Evaluation - Bradley Mills

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

Typically an opening sequence includes titles, music, and heightened suspense -

Music

The Generic music of a Thriller opening is an eary non Diagetic soundtrack that is there to create suspense such as the soundtrack used on the movie 'The disappearance of Alice Creed',  we chose to use a generic soundtrack in order to trigger the automatic response from the audience upon hearing this soundtrack which is associated with this specific genre.

Titles

The Titles we used were inspired by our research of titles from the movie opening 'Se7ven' as you can see from these screen shots comparing our titles to the titles used in the movie 'Se7en', our titles flickered and appeared with an electric sound effect from garage band, to add to the movies feeling of uneasiness, this is typical of thriller movies using the titles to display the sense that something is wrong.

'Se7en' titles

'Forgotten' titles

We tried to create a Feeling of heightened suspense via the use of cross cutting, we showed longer shots of the male character than the female character particularly at first, as the suspense started to build we shortened the length of the shots of both characters and made quicker cuts to the other to give the audience the feeling that they were about to cross paths, this is a classic thriller technique as seen in the movies such as 'se7en' and 'The disappearance of Alice Creed'.

 These Openings combined are similar to our 'Forgotten' opening because we took a lot of inspiration for our opening from these two movies, being our first project. Our opening sequence develops typicality's of the traits of the antagonist character by making him seem almost emotionless, which is similar to most antagonist characters in thriller films.

The only part that challenges stereotype is the use of costume for the antagonist character who is wearing white, which is generically a color of the protagonist character because it symbolizes innocence and purity, however we used this technique to create confusion within the audience.

We tried not to be too different in order not to alienate our audience, as you can see by the shots below taken from our opening not all the pictures out of context look like they have been taken from a thriller movie, but thrillers are not all about scaring the audience from the start of the movie but there has to be time taken in order to build up suspense with shots such as the pan used in the middle picture in column 3 which just shows a wall in the house, also establishing location.

other shots Show low key lighting which is generic of the film genre, and none of the screen grabs display identity of characters.

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

In our thriller opening we introduce to the audience two characters, one being the generic damsel in distress which appears in most thriller movies, she is first introduced to the audience in a very fettle body position suggesting that she feels helpless also establishing her character and role in the film.

The other Character shown is a male character but we did not want to give away his identity with close shots of his face early in the sequence, to create an enigma about the character we also had him performing everyday activities such as watching TV and making lunch.

In thriller movies there is the idea of antagonist characters vs the protagonist characters, we tried to establish these roles early in the film due to the short amount of time we had to display our film genre we skipped the equilibrium phase at the beginning of the movie and replaced it with a confusing and conflicting imagery, with both characters wearing white which is a generic symbol of purity and suggests to the audience that they are 'Good'.

For our casting of characters we needed people who were going to be defiantly available for shooting, but they would also have to conform to the stereotypes of the characters we tried to portray.

'DAMSEL IN DISTRESS'

Character in 'low key lighting'

For this character we used a girl of the late teen age range which is appropriate for this character, we chose an attractive girl, with a weak and run down body language to represent there being a disturbance in the equilibrium, we used low key lighting to create a feeling of loneliness and danger, she is wearing very neutral clothes with a white vest top which suggests purity and also lack of protection and comfort. This representation of the lead female Character is Very common in movies but particularly Thriller movies, and this seems to be a proven way of representing a female character, however traditionally audiences do not respond well to movies which challenge this role with most movies portraying the female as being a lead action figure the films usually are unsuccessful.

Villainous Character

We Tried to create a definite contrast between these two characters making the male character appear very unemotional in contrast to the emotion displayed by the female lead character who is shown crying;  For the male lead 'villainous' character we attempted to reduce any typical human emotions from him in order ton create separation from the audience where as we wanted the audience to feel empathy for the Damsel Character. we decided to make this character an older man to suggest power and status.

Research

we all watched various different thriller openings to take inspiration for our own movie, we looked out for use of Camera work , Mise en scene, Sound and Editing.

 Camera Work:


The main objective of the camera shots of the 'damsel' character was to create a bond between the audience and this person, the movie relies on this closeness with this character to give more meaning and empathy towards her and her situation. In order to create this using camera work was to use close ups, which allow the audience to see facial expression and therefore emotion. We also used longer shots to show her body language as being fragile in the opening shot of the film. There are no low angle shots because this coveys power and status and in the situation she is in she has very little power, instead we used mainly high angled shots to convey to the audience this feeling of lack of power and control. We used a shallow depth of field because she was in the foreground and we wanted her to be the focal point of the shots.

