Evaluation first draft

My media products use, develop and challenge the forms and conventions of real media products. I did this by making the opening sequence of a thriller, my media production uses the genre of thriller to some extent in media products. We decided on making my opening sequence involving a stalker and a vulnerable girl walking to her home after being out with some friends. A thriller genre has many conventions such as a dark environment and a main victim or a possible victim. Conventions of thriller typically have ominous music and editing or creating a story which itself creates an enigma for the audience. An example of this is Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ 1960, this film holds backs information until the end therefore the audience are more intrigued and ultimately more scared. My media product has fitted to these conventions of the thriller genre by having the traditional classic characters of a ‘victim girl’ and a ‘murderer’, also by using enigmas by not showing the murderers face. In the opening sequence we have used some iconography similar to other thriller/horror films, based on the location, weather and lighting. Another way we have represented thriller films is by using the theme of stalking, which has been used in many famous films such as ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ 1997. In my media production I used low creepy chilling music to help correspond with the atmosphere of the opening sequence. We didn’t decide on sticking with Todorov’s narrative theory by starting with an equilibrium with a disruption that gets resolved because we wanted the audience more on edge throughout the opening sequence, then towards the end, wanting to see the whole film, which doesn’t exist. We had to look at the conventions of an opening sequence to give us ideas and techniques we could use, in order to create a 2 minute thriller opening, the conventions including were titles throughout, different types of music, sense of danger and symbolic/iconic images. The film ‘silence of the lambs’ helped a lot with the conventions.My group stuck to these conventions as there was a girl as a ‘first’ victim, we had titles throughout, the main theme ‘stalking’ because we introduced the man following her which gave an insight on what was to come, music mainly throughout also. We used many different shots in our film, including an establishing shot, a close up of the victims face as she reaches her house, a match on action shot of her entering the house, a long shot of her being stalked, and a reaction, there was some form of action shots as well, showing where she had walked to and from. The overall style of our film is very eerie, with close-up camera work to show the expressions of both stalker and victim face. The lightening is set in a dark location, showing little expressions.

Our media product represents particular social groups by using only two teen characters, a victim girl and the stalker boy. We used a middle sized guy, wearing a hooded jacket who looked very scary and menacing as a stalker. His hooded jacket showed that he didn’t want to be seen as a person, which represented the character very well. The clothes that he wore were casual, yet giving off an eerie, tarrying look at the same time, implying that he was used to following people. The location was very daunting, with left over snow, through alleys and dark streets, showing that the victim was carelessness to who was behind her. We didn’t use any form of weapons or violence in the opening thriller sequence, because we didn’t want to give to much away, keeping the audience on the edge of the chair. We used a young girl who looked innocent and vulnerable, who lived near dark street’s and alley ways creating a sense of danger, but this tells us that she was used to walking home alone in the dark, not knowing that anyone was around to watch or stalk her. Her clothes were casual day time clothes, showing that she might’ve been out with friends, she lived in a fairly middle class house, you can see this because as she’s walking home she has her mobile phone and Ipod either texting or listening to music. When we had to think about how to represent age, we decided on looking at the actors ages, to help us come to a decision on what audience age group we were basing our thriller opening on. Our audience is young adults ages between 16+, mainly because our actors are in that age range. The victim girl character wouldn’t have worked well if she were older, because to seem more helpless and vulnerable she had to be younger. The stalker character is seen as very disturbed mental boy, to be following a helpless girl who is none the wiser on what is about to happen to her. In one of the psychological thrillers that we were asked to analyse ‘The Butterfly Effect’ low key lighting was used to create a eerie and mysterious atmosphere, while short and simple cut out effects were used to focus the audience’s full attention on the action rather than the editing that probably took them a while to do, leaving the viewer fully unaware of these shots.

