7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
From the preliminary task that our group did, I think that we have all made improvements in a lot of areas:
Use of camera -
In the prelim opening that we made, one of our major mistakes was forgetting to set the white balance at the beginning of filming! This resulted in some of our final footage having quite a yellow appearance (like the shot shown).
This didn't look very professional and we had to spend more time trying to change it by using the colour corrector on Final Cut.
For our thriller opening, we made sure that we set the white balance every time that we went out to film by taking something with a white surface out with us; this resulted in much better quality than our previous filming.
To make our editing process easier, whilst we were out filming, we allowed time before and after we began shooting. This allowed us more flexibility when we came to edit as we could do different types of transitions. For example we left time each side of the footage to be able to blend the two together like this one here.
In terms of our variety of camera shots and distances, we experimented quite a lot in both the preliminary and the thriller opening therefore we could change our mind as to what looked best when it came to editing.
In the prelim we used shot a lot of angles to make it appear more jumpy and even experimented using a cctv effect on Final Cut.
We continued to to this in our thriller opening so that we had a lot to chose from. In the thriller opening, we tried using more complex camera movements such as handheld and the crab - like the crab around the victim. I think that it made the final piece look more professional and it also suited the genre of the footage. Overall I think that we were quite successful on our use of the camera.
Due to our better filming, I think that our continuity worked better.
In our preliminary we didn't take a lot of time researching and choosing or music which meant that the end product could have been better had we looked around more. For our final thriller opening we made use of the website Incompetech which allows you to download royalty free music. It uses a narrowed search so that you can search for key words and genres of music and there was a very large range of soundtracks available. This therefore made our end product better. We also made use of recording foleys, using the college' sound recorders, which we had not done in the preliminary. These were easy to use and very effective so we progressed quite a lot in terms of sound.
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
I think that our opening has used a lot of aspects from the genre of Thriller.
To begin with, we planned on filming our footage with low key lighting as from researching we found that this gave a more intense feel to the film as the colours created are very mundane.
For example 'The Silence of The Lambs' opening has a similar setting to our and uses low key lighting to appear that only ambient light is present which gives a more eerie look.
The location/setting of our opening partly features the woods which we thought was good for our thriller as it suggests how isolated they are.
Kill Bill is another film that shows without the use of colour, a very eerie and frightening atmosphere can be created.
Our opening shows a similar use use of lighting which gave the effect we wanted. However, the days that we had planned to film the weather was very sunny and bright; this caused some inconvenience to our editing. To overcome this we used the various tools on Final Cut to edit some of our footage.
- We desaturated the footage from the woods so that the colours weren't so strong which gave a duller look.
- Turning the brightness down slightly also helped the problem of the sun making everything too radiant.
- Adjusting the noise also made the footage suit the thriller genre more.
Another convention that we were aiming to achieve in our opening was enigma. This is definitely something we wanted to incorporate as in many existing thriller films it is very prominent. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo demonstrates this very well:
enigma has been created due to the fact that her identity is hidden. For our scene that shows the antagonist looking through his box, we only allowed his hands to be seen which doesn't reveal anything much about the character.
This along with the use of just a key spot light, creates enigma in our piece as questions such as: who is he? and why is he there? in such a dark/secretive place?
The final (non diegetic) soundtrack that we chose for our opening also helps to create enigma as it includes a lot of crescendos (which are not that pleasant to hear) which leads the viewer to believe that it is leading towards something. For example, 'Red Lights' uses similar music for their opening which leads it to be very eerie and jumpy. I feel that we also created this atmosphere.
The diegetic sounds that we added were off the antagonist's feet in the mud to add emphasis on the fact that he is mad and the place he is in to make it more dramatic. I believe that 'Kill Bill' would have also used this for the girl breathing heavily to put emphasis on her struggle.
In terms of our characters, we wanted to include an antagonist because without one a thriller film wouldn't really work that well. Also we wanted to portray our victim as somebody weak and vulnerable. From watching the film The Lovely Bones, I suggested that we chose our actor for the victim to be:
- a girl - as they are stereotypically seen as the weaker gender
- quite young - meaning she is more inexperienced
- somebody with a small frame - to show her vulnerability
- blonde hair - which is often associated with innocence and not being very intelligent
The Lovely Bones also gave our group the idea of including a box, containing pictures of victims, for the antagonist. From the existing film, a book is used with plans and drawings which demonstrated how the antagonist was cruel and perhaps even mental. We wanted to show our murderer to have those characteristics as well.
Our theme and story is rather similar to that o The Lovely Bones with there being somebody to stalk and kill people and also our opening is set in a flash back. (Here is the storyline of The Lovely Bones ) however we chose our actress to be of an older age to make it relatable to our audience.
Our storyline meant that we differed slightly from Todorov's theory as we began our opening with somebody being killed instead of an equilibrium. We did this because we thought that it made it a more intriguing opening as the viewer knows what has happened but not the characters.
For our camera work we used a variety of shots and movements, for example: point of view, high angles, and crabs.
The crab gives the effect of somebody watching or that the person is isolated which is what we wanted to show. Also, we used high angles on the shots of our victim as it shows that she is small and some sort of prey. This is similar to The Silence of the lambs which I have looked into.
