Her mirror is heart shaped, This shape being a stereotypical shape for females to admire.
Prop - She also has a big wedding ring with a big accompanying crystal which is also a stereotype that 'Diamonds are a girls best friend'
Costume - Suit, Bow tie, Cufflinks, shirt. This set of clothes is usually worn by males, although this does not mean that this is necessarily a man
However we are later shown facial hair on the characters face showing that it must be a male.
There is one comment i can make on both age and gender which relates to stereotype. This is that the older person in the relationship is the male character, and he is the more dependent one on the relationship rather than the female character
Accent/vocabulary – she uses slang words
and phrases such as ‘Dead good’, ‘Thingy’ and often can’t think of the
correct words to use. She also swears a lot for someone aged 13. This conveys
the feeling that she is not particularly well educated and her mother has not
necessarily been a good influence on her, although we are not actually told
so.
Costume – The young girl does not look as
if she is particularly well groomed or well dressed, wearing a cheap, functional headband and coat. She also has an inexpensive hairstyle and big hoop earrings which again conveys her class, showing her family may not have money to spend on unimportant things.
Current time, walking along canal
This
style of clothing is then seen again as we revert to her past and see her
parents. We see her dad wearing a set of tracksuits which is a stereotype clothing.
Daughter and Father in flashback
Sound/Dialogue - We hear from the dialogue that her dad is looking for work, Although when she says it, she doesn't seem to serious, meaning he is on benefits and is planing to stay that way. This shows that there is no proper income coming into their family which might make them an underclass family rather than a working class. It also shows the lack of motivation in the family which might be more apparent in a higher class family.
‘knock off beer’
‘Do I look like a fucking bank’
Mise en Scene/Setting - Canal filled with rubbish
Mise en Scene/Setting - Terrace houses
Mise en Scene/Setting - Boarded up house windows
Mise en Scene/Prop - Graffiti
Dialogue/Sound - Thinks Bacardi is a posh drink
Age
Editing - Percival uses jump cuts to enforce how children think.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In our media product we really tried to challenge the conventions of ENIGMA. By creating a lot of suspense and mystery in a shot really draws the spectator into the product and makes them focus on what's going on in the scene and this is what we wanted to achieve. Other conventions which usually are included in Thriller products: - Characters: stepping away from the STEREOTYPES and challenging that convention by making the identity of the antagonist more mysterious and the female protagonist visually different to what you would usually see in Thrillers. - Iconography: A lot of visual props you would usually see on set of a Thriller, such as guns, weapons, shadows, wounds etc. STEREOTYPES:
The first time you see Tom's character, we wanted it to be easy to recognise him as the antagonist. We did this by creating a silhouette so it creates more enigma.
As well as focusing on lighting to create mystery, we also used mise en scene and thought a lot about the characters props and costume. Tom has a scar which shows his character had been previously been fighting (1) and he carries a bag full of weapons, to suggest he is prepared to torture/kill the victim. (2)
(1) (2)
And the first time you see my character, we also wanted it to be easy to recognise, but instead I played the protagonist. As you can see I'm defenceless.
We focused mainly on avoiding the stereotypical female protagonist character, so for mise en scene: her costume was all black and she wore grungy worn out hoodie and some Doc Marten boots (1). For make up she had a very dark eye (2) which we think paired nicely with the costume and over all looked good for the character.
(1) (2)
Both characters had initial looks which we had been inspired by from other Thriller films. I created a couple of blog posts on this earlier on when we were doing our research and development for the project. Here are links to the three blog posts: - List of Roles - Inspiration for Tom's Character
- Inspiration for my Character ICONOGRAPHY: This convention is very important in the Thriller genre because it is what is used to show the difference between thriller and horror. For our product we used very iconic thriller examples. Such as the props (1) and shadows (2). (1) (2)
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? 3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product? For our media project we decided our target audience would be for teenagers - young adults. There for we rated the film a 15, to make this decision we visited the BBFC website (click here for the link) This gave us all the information about what would make the film a 15 and what the limits were.
