Evaluation - Kieran

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

It definitely challenges forms and conventions of real media products as we researched real media products before we started story boarding to see what a good open thriller sequence should look like - 

A great example would be 'Arlington Road' as it relates to our media product. 

 

This is relevant to our film because just like ours

- it has a variety of shots which doesn't give the protagonist away early on in the sequence.

- Because of the variety of shots used it is unclear to what is going on.

- It's unfocused in certain shots to not give away too much of what's going on.

 - It also has natural lighting, just like our film. 

  - It also uses highly intensive music.

  - The setting which it is shot in is a public                     area just like ours was.

Arlington road is also very similar to our opening sequence as it uses time wisely, just like ours it doesn't rush into anything and misleads us for a while. So it builds tension and the audience gets drawn in. As both sequences use high intensive music it really compliments the slow paced shots as this helps build to the occurring tension. The narrative is also quite similar as they're both about injured civilians which are stranded searching for help, but at first this isn't given away and you're wondering really what is going on, until it's obvious that they're hurt. So the narrative structure in both sequences is very important and has really been thought about when they're planning to film and when they're filming. The only difference is that we took a different approach to giving away what was actually going on in our sequence to Arlington road. We used the effect of a flashback which then clearly shows what actually happened to this girl. 

We also looked at other opening thriller sequences to look at range of title sequences and how they're displayed like 'Inception', 'Silence of the Lambs' and 'Asylum'. I followed the thriller conventions and chose a title which would stand out like in the other films, a font that wasn't totally random but was still relevant. I think the boldness is really effective as it makes the rips in the title more clear. These rips are effective as they're relevant and relate to the narrative. This font signifies someone/something being hurt or broken, fear and isolation.

Shot Ideas -
Panning shot of the scenery

This shot was inspired by the start of the 'The Shining'. We inherited a shot like this so the completely normal atmosphere contrasts the shots that are about to come. This was effective as it confuses the audience and makes it more mysterious.

This shot was inspired by Arlington road. We inherited this shot because it keeps this mysterious presents that we were really trying to put across in our open sequence.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We took a very stereotypical approach to our characters. As the girl is seen as a ordinary middle class teenage girl and the boy is seen as a lower class 'hooligan' we had to make this clear to build suspense through the way they look. We made it clear to the audience that this character is 'trouble' and they then judge him before he's actually done anything, just like how people react to most antagonists in thriller films.

- Typical White Teenage girl (16-18)
- Clothing shows represents she's middle class
- White T-Shirt represents her purity
- The iPhone again represents that she most come from a fairly wealthy background.
- Leather Jacket shows she's quite 'trendy'

- Black hoodie and low sagged jeans connotes to him being 'trouble' and a 'thug'. Stereo typically representing him coming from a 'lower class' background.
- Skinny jeans represent him being 14-20 years of age as someone of an older generation probably wouldn't wear tight fitted jeans.

Also from the shot above you can tell that from this camera angle and the focus on this male character from the other shots that he's following her and also that he most likely is the one who has assaulted her. 

3. What kind of media institution might

distribute your media product and why?

Our film is a low budget independent British film. 
It could be taken up by a independent film distributor company - This would have to go through 3 processes

1. Film Production - The making of the film.
2. Film Distribution - Securing the place of the film.
3. Film Exhibition - The Place where the audience will watch the film.  

The British Independent distributors i would consider would be -

Companies like these will deal with 
- Theatrical released 
- Marketing 
- Also viewing on DVD, on demand, TV and on     download.

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?

• We're targeting Females
• Age 15-34
• Targeting middle class viewers (C1)

We're targeting mainly females as females would feel sympathetic for this girl as they could relate to how our protagonist would be feeling if they were put in her situation. The reason we chose a audience between 15-35 is because we thought they would be more engaged with our sequence. We didn't target children because the concept and scene is a bit to explicit for their viewing, as it infers that this girl has been sexually assaulted. So this is why we chose our age group to be 15-35. For our social class we aimed at middle class viewers as it will appeal more to the audience. (C1)

A similar thriller film which would appeal to this audience would be 'Taken' as this film also has a female victim of about the same age.

How did you attract/address your audience?