2) How does your
media product represent particular social groups?
One of the main
characters in our opening is the young female. When choosing who we wanted to
play the part of this character we knew that we wanted somebody that was going
to portray an ‘innocent’ look. We discussed as a group the stereotypical
aspects that an innocent vitim would have:
- We chose to have a girl because they are
stereotypically seen as the weaker of the two sexes.
- My sister (who plays the victim) is quite small which
shows that the character is weak and vulnerable.
- Her hair colour – blonde - is also something that
people associate with innocence and somebody that is not particularly
intelligent. This therefore fitted the role well.
Our actress also falls into the age group of our target
audience which is good because we wanted the audience to be able to feel
empathy for the character which we hope we achieved as she becomes more
relatable as she is of a similar age to our audience.
The clothes that we chose the female character to wear
suggests that she is from the social class of B to C2 as she is presented in
clothes that are not extremely formal (partly due to her context- the woods) but
quite casual i.e. clothes of which an average young female would probably wear.
Also the character is a young female which is stereotypically classed as
somebody very vulnerable.
In terms of ethnicity, our actress is of white British. Even
though there are a lot of different ethnicities in the UK, it would not make a
difference to the effects of our film because the girl isn’t represented in
either in a negative or positive way.
Our protagonist was chosen due to
the fact that we needed this character to come across as somebody quite
threatening:
·
Harry is quite tall
·
Has dark coloured hair
·
Broad shoulders etc
All of these aspects fit him into
what is stereotypically seen as somebody that comes across as mature and strong
but due to his clothes, (all black and quite large) demonstrate somebody quite
intimidating and perhaps of a lower social class.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
I thought that creating a survey would allow me to see if we had achieved attracting our chosen audience. I sent my questionnaire out to people within our desired audience.
These are the questions I asked:
- Do you think that this opening targets both genders in the age group of 15 - 30?
- From watching the opening of this thriller, would you continue to watch it?
- Which aspects of the opening do you like? and why?
- Do you feel like the opening needs any improvements?
- Which age certificate would you apply to this film?
- Do you feel that using a girl works best for the victim? And why?
- Were you able to empathise with any characters? How?
- Do you think that the soundtrack and music chosen suits the opening?
From the answers, you can see that many people thought that they could empathise with the female character as she was portrayed as very innocent and vulnerable. We did this by the way we used different shots i.e. long shots to shows her isolation and high angles to show how she is small and vulnerable.
I think that her character targets our chosen audience because she is withing the age group which makes her more relatable due to the fact that young people would be able to empathise with her - the point of view shot used to chase her uses a handheld camera which is bumpier, showing that she is running fast, allowing the audience to feel for her and understand the situation better.
From the answers, it shows that people could empathise with her as she appeared vulnerable and innocent. We managed to portray this by choosing a girl that was quite small with blonde hair as this is often stereotypically seen as somebody who is weak.
If we had chosen to use a boy as the victim, it wouldn't have worked so well as they are stereotypically seen as the authoritative and stronger gender therefore wouldn't appear to be as weak.
6) For this question I decided to use a website called 'Prezi' - this is what I have produced - Rosie's Question 6
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
As we are an Independent British film, its limits the the ways in which we can distribute our film as it is also low budget.
There are 3 main steps that apply for distributing a film:
- Film Production - Securing the placement of the film on an exhibitors screen and for home viewing
- Film Distribution - the place the audience watch the film i.e. cinema screen
- Film Exhibition - making the film
Due to the fact that we are not a very well known film company, it will be more difficult to for us to find options of where our film can be screened. For example, cinemas and producing DVD's would be a target that we would not be able to reach. However, there are some cinemas that are low key, (an Art House) e.g. Uckfield Picture House that would be good for small budgets.
YouTube would be a great way to distribute our film; this is because all of its services are completely free! YouTube is also a global website meaning that we would be drawing in a wide audience. Money could also be made through this way of distribution as if it is successful you can place advertisements.
Other digital distribution is probably out of reach for a company like us due to the low funding. The snowball effect could also happen - meaning that our film would gradually increase in popularity due to people sharing and liking the video.
We would also like to be able to advertise on social networking sites e.g. Facebook. This is because these types of websites are used everyday by our target audience. A twitter or Facebook page could also be created to promote the film more; this also allows people to suggest and share it with their friends creating a larger audience.
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our audience would be in social classes A - C2 and aged between 16-30.
We decided on this age group because this is an age where you can begin to make a good disposable income.
- The characters in our opening are also withing this category meaning it will be more relatable to the viewers.
- The clothes worn by our female character are not overly formal yet not too scruffy showing her middle class status.
For the above reasons we have given an age certificate of 15 as it also included some unpleasant content.
We have decided that our target audience will be a balance between male and female. Despite men usually being more attracted to the genre of thriller, we think that with the use of our female character, more females will want to watch the film as they can empathise with her.
From looking at the Pearl and Dean website a film that is similar to ours is 'Cabin in the Woods'.( The setting used is similar i.e. a woods.) This is because it is a film of the same genre as our which has a 15 age certificate set to it.
