1. AS Media Studies Evaluation
Scott Kirchgaesser

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media
products?
Upon making our opening sequence for a thriller film ‘The Brief’ we used, developed and challenged forms and conventions of real media products.
We made sure that we kept to the key concepts and conventions of a action thriller genre yet also challenged forms through our development of
our final piece. We made sure we did this so that the audience would receive some familiarity which is important yet not receive something that is
to repetitive and cliché.
Before attempting to film and make our opening sequence, I explored into
opening sequences of similar real media products analysing the use of
camera, sound, editing and mise-en-scene. By doing this I gained a further
understanding of the typical codes and conventions action thrillers have. A good
opening sequence I analysed was ‘Salt’ where I noticed the use of the colours
black white and red for the titles. I noticed similar formats in other thriller
openings and therefore applied it to our own piece giving us a generic
convention for a thriller.
[See 0:52]
In addition to this, with my research into mise-en-scene I found examples used to
connote certain meanings. For example in the movie ‘Defiance’ Russian spies are
shown to be frequently wearing specific types of hats which the audience will
associate with Russian people. We therefore thought it would be good idea to
translate this into our own opening sequence showing similar mise-en-scene.
Furthermore, this adds to the form of generic conventions by the way Russian
characters are presented.
[See 1:25]

3. In other cases however, our opening sequence subverted the forms and conventions of real media
products. An example of this would be the presentation and editing of the title of the film. After
looking through various thriller openings I found that the title of the film would almost always slowly
fade into the middle of the screen and then hold and slowly fade out. Despite this, we used a
different editing effect where the title splits into 4 pieces going out in different corners. Even though
this is challenging conventions, we believe that this doesn't take any suspension away from our
opening or effect our product negatively. Instead we believe that it gives our product a unique
original look.
However, the choices we made whilst filming and editing reflect
heavily on the genre of our film. Through the use of codes and
conventions it indicates a action thriller. This provides familiarity to
the audience as we are using key concepts form already existing
media products. This is clear to see through the use of mise-en-scene,
content, editing, titles and camera work. Firstly, our content reflects
our genre as it covers a familiar feature of a thriller and that is the use
of a Russian protagonist. Audiences would be able to recognise this
providing evidence of repetition in our thriller. Our editing also
reinforces this as at [0:44] a pre recorded non diegetic sound of a
Russian voice emphasizing that the protagonist is a Russian spy.
The mise-en-scene also indicates that it is a action thriller as when the male protagonist is looking over his
mission brief a machine gun is shown to be by his side representing danger and action. The titles also add
emphasis to the idea of a action thriller as they are a tinted red mixed with a shadow effect black. The use of
the colours red and black add to the tension as they resemble ideas such as death blood and thriller
conventions. The titles also were positioned carefully to not draw much attention away from the shot in
hand. The camera work also helps to add tension and create ideas of an action thriller. This is done by
creating a over the shoulder close up shot of the security cameras at the train station at [1:42].
Overall, I believe that genres are always evolving and by subverting to the conventions slightly we are
keeping the genre alive. This would gain a positive response from our target audience as they
experience typical representation of a Russian character adding familiarity. I believe that we were
successful in using and subverting from conventions as our research will prove. Despite this, I feel as if
we could have gone more into depth with our portrayal of a action based thriller genre.

4. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Throughout the making process of our opening sequence our group continuously
focused on how particular social groups could be represented in order for the
audience to gain further understanding. Our first shot [0:17] presents gender in a
stereotypical way as the mise-en-scene allows the reader to see just a male character
positioned centre of the screen dominating the scene. This idea of power and
dominance is also re-enforced through the use of mise-en-scene where immediately
you can see a machine gun positioned to his left. Despite this, the use of a white t-
shirt the male protagonist is wearing represents background information of
innocence and purity, this is used to create controversy as if we where to make the
entire film the protagonist wouldn't go through with his mission but go against the
Russian secret service. By having the all black machine gun in the same shot as the
male protagonist wearing a white t-shirt , stereotypical representation of gender is
contrasted.
Gender is continued to be presented this way as the male protagonist continues to
wear the white shirt throughout the opening sequence. Despite this, as the male
protagonist approaches the train station he wears a black and grey coat over the top
of his white shirt which is still slightly revealed [1:25]. This re-enforces our intention
to allow the protagonist to turn good later on in the film as the black and grey coat
symbolizes emotionless, efficient and sinister which his mission brief requires him to
do, however his own conscious is always still their connoting innocence through the
use of the white t-shirt.
Overall, our opening sequence alone portrayed a mostly stereotypical view of a
Russian male protagonist therefore allowing audiences to familiarise themselves with
our thriller.

