Evaluation - James Garbis

QUESTION 1- In what was does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our thriller opening includes multiple techniques and themes as some proper hollywood high end thriller moves. It follows the conventional way of a thriller in ways such as...

• From feedback from people who watched the clip they said that it was edgy and exciting which left them wanting more -  this shows it worked and came out exactly how we wanted it to. In mainstream thrillers you always find yourself wanting to quickly know more and find out whats going to happen next creating an enigma.

• Our thriller storyline isn't too typical because we give quite a big portion of information to the audience straight away with things like the box that includes photos of multiple people which the antagonist had murdered and so could suggest what else could happen in the rest of the film. However the theme of 'stalking' is used in many thrillers as it sets such a good bench mark and allows you to experiment with so many different types of camera angles such as canting as well as different types of lighting to portray the antagonist and protagonist.

For example from this screenshot above we can see that the area for the very first shot of the sequence is in an unusual location, lots of machinery and blunt hard objects which could be used as weapons, a place you wouldn't like to be by yourself.. especially during the night. We chose this location to bring across the spooky odd presence we wanted which you'd see in other thrillers.

 Other thrillers such as The Cabin In The Woods illustrated here above, is taken from the opening scene where we can see it is kind of similar to the shot we have of the surroundings, all though i find ours looks a bit more sinister because of the low lighting and effects we used such as desaturation.

 This medium shot where we panned around the location also gives another perspective. Again it gives a weird vibe to it due to the nature of the surroundings, more blunt objects and machinery. Also we edited  in the name of our company which is Take 2 productions, the animation faded in and zoomed in towards the screen as it became bigger which could simulate something suddenly, scarily coming at you.

 We can see from the screenshot above which is also from The Cabin In The Woods, that they have also done a shot of the surroundings, yes it is an extreme long shot from a very high angle but it gives the same affect as what we tried to achieve, giving you a feeling that theres nothing else around, no where to go for safety.

In this shot above we can see the protagonist at a long shot from an above eye level. We decided to give her normal clothing because she is meant to be portrayed as just a normal girl who is simply taking her doing for a walk, she is unaware that she would be followed, obviously is that was the case she would try and blend in with the surroundings as much as possible. 

From the screenshot above from the same thriller as discussed previously we can see that they have also given the characters normal clothing because similar to are story, they are thinking they are just going for a friendly camping trip and are unaware of the circumstances that unfold. 

From this screenshot above from  our piece we went for a very low angle and focused just on the antagonists feet, we used a foley recording of him walking through the mud. This is conventional in a thriller because it helps us get the point across that there is obviously something wrong with the character and helps theaudience feel spooked out and unease.

From the screenshot above of Cabin In The Woods we can see they have also done the same thing where they have focused in on the protagonists legs and feet, we did not however get the idea from this film it is by coincidence i found this image and thought we obviously did something right if the same was used in a big movie.

This screenshot above from our film is taken at an odd angle behind a tree to give the sense that someone is watching her, (the audience from that person's point of view' and the pathetic fallacy of the audience knowing and the antagonist not, it keeps the audience on edge to see what happens next. We filmed this not on a tripod to give the sense it was direct POV and not still.



This other screenshot above shows sort of the same thing but this time from a canted angle like the antagonist was ducking behind a tree in and out to make sure he wasn't seen, again its a POV angle. The editing for this part is fast paced ad we have a zoom on the antagonist as she walks over the bridge.



From the screenshot above from Cabin In The Woods we have a worms eye view of the cabin itself which gives an odd feeling that possibly it could be being watched by a person lying down trying to see something inside, just like our shot from somewhere where the protagonist would not see anyone and be unaware of the antagonist looking at them.

QUESTION 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

•  We decided to look at the Pearl and Dean website in guidance to pick the social class, we decided to go with B - C2. 
• When deciding on getting actors, we decided to go for teenagers and younger people, this is because for a start we knew that when we had finished the product, we could easily find feedback from our friends who are of the same age.
• Also we knew it would be easier to find actors our age.
• We decided to make the protagonist an innocent female, choosing females for these kinds of roles are good because stereo typically women\girls play this role and usually are seen as venerable and weaker then men. 
• Because of the fact above, we decided to make the protagonist a man.
• We did not have any other ethnicity's besides British white people .
• Sexual orientation did not matter for our piece because it has nothing to do with the opening and is irrelevant to any audience member. 

