Thursday, 28 April 2011
Friday, 1 April 2011
FINAL FILM EVALUATION - JOE GALLON
1 - In what wats does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For our film, we started off with covering up his identity completely, making the audience ask themselves more what he is doing there than who is he? In the first shot we used a shallow depth of field to do this, with the focus on the door and the character in the background.
The second shot is a very high angle shot of him from the back, again, still not revealing his identity to the audience.
Third shot in and eyeline match, in shot two he is looking at the door handle, reaches for it and then opens it. This is a very important continuity aspect of our film and is again keeping the emphasis away from his face. This carries on into the fourth shot.
Fifth shot is a sillouhette of him walking down the corridor and and tracking shot behind him. Again, typical to a thriller, asking questions of who he is.
Sixth shot
This starts to reveal the identity of the character, but you still don't know who he is in relation to the film and also the shot is not clear, it is still in a dark light and typical to a thriller, the dark lighting gives you a sense of mischief towards the character.
Seventh Shot
Another shot that links back to the Fifth because of the sillouhette technique used.
Eighth
This shot finally puts some light onto the character and reveals his full identity, so has therefore stopped the audience asking the question of what does he look like, but still asks who he is in the film? This is a crucial link to the next shot which shows him with a policeman in a police station, it is another clear shot of him and confirms that it is the same person as the rest of the film has shown. This then opens a whole load more questions, for example, what has to done to be in this situation? This worked very well in our film and is a typical thriller theme that we felt would be very effective incorporated into our film.
The main conventions of a thriller film are that it in the opening, it asks more questions than it answers, and I think that our film really does this well, in the opening shots of the film. Nothing is given away and it ask a lot of questions! Why is he there? Who is he? Where is he going? Why is he at the police station?
At the beginning of a lot of films, this method of not revealing who the main characters are and why they are there is very effective. Films such as the Dark Knight , Harry Brown and No country for old men. Each of these films cover up their characters identity in different ways but all have the same principle to them.
The second one, is from the Dark Knight, this film used masks to cover up their identity. But because this character is the only person in this shot, it makes the audience ask why are they significant and who are they in the context of the film?
This is from Harry Brown, this similar to the way we used to cover up identity during the attack scene, with very dark costume and the lighting is bright in the background to take the emphasis off their faces. For our film we have used a lot of methods that Harry Brown has used and this was a crucial thing.
2- How does your media product represent particular social groups?
We tried to give of the impression that these two sets of characters were from a different social class. The attackers, being the ones who are from a working class background and the victim, the chef and the detective being from a higher class and with a higher status in society. We tried to use the fact that the detective is the girls dad in a beneficial way in the opening. Because the female victim doesn’t say much in the clip, we needed the detective ( her dad ) to come over as quite a well spoken and upper class man.
3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?
We think that our audience can really be anyone from the ages of 15 and up. People below 15 should not watch the film, because of the clear violence and language used. But anyone above this age can enjoy the film, as we tried to make it attract all audiences but incorporating what it is about in the opening. But, having said that, there is some bad language in the film, so this could possibly offend some older audiences as the style of thrillers has changed in the modern day.
It can have something for everyone, it has some violence and action, and a huge part of the film is based on mystery, which of course can attract anyone. We show that our film has both of theses genres because of the two main scenes we have. There is a fight scene, showing that our film has action, and then also an interview scene, showing that our film will have a mystery side to it. The main film that we used to do our research on was Harry Brown, we all really liked the attack in the opening of this and thought the style would work well in our film. So we took this and made it less violent, meaning that we could then aim our film at a much wider audience.
5 - How did you attract / address your audience?
I think that we attracted our target audiences through the use of the narrative mainly. Our story line is clear but still asks more questions than it answers, like the opening to a thriller should. The fact that not much information about our main character, Mr Collins, is given away, means that our audience want to find out more about him and what he was doing in the area. Also we ask questions about why the policeman is trying to set up the main male character.
I think that the way we used the camera shot sizes and angles makes our audience feel more involved, and more like they are into the story. For example, this shot were we have a handheld view of the attack makes the audience feel like they are right into the scene.
