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

The first frame is for our main title Fixation. We decided to have our main title at point 1:46-1:47 as when it enters it separates the two characters personalities and shows that they are in different scenes living two different, separate lives. The music remains the same, to set the same feel throughout the scene. And although the music remains mysterious in the party scene, it is used to show the lurking from the stalker and show the audience she is present. The title flickers, which gives the dramatic effect from our opening, and this indicates the genre is thriller, along with the font.

The second frame which used conventions is of the location and setting. This is a over the shoulder shot of the stalker, Eileen, walking up the driveway. This suggests that James is a middle class boy as we have a clear shot of his house. It gives us a clear mind set of the type of protagonist James is going to be. In a film called 'truth or dare' there is a house party that is taking place. We used the idea of a house party too, as this attracts our target audience because that is the type of hobby's teenagers have nowadays.

The third frame is to represent costumes. This is also a shot of the stalker walking up the driveway as this is the only long shot we include in our opening that gives us a view of what she is wearing. She is wearing all black. Connotations of black are evil and gloom. She is also wearing kitten heels, so she feels sexy within herself. She thinks that if she looks sexy, James will go with her. This helps identify the personality of the character Eileen. In the film 'Scream' the main character is always dressed in all black, we got this inspiration from this as most scary protagonists dress in all black clothing. This then gives away their image and a straight association with all black is the evil character in the films.

The fourth frame is to show editing. Throughout our editing, we include our titles within our opening scene to make it more mysterious feel. As our genre is thriller, and our film is about a stalker, we thought a stalker wall would easily show the personality of the protagonist Eileen. We have used a 'ghosting' effect on Premiere, which consists of layers over images which shows more than one shot at each time. This gives the effect of the information on the board consistently entering Eileen's mind and she is constantly reviewing her board on James and adding more information.

The fifth frame is to show our font. The font we chose is plane and simple but still gives the thriller vibe. We chose this font because it does not give too much away, but at the same time gives thriller hints that we thought were necessary. This pans over some of our stalker board, which shows the audience the importance of this feature. In the movie 'Signs;' all of the font that the titles are written in are Serif, and this gives the horror feel as it almost looks old and spooky. This is where we got our inspiration from and decided to duplicate this idea.

The sixth frame is representing the story and how the opening sets it up. Here, is another over the shoulder shot of Eileen reviewing her information board on James. The board is very important in our movie, and it is an essential as without this the film would not make sense and would not give the stalker vibe we are specifically aiming for. This gives us a view of what she is seeing, and the layout the board is set in. It strongly shows Eileen's personality, and explains that she is obsessed with someone.

The seventh frame shows the genre and how the opening suggests it. I have given another shot of Eileen walking up the driveway. The lighting shows that the setting is dark and gloomy, and this clearly gives the interpretation that the setting is thriller. Also, the clothing that she is wearing shows that she is a dark character and plays a evil role.

The eighth frame is how characters are introduced. Our characters are introduced in different ways. Eileen is introduced in a way of evil, as her gloomy lighting sets her personality straight and indicates that she is the evil character in the film. In the opening, we never see Eileens face, just like in the film 'Scream'. Throughout the whole of the film scream, we never see the evil protagonists face, which gives you the feel of barely knowing who the person under the mask is. This is similar to the story we wanted to give off, as (only in the opening) we want to remain Eileen to be mysterious, and this is why we never see her face. The next character is James, and he is introduced in a way that he is shown at the party. This is a stereotypical teenage boy, who drinks and attends parties and it gives across that this will be the victim in the film.

The last frame is special effects, and we have put a tweet over clips of the party scene. This shows that this is the party that the tweet is talking about, and James has announced to the whole of twitter that there is a party at his house and that everyone is welcome. We have put the opacity to low, so that it does not stand out too much and distract us from the scene in the background.

Overall, I think that our opening sequence is very successful. We do include some challenges in our opening sequence and these include having a female villain, not seeing the villains face and the party scene. Having a female villain was a challenge for us, and a lot of market research took place before we decided to use this thought. We noticed that in most thriller films, the evil protagonist is mainly a male so we decided to oppose this idea to make it more original. Next, we don't her face. This was also a challenge we portrayed but we thought it would give more of a intense feel as. Next is the party scene, we had a big challenge here. In most thriller films, the opening maintains as a scary vibe, yet ours differs in a way that it includes something fun within to contradict the two personalities. This then disorientates the audience as they will remain confused.

A way in which we support this is that we maintain the typical thriller conventions by keeping the music eery, the lighting dark, the clothing bland and the setting spooky.

To develop our idea we took our conventions and put the titles into our map. We then went further as we included them in our scene instead of putting them over after on editing.

#2 How does your media represent particualr social groups?

Here I created a collage on all different things typical teenagers enjoy and also some people they idolise. This gives an insight to the typical popular school children's enjoyment and shows the social groups we aim to attract. In my collage I include lots of things that our social group of teenagers, enjoy and people they idolise.

Make-up: Teenage girls love makeup, they can't live without it and this is a big factor in a teenage girls life story. Young girls love getting dressed up and going to parties, and our target audience will also have a big interest in makeup as this is the age people experiment with it.

'Perfect girls': This image includes female celebrities such as Vanessa Hudgens, Rihanna and Miley Cyrus, and these are girls that most teenage boys 'fancy'. So this is why I included them in my collage, as boys are very interested in these type of girls and usually define them as 'perfect' or the 'ideal woman' and most teenage girls aspire to be like them.