How are the 2 main characters being represented? 

Harry -  The Antagonist - Pictured to the right, seemed an ideal antagonist due to the fact that he is larger than the average man and dressed in all black clothing would look menacing and intimidating to the regular person and to the audience (plus he said he didn't mind walking bare foot in the mud). 




Louise - The Protagonist - Pictured to the right, is the sibling of Rosie who is in the group. This first off, meant it was easy to complete the cast as there were only two people needed and both nearby and offering to act for free. She was an ideal person because she is quite petite and looks vulnerable especially walking round in a big wooded area. Once meeting her it confirmed the remaining members of the groups thoughts about having her included in the film. The bonus was that she had a dog which we used in the film to give the protagonist a reason to be walking through the wood alone.. walking the dog. 

From this picture on the left which was taken during a break from filming, we can see the costumes that they were wearing

We dressed the protagonist in such a way that she would look like the average girl taking her dog for a walk, nothing unusual as thats how we wanted it to come across. Her hair and makeup were kept to a minimum due to the fact that we wanted to keep realism and if she had all her makeup and hair done like she was about to go to a party this wouldn't be realistic

Also I told her that during some parts of the filming to convey certain facial expressions, and body language when doing things such as running away. The props that were used were just the dog. 


The antagonist was dressed all in black to give the stereotypical 'bad guy' presence all though we decided against having his hood up. No makeup was used, for example we could have put fake blood on his hands or face but we didn't do this.

When filming this part on the right, I deliberately did it in a long shot perspective to show she's all alone and looks so small compared to her surroundings which makes her look vary vulnerable. We used a foley of a stick breaking during this particular part which made her turn around and look worried. We see her as a normal teenager.

Continuing to the antagonist from this screenshot we can tell he obviously has something wrong with him if he is walking bare foot through a wet muddy wood, to enhance this we put more mud on his clothing to make him look even worse. To make the ground we we actually used a bottle we repeatedly filled up from a small stream within the wood and poured it onto the path he was treading. He comes across as being unstable and odd because of this. We have chosen to represent him in this way because it instantly comes across to the audience something weird is happening and gives off those thriller vibes which make you think. 

QUESTION 3 -  What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

This was a low budget british independent film, there were very few costs involved, this is because the clothing we already had, we did not have to rent out anywhere to film. Props again we used things we already had. The only two things that required any money for the film was the renting of the college camera and tripod which is a deposit which you get back. The other being petrol from my car, all four of us went to separate locations for filming and prepping around 10 times which adds up but isn't that much of a substantial cost. 

As you can see from this image on the left, one of the final small bits of filming which needed to be done had to be done without a tripod as the one we had been given was broken. 

This is one of the only issues we had whilst filming besides losing some footage which had to be reshot.



There are three parts to producing a film, these are... 

FILM PRODUCTION - Making the film, shooting it and editing.

We made the storyboard in good time so we knew exactly what to do once we started filming.

We filmed on about 10 separate occasions and i ensured we got lots of waste footage so we had more time to play around with spare clips and get it just right. 


Once all the prepping, filming and editing had been done which you can see in the surrounding photos we then move on to 
film distribution



FILM DISTRIBUTION - Securing the placement of the film on an exhibitions screen and for home viewing.

It would be extremely hard getting any big exposure for example on television as much more money would be needed to make that work.

In order for our film to grow to different audiences there are some things we could do, for example 

1. I could put the film on Youtube which is the 3rd most visited website in the world and many people could find it and it could unexpectedly blow up and have a huge number of hits 
2. Send the video out on an email blast which would reach around 1000 people depending on how many peoples emails you have
3. Facebook is brilliant for things like this, everyone uses it and things like the opening to our film could easily get a lot of exposure and people talking about it, word of mouth also spreads rapidly.