Shot obscured by objects
 (from The Disappearance Alice Creed)

The audience is first introduced to the male 'villainous' character with a long shot obscured by objects, giving the audience the feeling the they are looking in on the situation, tracking shots are also used with this character to convey this feeling of observation of the antagonist character this technique was also used in the opening to 'The disappearance of Alice Creed'. We chose not to reveal his identity fully because it was the beginning of the film and we wanted to create an Enigma about the character we achieved this by a mixture of tracking shots and angles that did not reveal his face .

Birds eye view shot not revealing identity

Mise en Scene

We had to take in to consideration all the areas of Mise en Scene and how each decision we made would effect the audience's perception of the character.


Body Language Was key for creating the contrast between the Two characters, where the female character showed weakness and vulnerability with her body language the male character showed little sign of emotion and his movements were very logical, simple and precise demonstrated in the kitchen scene.

Our 'tear shot'

Facial Expression - This was only used to represent the female character because we wanted to conceal the identity of the male character, we used close ups with the female character to reveal her emotional facial expression, she is shown looking down to represent that she is feeling down and sad this is further exaggerated by the use of 'Tears' we researched different methods of achieving this online.  ( Our Research material) How To Cry On Demand


We tried to create a very neutral costume for the female character using a plain white vest, little makeup and curly hair however the girl is lit so that only her face is in focus and the rest of her body is in the shadows. This neutral appearance creates a feeling of normalcy about the character therefore creating empathy with the audience and limiting Pre-Judgment from the audience.


The Hair, Make-up and Costume of the girl were all significant in creating her appearance, the main effect was the make up, we made her make-up run as if she was crying, adding to her weak, vulnerable appearance allowing us to empathize with her.

The male Character we tried to keep simple also because of his lack of emotion in his actions we tried to limit emotion and character in his outfit, we had him wearing a white shirt which generically represents good in movies but this just ads to the enigma of the character.

Setting, props and decor show a certain amount of wealth and tidiness with the character with the ornaments on the shelves and the neat layout of the room this creates a contrast to the emptiness of the room that the female character is being held captive in.



Sound

Clock sequence
( by use of editing created suspense and a sound bridge)

From our research we watched various different thriller openings such as 'The disappearance of Alice Creed' which used an eary instrumental and used no dialogue to open the movie with, we used this technique to add to the feeling of suspense in our movie making the non dietetic sound such as the soundtrack the focal point of the sound, we also added sound effects such as the clock creating a sound bridge with the ticking getting louder closer to the clock, and becoming quieter further away such as upstairs in the attic , we added footsteps which we had to cut and paste in time with the action on screen, we added an electric sound for the titles which matched the flickering text. and we also added in a news report relevant to the story.


The audience for this type of movie genre is wide but the main target  audience is with teenage boys and girls. Appealing aspects to this target audience is anything sexual, scary or tense and i think in our opening we have managed to create a lot of tension particularly with the parallel editing and use of non diegetic sound.





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

Production

Anamatic shot

Shot used in our opening

We had to produce a opening of a film that would be marketable and appealing to the main target audiences of this genre, this stage involved pre production (story boarding, planning, brainstorming, tests ect) filming of the footage itself based on the animatic story board and then finally editing using final cut pro and adding non diegeteic sound effects using garage band. the end result is the movie that is intended for a potential audience to see.


Distribution

I belive that our movie is not a blockbuster type film with alot of special effects, which are usualy released by big distributor companies such as universal however or film is low budget and would be better suited as an independant release.

Bus Poster

In order for the potential audience to see the movie we will need the movie to be marketed, there are various ways of marketing your movie from the traditional bus posters such as this public advertisement for the movie 'Despicable me' 




Talk show plugs (A common form of advertising) is to get the star of the movie to go and do 'promotion' by appearing on talk shows (Tv and radio) and mentioning/talking about the movie and when it can be seen, this is a symbiosis creating positives for the movie in the form of advertising and the show gets to have a guest to appear on the show to provide entertainment.