5. How did you attract/address your audiences? To attract the audience we came up with a storyline that was intense and could target at a younger audience. We think the plot was thrilling/exciting and had interesting characters that formed a film which we would go to the cinema and what ourselves.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Camera: Although I didn't do much filming, I feel like I learnt a lot about the process you have to do before shooting. Such as attaching it to the tri-pod, dolly and white balancing. It was good to experiment with angles, shot sizes and movement.
Lighting: I learnt that lighting has a huge role when it came to creating our product. By experimenting with different gels, strengths and positions I think we produced a good mood that linked with our thriller genre. I think our lighting helped improve our product.
Final Cut Pro: I used this when creating different blog posts: such as editing the bloopers together or the evidence post when sorting out locations. When I first used Final cut it was all very new to me and I got very confused, but once I started experimenting with it I found it easy to use I thought the blog posts turned out good.
Apple Mac: I used this to do most of my blog posts, this was so I could edit videos, find images and useful links and creates posts all simultaneously. Because I was used to working on PC's it was hard to get used to the new software, but after a while I got the hang of it and overall enjoyed the experience of using the Apple product.
Blogger: Our whole project was presented onto blogger, so it was more of a visual, multi media product which allowed you to be create with the way you presented your work. Personally I really enjoyed using blogger as I liked the way I could incorporate links, images and videos into my work which linked to the project.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
Preliminary Exam: Link to the preliminary piece: http://foundationportfolio1474.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/our-final-prelim-product.html I feel like I have learnt a lot since the preliminary task. Since it was our first go at creating a project and blogging to record our progress, I feel I didn't do as well as I could have. When filming we didn't white balance as much as we should have, which affected the finished product, and when it came to blogging; I wish I created more posts and more frequently to record our evidence better. Over all our preliminary product was good, we were all pleased with it as a group, but if you look in great detail you can see there are a lot of errors. White balance: (Because we did not adjust the white balance in every shot, some of the scenes look an odd colour. This is clear in the product and I feel it lowered the mark for our piece.) Continuity Errors: (For the two female characters, the first day we filmed we were wearing different clothes to when we filmed the second section of the product. This was very clear in the final piece.) Lighting: (We planned our lighting to be based around a swinging light bulb suspended from the ceiling, but that was too bright. So on the day of filming we had to improvise with LED to try and create the same effect.) Final Product: Link to the final product: http://foundationportfolio1474.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/isaac-finished-final-product-nearly.html Though out the final project I think we over all improved all our skills. At the start of the project I was very eager to blog all of our evidence for research and planning, because I knew I didn't do as much as I'd hoped in the preliminary. So I tried to make the posts as creative and visually pleasing as I could. Including pictures, videos and helpful links.
When it came to the actual product: I'm really pleased with the final piece! We really experimented with shots, movement and lighting. We did a lot of research on the Thriller genre and what it takes to make it look realistic.
Here are some pictures of us experimenting with lighting:
And here are some of the scenes were I think our lighting was good:
here are some screen grabs of the scenes were I think the camera movement/shot really worked well:
Another thing we focused a lot more on is the mise en scene. For costume/make up and hair we put a lot of effort into what the characters looked like and tried to create some character development and personalties.
For example:
My make up/costume is more dark and not very typical for a female character:
Tom's character with his smart suit and when he wears the gloves to do the torturing and uses a piece of paper to pick up the phone (OCD character):
Over all I think we had improved an incredible about whilst completing our final exam piece and as a group we are all very pleased with the outcome.
We made clear as to who was the antagonist and protagonist from the first time we met the characters.
Tom, our antagonist, wears a scar proudly on his face which already relates to one of our Thriller conventions for antagonists.
He also carries a bag of dangerous tools with him which presents the kind of character we were trying to achieve.
