Michael Maddock
The Evaluation
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• (Radio Still) The music, generally in thrillers the music fits perfectly to the actions on the screen. In my thriller we use contrapuntal sound challenging the norm of thrillers. This is good because it catches the viewer’s attention and maybe they will want to keep watching to see if there are any more interesting features.
• Editing, like many thrillers the editing in my thriller opening is key to drawing in the audience and making the feel for the rest of the film. We decided to use parallel editing, in doing this we hoped to quickly draw the viewer in. And in turn this fitted with the conventions of a thriller opening.
• Dialog, The opening shot of the thriller doesn’t have any dialog this is common in quit a few thriller as it creates tension and after all tension will keep us watching.
• (Shower shot) Normally in a thriller their would be music were the first bit of action is but we challenged this. When we get are first bit of action there is no music just the shower noise, The shower noise is louder than normal and this creates the atmosphere were as we believed and the audience agreed music would of destroyed this atmosphere.
• (Writing Report) In are opening nearly every other shot is a man writing a report, we never see his face and in these shots not a lot is happening. I got the influence for these shots of the film “girl with the dragon tattoo” were an old man receives a letter slowly undoes it, reads it and cry’s. In doing this in creates a sense of wonder and so we want to watch on so is a common convention of thriller openings.
• (Flooded bathroom) Often in thrillers their isn’t a cut when the action is about to happen but we challenged the normal thrill opening and decided when are first bit of action happened instead of just letting it play we would cut it. Just as we enter the bathroom and have a real sense of atmosphere it cuts to the report writing. The report is closed and we feel like the opening is over before it’s started but then it returns and we see the girl in the shower.
• (Smoking) In many thrillers there are clear protagonists and antagonist are film is the same. We have a protagonist in our opening scene but its hard to tell who is who and we wanted it this way. By having the man writing the report in a slightly run down office with low key lighting smoking a cigar we are confused if he is good or bad and what his significance in the film is. I believe this develops the conventions of most thrillers.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
• Main mail unseen character- One of the main characters in the opening you never see. He is about 19 years old recently railsed from caier or a mental hospital. As we don’t see him but still want the viewer to build up a picture of him we had to use editing and camera work to give him a personality. We used the camera as his eyes instead of just having an actor to create an air of suspicion and interest. We wanted to make him look unstable maybe being drunk, high or just panicked and angry. So we slowed the footage down and blurred it slightly. The way he is stumbling through the house gives of the impression he is looking for something or some one and we later find out he is. He is made to look bad even evil and this is exactly what we were after.
• Female- Are female character is around 17 years old, middle class and white British. She is represented as a normal innocent female. Wearing every day cloths, jeans and a T-shirt. When we first see her she is fully dressed cowering in her shower with the male looking at her. By having her cowering it shows she is submissive and a weak character. We deliberately made her this way because we wanted to create empathy with the audience. One of the main reasons she is like this is it makes the male character look worse as he is praying on a helpless female were as if she was a hard male then we wouldn’t seem so bad.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?• I think that if our thriller would be distributed it would be shown in small cinemas across Britain. Because it is a low budget film there would be no money for feather advertisement outside the UK. I believe that our thriller could be digitally distributed. It would help access for those who don’t get a chance to see it in cinemas.
• I believe that our thriller could be distributed by companies like Seven Arts Picture and Revolver Entertainment or other small independent companies. Seven Arts Picture as it is an independent motion picture production company which helps in distributing low budget films. It distributes films from different genres. Thrillers which were distributed by this company are A Broken Life (2008), Knife Edge (2009) and Shooting Gallery (2005).
4. Audience-• The audience for my short horror film would have to be 15+
• Having my film as a 15+ fits well with the thriller convention as they are often rated 15+
• Although the opening shots have nothing to make them a 15+ if the film was to carry on then it would quickly start to become more intense and only suitable for viewers over 15.
• I believe this film would attract both males and females, slightly more towards males as they seem to enjoy thrillers a little more than females
• Our thriller is available to audience over 15 years old but our target audience are within 18-35 years old both males and females. I think that movie we had created would be suitable for a wide range of audience as it is a medical/scientific thriller which I think would attract different kinds of people. When we first decided on our target audience we thought that they will be around our age (17-19 years old) but know when we did it I think that it would be more suitable for an older audience as it is contains lots of themes which could make the younger audience confused or bored.
• I think that that our film will also appeal to people outside our target audience, especially older than 30. Although you would have to be 15+ to see this in cinemas under 15s may watch out film but I don’t believe they would enjoy the scientific or medical aspect of our thriller. Also it could be hard to understand the theme. I believe that people older than 30 would like our film as those are usually educated people with interest of the world around so they would be interested in our story.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
• The audience of my film would enjoy it because;• Camera- The sense of tension created through the use of camera work that fits with the stereotype of camera in some other thrillers. An example in the shot bellow-
(THE HALWAY EYE SHOTS)
As you can see having the camera at eye level and then adding the slow motion blurry affects wondering through the house creates the idea that the camera is a person. And in this instance that person is main character drunkenly stumbling through the house trying to find his sister. So by doing this the audience would be attracted and drawn into the rest of the film.
