Q1

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

My media product follows many of the conventions of a thriller opening. It has a contrast in the pace of the scenes similar to many films of the genre. I took a lot of influence from the opening of the James Bond film ‘Casino Royal’ where there is a change in pace between the scene happening in the current time, in which Bond is talking to a double agent, and flashbacks to his first kill, in which he is fighting a man in a public bathroom. These intercutting scenes dramatically contrast in pace adding to suspension and audience excitement.

The film also grasps the negativity of many thrillers in that what is happening in the scene is clearly not a good thing. All thrillers are based around something that, although may end well, is essentially bad. In the case of my product the negativity comes not only from the violence but the tone of the product. The film starts as it means to go on.

Like most thrillers there is a degree of violence to our product. This is often what makes a thriller ‘thrilling’. But above all our product has tension and suspense. Tension and suspense are essential to the thriller genre. And it is arguable that without these attributes a film cannot be a thriller as they create a feeling that makes a product ‘thrilling’. An example of a thriller that successfully uses violence to create suspence is ‘Taken’

The main source of suspense in our product is the knowledge the audience has over the character ‘Sarah’ whose boyfriend has been kidnapped by someone she knows. The first way in which suspense is created is the journey of Sarah towards her home where the audience knows her boyfriend is being savagely beaten and possibly killed. Because of the way the film is cut the audience believes that as she approaches the house she will walk into a violent scene however there is little evidence of the struggle that has occurred. This tension is helped by an increase in volume of the music.

The second source of suspense is the arrival of the antagonist. Suspense is created here using slow ominous music creating a feeling eerier than silence. The suspense is relieved when we see the antagonist (Jonathan) and how Sarah reacts to his presence; she clearly is familiar with him. 

The title and font we used in our film is similar to many other films of this genre. It is simple, classy and not too flashy and in serif format. This is used in the opening to reservoir dogs. This sets the tone of an intelligent thriller that is not trashy and has a degree subtlety.

And the spacing between the letters is similar to that of the film Gattaca. The spacing makes the graphics more interesting and aesthetically pleasing for the viewer.

The location of my product is common in many thrillers. It is in the suburbs of a big city in an area that isn’t too to ‘urban’ but not too high class either. Many thrillers are set primarily in cities. E.g ‘The Town which is set in suburban Boston; however a very run down area in Boston.

The camera work is similar to many thrillers. It is handheld in the car so it shakes slightly somehow giving an eerie ominous feel. There is no fancy camera movement which gives it the subtlety of films of the non action subgenres as they often use helicopter and rolling shots to make the scene seem bigger and more epic.

The costume in the product is mainly dark colours which give a negative mood to the piece. If the colour of the clothing is bright it will stand out and seem cheerful and out of place.

This also applies to much of the lighting. The car is dark which gives the ominous effect and the lighting during the fight is low key and looks cold. This is similar to  the lighting in the film Brick

TS

Q2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main social group that our media product represents is the middle class. The characters Robert and Sarah are clearly fairly well off as they live in a fairly nice house in a fairly nice area considering there age. Our media product also represents both genders through Sarah who is clearly a young professional and Jonathan and Robert represent males.

The men in our product are shown to be brutish, particularly Jonathan, as he is violently beating Robert. This does not show men in a good light compared to films of the 1990s that show men as clever and resourceful compared to women. In our product it is clear that Sarah is the protagonist and Jonathan is the antagonist. This may be considered to go against social stereotypes. Sarah is shown to be the protagonist as there are scenes of her where she’s not really doing much suggesting she is integral to the story. Men are also shown the be corrupt and in this case treacherous as it is made clear at the end of the sequence that Jonathan and Robert were clearly friends before Jonathan betrayed him.

Our media product does not necessarily create realism as the couple are clearly very young to be living in the house that do. In the real world they would be more likely to be living in an apartment.

Sarah portrays the image of a young professional effectively. She is wearing clothes that one would expect of a young professional and in some ways acts as a young professional would. In the taxi she is clearly stressed and seems relieved to be out of the office and back at home, almost instantly turning the kettle on.