The fact that one of the props he is wearing are a pair of gloves shows that he is doing something incriminating and that he does not want his identity revealed, but also it enforces his sanitised, clean nature and obsession.
Phoebe, on the other hand, is made clear that she is our protagonist. Although she is a girl, we wanted to break the conventional female stereotype of a helpless victim. To do this we had to really think about Mis en Scene, but especially makeup and costume. Her makeup consisted of dark eye shadow around her eyes and her costume was all dark clothing and big boots.
We believe this made her look more independent and refrained from making her look like a 'conventional girl'.
She is made to look like the protagonist however, because the second she runs through the door, she is knocked out and tied up. this makes her look helpless.
In the first shot of our Thriller opening, we see Tom's silhouette.
This was done in post production by colour correcting and darkening the blacks and mids. The effect this creates makes it a conventional thriller. It creates an enigma and links to a lot of thriller film's opening scenes such as 'The Usual Suspect' because the identity is hidden.
As our Thriller opening continues through the opening credits scene, we have used over the shoulder shots, extreme close up shots and lighting to keep a lack of knowledge of the antagonists from the audience identity which keeps the mystery rolling.
If we move back to talking about Tom's character, the antagonist, we can tell he is very strange. he lays out hand sanitiser with his tools, he wears a set of latex gloves, he orders his tools out extremely neatly and he won't use the phone unless he picks it up with a paper towel.
This kind of unusual antagonist is actually quite common in thriller films and TV shows such as BBC's 'Sherlock' who's main antagonist, Professor Moriarty, is a strange genius and 'American Psycho', which, by judging by the name, relates to our antagonist. The main character from 'American Psycho', Patrick Bateman, also has a routine.
The weapon/tool props we have used in our Thriller opening show the antagonist's character very well. They show the hierarchy and the controlling nature that the antagonist has over the protagonist but the fact that they are household tools makes it slightly disturbing because we can easily relate to them and do not think of them in a way that could harm anyone.
Our inspiration for the shot in this scene was from 'The Disappearance of Alice Creed' which was also a close up shot of tools.
We felt as if it looked really effective because it focuses the audiences attention on the important part of the shot. We did not however, go close enough or have the correct camera lens to get the depth of field effect that this shot had.
SHADOW
Phoebe's shadow scene
Creates enigma through the unknown
Creates tension through the unknown
Low key lighting used in a lot of conventional thrillers due to its atmospheric features and qualities
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
STEREOTYPES:
Male
Antagonist (usually)
Strong
Influential
Dominating
Powerful
An example of these stereotypes from a thriller film is the 'Dark Knight' where the protagonist is a strong, powerful male and has complete control of each and every situation.
Female
Protagonist (usually)
Weak
Victim
vulnerable
If this is not the case in the movie, the female character may be made to be a sexual object such as 'Lara Croft' or 'Bayonetta' although these stereotypes have changed a lot recently and women have started to become a much bigger target audience.
Our main male and female characters are represented in exactly these stereotypes. Tom's character is male, the antagonist and the more powerful, influential character, whilst Phoebe's character is female, the protagonist and the more vulnerable victim.
Stereotypical Antagonist
Male
Mental health issue
Clever
Drives to undermine the protagonists success
Antagonist's play a big part in Todorov's narrative theory. They are the cause of the 'disruption of the equilibrium' (stage 2) and the 'damage' that is repaired (stage 4). The destruction or removal of the antagonist causes the 'new equilibrium' (stage 5).
Stereotypical Protagonist
Male
Admired by the audience
Brave
Strong
Main character
Teenage Female Stereotype
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media products and why?
There has been a democratisation in the distribution sector, causing us, as an audience, to change from being consumers to producers. This has caused more films to be produced and allowed anyone with a phone or cheap camera the opportunity to make and produce a film.
Distribution has changed and new methods of film production call for new methods of distribution.
