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How do your products represent social groups or issues?
Looking at it with just the knowledge of what the film is about, it is not about any social groups or issues. It's just a student film about some guy being stalked by another random person and meeting a new "neighbor". For the sake of the question in its contents, it represents the social issue of stalking and breaking and entering and represents the social groups of people who have been stalked and victims of breaking and entering. It is an issue because, well, you, a stalker robber person is harming someone or causing distress to someone, that is an issue. It represents stalking and breaking and entering as a normal thing because of bad acting from the lead. But in reality, it is a very scary thing to go through. The aftermath I can imagine is scarier because of the violation of privacy. In my film, it is not really seen as that. It shows the action, but not really the realistic outcome or even a realistic visual of the situation itself happening. Again that is mainly due to poor acting and also poor communication on my part. The explanation for that is my brother is not the best at doing what was told, also he is just not really good at acting and the such in general. An example of this would be the part of my film where he makes this really strange expression at the computer. It is not just on him, it is on me as well. To be completely honest I never thought of the outcome of something like that. I never thought that I should make the situation more intense, that would have been a good touch.
How do the elements of your production work together to create a sense of ‘branding’?
They work together in a pretty direct way, if that makes sense.They work together to show that this is the name of what we are doing, and this is what we are doing, y'know? When it comes to the social medias themselves, they are all the same but it is still reaching out to different people in different ways when you consider that people use some social medias and not others. In that way, it is understood that more people will come together and know the name of the fim; Woman in the Grey Shirt. Though not the most related, branding helps a lot with marketing, it is one of the steps or most helpful things to do when it comes to marketing as a whole. Marketing is the act of making money off of something you have made and gotten out there. Branding is the thing that gets it out there, branding will get your name and what you do known so that people who are interested will tune into that. When it comes to me and my project, for example, I gave the name of the film to people, they were able to look it up and find it. Branding, giving people the name, made the film easier to find by people who want to see it. If they do not want to see it, well, if you brand well enough and spread your stuff around they are going to have to see it because advertisements(and such) are frequently seen.
How do your products engage with the audience?
When it comes to things around it like social medias, they engage with audiences a lot and I guess pretty well. I am the only one running it and there is not a lot of people who interact so it is pretty easy to get back to the very few people who have said something to me. There is not really much to engage with or about so it has not really been done. When it comes to the film itself, it does not engage with audiences at all. It is not really relatable in any way either, so. Unless you have been through stuff in the film, like an active break in, stalking, The only engagement it has with the audience is how it makes them feel. Considering it is supposed to be a thriller film, it is supposed to make the audience think. The music is there to be either comforting or distort the original outside ambiance, that depends on how you look at it. Every platform that is online and has a text box can help you engage with audiences, that is what is so cool about the development of technology. We can keep in touch with thousands of people with just the clicks of buttons on a little device. There is so many ways to reach out to people, positively or negatively. No matter what you do, at least one person will have whatever that is in common with you, there, you have engaged in conversation with a person on the internet. What will you become? A rad friendship? Drift away after a few months? Who knows, all that matters is that you had that experience and you were able to expand your social circle as well as your knowledge of how to navigate through media and talk to people with similar interests.
How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
Research informed me by shedding light on the different genres that pair with horror and such. It gave me an idea of what kind of film I needed to make, the camera angles, lighting, music, editing techniques I needed to use, etc. all to make a decent film to fit into the Thriller genre. They use conventions by doing stuff like close-ups, zooms, dramatic pauses, dark lighting, and such, those are all conventions of the Thriller and horror genres. It challenges conventions by not really being the stereotypical Thriller film. Although the idea from the film itself could be considered stereotypical, the actual film itself is not. Thriller films are a lot of the time filled with the thought of something bad happening and just fear and panic. That does not really apply to my film. It is more "I do not know what is going to happen so will not worry about it or think about it until it actually happens". I researched through common sense, previous viewing of thriller films, and on engines like google. My overall goal was not to not follow conventions, but it was not to follow conventions either. It was(and is usually) just supposed to be a mix of both, I started this production with no idea what I was going to do about following conventions, I just went with what I thought looked best and I think it worked out.