Also these two close up shots of the detective, make him seem cunning and and like he is up to something, which again, draws our audience in and encourages them to want to see more of the film and find out what the detective is actually like and why he is like this, does he have some kind of incentive to act like this?
The music can also have an effect in attracting the audience to want to watch more. As the music is almost a bit contrapuntal to the action on the screen, such as the fight scene, the diegetic sound is quite different to what you would expect the music to be like, it is calm, whereas you may expect it to be fast paced and quite loud. We had the idea to create this kind of music, virtually from the beginning, and we had Lianne and Jack in our group, both doing music, so they were able to create this Non Diegetic sound.
6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAfw4aqT_nQ
A link to youtube where my video has been uploaded.
7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
I feel like our group has taken a big step up in the quality of the film, in comparison to our first film. In all aspects of the film, there has been strong improvement.
CAMERAWORK
Our camera work was good in the preliminary film, we used a variety of different shots sizes and angles throughout, but I do think that this improved for the thriller opening, because we were less afraid to be more confident in leaving blank space in the shot, or to the other extreme, no space at all! This is backed up in the top left and top centre. In the preliminary ( top left ) we left a lot of blank space around the face and the shot was more of a close up, whereas in the new one, we left far less space, and I feel this worked very well and the emphasis was on the face more and we were using an extreme close up.
We also experimented with more camera movements in the new film, which we did not attempt in the preliminary. In the bottom centre photo there is a tracking shot and we also used a pan in another shot, so this gave us a lot more variety with camera movement and made the film opening look a lot better as a result.
Also under camera work, I think in the second film, we used the shallow depth of field much better. In the preliminary (middle centre) they are both in focus and there is not much depth of field. Whereas in the new film (left centre) , we used this to much better effect.
In the preliminary, we occasionally forgot to use the white balance option, but I think that we learned from this and in the new film, we had the white balance perfect. This has a massive effect on the film, as you can see that the preliminary (top right) has a yellow wall in the background, but all of our new film shots have pure white walls as we corrected this using the white balance.
EDITING
In the fist film, we only used straight cuts for our film, but in the new film, we thought about how this would look on our film and what we wanted to construct and we used fades and dissolves. In the bottom right, there is a dissolve, and we used this to great effect to show that the time was passing in the interview room. We also used titles, in the preliminary we didn't do this, we only added credits. But I think that our basic titles worked well and didn't overpower the screen. As you can see that bottom left, there are only credits, but in the new films, (middle right and bottom centre) there are titles and they fit well into each corner of the shots.
SOUND
The sound in the preliminary actually worked really well and we stuck with the same sort of method when making the Non diegetic soundtrack for the second film. We stuck with the same sort of contrapuntal sound that we used for the preliminary. There was one difference between the two though, there was no extra non diegetic sound effects in the preliminary and we did add these on using GARAGEBAND in the thriller coursework.
MISE EN SCENE
In the preliminary, our group did not really think about the importance of mise en scene but as we had more complex situations on out coursework we put a lot more time and effort in to this. For example, in the left centre photo, we used a proper tape recorder and also the policeman is in full uniform. This has a massive effect on the continuity of the film because it makes it a lot more believable for the audience.
CHARACTER AND STORY
The way that we constructed the characters for the second film was thought about a lot more. We wanted to make the girl come across as quite a vulnerable character, the policeman as a cunning and sarcastic character, and the chef as quite a nervous and frustrated man. They way we did this was through the script, and what they said, we also used body language ( the girl with her hands in her pocket and the Male protagonist looking down and nervous )
For our film, we started off with covering up his identity completely, making the audience ask themselves more what he is doing there than who is he? In the first shot we used a shallow depth of field to do this, with the focus on the door and the character in the background.
The second shot is a very high angle shot of him from the back, again, still not revealing his identity to the audience.
Third shot in and eyeline match, in shot two he is looking at the door handle, reaches for it and then opens it. This is a very important continuity aspect of our film and is again keeping the emphasis away from his face. This carries on into the fourth shot.