The type of media institution distributing your media product mainly depends on what type of film you have created. If you have created a film that was going to be a large Hollywood blockbuster film, it would be shown in every main cinemas such as the ‘Odeon and Vue’ to gain a greater profit and for the audience to see how good or poor your film is. On the other hand if you have created an independent film it would mainly be shown in small independent cinemas either run by the town, or at local events or at exhibitions, a lot of the time you can watch them over the internet. Most student films are posted online which may gain a large audience via the internet. I think our student film would be distributed well over the internet as I believe this would be the best way to target a wider audience. Even though our opening sequence is only a student film, I personally think that if our film was distributed in the real media world and if it wasn’t made on a student budget, I believe ours would be played in small cinemas in towns, or maybe main cinemas in bigger towns as well as a discerning few cinemas for a limited time. I think this because the opening sequence keeps the audience on the edge of their seats throughout the two minutes that it is, gaining the audience’s attention to want to watch the rest of the film. Therefore mainly smaller cinemas at first might want to distribute our media product, the product gives off a significant message showing how teenagers not just girls, are vulnerable to any type of danger, especially walking home at night through dark alley’s and streets.

For our audience for the media product, we researched audiences and what stereotype of audiences liked what, such as teenage girls preferring chick flicks and rom-coms, then teenage boys enjoying comedies, action and horror films, the odd girl preferred horror/thriller films. I looked into how gender and age could affect what an audience chooses to watch. A prime example being the elderly who would rather old classic films which they enjoy as when they were younger there wasn’t many horror/thriller films around. I also looked into families and how they would prefer to watch blockbuster films which are very modern with plenty of special effects such as ‘Transformers’, ’Night at the museum’ and ‘Up’. Families tend to watch films like these, because they are family orientated, with no unnecessary language. Young adults to middle aged people might prefer drams with an enigma or disruptions which lead you to think. Peoples live style’s and hobbies can also have a great impact on what films they watch, like art students as myself may be more inclined to watch in depended quirky films. We decided that our film is quite a serious matter to say the least, we made our film certificate 15. Our secondary, wider audience is people ages 17+, as we as a group believe anyone who enjoys thriller/horror genre will enjoy our film. We are targeting students as our audience because they are insightful and young who will enjoy the theme of our film, as well as the plot. The film appeals to the audience expectations of a thriller, they expect it to keep you on the edge of your seat, scared and trying to piece together the storyline. We found out all this information by conducting a survey an handing them around the upper school, we had a great feedback from this. Audience research is a major part of any media company, using questionnaires. Media producers basically want to know the income/bracket status, age, gender, race, location.

The way we attracted and addressed our audience was by sticking to the conventions our audience would be expecting. I used Levi-Strauss’ theory of binary opposites using hero vs. villain, good vs. evil but in our case victim vs. stalker. We had a stalker seeking the vulnerable girl for a particular reason which is a convention of a horror/thriller. We seeked the audiences pleasures of horror/thriller films by exploiting their fears. We used narrative twist’s towards the end of the opening sequence by not letting on what the motives of the stalker were, and how he appeared in her house, but not showing how he got in. People normally go to see a horror films because they expect and know they will be scared, they look forward to being scared and confused by trying to pick up the pieces of what’s going on. The audience have a tendency to get worried and emotional about what will happen next. Me and my group also used eye catching shots such as the figure of the stalker, as he leant down to pick up the vulnerable girls scarf, not showing his face, which not only looked effective but created a sense of danger. We used a cut away shots showing where the girl had walked from, this is showing the audience how creepy and dark the location was, and how no one ever walks down there at night. We also used a track shot to follow the stalker and his shadow making the atmosphere intense. Our audience will have chosen to watch our opening sequence because it is a thriller which doesn’t give everything away straight away, which then creates and enigma, therefore we are essentially appealing to our audience tastes.