• Cloths- In the film we wanted to keep it looking simple, modern day cloths on are female, Jeans and T-shirt. We did this so the audience would focus more on her and why she is in the shower rather than how she is dressed. Also most people dress like that so it keeps the sense that this could happen to them, witch keeps them on their feet and in doing that attracts them to watch the film.
• Props- In the house scenes we placed cloths and other objects on the floor to make it look like the house had been trashed.
(HOUSE TRASHED)
This is attracting my audience as we want to know why this person is in the house and what is going to happen in the rest of the film.
• Lighting- We used low key lighting or natural light in our shots. For the house scenes we generally used natural light, and this makes it look like any old house and that attracts the audience as it could be happening in the house next door and this just makes the film seem even more realistic. In the other shots we used low key lighting so it looks more dark and suspicious. This leaves us with a sense of wonder, and is key to making the audience keep watching and enjoying the film.
• Themes/Issues-Editing- For the audience to truly enjoy the film it had to have an interesting opening, so we used parallel editing. It cuts between the man writing the report and the exploring of the house. And by sutauly getting faster towards the end of the two minuets the audience are getting more anchus to what is going to happen. We also when for a not to common thriller theme, that way the audience wouldn’t have seen any thing to much like it but still had the re a shorance that it was going to be a thriller and cover issues thrillers would usually cover.
• Sound- We went for contrapuntal sound in our film as we believed and the audience agreed that it gave it an edge and would make it stand out from most other thrillers. We also used a sound bridge between shots, in one of are first shots we see the male who writes the medical report turn on the radio and the radio noise continuous through most of the opening.
Having the music stop and re start creates tension and that’s what the viewers want, then when the music stops completely and we can hear the shower we are just waiting for something to happen.
• The Audience would enjoy all of the above because they make the film a Thriller, and that’s exactly what they expected to watch.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
• Camera- Although when we made the preliminary I had used a video camera before I didn’t know how to set the white balance and didn’t know how important it was. By the main task the whole group was confident using the camera.
• Editing- When we edited are preliminary task are cuts were all straight but with the main task we played around with the transition a lot to find what worked best.
We also changed the filters in the main project in the office shoots to make it look like a different time and location, This is something new we learnt just from looking at final cut pro and messing with the setting something we wouldn’t of had the confidence to do in the preliminary.
Another little editing technique we learnt, we could make affects happen at a chosen point and control the intensity and how long they lasted. We did this in our opening shot were it comes in from white and the white sticks to some of the objects longer than others giving the shot a interesting feel.
(An effect, fades in from white.)
• Sound- When we made the preliminary sound wasn’t really a big part of the film but after research we realized how massive background music was to film. So after lisining to lots of different types of music we decided we were going to do something different, we wanted digetic sound for the man writing the report with a sound bridge to the hall way scene. We also composed are own music and fixed it together on garage band. Using affects like radio noise, we would never have done this in the preliminary task as we didn’t believe it was important.
We also used phoney affect to enhance are film, We learnt how much making certain sounds louder than other can make so much tension.
• Organisation- In the preliminary we weren’t very organised, No one really had a job and we didn’t take it really seriously. We tried to make it slightly funny and although it was ok we could of made it better. So this taught us we had to allocate roles and stick to them.
This worked, we all did our roles and if we got stuck we knew it was up to us to sort out that problem and not leave it to some one ells.
The Evaluation
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
• Editing, like many thrillers the editing in my thriller opening is key to drawing in the audience and making the feel for the rest of the film. We decided to use parallel editing, in doing this we hoped to quickly draw the viewer in. And in turn this fitted with the conventions of a thriller opening.
• Dialog, The opening shot of the thriller doesn’t have any dialog this is common in quit a few thriller as it creates tension and after all tension will keep us watching.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
• Main mail unseen character- One of the main characters in the opening you never see. He is about 19 years old recently railsed from caier or a mental hospital. As we don’t see him but still want the viewer to build up a picture of him we had to use editing and camera work to give him a personality. We used the camera as his eyes instead of just having an actor to create an air of suspicion and interest. We wanted to make him look unstable maybe being drunk, high or just panicked and angry. So we slowed the footage down and blurred it slightly. The way he is stumbling through the house gives of the impression he is looking for something or some one and we later find out he is. He is made to look bad even evil and this is exactly what we were after.
• Female- Are female character is around 17 years old, middle class and white British. She is represented as a normal innocent female. Wearing every day cloths, jeans and a T-shirt. When we first see her she is fully dressed cowering in her shower with the male looking at her. By having her cowering it shows she is submissive and a weak character. We deliberately made her this way because we wanted to create empathy with the audience. One of the main reasons she is like this is it makes the male character look worse as he is praying on a helpless female were as if she was a hard male then we wouldn’t seem so bad.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?• I think that if our thriller would be distributed it would be shown in small cinemas across Britain. Because it is a low budget film there would be no money for feather advertisement outside the UK. I believe that our thriller could be digitally distributed. It would help access for those who don’t get a chance to see it in cinemas.
