Fun Hong- Evaluation: Question 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Since the preliminary task, I feel we have improved a lot during the process of making our final product.

Fun Hong- Evaluation: Question 6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Fun Hong-Evaluation: Question 5. How did you attract/address your audience?

After distributing our questionnaires and collecting the results, the majority of whom we had asked were in the bracket of 16-20 years old. This would therefore mean the certificate for our film would be a 15. According to BBFC  a 15 can include:

BBFC classifies a 15 as being able to include:

• strong violence
• frequent strong language (eg 'f***').
• portrayals of sexual activity
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity
• brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behaviour
• drug taking

So, in order for us to make sure that we fulfil the terms of a 15, we tried to minimise anything that will be unsuitable for our target audience. Therefore, we had included the following to make our thriller opening appealing to our audiences:

• Unconventional protagonist: The protagonist of Red Marks subverts the mainstream idea of the protagonist being a male character. We mainly subverted this idea because our target audience were females, therefore, in order to appeal to our target audience, we had decided to make the protagonist a female. 

• Variety of shots: During the opening sequence, we had used a whole range of shots, including location shots, close ups, long shots, tracking, panning etc. This emphasises us being an independent institution because following mainstream conventions, they usually stick to a couple during their opening sequences. 

• Psychological thriller: Reflecting on asking our audience's preference for which sub-genre they thought would be most interesting with a thriller, the majority of people preferred psychological thrillers. In order to portray to depict the psychological element of this thriller, we decided to use parallel editing in order to discomfort and confuse our audience. 

Fun Hong- Evaluation: Question 4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Creating the questionnaire
By creating a questionnaire, it enabled us to draw ideas in order to satisfy our target audience of who we asked. Overall, the questionnaire has helped us plan out and make the final media product and see how we can challenge or develop conventions from thrillers. The questionnaire included questions such as what were their favourite thriller movies, what conventions they recognise in thrillers. We had also put different films into the questionnaire and had asked people which they thought were thrillers. Surprisingly, most people were not able to categorise which of the following films were thrillers, which could be the reason of them not thinking about whether it was a thriller or not if they had seen it.  These questions had helped us especially to plan our media product, because we wanted to see whether we can draw out the thriller aspect of our opening sequence a bit more, and to see whether our target audience would be able to identify Red Marks as a thriller.

Results:

From this pie chart, the majority of peoples favourite sub-genre was psychological. This enabled our ideas to become more creative, as psychological thrillers could be experimented in many ways. In Red Marks, the psychological aspect is the whole journey where Eleanor Park walks towards the toilets and the whole flash backs she has about the murder she had committed. This would therefore mean that the audience would be intrigued in watching a psychologically unstable protagonist brutally victimising other students.

What institution our audience preferred 

The vast majority of our audience preferred our media product to be independent. This would benefit us because it would allow us to bring out more creativity, as we could identify conventions from mainstream films, and challenge/develop them. Overall, this had allowed us more freedom, because we were draw out ideas and not having the fear of it not being classified as a mainstream.

From the results of our questionnaire and our final cut, our audience for Red Marks would be:

Gender: Females- as our protagonist is a female character, which subverts the conventions of thrillers who are mainly men.

Age: 16-18 Year Old

Occupation: Students- as it is based in a school, students are more likely to be interested in watching Red Marks

Examples of how we've applied our results into our opening sequence:

The use of parallel editing fulfils the audience's need of it being a psychological thriller because its as though they are going through the journey with the protagonist, which is used in the opening of Psycho. In the parallel editing used whilst Eleanor is walking, the constant use of flash backs could also confuse the audience, which fits in with the independent conventions of independent institutions allowing their viewers to be confused, so that ask themselves questions, and want to watch on in order to get resolutions for their questions further on into the film.

Fun Hong- Evaluation: Question 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

From our audience research, most of the people we asked preferred our media product to be independent, therefore I think it will be best if the media institution that will distribute our product is independent institution.
From aspects of our film, we have mostly challenged conventions from mainstream, such as our lead female protagonist being a female. However, a female lead is also used in Wanted and in Kill Bill.

We would also fit into the independent industry because we have a small cast, an unconventional location (as most of the thrillers take place at someone's home or somewhere isolated), and we used a pan of the drain(shown on the right) to emphasise the flow of the blood running through it. The blood running through the drain could also be symbolic of how Eleanor murders her victims, as the blood is rinsing out of their body after she has killed them.

I think Summit Entertainment would be a good institution to distribute Red Marks. This is mainly because evn though they are an independent institution, they are quite successful in distributing films. For example, they were successful with Twilight Series and in 2009, they released Knowing  which earned them over $100 billion worldwide. Knowing this, it will benefit us if they might distribute our media product because they are able to distribute successful films, which would help Red Marks go towards a wider audience.

Fun Hong- Evaluation: Question 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Fun Hong- Evaluations: Question 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

1.Meaning behind the title:

Title of the film

We had decided to name our thriller Red Marks in order to draw the links between of how the protagonist kills and the relevance of it being set in the school. The use of Red Marks is punning against the red marks in which the protagonist kills, and red marks which are given to students at school who behave anti-socially. 

The idea of the blood running whilst the viewing of the title of our thriller was taken from Dark City , where during the showing of their production company, they had swirls moving at the background. In this sequence of the production company, we later see that the murder consists of carving that same pattern on the protagonists victims. This has been used for the title of our film instead, because as the water mixes with the blood, its expresses the protagonists psychological thoughts being "diluted" which causes her to murder in her school and let the blood run (as shown in the moving image behind the title).

We have developed on the white-on-red title from the title of Dexter, which is switched around into red-on-white. The use of white-on-red for our title stands out, because its on a darker colour on a white surface (sink drain). I thought this would be quite good, because instead of doing another shade of red, the white is able to draw attention to our audience a lot more than the other shades of red.

2. Setting/Location

Corridor Shots

As the group decided that the murderous crimes the protagonist gets up to are based in school, we decided to include corridor shots in order to introduce the setting. This is also used at the beginning of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. We have used conventions from other thrillers, such as lighting. Lighting plays a key part in trying to introduce a mysterious or unnerving atmosphere. This is also used in the introduction of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, which makes the audience feel discomforted. The discomforted atmosphere is created through the use of panning around the house, which comes with eerie and deceiving music. We are also shown an empty room with a cradle placed right in the middle, which makes the audience feel at edge, because it makes us, as a audience, link the cradle directly to the title. We have used this idea with the tracking shots of the corridors, which can also make the audience link these to the title Red Marks, as red marks are associated with misbehaved students and blood. 

Saturday Detention- where protagonist is kept behind

3. Plot/Characters
It was decided to base our plot on the fact that misbehaved students in this school are being kept in school on a Saturday evening for "Saturday Detention". This would give Eleanor an advantage into committing her plot to her victims. This is conventional because the protagonist somehow tries to blend in with the crowd in order to hide their true identity, which in this case she tries to misbehave in order to get dragged into detention, leading her to commit the murders towards her victims.  

Introduction to the protagonist
The way the protagonist is introduced is conventional of the genre of thrillers. For example, in Dexter, we see his reflection blurred(shown on the left), we could reflect the fact that he moonlights his murderous side to others. We have developed this convention, as we decided to finally reveal the protagonists face. This was purposed in order to represent her lack of guilt of the murder she did. This enables us to reveal her cold-blooded side, which is not conventional in thrillers, because it continually creates a sense of ambiguity by not revealing who the protagonist really is.