Gemmas Evaluation

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

 

·         Generally thrillers show justice and injustice (Via good or evil) fighting against each other with a strong feel of suspense. Most often the identity of the antagonist is known and the protagonist must intervene with their plans. Throughout a thriller it’s typical for there to be a bigger threat of danger the more into the film it gets.

 

·         In the Zodiac opening the protagonist is a boy and girl who are sitting in their car when a man drives up, gets out of his car and come to the driver’s window and shots both the characters, we don’t know who the antagonist is but all we can tell is that it’s a man dressed in dark clothing.

 

·         In our opening I am the protagonist, I get injured by the antagonist. The difference between the two openings is that the audience know who the antagonist is in my opening whereas in the zodiac little information was shared with the audience,

 

·         It is common in thrillers to include iconography, in thrillers this would include props such as knifes to create a dangerous feel, confined spaces to create the feeling of being trapped and shadows to create suspense, enigma and mystery.

 

·         In Silence of the Lambs the first shot we see is of the woods, this automatically creates a mysterious feel as the lighting too in the shot makes for a creepy dark feel. It is later shown that the woods aren’t a danger to the character from the scenes that we see.

 

 

·         In our opening we used the woods as an iconography as the woods can be portrayed as a sense of being lost, the characters walking the woods to try to figure out how they can escape their circumstances. Being in the woods creates a feel of being isolated which can be seen as being alone and vulnerable.

 

·         The use of close camera shots was important in the making of our thriller opening as we wanted the audience to feel the characters emotion by being closer to them. By placing the camera in certain places and distances allows the makers of a film be in control over how much emotion is portrayed in a scene by where the camera is placed. Also close ups show the significance of something, for example in Alice Creed, there are lots of close ups which make the audience question what is going on, also it enhances the effect of a thriller by building suspense and tension.

 

·         In our opening we also used close ups to attach the audience to the emotion I was feeling as the victim of physical abuse. We see close ups of the antagonist too briefly when the action is occurring which is also disoriented and quickly moves on from the flashback.  Here we see me looking vulnerable and Tom (the antagonist) looking angry.

 

·         Mise en scene was important in our opening as we wanted me to fit in as easily as possible using costume. The clothing was casual which allowed me to fit in rather than drawing attention to my character, I had natural hair which was down for the same reason and also by having my hair down allowed me to use my hair as a mask to hide my bruises. The bruises were created by using makeup to give the effect that I had been hurt and by having them shown to the audience along with my close up framing meant the audience could look into my character more. The reason for the use of clothing and hair allowed me to look like a normal girl who fitted in. I had in date clothing on so that my target audience could relate to me being a typical 18 year old girl, our target audience is females between the ages of 16-20. The audience sees me in a casual pair jeans and a basic jumper, nothing jumps up as suspicious and “worrying” about what I am wearing. Tom the antagonist is wearing an oversized shirt, a hat backwards and a pair of black jeans. The black jeans symbolise himself as he is a mean man.

 

·         Both the men in Alice Creed are wearing dark items of clothing which will represent their role in the film which is that they are both antagonists. The men are also wearing black gloves which are a symbol of danger and murder.

2) How does your media product represent particular social group?

 

 

 

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

·         Artificial Eye is a British film distributor, specialising in foreign-language and art house films for cinema and home entertainment, this would be good for my film as a small art house film is what I was looking to release. An art film is intended to be a serious piece of artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal, they are made primarily for appealing reasons rather than commercial profit and contain unusual or highly symbolic content in a film. Also the fact the distributer provides their films for home entertainment is important to me as although cinemas are still a popular way of watching a film, our target audience (females aged 16-20) still enjoy the comfort of watching a movie with their friends at home. Artificial Eye releases some 20 new theatrical films and 30 DVD titles in the UK each year such as on DVDs and BlueRay, as well as digital releases via several platforms, such as iTunes, Lovefilm, FilmFlex and in-house Curzon On Demand.