One aspect we attracted the audience was through mise en scene, the realistic costumes made our story believable and presented this could happen at any point in everyday life. Also the fake blood signifies fear and death, which also expresses the conventions of thriller films.

We attracted the audience also through the building of suspense we created within this film. We gave the audience a series of mysterious shots which then lets them think about what has happened, so it engages the audience more. Also the characters are quite normal and you only discover who they are when the plot is given away more, so this lets them interpret what these characters are to the plot. So it lets the audience judge the 'thug' looking antagonist.   

We also used various angles and camera shots when filming for example (high, low, LS, panning and CLU's) to make our film more interesting as it makes it less boring and we used the high and low shots in sense of power with the antagonist and we panned the first shot of a nice scenery to confuse and engage the audience as it completely contrast what's about to happen. We used POV shots to engage the audience as it gives a sense of how this girl feels from her perspective, we then put a heartbeat foley soundtrack over the top of her running to represent her being scared and to build tension.  











We used the soundtrack 'Man eater' which we got from a copyright free website 
- http://www.freeplaymusic.co.uk/ 

This music really builds tension from the start of the film, so with this music we followed thriller conventions as it's a high suspense soundtrack which really sets the mood for our final film and this engages the audience as they can interpret what's going to happen in this short sequence. 

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

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Preliminary 

Final Product

My preliminary short film wasn't bad as it had a variety of different shots and decent continuity, but you can tell that i have progressed going in to filming my thriller opening sequence by the final product. The camera work has improved a lot, you can tell that the white balance is set to a better standard so we have a much better natural light.

You can clearly see here that there's many errors with the white balance in the bottom picture (a shot from the preliminary) compared to the shot from the picture on the left (our final media film). You can clearly see that it's firstly grainy and really effects the quality of the shot. Also it goes completely against the look we were going for originally as we were trying to have natural lighting throughout our preliminary just like in our final product. 

The reason we had this problem with the white balance is because we didn't reset it after every time we filmed, we really learnt a lesson from this as when we came round to doing our thriller sequence we reset the white balance after every shot making sure we didn't make the same error we did before.
As you can see it made a massive difference as we achieved the type of lighting we were planning for.
We also changed our location because of the issue with the white balance as filming in front of a window was too tricky and made it difficult for us to keep the same lighting stable. We also made sure we did a lot more preparation for our final piece, by trying different things to see what they look like for example using artificial lighting on certain shots to see what looks better, we achieved this by using a LED lights above and below the actress. We also made sure our sound was lot clearer, we incorporated a lot more foley when needed. For example when she's running we re-recorded it to made it sound louder and clearer and we created a heart beat sound effect by banging on a table. 

Our preliminary didn't incorporate any foley and you can tell as key sound effects for example where the girl slaps the boy isn't very clear or loud. 




The editing in the preliminary was a lot poorer compared to the editing in our final task. This is clearly represented by the lack of effects and transitions in the preliminary. The editing in our final task was a lot more professional and we showed and covered a range of techniques. This may be because we spent a lot more time editing and filming our final task compared to our preliminary, but this is clear. A great example is how we used 'light rays' and blurry effects to convey the girls flashback 

 

In our preliminary we didn't use a range of angles we tended to stick with the same type of shots, but in our final task we ranged our use of shots and angles and used more of a variety of 'high' and 'low' angles when filming.

We used shots like this to demonstrate power and to represent that the male is the dominant one in this situation and that he's in control. This comes across being really clear with help the dialogue being "help, help."









There's a clear contrast between my preliminary task and my main task. Even though my preliminary task showed it had potential, my main task showed clearly that we'd progressed a lot going on to doing our final task. This was made clear by seeing the outcome of both, as it had more effort put into the camera work, planning, mise en scene, editing and sound work. The change of location also made a big impact as this gave us lot more space to work with and also it complemented our plot nicely. As this long road which may be 'deserted' as you see no other civilians could realistically be a place where this could happen. So this was a lot more effective than filming in the college, so we've also got more wise about where we're going to film and why. The narrative structure in the final task also had a lot more thought put in to it compared to the preliminary as it begins to tell a story and the audience becomes a lot more engaged with it.