This has allowed for an increase in variety of film exhibition such as art houses and small independent cinemas and allowed more to crop up because of lowered prices due to an alternative to renting reels, which is memory cards and ADSL's.
Distribution has also changed in the way that the middle man is slowly fading away, with films being distributed by the producers on new platforms such as 'Pulp' which was only released on Xbox live.
But with a change in distribution comes a change in audience consumption. For instance, 63% of iPad users watch TV and films on their iPad device, this allows easy portability and means it can be watched anywhere such as on a train, plane bus or just the commute to work.
Netflix and Lovefilm have a combined population of about 3.6 million subscribers,
and a lot of people share accounts so it is considerably more, showing that a lot of people have turned to internet streaming rather than going to the cinema, because who wants to travel, sit through adverts and pay an obscene amount of money for a ticket and a packet of Maltesers, just to have the 'cinema experience' which has been long gone.
These figures show that cinema consumption has decreased in 2014 due to all these changes
Because my film would be a small indie film it would not belong in a multiplex, but rather a small art house or independent cinema. This also means that i'm going for the home and portable market.
This also means I would want my film distributed digitally because it makes it cheaper but also allows opportunities to be shown in a multiplex if the movie gets good publicity
There are also ways of distributing my product without a middle man using Youtube, Vimeo and iTunes. Indie movie producers have done this before such as Nina Paley who made 'Sita sings the blues' and distributed it herself through her website and blog.(http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1950005,00.html)
There are lots of different distributors, in the U.S.A alone there are about 9000, a lot of these are indie distributers, and there will be some who target the same audience as me. So if I chose not to distribute it alone, there are other options.
HOW TO DECIDE WHICH DISTRIBUTION COMPANY TO GO WITH
Look at previous films the company has distributed and see if they have the same target audience as mine.
Look at the ways in which the company advertises and distributes previous films. For example a big film distributor such as 'Lions Gate', might be distributing a film whose target market were kids, and therefore sign a contract with McDonalds to make the main characters into toys to give with the happy meals. If this was the case with a distributor, then it would not fit for my film.
The film 'Locke' direct be Steven Knight is a independent movie distributed by a company called A24 who were established in 2012 and who are based in New York. IM Global are also helping who are a very big company, but work with small art houses as well as multiplexes. This is the sort of film I would be producing but neither of these companies have the same audience as me. I need a distribution company that deals and advertises to teenagers, not to an older audience.
After looking at companies, Curzon suits my movie the best. It includes films such as Calvary (Rated 15) Fish Tank (15) Katalin Varga (15) and so on. These films follow the same theme as mine, and have a very similar audience. Curzon also have their own cinema's across the world which would make my film more widely seen
However, if I decided not to go with a distributor, I would chose to release it on either Xbox live, PlayStation 3 or on the iPhone and iPad app store. The reason for this is that the people who use game consoles and access games on the app store are teenagers and because girls are now making up over 50% of casual gamers, This will reach my target audience perfectly
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
The market audience for my media product would be from 15 years of age to 20 years of age. I realised that this film would have to be at least a 15 due to the rules and regulations on the BBFC which were any of the following:
strong violence
frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***').
portrayals of sexual activity
strong verbal references to sex
sexual nudity
brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
discriminatory language or behaviour
drug taking
I also thought that this movie would be rated 15 by comparing it to other films of the same nature. For example in James Bond: Casino Royalethere is also a torture scene which is more graphic then the one in our thriller opening, yet it is still rated a 15. This shows that our torture scene wound not make it an 18 rated film.
Gender and Age
The main gender and age that i had previously chosen to target
for our final product is a male audience.
The reason for this is that after looking at statistics from Pearl and Dean.
The main target audience for a 15 rated film is teenage males. Our final product must be a 15 due to the regulations, therefore making males our target audience.
I also thought more males would watch our thriller than females because it is a very action based, violent film. This attracts more males than females generally/stereotypically.
