Isaac's Evaluation

 

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

Conventions of real thriller media products:

• ENIGMA! 
• Creating suspense and excitement for the audience
• Characters - Antagonist (usually a strong or powerful male character), protagonist (usually a vulnerable female character)
• Iconography - Guns, weapons, silhouettes/shadows, confined space, scars

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

1. Creates enigma through the unknown 
2. Creates tension through the unknown 
3. 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

1. 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.
2. 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
3. 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)
4. 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 Royale there 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. 

1. 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. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. 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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
3. 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.
   
4. 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.
5. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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
   
4. 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.
5. 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.