I learnt a lot throughout this project, about the technologies needed, I developed my skills on both the PC and the Mac quite a lot. I improved my ability to use I movie on the Mac’s greatly as I had never used this software before, or the Mac’s, this task enabled us to be more creative with how we wanted to edit our piece. We were able to use the editing software before the editing of our film with our continuity exercise, to help us broaden our way of editing. I learnt how to use pace to create suspense, slowing down the shots to create more tension, I also learnt how to edit the colour of the footage. Using other technologies such as the blog site to book mark certain things that you might later on want to refer too. Also using a blog instead of a pen and book means you can plan and show how you have revealed certain aspects of the media project in much greater detail. In class we used You tube to look at other students thriller opening sequences from the past, giving us many ideas on what we could create for our own. This helped us a lot and gave us more inspiration on what to achieve. Our initial choice of music for our film was a low long lasting copyright free track, it mainly had violins in, creating a sense of rush, and mysterious atmosphere. The music was quite repetitive but it fitted well with the titles and the shots. The title’s are mainly at the beginning, the first title Is bold, and appears when the teenage girl appears, the same for the boy, and a few second’s later the director and producers names. Our main title ‘Pursuit’ appears when the stalker is walking down the alley way with the reflection of the dimmed light behind him, not showing his face with his hood up, the shot slows right down when he walks towards the camera, giving the audience a feel that he’s about to catch up with the teenage girl. It took us a while to pick the font of the titles, but we managed to decided as a group in the end. We didn’t use any of the title font’s from a website, and got the music from a copyright free retailer. The location on the establishing shot is used very well, showing the girl walking down the ‘getting’ dark street, on her own, but there’s no sign of the stalker. We had some problems with our shots, with the focus on the camera being blurred at some points, but luckily it fits in quite well with the rest of the film, the camera wasn’t the best of cameras to work with, we did have some difficulties working with it. As a group we learnt to manoeuvre the equipment and ask questions to check everything was ready before moving the tripod. As a whole we worked well as a group even if it wasn’t the people I would of liked to have worked with.

The preliminary task which was the continuity task which involved me filming and editing two characters walking across a corridor, opening a door, crossing a room sitting in front of one another and exchanging a couple of lines of dialogue to each other, and one of the characters leaving the room. This task demonstrating our abilities to stick with a match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. Doing this task before making and editing our own film made me progress my ability to edit using I movie. For the main task to last two minutes or 3 minutes maximum, all video and audio material had to be original produced by the candidates of the group with copyright free music. This was a big step after only creating a continuity task, using hardly any of the above. But after working with that task it helped us a lot to approach our own film with care, and responsibility, our main task was asking a lot more out of us than the continuity exercise. Creating our own film made us think about every different shots, the location, what character would play what, the use of music, the font of the titles, the editing of the shots to come together as a whole etc. as a group we found the importance of planning before hand crucial in every aspect, and how essential it is to make sure something is possible before doing it. Every student in the group had a go at being involved in everything that was going on. The planning of creating our film task was an important part in creating the film, before creating the film we researched, and showed how important a shooting script and a story board is as they both allow you to shoot on the order of the sequence. These we very useful as we needed to know what shots to film first, and what days. To create our task we needed to research genre’s, audience types, and age to make sure they fitted to the convention’s and that it appealed to our audience. In our production we were able to re shoot, or even re film unlike the continuity exercise, but it showed us how important it was to plan everything first, during the production we as a group were more conscious of time, we needed to get things done quickly, but it wasn’t to be rushed at. As a group we felt that the post-production was more time consuming than the actual production itself, this is because we were able to do what we wanted to some extent and be more creative with how we choose to edit our film. It was very important that we discussed things as a group and to get our audience feedback along the way, we used our year 11 induction evening for this, we is on tape, which will be posted on to my blog. I felt like we didn’t discuss enough in our group as much as we should’ve. I used my blog to write down all the problems that we had producing and creating our two and a half minutes thriller opening sequence. Overall I enjoyed working and creating this project. It has giving me a excellent insight of the media world, and how to use Apple Mac’s.