However, because our protagonist is a strong female character i believe that the majority of the audience who would go to see this movie would be female. Although the majority of audience for 15 rated films is male, the majority of main protagonist characters are male as well. And because our main protagonist is female, this could change our audience, once again, relating to The Hunger Games.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
We addressed and attracted our audience by making it easy to relate themselves to our characters in our final piece. Our main protagonist, Phoebe, is easy to relate to because we've all felt responsible for incidents which have not necessarily been our faults or in fact, we have not known about. She is also a normal girl who is generally easy to relate to and feels like a teenager for the audience to look up to, such as the Main, Female character in Hunger Games.
The audience were also attracted by wanting to watch more. We created enigma through lots of techniques which made the audience long to know what could happen next and why Tom has come about to capture Phoebe and torture her. Because this film in in a non-chronological order, the audience don't know who these characters are yet and how they have got to this point. Everything is confusing at the start which makes the audience want to watch on.
Attracting Audience Through Being Able to Relate:
If the audience can relate a movie or parts of a movie to their life then it attracts them to the film and makes it a more gripping experience for them.
Setting - We used an abandoned cottage for our filming location. because it wasn't a warehouse or abandoned swimming pool, which was used in Sherlock, it is easily relatable to the sort of cottage/house/flat/apartment we might have.
Props - Tools - The tools we used in our thriller opening where normal, household tools which we all know and use on a day to day basis, making them easy to relate to. However, these tools are used to create enigma because it is harder to picture them in another context and when we are first introduced to them, the audience doesn't realise what they will later be for. This makes it interesting which attracts the audience
Overall i think the main theme which attracts and addresses our audience is enigma which we have created using the camera, editing, Mise en scene, sound and lighting. an example of this is when our antagonist, Tom, is laying down his tools. The first reason this creates enigma is because the camera angle restricts us from identifying the antagonist, so the audience wants to know who he/she is. The second reason is that the audience are not told why this mysterious man is laying out tools. This creates enigma
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Technology i have gained knowledge in using:
Piece of Technology
What was hard to use about it
What it helped me to achieve
Camera
The hardest thing about the camera was remembering to use white balance, this was a big reason as to why our preliminary didn't reach its full potential.
The use of camera angles, distances, pans, tracking and so on, gave off the feelings and atmosphere that I wanted to achieve
Lights and Gels
Knowing how bright too put them because it always looks different on Final Cut and knowing where to put them.
Lighting helped set the mood for each scene and allowed me to create enigma when necessary
Blogger
I was always confused as to how i create posts, look over old posts and navigate around the app on my phone. The phone app proved to be very helpful after finally learning how to use it
Present all of my work in a stylistic, easy-to-read, (hopefully) interesting way. It has also allowed me to combine pictures, text, videos and voice recordings.
Dolly
It was hard to put together and it was annoying having to take the camera and tripod off it every other scene
Gave some beautifully smooth moving images.
Final Cut Pro
It is a very complicated system and it has taken me a long time to understand how to use it
Allowed me to but my thriller opening together
Sound Recording Kit
Finding the right files to get off this machine and put on the Mac was a disaster
Allowed for the use of 'HomeMade' foley sound effects which helped keep our audience on the edge of their seats.
Garage Band
I didn't realise that you could make the viewing screen bigger, so i was constantly squinting at the top left of my screen.
Allowed me to use foley sound effects which made the viewing expirenece more intense and more realistic, reeling people into the action (if you'll pardon the pun)
Apple Mac
Well they're not PC's, are they. it took me a while to get used to them because the interface is just so different. Even the fact that it depends where you click on the mouse as to whether you commit to a left or right click is mind boggling, especially if you're doing it wrong every 12 seconds
It allowed me to bring blogging, editing, making foley sound effects and everything else together
Batteries
Although batteries don't sound like a difficult thing to use, they are. There are so many different types for so much equipment that its so hard to remember what you need, not mentioning the fact that half the time they are dead.