'Perfect boys': I have also included male celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Zac Efron and Louis Tomlinson. These boys are very big in the celebrity world, and teenage girls love them. They stalk them on social networking sites and wish they would notice them, even if it is just once. Boys envy them, and usually associate any criticism they can with them.

Relationships: Chris Brown and Rihanna are also on my collage. They did used to be a couple, and teenagers are this age are obsessed with relationships. This is why I included this, as also in our film a relationship would take place between a girl and our main protagonist James, and our other protagonist Eileen, will envy this relationship.

Our Protagonists

We decided to go against Propp's character theory as we wanted to make our film more original. We decided to go with a male victim, which is different to the majority of thriller films.

James is one of our main protagonist's in our film opening. He is a white, middle class teenage boy who is approaching 17 years old. We show that he is middle class by showing a shot of his house when Eileen, our other protagonist, walks up his driveway. The house is a middle class house with a driveway, with 2 garages which includes a step up to the door. A house similar to James class would be: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-43266800.html?premiumA=true

He is a stereotypical teenager, throwing and attending parties, being a user on twitter and sending regular tweets, drinking with his friends high amounts of alcohol and he is also very grungy as he does not really care about his appearance, just his reputation. We portray him in this way so we can associate well him with with the target audience as we want the audience to form a connection with him, so then when he gets taken later on in the film, you feel sorry for him. Teenagers drink a high amount of alcohol these days, here is an article showing the major risks that this has on their bodies: http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/05/specialist-calls-for-debate-on-drinking-age-as-teenagers-being-treated-for-liver-disease-4250061/

Our target audience is a 15, so this includes people are about 15-17 years old, and this is the age of the teenagers in our film and the age of James. This is why we included a popular teenage boy, as during teenage years everyone wants to be popular so the target audience can relate. Also at the party scene, this makes it easy to identify the personality and popularity his character. We also chose to do this type of opening to raise awareness to teenagers and people that use social networking sites. There is a typical expression given 'It would never happen to me' is a regular thought that teenagers think when hearing tragic stories like these. But the truth is, it really can happen to anyone and we wanted to make sure people understand this. However, James is not a typical victim, as he is male, and most movies that we researched that are similar to ours, use the victim as a girl instead of a boy. Similarly, in a film called 'Facebook stalker' a man uses Facebook to stalk a girl from a coffee shop. This is similar to our film, as a protagonist stalks another protagonist via social networking sites such as twitter. This then raises awareness to our target audience of the possible risks. Teenagers announce a lot of personal things on twitter, her is an article about this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2538523/Stars-social-networking-sites-reveal-VERY-personal-photographs-Golden-Globes.html


We discovered that James' character is a lot similar to the character "James Cook' in the TV show Skins and this is the character we wanted to portray. He is shown in a very grungy way, but all girls in school like him and he is very popular. He also believes that he is unbeatable. However, the difference is that Cook's family are very upper class as his Mother has a very big house. This is the only difference in character roles that Cook and James have.


This is the image we wanted to portray James as: Cook from TV series 'Skins'

Typical victim's in thriller/stalker movies: Donner from movie 'Prom Night'
We found that in most thriller/stalker movies, the victim was mainly a white female. We decided to challenge this idea and change it to a male. We then found a film, Prom Night, which also includes a stalker and the victim was, a white young girl, which then supported our research. Here is a link to support this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome 



We decided to go against Propp's character theory as we wanted to make our film more original. We decided to go with a female villain, which is different to the majority of thriller films.

Eileen is the other protagonist in our film opening. She is a white, middle class female who is middle aged. We show this by her clothing, as she dresses quite old fashioned including kitten heels with a long black coat with her hair slit back to her head in a low pony tail. We choose not to give much off about Eileen, and this gives the mysterious vibe behind her. We never see her face, and this is a major challenge we decided to take and could confuse the audience about what type of person she is. She is not stereotypical, as she is a woman and from market research, we found you irregularly come across female villains is this genre of film. As the mass of interpretations are that men are the villains and women are the victim, but we wanted to reverse this to make it more original and create something different.

Mental Illness
Our character Eileen suffers with a mental illness of depression. A few years ago, before her obsession with James, her husband was killed in a violent car crash. She has been mourning ever since and really misses her husband. This is why she seeks male comfort, and believes James can give her the same satisfaction and love as her husband could.

In a film called oral fixation, I found that there is a character that looks over a board. This is similar to our movie when our board is shown. He is keeping track of a lady. However this man is not the stalker, he is just trying to help the man that is being stalked get away from the danger that the stalker is putting him in. When I saw this clip, i was very surprised as I watched this film for the first time after we completed our opening sequence. Once seeing this, we became very confident with our idea and about the choices we made because a film with the same theme 'Stalker' used the same convention as we did.


Another film that we found that was similar to ours was Prom night, but this film is everything we did not want to make ours about. A man stalks a young girl and makes a evil move to her. He does everything he can to make sure he gets 'the girl' and even his actions are killing the girls family and friends. This is a very stereotypical film as it is an older man stalking a young, popular girl. The girl is popular, and is a stereotypical victim and this is the personality we wanted to include however we reversed it so the victim is a boy instead of a girl, but with the same traits.

This is the image we wanted to portray Eileen as: Stalker in film 'Oral Fixation':

Typical villains in thriller/stalker movies: Stalker and murderer in movie 'Prom Night'