Both Jonathan and Robert portray images of good and evil.  Jonathan wears dark clothes and has dark hair and pale gaunt features. These are often stereotypical features of an antagonist whereas Robert has blond hair and less gaunt features, although he is quite pale. Robert does not have all the qualities that constitute to a stereotypical protagonist but he has the qualities that make him a benevolent character. He also struggles to fight back against Jonathan possibly because he is weaker than him but it could be because he cannot hurt the man he previously considered his friend.

We believe that these social groups will attract our target audience of 15- 25 years olds as they are of similar demographics that may help the audience relate to them.

The Couple in 'Paranormal Activity' are of similar social grouping to the couple in our film as they are young and middle class.

TS

Q3

What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?



TS/JT

Q4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

For a target audience, there are usually two possible options; family audience and 16 to 24 year olds. The target audience for our film would be people ranging from 15 to 24 years old. The level of violence automatically puts it up to a 15 certificate, meaning that it is unsuitable for families, and so young children won’t be allowed to watch it.


We asked a group of people to fill in a questionaire, to see what they thought of the film and to see whether they thought it was a successful film opening

            The film is a thriller, so people who like the thriller genre will be more inclined to come and see it. The characters in it are of a young age, around the mid 20s, so people of that age will feel they have something in common with the characters. In the rest of the film, there is one particular couple who together avenge the villain, and couples will feel that they will be able to relate to that, working together, which would entice them to see the film. There is a majority of male actors in our film, maybe meaning that a larger proportion of the audience would be male.

            The location is shown to be England by the style of houses and the writing on the shutters of the shops that she passes in the taxi. This means that maybe it would not appeal so much to a foreign audience, but would mean English speaking people will be able to feel at home and be able to relate to the film in that way. The characters speak with English accents, to show the British-ness of the film; another reason people would want to go and see the film. The use of the metropolitan police badge makes people living in London feel like it could be something that’s happening just outside their front door, so thus is another reason they would come. It is also representing the British police force so people who were strong nationalists would hopefully feel patriotic and come and see the film.

            The setting we used was a middle class modern home, with the majority of the action filmed in the kitchen. The kitchen has some extremely nice red colours that really show up well as a sign of danger when the fight scene is happening, and in the same way that people will go and see The American because of the beautiful shots and scenes created by the photographer director, they will come and see ours for wonderful strong colours.

            The violent aspect turns the film into an action thriller, and this is emphasised by the smashing of plates, and I think it is this aspect of the film that means that it will be shown in multiplexes, and so opens up a whole new audience: the action lovers, which one could argue is a mainly male audience.

            It is a film that could be shown in an art house cinema as well as a multiplex, so this opens up the film to both types of cinema goers. This means that the people who like lower budget films that are shown in cinemas such as the ritzy in Brixton would go to see it, as well as Odeon goers, people who are used to mainly watching big blockbusters. 


JT

Q5

How would you attract / address your audience

The main way we would address our audience is through the characters in the product. The characters are fairly young. This means that the majority of our target audience will be there age or thereabouts. This will help the audience relate with our characters. Another factor that may help to address our audience is the fact that mostly our characters are normal people that have been put in certain situations. Sarah is a normal young professional who is forced into violence in order to find and save Robert. Robert is a normal young police officer who is kidnapped and held in captivity. The only one who could be said to be abnormal is Jonathan who is a corrupt and considerably criminally dangerous police officer who kidnaps his colleague and friend. However this is not entirely unrealistic as there are dangerous people in the world. Our characters are easy to relate to in contrast with characters such as spies who, to the majority of the population, are unknown and alien making them difficult to relate to.

We would attract our audience through advertising. We would advertise a lot on public transport as a lot of the people within our target audience would see them there. We would also advertise within cinemas before films of similar genre. This would be effective as the people seeing the film would be likely to be keen on the thriller genre and therefore our film would appeal to them. We would also use the internet to market our product as it is a world wide forum that almost everyone uses particularly those within our target audience. We would consider setting up a website with police case files and reports referring the content of our media product. However we would need to be careful not to give too much away as it would take away the tension from the film. However we would give enough to entice the audience to see more and therefore see the film.

To conclude the addressing and attraction of our audience would be very much tailor mad to our target audience as this is the most effective way of getting people to see a film as it is clear that there is no point in advertising a film for young adults to pensioners nor is there much point in putting trailers on for thrillers before romantic comedies.