Fifth shot is a sillouhette of him walking down the corridor and and tracking shot behind him. Again, typical to a thriller, asking questions of who he is.
Sixth shot
This starts to reveal the identity of the character, but you still don't know who he is in relation to the film and also the shot is not clear, it is still in a dark light and typical to a thriller, the dark lighting gives you a sense of mischief towards the character.
Seventh Shot
Another shot that links back to the Fifth because of the sillouhette technique used.
Eighth
This shot finally puts some light onto the character and reveals his full identity, so has therefore stopped the audience asking the question of what does he look like, but still asks who he is in the film? This is a crucial link to the next shot which shows him with a policeman in a police station, it is another clear shot of him and confirms that it is the same person as the rest of the film has shown. This then opens a whole load more questions, for example, what has to done to be in this situation? This worked very well in our film and is a typical thriller theme that we felt would be very effective incorporated into our film.
The main conventions of a thriller film are that it in the opening, it asks more questions than it answers, and I think that our film really does this well, in the opening shots of the film. Nothing is given away and it ask a lot of questions! Why is he there? Who is he? Where is he going? Why is he at the police station?
At the beginning of a lot of films, this method of not revealing who the main characters are and why they are there is very effective. Films such as the Dark Knight , Harry Brown and No country for old men. Each of these films cover up their characters identity in different ways but all have the same principle to them.
The first one, No country for old men, sets the scene for the first minute with just shots of landscape, but all the time there is a voice over the top, and this is a method of hiding identity and asking questions to the audience, it makes you think who is the voice from?
The second one, is from the Dark Knight, this film used masks to cover up their identity. But because this character is the only person in this shot, it makes the audience ask why are they significant and who are they in the context of the film?
This is from Harry Brown, this similar to the way we used to cover up identity during the attack scene, with very dark costume and the lighting is bright in the background to take the emphasis off their faces. For our film we have used a lot of methods that Harry Brown has used and this was a crucial thing.
2- How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our product represents the female gender in quite a passive way, as if to suggest that the dominant male attackers think that she is just an object and her sexual orientation is jut as an “object”. We used a girl to be the victim because we thought that it is a more realistic way to do it. The male attackers fit better into the role and come across as more intimidating towards the girl. If the attackers had been female and the victim male, this could have been viewed in a different way by the audience. The male audience may not have been as attracted to watch the film is the victim had been male.
The police officer was a male because we wanted him to come across as quite a sly and cunning character. As if he always gets his own way and has a sarcastic attitude. I think the mise en scene fits in to this well. He dresses well, in a suit, but also has quite a scruffy attitude in the way he represents this dress. He is constantly starring into the eyes of the suspect, making him come across as a powerful intelligent man. This is the way that male police officers seem to be presented to us in most tv dramas and films, but we felt that this stereotypical view of a policeman was used, as it does fit well in to our film.
We tried to give of the impression that these two sets of characters were from a different social class. The attackers, being the ones who are from a working class background and the victim, the chef and the detective being from a higher class and with a higher status in society. We tried to use the fact that the detective is the girls dad in a beneficial way in the opening. Because the female victim doesn’t say much in the clip, we needed the detective ( her dad ) to come over as quite a well spoken and upper class man.
The Mise en Scene of the attack shows the class differences well. The attackers turn up in distinctive hoodies and the victim is well dresses and innocently walking home. The diegetic sound in the film also suggests the social class of the different characters, the bad language coming from the attackers, and the well spoken voices from the detective shows how different it can be between these two social classes. The non diegetic sound, is quite calm and classical and quite contrapuntal to the actual scenes. This suggests that the main characters, and who the rest of the story will be about it actually the victim and the chef, as the soundtrack fits in with their social class better.
We also used a high camera angle on the attack as this shows who has the power at this very point. The power could easily change, but we wanted to portray that the attackers have the power over the girl as this was obvious due to the number of attackers. And we thought that the best way to do this would be through a high angle.
