In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media text uses the media conventions of real media products in its representation of females, in our media text both females act subserviently to the male character, which adheres to Laura Mulvey's theory of the Gaze in media. Further in Scene 2 where Johnathan is looking at the pictures of the girls he is attempting to be scopophillic as the girls don't know they are being watched but, Johnathan is also looking at them for pleasure. However our media product challenges the binary structure in the gaze through the female character, Mika acting in voyeuristic manner in scene 2, where in most media texts voyeurism is normally committed by males which follows the binary construct. Therefore by having Mika committing voyeurism she has the power as Johnathan is aware of being watched and has no control of the information Mika has of him.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product both follows and challenges the binary structure of the social group: gender - with males at the top, with the most power and females at the bottom, deemed weak. In Vengeance, Mika portrayed as weak and vulnerable as a cause of Johnathan's abuse(seen in scene 3), which her entire character is based around - her anger and hunger for vengeance. Further when Johnathan is looking through the pictures of girls in scene 2, Johnathan has the power as he sends Lisa to find girls and speaks to her in a very harsh tone and he also has the power over which girl he chooses, which objectifies females. However through voyeurism in our film, we gave Mika power , which is against the binary construct of gender. Voyeurism is where a person is being watched without their knowledge, making hem very vulnerable as they now have knowledge which the person being watched cannot control, thus giving Mika the upper hand and changing the power dynamic.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Due to our film being amateur and very low budget, we will distribute our film on YouTube. YouTube is an ideal place to distribute our film as it is free and with our film being made with a low budget we lose nothing in distributing it on YouTube. Further, our film isn't complete therefore, if we were to eventually complete it we would want feedback to make a better version and YouTube allows us to get feedback through the comments section worldwide. In addition, YouTube is generally used by our target audience and it would be beneficial to get their response, and as they are not known to us we are more likely to get the most honest feedback. Moreover, having our film on YouTube exposes us to the potential of being noticed by investors who would be able to provide professional advice and feedback alongside money for better equipment and possibly actors. With an improved film we could take our film to an independent cinema or a film festival where we are likely to get even more investments and recognition. This could take our film to national cinema and eventually international cinema.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience are British Middle Classed Female Teenagers, although we tried not to make our film target a specific audience we found our cast being predominantly female - giving little room for males to make an attachment with characters due to the limited male casting. Looking at theories of why people watch media, with Lacan's theory of the Ideal-I and the Mirror Stage - watching because we see the desirable characteristics in a character we believe we have or share with them: desiring to identify with Jonathan is unlikely as he is portrayed as a sexual abuser. However. the 2 female characters give the female viewers the ability to choose who they can associate them-self with, more so as Mika being the protagonist and Lisa the antagonist. Aside from our attempt to make our Target audience gender specific, we successfully didn't make our film target any specific race as our cast is multicultural and we didn't play to any stereotypes of any cultures presented in our film. Consequently, addressing the British public was made easier as there was a larger audience we could reach; Britain being a multicultural society our film appears more real especially to the Middle Class where a wider range of races can be found compared to the upper class. Naturally, our film is targeted towards the British public due to our cast being Britons as well as the language used and the Mise-en-Scene of the film as the Setting and Costume relates to British culture as we used typical sets and clothing: only recognisable to British.
How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted our audience by using environments which would be familiar to the British Middle Classed Teenagers: a typical park and a typical house, by doing this we keep the characters relatable through the Mise-en-Scene of the set. When planning the film we conducted a survey on things that the audience would like to see, although we didn't ask if the surveillance scene would be suited in a park the results showed that familiar and public places were valued equally. After creating the film we conducted a survey which showed that Mika's age also attracted and addressed the audience as the majority of the viewers identified her age to make vulnerable which could be due to the audience feeling compassion as they are a similar age. Moreover, the outrageous nature of scene 2 where Johnathan looks through the pictures also addresses the audience as females may be offended by the comments as it addresses their appearance and makes them feel preyed upon. From our interviews and general comments from other peers, we found that giving little away of the characters background caused great intrigue, as people often commented on the fact that they wanted to see more.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
While constructing our media product I became aware of how many different technologies we would be needing to use in order to create a media product, what's more a successful one. I didn't expect to be using so many different forms of technology- Celtx, Blogger, Survey Monkey and many others, it was also unexpected how much they would lend to our film. Survey monkey, YouTube and Blogger played the greatest part in our film making process, survey monkey helped gain an understanding of what our target audience expected and wanted to see. Furthermore, Survey Monkey and YouTube also helped us gain feedback on our film.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The preliminary coursework lent to our final product more heavily than I thought; we were constantly referring to the shots we learnt from our coursework - thinking about why we used it and the effect would have on the audience. For example we had to consider how we would build tension by doing closer shots from various angles, with this we also had to consider continuity which we also learnt from the preliminary work. We had to remember hand positions and when we didn't keep it in the right positions we had to go back and refilm those scenes. We developed what we learnt from the preliminary coursework by using different shots and angles which meant we had to think carefully about how we were transitioning from one shot to another, especially form the full shot to a POV, which required various takes after realising the mistakes during editing.
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