Other forms of distribution include merchandise (usually more suited to a younger target audience)


Trailers (there are specialist companies that will create a trailer for your movie)

The job of the Trailer is to convey the mood of the movie, displaying the best parts of the film in a short time frame making the audience want to see more.

This tailor is exciting and does its job to create excitement about the movie but it gives away too much of the plot, i would try to replicate something along these lines but without giving away too much which is the main point of a thriller movie to withhold information from the audience.
Film Posters 


Magazine articles such as Empire or total Film magazine

These three highlighted promotion tactics are best suited to our product.

The soundtrack album

And video games which in the past have been a disappointment for gaming fans due to the lack of investment into these products but now are becoming increasingly more important to the movie makers them self's and there is more communication between the film makers and the game developers. 


Exhibition

This is the stage where the final product is seen by the audience itself, usually by cinema audiences followed by DVD sales ect, this is where the producers and the Distributors will try to gain there money back, money spent on salaries, sets, filming costs, advertising and so on.


Our movie was low budget so we would break even with minimal income generated however if we paid for advertising we would have to make more money to break even, this means making back the money you put in, any money in advance of this is considered profit, which is shared between the Distribution company and the producers.


4. who would be the audience for your media project?


We tried to make a thriller movie for people between the ages of 15 - 30 as our primary target audience, with mainly males of any ethnicity being targeted, however we have not gone for a niech audience with our product, but instead we have made a film opening with intentions of a wider potential audience, being a British made thriller film we expect the majority of our successes to come from the UK, because British Thriller films so far have not been huge successes overseas.


Females may also be interested in this film due to the lead character being a female, but classically the male audience will be the primary audience for this type of film due to the violent nature of the film and the subject. 


Through my feedback on Facebook and Youtube I have discovered that the most praise and support for our film opening has come from female teenagers in our target audience 


(quotes)



Josh Aged 19 said -

' Its very good and tense and suspenseful, I like the credits they reminded me of saw'





Betsie aged 16 said - 
'its really good! like ridiculously so, did you make it?'

when asked what in particular did she like she replied


'i liked the flickering of the credits and the news report at the beginning'

Hannah aged 19 says

'the use of amplified sound adds dramatic effect, which is what i expect to see from the thriller genre'


Kelly aged 16 says - 

'thats wellgood! realy freaky'

Tom Aged 20 said -

'It was good, the soundtrack made it scary'


James aged 17 said -


'I like the part where he walks up the stairs and you hear it creek, it reminded me of other thriller movies'

Being in the target range myself my main critique of the movie opening is the end part where the Forgotten comes into the screen over the top of the footage, which although i think is good it doesnt realy flow well

However I am proud of the product we were able to produce with no budget and little free time, the highlights of the product for me is the tracking shot in the kitchen which we used a remote control car as a dolly for the camera.

Also the edited version or the film opening is a massive improvement from the unfinished product we had with out sound editing, so we did a good job at editing our product on garage band.

5. how did you attract/address your audience




Camera work


There is an enigma created about the antagonist character because you never see characters face We made this decision in order to draw in the audience early and have the audience wondering who he is, does he have the girl captive and what are his motives?

it also gives the audience the feeling that they are looking in on him, rather than the closeness and almost bond they feel for the female character who the audience are made to feel an emotional bond with due to the use of closeups which show her emotion and facial expression.




'i liked the camera angle, when you filled up the glass with water from the sink, and i liked the camera angles in general' - Betsie



 We used close ups also with the male character but not to show emotion or facial expression but to hide his identity, the shot where he is shown walking up the stairs was popular because it creates suspense which will make the audience want to continue watching to find out what is going to happen.

James aged 17 said -


'I like the part where he walks up the stairs and you hear it creek, it reminded me of other thriller movies'

We used Mid shots to introduce the female character this showed her body language and body position she was in to immediately convey to the audience that something is not right, this involves the audience in plot of the movie and creates confusion.

We also used some long shots to show setting and to mix up the different shots in order to create a visually more interesting film.






Narrative




We added in a voice over of a news in editing which added to the narrative of the story, The news report talks of a 'missing' girl which provokes the audience to start thinking why they are overhearing this news cast, and they should start asking questions such as whats that got to do with the house that they are seeing, why has he taken the girl if he has taken her.... this  pulls audience in.