5. In addition to this, the use of starting the opening sequence and
ending the opening sequence with the same male protagonist
emphasises the overall dominance of males in comparison to
females within this genre. In our research few opening sequences
of real media products just included one character, despite this we
felt that our story and content only needed one character for it to
work and it allowed us to further convey key conventions of what
our male protagonist was meaning to convey to the audience.
[see 0:16] [see 1:51]

6. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
In the process of trying to decide what media institution that would distribute my media product, I looked at films within
the action thriller genre and found out what media institution they belonged to. I firstly looked at the film ‘In Bruges’ and
found out that they were produced by Film4.
In Bruges: Guilt-stricken after a job gone
wrong, hit man Ray and his partner await
orders from their ruthless boss in Bruges,
Belgium, the last place in the world Ray
wants to be. (www.imdb.com)
Similar The mise-en-scene
lighting shows the us of guns
Film4 productions is a
connoting to be a typical action
British film production
ideas of an thriller convention
company owned by
action thriller.
channel 4 television
corporation. The
company has been
responsible for
producing a large
number of films made
in the united kingdom.

7. Die Hard: John McClane, officer of
the NYPD, tries to save wife Holly
Gennaro and several others, taken
hostage by German terrorist Hans
Gruber during a Christmas party at
the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles.
(www.imdb.com)
The use of a still image
has been taken to
The use of a machine Dark lighting be used represent a particular
gun rather than a when portraying the ‘bad scene in the film. This
pistol portrays the guy’ makes the scene more
character to be evil iconic and well known.
and dangerous.
20th Century Fox, or 20th Century
Fox Pictures, is one of the six major
American film studios. Located in
the Century City area of Los
Angeles, just west of Beverly Hills,
the studio is currently a subsidiary
of Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corporation.

8. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Based on my research of thriller films, I believe that our film could potentially fit into two different production companies. One option
is that it could be made into a British film through the production company of Film4. Our reason for this is that Film4 usually produce
low budget films that target a smaller audience. Despite this, the action thriller ‘In Bruges’ produced by film4 gained high popularity
with many people watching it. And because our film is similar to this, we believe Film4 could be a suitable choice to distribute our film.
Furthermore, we also believed that our film could also have been distributed by 20th Century Fox. By doing this our audience would
be based on a much larger scale gaining a greater amount of viewers. 20th Century Fox has distributed many films similar to ours in
the action thriller region, such as ‘Die Hard’, ‘Alien’ and ‘Independence Day’. Therefore 20th Century Fox could also be a good company
to produce our film as it has distributed similar films in the past and due to its reputation will gain a larger audience.
In addition to this, we also decided that our film would be based in Cinemas rather than just online due to the our research saying that
most thrillers have come out in the cinema first. By producing this only through the internet would massively decrease our potential
audience and due to only few people familiar to downloading films on the internet we would be decreasing our profit margins and
target audience.

9. Who would be the audience for your media product?
We have decided that our media product would be targeted at the certificate 15 market due to the themes
and issues raised in the text. This is shown through the dangerous intention that our protagonist portrays to
the audience. In addition to this, we believed that our action thriller film would not fit into the 18+ region as
comparing it to my research I found that our film if made professionally would most likely be a certificate 15.
Furthermore, due to our protagonist being similar yet slightly older to our target audience we feel as if our
target audience would be able to identify the characters with meaning more easily. Despite this, gender on
the other hand may be more biased towards males than females. This could be because our film is primarily
dominated by a male character who shows little to none female aspects that some women could relate with.
Furthermore, because our thriller raises issues of typical thriller conventions such as a Russian spy, this
familiarises the audience with the content and genre of the film. Therefore, audience’s that continuously
seem to enjoy thriller movies are more likely to like ours maximising our audience.
Films that we believe to be similar to ours can evidently be linked to ours such as ‘Salt’ and ‘Defiance’. As the
film ‘Salt’ was a Hollywood film audience’s ranged widely due to the large target audience and was a popular
film around its release. Despite this, ‘Salt’ was rated PG -13 where as ‘Defiance’ was rated R. Therefore we
believed that due to our film being similar to both ‘Salt’ and ‘Defiance’ we would take aspects of both films
and collaborate them to make a rated 15 thriller. Further research on the BBFC website also helped me with
our judgement whist deciding its age certificate.