• I believe that our thriller could be distributed by companies like Seven Arts Picture and Revolver Entertainment or other small independent companies. Seven Arts Picture as it is an independent motion picture production company which helps in distributing low budget films. It distributes films from different genres. Thrillers which were distributed by this company are A Broken Life (2008), Knife Edge (2009) and Shooting Gallery (2005).
4. Audience-• The audience for my short horror film would have to be 15+
• Having my film as a 15+ fits well with the thriller convention as they are often rated 15+
• Although the opening shots have nothing to make them a 15+ if the film was to carry on then it would quickly start to become more intense and only suitable for viewers over 15.
• I believe this film would attract both males and females, slightly more towards males as they seem to enjoy thrillers a little more than females
• Our thriller is available to audience over 15 years old but our target audience are within 18-35 years old both males and females. I think that movie we had created would be suitable for a wide range of audience as it is a medical/scientific thriller which I think would attract different kinds of people. When we first decided on our target audience we thought that they will be around our age (17-19 years old) but know when we did it I think that it would be more suitable for an older audience as it is contains lots of themes which could make the younger audience confused or bored.
• I think that that our film will also appeal to people outside our target audience, especially older than 30. Although you would have to be 15+ to see this in cinemas under 15s may watch out film but I don’t believe they would enjoy the scientific or medical aspect of our thriller. Also it could be hard to understand the theme. I believe that people older than 30 would like our film as those are usually educated people with interest of the world around so they would be interested in our story.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
• The audience of my film would enjoy it because;• Camera- The sense of tension created through the use of camera work that fits with the stereotype of camera in some other thrillers. An example in the shot bellow-
As you can see having the camera at eye level and then adding the slow motion blurry affects wondering through the house creates the idea that the camera is a person. And in this instance that person is main character drunkenly stumbling through the house trying to find his sister. So by doing this the audience would be attracted and drawn into the rest of the film.
• Cloths- In the film we wanted to keep it looking simple, modern day cloths on are female, Jeans and T-shirt. We did this so the audience would focus more on her and why she is in the shower rather than how she is dressed. Also most people dress like that so it keeps the sense that this could happen to them, witch keeps them on their feet and in doing that attracts them to watch the film.
• Props- In the house scenes we placed cloths and other objects on the floor to make it look like the house had been trashed.
(HOUSE TRASHED)
This is attracting my audience as we want to know why this person is in the house and what is going to happen in the rest of the film.
• Lighting- We used low key lighting or natural light in our shots. For the house scenes we generally used natural light, and this makes it look like any old house and that attracts the audience as it could be happening in the house next door and this just makes the film seem even more realistic. In the other shots we used low key lighting so it looks more dark and suspicious. This leaves us with a sense of wonder, and is key to making the audience keep watching and enjoying the film.
• Themes/Issues-Editing- For the audience to truly enjoy the film it had to have an interesting opening, so we used parallel editing. It cuts between the man writing the report and the exploring of the house. And by sutauly getting faster towards the end of the two minuets the audience are getting more anchus to what is going to happen. We also when for a not to common thriller theme, that way the audience wouldn’t have seen any thing to much like it but still had the re a shorance that it was going to be a thriller and cover issues thrillers would usually cover.
• Sound- We went for contrapuntal sound in our film as we believed and the audience agreed that it gave it an edge and would make it stand out from most other thrillers. We also used a sound bridge between shots, in one of are first shots we see the male who writes the medical report turn on the radio and the radio noise continuous through most of the opening.
Having the music stop and re start creates tension and that’s what the viewers want, then when the music stops completely and we can hear the shower we are just waiting for something to happen.
• The Audience would enjoy all of the above because they make the film a Thriller, and that’s exactly what they expected to watch.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what have I learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
• Editing- When we edited are preliminary task are cuts were all straight but with the main task we played around with the transition a lot to find what worked best.
We also changed the filters in the main project in the office shoots to make it look like a different time and location, This is something new we learnt just from looking at final cut pro and messing with the setting something we wouldn’t of had the confidence to do in the preliminary.
Another little editing technique we learnt, we could make affects happen at a chosen point and control the intensity and how long they lasted. We did this in our opening shot were it comes in from white and the white sticks to some of the objects longer than others giving the shot a interesting feel.
• Sound- When we made the preliminary sound wasn’t really a big part of the film but after research we realized how massive background music was to film. So after lisining to lots of different types of music we decided we were going to do something different, we wanted digetic sound for the man writing the report with a sound bridge to the hall way scene. We also composed are own music and fixed it together on garage band. Using affects like radio noise, we would never have done this in the preliminary task as we didn’t believe it was important.
We also used phoney affect to enhance are film, We learnt how much making certain sounds louder than other can make so much tension.
• Organisation- In the preliminary we weren’t very organised, No one really had a job and we didn’t take it really seriously. We tried to make it slightly funny and although it was ok we could of made it better. So this taught us we had to allocate roles and stick to them.
This worked, we all did our roles and if we got stuck we knew it was up to us to sort out that problem and not leave it to some one ells.
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