The good thing about Youtube is that there are like and dislike bars as well as comments sections to get good feedback, Facebook is similar but not as useful.

FILM EXHIBITION - The place the audience watch the film, traditionally cinema.

If we really wanted to get people to know about our film we could hold an event round a friends house who could accommodate a large amount of people and who has a projector and film down screen, i know someone with this and wouldn't be hard to organise it. However one issue which could let us down was the cameras were not in full resolution of 720p instead of 1080p.

QUESTION 4 + 5 - Who would be the audience for your media product and How did we attract/address our audience?

Our selected age range is 18-30 years old, we chose this for the following reasons... 

• The actors involved are in that age range
• The elder generation wouldn't like it
• The younger generation wouldn't understand it 
• The younger generation could get scared
• The younger generation could mimic scenes within it 
• We didn't think it would appeal to anybody else

Obviously we knew this age range from the start, we used the website pearlanddean for guidance. 

There are many different age categories but we felt like 18-30 would just be the most appropriate. The available ones were 11017, 18-25, 18-45 and 35-55.

I did some research about what other thriller films my peers watched and what they thought of them, some of the results i got were films such as

1. The Cabin In The Woods
2. Fast And Furious
3. Transformers
4. The Hunger Games
5. James Bond 
6. White House Down
7. Now You See Me
8. The Gathering
9. Black Rock
10. Vantage Point

This helped me because some of them for example Cabin In The Woods has some of the same themes as our film and would mean they hopefully liked it.

We designed this questionnaire and went round the college asking some students what they  thought, taking my iPad and showing them the opening of the film.

1.  Do you think that this opening targets both genders in the age group of 15 - 30?
2. From watching the opening of this thriller, would you continue to watch it?
3. Which aspects of the opening do you like? and why?
4. Do you feel like the opening needs any improvements?
5. Which age certificate would you apply to this film?
6. Do you feel that using a girl works best for the victim? And why?
7. Were you able to empathise with any characters? How?
8. Do you think that the soundtrack and music chosen suits the opening?

In addition to this i asked a few members of my extended family what they thought of the piece and got some surprisingly good feedback. 

Why would our audience enjoy our film?

• Because we included scenes of suspense and danger 
• Scenes that make people want to see more and find out what happens
• If we liked it then surely people with similar interests would 
• A range of editing techniques that they would find impressive such as

1. Multiple match on actions
2. Shot reverse shots
3. Sound bridges
4. Parallel cuts
5. Jump cuts
6. Cross cuts
7. Clever titles
8. Fast paced action

• Clever camera work including many different angles, distances and movements, these can be seen in the images below.

1. We included crabbing round the tree at the end 
2. Overlaying
3. Close ups
4. Medium close ups
5. Long shots
6. Pans
7. Canting
8. Extreme long shots
9. Over head shots 
10. Intense, suspenseful music

Over the shoulder shot

Close up

Over head angle

Very low angle

Stalking perspective

Worms eye view

Our characters helped to target this audience because of their ages so the audience can relate to them. They fit with regular stereotypes of films like this typical girl in trouble and a scary murderer is chasing her in all black clothing and acting mysterious with odd boxes with picture of people in them. We know this because we heard it from peoples feedback as well as knowing it ourselves when deciding the storyboard.

QUESTION 6 and 7 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product and what do you feel you have learnt in profession from it to the full product?

Conclusion - I feel there were some big ups and downs with the project but I'm very pleased with the way it turned out, if i could change anything I would definitely have done my time management better and we all needed better communication within the group as one or two small issues raised but have all been sorted out now. 

You are able to tell some progression has definitely been made since the first piece we created for example simple things like match on actions seemed to go down a lot smoother since the first task, for example in the first piece where i get out the car and it flicks to a shot of my feet as i step out the car which you can see pictured below one of the match on actions in the new piece which went a lot easier would be when the antagonist walks through the mud to and then it switches to a rear perspective angle as you can see below.

Match on action from this view to the view below