TS

Q6

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When filming, we learnt a lot about the hardware and how it was used and when used differently, what effects that made. The tripod on which we positioned the camera was familiar after having done our pre limb task, but we learnt that in order to do a smooth pan we had to have it at the right firmness otherwise it wouldn’t                             turn quickly enough, or it would be shaky. The camera itself was relatively straightforward to use. We had to make sure that we didn’t rewind the tape then film over the footage that we had already shot, and we had to make sure that the microphone was on; otherwise no sound would be recorded. This, as easy as it may sound, was surprisingly difficult to remember to do whilst concentrating on 

everything else and it was necessary to go back and retake some shots for lack of sound but we ended up with a good set of shots with clear sound. We learnt a lot also about lighting and the difference it makes to the look and feel of a shot. In our film opening, we have used lighting very effectively to create large shadows and also bring out the bright red colour of the wall. In the fight scenes, we used artificial film lighting only, to create the stark effect, but later on, when she returns home, we also used the lighting in the house to create a warmer feel.

 

As my partner and I are both used to using PC computers, at first it was another challenge to use the Mac computers as efficiently, as everything that we were used to is in a different place, but we found that after a short while we were using them with ease.

The editing programme that we used was called ‘Final Cut Express.’ This was something that we had never used before. It was where we chopped and put together all our film footage, then edited it by cutting and tweaking the endings and beginnings of shots. Once everything was in place, we were able to concentrate on the smaller details of visual, like the fade ins and outs of shots and the exact length of the shots (in order to abide by the two minute rule). We then were able to concentrate on the music, for which we imported a track and laid over the sound on the video by adding a new audio track and importing onto there. We used the natural sound from the microphone as well as the music, but turned up the music in the quieter scenes. We were able to dim the sound up and down for smoothness as well as select which track we wanted to play when.

When selecting a sound track for our film opening, we were not allowed to use music that had been copyrighted, so we had to go online and visit a website called ‘freeplaymusic.com’ for non copyrighted music. The download process involved listening to a small extract then downloading the whole track. We would then import it into final cut express to add as a new layer for the sound. We chose 2 tracks to suit different stages in our film and we imported these to final cut.

For our titles, we downloaded a font from a website called ‘dafont.com’ as it was a font that suited our film well. We downloaded it and then we were able to create the titles via final cut, as the font appeared in the list with all the original fonts.

In order to make our ident, we used Adobe Flash and used a pen effect to draw a logo, and used the same pen when writing ‘value productions.’

JT

Q7

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learnt in the progression to the final product?

Looking back at the preliminary task it is clear that a key thing I have learnt is the importance of planning. Although I created a storyboard for my preliminary task the overall planning was no where near as in depth as the planning for the final product.

For example in the prelim a lot of the speech was almost improvised, by this I mean the lines were thought up just before the shot was taken. However for the final product the lines were prepared further in advance. For our final product almost everything on screen was put there for effect whereas for the preliminary task it was just the movement of the camera movement was planned. We also had more content in the final product that needed to be planned such as music that had to be chosen.

We also learnt the importance of organisation in terms of time, people and people and equipment. We had a limited amount of time to shoot due to demand for the limited filming equipment from the other members of our media class. We also used actors that were at university that meant we had to film within a three week time period. This presented us with the challenge of people management as we had three actors that were busy on different days and intended to go back to university of different days as well as an extra (the taxi driver) who was at work during the day and could only take part after a certain time. This turned out to be problematic and lead to a very last minute decision to change actresses.

I have also learnt more technical skills in the time between my preliminary task and the final product. The most important of which being my development of skills using Mac software and Final Cut Pro video editing software. Without being able to use this software it would have been impossible to create the final product. We used final cut to edit both the audio files of our film and edit and add sound. This was key to creating the effects we wanted to use.

I have also learnt to use equipment that was not used in the making of my preliminary task. The only pieces of equipment used in the preliminary tasks were a tripod and a camera. Since then I have learnt how to use various different lights to create different effects as well as the importance of using an external microphone to capture sound of superior quality.

There is an obvious improvement in the quality in my final product when compared to my preliminary task due to the development of technical, editing and planning skills.

TS