essential that the production company has links to the distribution and exhibition of the film. For example, See-Saw Productions are responsible for the making of the King's Speech, but distribution and marketing is in the hands of Momentum Pictures. 

Another ideal major production company for our film would be ‘Film4’, a British film production company who Create new original low budget films that prove be huge success, such as ‘This is England’ and ‘Slumdog Millionaire’

Because of the retraints put in place by a limited budget, another small but established company would be  'Coffee Films', a young but successful independent British film production company who opened in 1996 and experimented with filming with camcorders, fitting perfectly with the style of filming chosen for our thriller opening. (http://www.coffeefilms.com/content.html)
Unlike major American film companies who have an extensive budget to distribute their films, for example Avatar made by 20th century fox had almost 50 million dollars at its disposal to bring the film to the worlds attention. Because 20th century fox is owned by News Corporation, it enjoys 360 degree status, but because our film is on a much smaller scale, we have to rely on different marketing strategies, such as a viral marketing campaign, with possible clips on the web, youtube and Facebook to generate publicity and gain the film a high profile.

The reason why media institutions might distribute this film, would be that it addresses the issues of stalkers and child abductions, which is a current issue all around the world and needs as much awareness made of as possible.
The mise-en-scene in the film on terms of lighting and setting reflects our low budget production, this type of style is typical for film 4, the ideal distributor for our film.  

Who would the audience be for your media product?

The audience would mainly be made up of men of various ages, from aged 16-30. We Believe that men are more likely to watch thrillers than women. However women from our surveys indicated they do watch thrillers However would be from the ages of 20-30. Younger people are unlikely to watch them due the age rating, and elderly people are less likely because they are less interested in thrillers.
Many people after viewing the thriller opening said they were intrigued with the twist at the end as they believed the attacker was going after the young child, many said this would be there reason for watching on as they wanted to know where the young girl fitted into the story, and also what was going to happen to the older girl after being attacked.

How would you attract your audience?

The age of our audience is male teenagers and young men. To attract this audience we had a female victim. It is could be seen as stereotypical and sexist but it a female victim does attract a male audience.

Are thriller is not scary but leaves a sense of ambiguity with the viewer. What has this women done? Who is watching her? What relevance do the child and other female character have to the story?

This makes the audience edgy about what is happening and thinking about what is going to happen in the film. Our title is very different to most thrillers as you have some sort of idea what is going to happen. This may not intrest people as much but at the same time the story Would certainly not conform to what would an audience would expect.
It's not only the camera that is voyeuristic, the audience is to. Throughout the opening the audience sees the parallel of jessica in the park and the stalker watching Facebook all through the stalker or attackers perspective. The audience is almost placed in a position of responsibility, they want to warn the girl and the child on who is watching. 


The famous film advertising company 'Pearl & Dean' surveys films and sees how the audience can relate to other films and furthermore predict what the same audience would enjoy. A great example to compare our audience too is that of the film 'SAW' this was the average results of the audience that came to see the film. From this we can further develop the point that most of our audience would be male.

	Age:	%:	Gender:	%:	Class	%:

	4-6	0%	Male:	67%	AB	30%

	7-11	0%	Female:	33%	C1	29%

	12-14	0%			C2	23%

	15-24	42%			DE	18%

	25-34	22%

	35-44	21%

	45+	15%