1. By Gabrielle Lawrence-Lynch
Final Task Reflection
By Gabrielle Lawrence-Lynch

2. How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues?
Typical psychological thrillers focus on the increasingly deteriorating mental state of its character, chronicling the actions the character makes in this unstable state. Our film fits that standard for a psychological thriller because the main character is a teenage girl who has decided to kill her classmates to get to the top of her class. The fact that she decides to kill her classmates and has an imaginary friend shows how mentally unhinged she is and develops the psychological thriller genre within the film. Psychological thrillers often incorporate suspense within the film, which we utilize in the opening scene. To implement the sense of suspense associated with a psychological thriller in our opening scene we only showed Monika burying a dead body throughout the scene that way once the scene has ended the audience is left wondering who is in the body bag and why did she kill them. Also by having the opening scene be about Monika burying a dead body we are able to show from the start of the film that she is mentally unhinged and helps develop the theme of a psychological thriller. Our film represents those teenagers who are under a lot of pressure to get good grades from their school, parents, and themselves. The film shows how overwhelming school can be and may make those teens who have become overwhelmed by school to realize that they are not alone and that you should not let the pressures of school consume you as they did Monika.

3. 2. How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?
Our film is for a teenage audience, so it will be able to draw in that audience because it relates to them. Many teens may be experiencing the same pressures at school as the main character of the film, which will help draw in more teens since people enjoy being able to relate to the things that they watch. Our opening scene will make the audience want to stay since it jumps right into the action, with the burying of the body, and leaves them in the dark by not revealing who is in the body bag or Monika’s motive for the kill. The opening scene leaves a lot of unanswered questions at the end of it which forces the audience to continue to watch the film until the end in order to figure them out. Our film would most likely be marketed over social media, with ads placed on instagram, twitter, and facebook. We would create social media accounts for our film where we would provide sneak peeks of the film and hold giveaways for merchandise from the film leading up to its release date. Our film would most likely be produced by Hammer Film Productions considering that they mainly produce psychological thriller films and it would be distributed by Paramount Pictures or Relativity Media because those are the distribution companies that Hammer Film Productions primarily uses. The distribution companies will then negotiate with the movie theaters to get the film released.

4. 3. How did your production skills develop throughout this project?
Since starting the process of research, planning, filming and editing for this project my awareness of the filmmaking process has grown. Prior to this project I never realized how much time, effort, and research that goes into creating a film and now that I have had to go through all of that to complete this project I have acquired a higher admiration for filmmakers. While creating this film I was able to learn how to use a microphone, how to edit sound using the editing software, and how to add and edit title cards. While developing our opening scene I was able to figure out which parts of the filmmaking process I enjoy and which parts I dislike. I really loved the entire editing process of creating our film, it was fun to see how all of the little takes we took could come together to create a cohesive story. I enjoyed the entire filming, editing and creating process, there was not one step that we had to take towards our final product that I did not enjoy doing. After going through the process of creating this film I have discovered that I might actually enjoy being a Film Editor when I graduate because I am good at editing and find it fun or any job in the filmmaking world because I enjoyed doing every step that got us to the final product. I started my journey as a filmmaker knowing little about creating a piece of media, but now I have acquired a passion for it.

5. 4. How did you integrate technologies ----- software, hardware and online ----- in this project?
Every step taken into the creation of our final product involved utilizing some form of technology.To create our opening scene we used a Canon camera, a microphone, a computer, and the Pinnacle 18 editing software. I used the camera throughout the filming process to film the shots of our film. I used the microphone in conjunction with the camera to record the part with dialogue, because it is more sensitive to sound than the microphone on the camera and will produce clearer sounds than the microphone on the camera. Then I used the Pinnacle 18 editing software, and the skills that I have developed through the continued use of the editing software, to edit the camera shots, the title cards, and add music to our film. With the editing software I was able to cut unwanted sections of the shots and add transitions between certain shots that did not flow well. The editing software was also used to edit and place the title cards in our film, I was able to add transitions to the title cards so that they enter and exit the scene in interesting ways. The editing software was also used to add music to the background of our opening scene and made it so that it did not interfere with the scene with dialogue.