 

·         We would distribute our film at peak release times, Fridays will be a good day to release our film as this is the most common time for people to go to the cinema, especially for our target audience as they will most typically be at school, college or university during the week. Also Wednesdays are becoming busy due to 2 for 1 tickets from Orange.

 

 

·         Online ways of distribution will also be popular for our target audience due to the increasing use of tablets and phones. The technology has improved allowing people to watch films at all times of the day  and also is a very popular form of watching films such as on websites including, Lovefilm, Netflix or even YouTube.

 

4) Who would be the audience for your media products?

 

Gender-

I think it will be mostly females that will watch our film, this is due to the fact the film involves emotional scenes I feel as though its more likely that females will be attracted to it. Its easier for females to relate to female characters, men may not get the same attraction to the film due to the gender of the character.

 

Age-

I feel as if the scenes in Imprisoned could become distressing so I think that the film should be aimed at 15+ as it contains violence. This is also the age in which people are starting to get into serious relationships so will give people advice and make them aware of what can happen without realising.

 

 

 

5) How did you attract/ address your audience?

 

 

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

 

Transcript

There were 4 main pieces of technology I needed to use in order to make my thriller opening.

Camera- Although it seems pretty straight forward, we had to learn the main features of the video camera so that we could use it to the best of our ability. We learnt how to use white balance which was an important thing to do before filming each different setting or angle. This means that the image we get is a nice clean colour and doesn’t effect the colour of it and add a tint to it.


Final Cut Pro- The fact the programme is on Macs and that I would be using a Mac throughout the process of editing was a challenge in itself. I hadn’t even used a Mac before and wasn’t used to the settings and shortcuts. The editing plays a crucial part in our opening and I needed to learn fairly quickly how to achieve the look we wanted. I learnt how to add text onto my footage as well as cut down clips, increase and decrease the speed of a clip and how to remove sounds from a clip.


Lighting- Lighting was a key aspect of our footage. We used lighting to portray emotion and effects into our opening. We used dark lighting when the protagonist was in the bath where the bruises were shown on her body. This allowed the audience to see the bruises but also get the feeling as though she was alone and scared due to the dark lighting.


Blogger- Using blogger was different to how I expected. Once I got my head around how to make it look good and how to put items on the blog it became easier. It allowed me to just upload items when I wanted to off of my phone or online which made the blog look more visually appealing due to the images.

 

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

Camera-

In our preliminary task we used simple camera work such as the shot distances we used and angles and a pan, this was basic and in our final piece we wanted to challenge ourselves. In our final we used handheld camera work and still cameras, by using these two types of cameras during filming. The handheld gave our final piece the effect of a Point Of View (POV) shot which is what we were looking to achieve in our piece. The handheld camera was also used in the canted shot of Toms feet walking away as well as the POV of me when I was being hit by tom, the camera made the feeling as if I was really being hit. Since progressing from our preliminary task I feel as though we used a lot more camera angles to build enigma which worked well with other aspects of techniques we used. In our preliminary task we used a lot of simple shots which looking back was boring and not engaging for the audience.

Editing-

Editing is a crucial part in making our final look effective. We have progressed a lot from our preliminary task, we didn’t use transactions in our prelim task which looking back made it jumpy and uninteresting. In our final piece we used lots of transactions which made the footage flow well and linked the clips together. We spent a lot of time trying to work out the best way to make the piece run together smoothly. In our prelim we used a match on action which looked good for our first attempt, I feel we have moved on a lot since our prelim by using more difficult editing techniques.

 

Mise en Scene-

I feel as though our mise en scene planning had a lot more time put into it than in our prelim task. We put more consideration into the antagonists hair and costume as we wanted our audience to connect with the character. This included making the character  wear up to date pieces of clothing which would help the audience connect and possibly could relate to the character.

 

Lighting-

The lighting has enhanced technically a lot since our prelim task. The lighting was placed in places which would improve the way our film flowed and gave an effect, we used dark lit rooms (i.e. the bathroom to give the effect of the antagonist being scared and isolated) we used natural lighting in the woods to give the impression of freedom, even if it was for a short period of time for the antagonist.