• How do your products represent social groups or issues?
To begin with, our short film production represents the social groups associated with health concerns and younger age in a quite serious manor. In today's society, our day-to-day lives have been rapidly changed by the overwhelming COVID-19 pandemic, that has earned its title as of the deadliest epidemics in modern history. Throughout the entirety of our film our goal as directors, was to shape our production film to resemble as much of real-life, just on a shorter prognosis. Thus meaning, the time table for quarantining, mask mandates, and a vaccine came at a much faster rate, but that did not subtract from the importance of everyone's safety. Additionally, we added the factor, that the virus has the potential to carry hallucinogenic side-effects that greatly alter the patient's reality, representing the potential harm the spread of the virus could oppose to others.
In addition, another social group that is being represented by our short film 2020 Vision, rests on the case for female empowerment. Typically, in our thriller genre, women are portrayed as the victims of often dangerous or homicidal villains. Despite the reality that our antagonist was essentially the virus, a male in this situation was the victim of its hallucinogenic effects. Further pushing our short films portrayal of female empowerment, females in our group were given high authority roles such as a doctor administrating the vaccine or the Ryan’s “best friends.”
• How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
Beyond this year's short film production, for the Final Task the overall objective was to compose a “short film package”. This package included a postcard, a website, sand several social media accounts. For instance, we created an Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts to reach a larger audience and promote our film. As directors, filmmakers, and most importantly teenagers, we understand the importance of social media platforms in advertising a product or media. Often times social media can be a place for business, in our case a production company with a short production film, to grow and attract additional followers, in turn more revenue. After doing some social media posts recapping our filming dates and film premiere, we linked our social media accounts to our website. The linking to the website allows our audience to travel from our platform on our website, which includes pertinent information in regards to the film, to the social media accounts which maintain a more colloquial standard. Additionally, the opposite applies. If the audience wants to indulge in more information about our film, hooking them with our social media presence, they can visit the link in our bio to our website. Finally, this postcard we recently sent out with the release of production film, granted us a “Last Mile” reminder to those whom may be interested in our movie that the release date is recent. Overall, with the combined effect of different media products and our social media platforms, we are able to establish a wide brand recognition with our audience.
• How do your products engage with the audience?
This year in AICE Media Studies A Level, the Final Task focused on being a product that engaged with the audience in a variety of wars. Despite this reality, at its core, our product is a short film production, based off the Thriller Genre, and lasting about 5 minutes in 1 second in total duration. We included very specific elements in the production of the final task, such as the props which were designed to transition from an exciting and vocational mood to a more sinister and serous tone. This short film production, and all of its other various products such as the social media accounts and various media outlets, are designed to engage with kids, students, teenagers, and adults, despite the fact that the film is a part of the thriller genre. This is because this movie offers an outlet for everyone to relate too as we battle with an ongoing epidemic. COVID-19 has left the United States in addition to other foreign nations ravaged of necessary supplies, lock downed with its constituents in quarantine, and a need for a vaccine distribution chain. Our short production film, brings all of these aspects together, yet in an entertaining media outlet form, in addition to the hallucinogenic twist. As mentioned, prior, the addition of the social media platforms this year allows the audience to engage with our product on an unprecedented scale. Specifically, in the case of teenagers and younger children, social media makes up a great deal of their day-to-day content viewing habits. By entertaining them with social media updates, videos, or posts we are conditioning and encouraging them to become lifelong fans and view on movie when it goes live.
• How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
In the pre-production and planning process of my film, my group and I, early on decided we were going to utilize the conventions and codes of the thriller genre. Many of us in our previous year of Media Studies AS Level had a great deal of success when it came to our Final Product and the thriller genre, and as such we saw it fitting. The next large decision that came in the pre-production process involved whether we were going to adhere to these conventions and codes. For the audience's sake, we believed that it would be easier for the purpose of our short film to be conveyed if we choose to follow these conventions. Finally, in the preproduction process we also choose to examine a few shorts and movies that utilized the thriller genre, for instance the movie Nine. We observed that many of these media forms utilized the same conventions. For instance, these conventions included suspenseful plot developments, ire sound tracks, high and low angles, over the shoulder shots, and fading editing techniques. We made sure to specifically included multiple fading techniques because over a 5-minute period we would need to smoothly transition across scenes, but not break character as a thriller genre. Finally, throughout the production and post production process we knew we would have to have a protagonist and an antagonist. Despite this reality, where our movie differs from most is our antagonist, a hallucinogenic virus, is an intangible object. While our protagonist or victim, is me as Ryan a male who dreams of being on vacation with 3 other girls.