10. Target audience feedback
In order to fully evaluate our final product, we created a survey using Google survey to help us design the questions. Below are
some comments from our audience feedback:
Do you want to know what happens next? Why?
“yes, I found the opening sequence engaging to the viewer and I wanted to know what happens after he gets off the train”
Would you say the representation for the character was correct? Why?
“yes I believed that the character was a Russian spy of some sort going on a mission to London”
Did you like the music? Why?
“yes I thought it fit in well with what was going on and I like the bit at the end where the train doors shut and the music
matched it”
Did you like the titles? Why?
“yes I liked how they were both red and black as it fit into a thriller type film. I liked how it was slightly different from normal
titles as well”
The graph on the left shows the results from the genre of the film question.
As you can see the highest score without a doubt was Action. This therefore
proves that we have successfully created an opening sequence that fitted our
targeted genre which we wanted our audience to believe. Our audience
ranged from ages 15 to 35+. This gives us a clear understanding to what all
age groups think of our thriller. Overall, as most of our feedback was positive
I think that most people enjoyed our opening sequence.

11. How did you attract/address your audience?
By using a over the
shoulder shot looking
down at the protagonist’s
book the audience is
drawn to what the
character is reading.
By having a close up of the
By having many different props all location the protagonist is going
in one shot the audience (London) the audience is further
automatically tries to identify each included in the narrative.
object and there significance,
attracting the audience.
By naming our thriller ‘The
Brief’ audiences should
associate this with a mission
brief which is most commonly
seen in action thrillers to
which we were trying to
convey.
By having a close up over the shoulder shot of a
security camera, the audience immediately associates
By introducing our protagonist with a long shot, the audience can it with crime and action. The use of the over the
identify the location. This involves the audience as they are shoulder helps the audience engage with the character
included in the narrative. as they see what he sees.

12. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout the process of filming and editing our action thriller, I learnt a variety of different
skills with the camera and editing software in order to present our media product in the best
way possible. In comparison to our continuity task we as a group achieved a lot more work
done in a more efficient manner. Throughout the process of making our thriller we planned
each shot and idea carefully so we knew exactly what we wanted to film when we filmed it,
to which we did not do as well in our continuity task.
After doing various different tasks such as the continuity task, anamatic and our thriller
opening sequence I have developed skills that allow me to use a digital whilst capturing
various shots to connote meaning. An advantage of being able to use the digital cameras
was that it allowed a great amount of independence to our group allowing us to film what we
want with effective and high quality equipment. One slight problem we faced whilst using
the cameras however was the use of the zoom. It took quite a few attempts to get the shot
we wanted whilst using the zoom effect due to it not always zooming at a continuous speed
or keeping the camera still at the same time.
Furthermore, throughout the process I also gained experience of using the tripod to which I
now have a good understanding of how to use. This allowed me to film steady and a different
types of shots adding variation to our work. At the beginning of this process I did not acquire
the skills that allowed me to do this, now however I feel confident and able to use the
equipment correctly. One shot that I felt looked the best was the over the shoulder shot. A
problem I had to face whilst performing this was getting the tripod set up at perfect height so
the shot wasn't uneven. Despite this, I felt as if I was able to perform this task appropriately
and the shots came out good.
Finally, during the editing process I learnt how to use the software Adobe Premiere Pro.
When I first attempted to use this software I didnt know how I would put our film together
nor did I no how to create any effects. Despite this, with the help of teachers and practice I
kept getting better at using the software and now can use it with ease to create a product.
This software allowed me to cut certain clips to the exact point I wanted and create
transitions and effects on the titles.

13. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full
product?
Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room
and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of
dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.
Main task: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio
material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a
copyright-free source.
Looking back on our preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a lot in many aspects that helped to create and
finish our final product. With the in depth research and planning I learnt the importance of organization
whilst trying to put together a media product. Researching into the specific aspects such as genre, framing,
sound and editing all proved to be very important and valuable to our final product. If I was able to change
anything I would most likely focus more primarily on the codes and conventions, as I believe that we could
have had a few more typical elements of a thriller included in our opening sequence. Another thing I would
try and focus more on would be the storyboard. This is because if we had a storyboard that we spent a great
and careful amount of time on our final product would reflect the hard work we put into our storyboard as we
learnt early on that a strong storyboard leads to a strong product. This is because our storyboard didn't
accurately predict how long each shot would be and looking back on our storyboard now a lot has changed.
Overall, I feel confident that I have progressed a great deal since the start of the year and am able to
effectively use all the equipment and software to there fullest. I feel as if my progress can be seen from the
difference in the continuity task and our final product.
Here for example, after the protagonist leaves the shot
the camera holds for longer than it is needed to and
finishes shaky. In our final product we made sure every
shot was edited smoothly and cut appropriately.
[0:51]