3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The distribution of our film will be done through Independent Art house Cinemas. I think that this is the best option for us as the competition of mainstream cinema films is very high. If we aim for Art House cinemas, we stand a much higher chance of succeeding as these show films of a low budget. As the budget for our product is not very high, we would only release the film to a few british cinemas. Each film would cost us £1500, and I would like to distribute the film all over the UK to specialist cinemas. 6 in England, 3 in scotland and 3 in wales. This is 12 cinemas overall, costing £18000. If the film was then successful in these cinemas, then it is a strong possibility that we would have the funds for more releases in the UK.
I would also like to release the film to Europe, but to do this through European cinemas it would be too expensive to do, for the amount that we would get back. It would cost double the usual price of a film role (£3000) to have a film with subtitles and this is definitely necessary for a European release. Therefore, I think that the better option for a European release is through a simultaneous online release. A website would be created, where you can either pay to watch the film there on the website, or for a slightly more expensive price, you can download the film.
To advertise and promote the film I would mainly use online sources. Through online film download resources, such as Itunes and playstation network, I would offer a free trailer of the film, coming with a link to the website where you can watch or download. As an extra method of advertising, When you download the film and have viewed it, to get a 15% discount of the price of the product, you can email the website to a minimum of 5 contacts and if you reach 15 contacts, this will give you 25% off the cost. This would hopefully produce more viewers of the film and I would hope that at least 1 of the five contacted would watch the film.
To advertise the film in the cinema, I would use the other Art house films to advertise. A trailer of the film would be shown before the film is shown. This would hopefully produce more of the same audience to come and see my film at the same cinema. ??
The certification of the film is 15, This is because there is mild aspects of violence and language througout the film, but it does not need to be classified as an 18 as they are not frequently strongly used. As far as violence is concerned, it only needs to be an 18 if injury and pain is shown in detail, “may be strong but not dwell on the inflition of pain or injury”
This is a link to the website for the British Board of film classification, it is evidence of why our film should be given a certification of 15.
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/download/guidelines/BBFC%20Classification%20Guidelines%202009.pdf
For the distribution of the product, I will use Soda Pictures, they are a British based film company who work with art house and independent cinemas. The main reason for using this company is because of the films and cinemas that they concentrate on, I think that the best way to promote my film is through art house cinemas, so Soda pictures is perfect.
For the distribution of the product, I will use Soda Pictures, they are a British based film company who work with art house and independent cinemas. The main reason for using this company is because of the films and cinemas that they concentrate on, I think that the best way to promote my film is through art house cinemas, so Soda pictures is perfect.
Also they are introducing film downloads from their website, as this is the way that I wanted to show my film outside of the UK, this is a great distributor to use for our film, giving us all the options that we need to distribute our film to the UK and Europe.
http://www.sodapictures.com/about/
http://www.sodapictures.com/about/
4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?
We think that our audience can really be anyone from the ages of 15 and up. People below 15 should not watch the film, because of the clear violence and language used. But anyone above this age can enjoy the film, as we tried to make it attract all audiences but incorporating what it is about in the opening. But, having said that, there is some bad language in the film, so this could possibly offend some older audiences as the style of thrillers has changed in the modern day.
It can have something for everyone, it has some violence and action, and a huge part of the film is based on mystery, which of course can attract anyone. We show that our film has both of theses genres because of the two main scenes we have. There is a fight scene, showing that our film has action, and then also an interview scene, showing that our film will have a mystery side to it. The main film that we used to do our research on was Harry Brown, we all really liked the attack in the opening of this and thought the style would work well in our film. So we took this and made it less violent, meaning that we could then aim our film at a much wider audience.
5 - How did you attract / address your audience?
I think that we attracted our target audiences through the use of the narrative mainly. Our story line is clear but still asks more questions than it answers, like the opening to a thriller should. The fact that not much information about our main character, Mr Collins, is given away, means that our audience want to find out more about him and what he was doing in the area. Also we ask questions about why the policeman is trying to set up the main male character.