They allowed us to use all our equipment
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product
What we did wrong in the preliminary task:
White balance - We forgot to white balance in a lot of the shots we did for the preliminary task. This made the footage very grainy and desaturated, but mainly made the colours out of distorted which made it uncomfortable to watch.
Not enough footage - We also did not take enough footage. This held us at a disadvantage because it meant we had to deviate from the original plot to make each section add up.
Lighting - We only managed to have one LED panel light for the reason that one light is all we thought we needed, which meant the shots were very dark. I then realised whilst i was editing that the footage becomes a lot darker when it is on final cut pro and that if we had filmed with more light, i could have dimmed it down in final cut to portray the effect we wanted to achieve.
Continuity - There were some continuity errors in our preliminary task. For example clothing on Phoebe and Sarah varied dependent on which location they were at and Tom had his hood up at points and down at points throughout the scene.
Timing - I did not realise that for a one minute task it would take so long to plan, film and edit. This was a 'reel' setback (haha) because it meant i had to edit it very quickly which then meant the result was not up to the level of my intentions.
What we did to resolve these problems in our full product:
White balance - I made sure that whenever i took a shot, it was white balanced before. this consisted of using the 'one push' white balance mechanism and holding out a clean white sheet of paper. There is a visible result and a clear difference between the image quality in the preliminary task and our full product.
Our ubiquitous footage - We got quite a lot of footage when filming which was annoying due to the tedious scrolling through footage, and picking the best shot out of 10 of the same takes. Of course, mainly it was good because some of the takes had filming equipment in the frame but also it gave me a wider variety of shots to work with.
Lighting - We used more lighting in our final product but also used it in a better way which made the end result look more impressive. We had three lights on all the time. A key light, secondary light and background light however we used these at different light intensities to create different effects such as shadows on Toms face or when we created an enigma by not revealing Toms character when he first came through the door by using lighting
Continuity - I wrote a checklist for costume, makeup, position of the door/curtains/table/tools and so on. This made it easier to keep on top of the little things that needed to stay the same.
Timing - For the final product timing still got away from me. I didn't realise how long it would take to edit and I ended up spending so much time in the editing suit the last few weeks, that my teacher said "I might buy you a bed for the editing suit because you're in there so much". Then again my hours have payed off and i still have managed to complete the editing within the deadline set.
Other things which we have improved on during the production of the full product:
Experimenting with different shots - I took shots of Tom's legs whilst he was walking towards the phone.
I also took a P.O.V (point of view) shot from Phoebe's perspective.
Character Development - This was one of the main differences between our final piece and our preliminary, especially for Tom's character. We really thought a lot about Toms character. All his actions in the film portray his character's personality. For example, the fact that he lays all his tools down neatly and that he has an anti-bacterial gel container and cleans the phone before he picks it up. All of these qualities create enigma towards this character but also show that he is very carful, clean, tidy and so on. His body language and facial expressions also portray the character that we wanted to achieve.
Foley sound effects - In our preliminary task we only used one foley sounds which was when we heard the CCTV camera zooming in. In this production I incorporated lots of foley sound effects such as the phone ringing in the abandoned cottage, Phoebe being hit by Tom, which was actually just a metal pole hitting celery and a wet cloth, and Tom's heavy breathing just to name a few. This really brought a heightened connection between the action in the film and the audience and made it a lot more believable.
Makeup - We used make up to portray our characters personalities and characteristics. - Tom's makeup - Tom had some foundation on to stop any reflective glare from the lights and also had a scar to provide a backstory and show that he is a dangerous man. - Phoebe's makeup - Phoebe also had foundation on but she had dark makeup around her eyes as well to show that she did not fit the stereotype female victim which has been created by the media.
Overall I believe we improved a lot over the duration of the preliminary task and the full product and I think if we were to make another product we would improve a whole lot more again.