'i liked the flickering of the credits and the news report at the beginning'

Characters


The nature of the characters brings questions to audience why has he abducted her? is it to do with attraction, money, is he holding her for ransom ext, these questions are not answered in our film opening.

Our female character is in the age range our target audience, and is also a neutral character with her costume and makeup, giving her a wide appeal amongst the audience.


sound


We inserted suspenseful non diegetic soundtrack into our opening which played throughout.
' the soundtrack made it scary'

Location/setting


We used dark and dingy house which conforms to the audiences expectations of a thriller movie, the lighting was very low key, particularly in the attic scene where we had to create lighting to reveal the subject without creating too much light to eliminate the darkness. This lighting gives the audience a feeling that her situation is unusual and arises suspicion.




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


Lighting and camera


During  my Preliminary task i underestimated the necessity of using specific lighting, but since then i have realized that the subtle aspects of thriller films make a big difference, I had screen tests with different types of lighting but decided against going for the convenience of the small tablet light, because the light generated was too obvious on camera that it was special lighting used.


The Generic lighting that you would expect to see in a thriller movie is a low key lighting because it hides areas of the screen in shadow allowing for disguise and possibility for something to jump out of the darkness, adding to the suspense and the enigma of the film.

The setup for low key lighting

 I also learned how to operate the camera properly as well, in regards to the light balance which if not set correctly can jeopardize the visual experience of the movie.




Final cut pro


The most important technology we had to use for our product, it allowed us to upload our footage and we cut and arranged our footage into an order, we decided to have the 'Damsel' character appear first on screen but for a short amount of time because we wanted the audience to wounder who this character is early on, and the news report we would later add in in garage band would provide a clue to who she is.

I learnt that when editing there does not have to be constant dialouge or action on screen but there should be some sort of a build up, which you can create in editing provided you have enough shots to use.


We also made our title sequence in Final cut pro, using an effect called earthquake at first but later realizing that we could create this kind of effect ourselves, by having the text appear and disappear shortly creating a flicker effect also we would sometimes move the text slightly to create the feeling of movement.


Garage band was my favorite part of the process because i was not entirely happy with the product pre garage band, but we were able to create a real feeling of suspense by the use of added diagetic and non diagetic sound, the Soundtrack we chose was simple but was successful in creating the eary tone we were looking for.

We added an electric sound over the image of the text appearing to match the image, we also added a ticking sound which was used as a sound bridge between upstairs in the attic and the downstairs, in order to effectively pull this off we had to enhance the sound near the clock, (downstairs) and the further the camera moved away from the clock we distorted the sound and made it quieter, this worked well with the shots of the damsel upstairs establishing her location, we used the same technique with the news report.

I have learned that by using garage band you can really effect how the audience interpenetrate what they are seeing, just by adding an eary soundtrack the footage became more tense because of how we as an audience associate this type of soundtrack with thriller movies.


I have also discovered the importance of camera angle, in my preliminary task I did not use a good variety of camera angles, i have learnt that by using high angles you can create a fealing of inferior status upon the subject, and that a low camera angle will convey a feeling of power and status about a character.




DIFICULTYS -
I started off this task not knowing whether i would have a team to work with or not, I sat down and brainstormed by my self in lessons and wrote notes on ideas i would like to explore such as creating a feeling of unease in a community with shots of people looking 'shifty' whilst a sound bridge of a radio show would be playing both non diegeticly and diegeticly, talking about the people going missing over night in the community, i pictured the camera cutting into a house with a woman closing her blinds or locking her doors with the radio in the background, whilst the radio report is happening, i was going to try to achieve this by writing to local radio stations to possibly get a professional DJ to create the sound clip for me if not i would have asked someone with a believable voice to record.

This was the key idea of my original plan but with short meetings with my teachers i was told i needed to join a team because the burden of work would be too large to complete alone.

I was lucky to be able to join a very capable team with such late notice, but due to the nature of my late arrival into the team I was not in position to completely get the team to go along with my film idea, however certain aspects of my original ideas were used, such as the news report and the idea of missing people, however not in the way I envisioned it.

Other problems included transport and communication as the group I was put into were all based in Brighton and I am from Burgess Hill it was difficult for us all to be available at the same time and be in the same place for filming.







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

In this video I discuss the movement from my original project to my final project.  I have recognized the faults from the preliminary and have been able to reflect on these.