6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAfw4aqT_nQ
A link to youtube where my video has been uploaded.
7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
I feel like our group has taken a big step up in the quality of the film, in comparison to our first film. In all aspects of the film, there has been strong improvement.
CAMERAWORK
Our camera work was good in the preliminary film, we used a variety of different shots sizes and angles throughout, but I do think that this improved for the thriller opening, because we were less afraid to be more confident in leaving blank space in the shot, or to the other extreme, no space at all! This is backed up in the top left and top centre. In the preliminary ( top left ) we left a lot of blank space around the face and the shot was more of a close up, whereas in the new one, we left far less space, and I feel this worked very well and the emphasis was on the face more and we were using an extreme close up.
We also experimented with more camera movements in the new film, which we did not attempt in the preliminary. In the bottom centre photo there is a tracking shot and we also used a pan in another shot, so this gave us a lot more variety with camera movement and made the film opening look a lot better as a result.
Also under camera work, I think in the second film, we used the shallow depth of field much better. In the preliminary (middle centre) they are both in focus and there is not much depth of field. Whereas in the new film (left centre) , we used this to much better effect.
In the preliminary, we occasionally forgot to use the white balance option, but I think that we learned from this and in the new film, we had the white balance perfect. This has a massive effect on the film, as you can see that the preliminary (top right) has a yellow wall in the background, but all of our new film shots have pure white walls as we corrected this using the white balance.
EDITING
In the fist film, we only used straight cuts for our film, but in the new film, we thought about how this would look on our film and what we wanted to construct and we used fades and dissolves. In the bottom right, there is a dissolve, and we used this to great effect to show that the time was passing in the interview room. We also used titles, in the preliminary we didn't do this, we only added credits. But I think that our basic titles worked well and didn't overpower the screen. As you can see that bottom left, there are only credits, but in the new films, (middle right and bottom centre) there are titles and they fit well into each corner of the shots.
SOUND
The sound in the preliminary actually worked really well and we stuck with the same sort of method when making the Non diegetic soundtrack for the second film. We stuck with the same sort of contrapuntal sound that we used for the preliminary. There was one difference between the two though, there was no extra non diegetic sound effects in the preliminary and we did add these on using GARAGEBAND in the thriller coursework.
MISE EN SCENE
In the preliminary, our group did not really think about the importance of mise en scene but as we had more complex situations on out coursework we put a lot more time and effort in to this. For example, in the left centre photo, we used a proper tape recorder and also the policeman is in full uniform. This has a massive effect on the continuity of the film because it makes it a lot more believable for the audience.
CHARACTER AND STORY
The way that we constructed the characters for the second film was thought about a lot more. We wanted to make the girl come across as quite a vulnerable character, the policeman as a cunning and sarcastic character, and the chef as quite a nervous and frustrated man. They way we did this was through the script, and what they said, we also used body language ( the girl with her hands in her pocket and the Male protagonist looking down and nervous )
Questions For The Evaluation-Jack Partridge
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forums and conventions of real media products?
The normal camera movements to an intro to a thriller film is usually panning and tracking, this usually shows the particular group of people the audience should be interested in, probably the best example of this is The Dark Knight intro ( the band heist scene ), we used panning and tracking in our opening to show the events that took place in the past, where Mr Collins leaves his work place and goes home. This enables the audience to understand the sequence of events. In thrillers, it is a rarity that you should zoom in and out, this is only used once in The Dark Knight, during an action scene. The main type of framing shot is the close up, this is used to build suspense, it is used to create the effect of mystery at the beginning of a film, we used close up shots throught the film, to emphasise location and establish action.
A common shot is also the long shot, this is used to let the audience see where the action is taking place later on in the film. The most common angle that is used in thrillers are low angles and high angles; high angles are used to show the power of a certain character, the opposite for a low angle. We challenged this not using high angles in the conventional way but we used it to create effect, we did use low angle shots during the interrogation scene to show power for both characters. The mise en scene of a thriller consist of key lighting, location and the objects; the lighting is usually used to set up a particular overriding tone or atmosphere. We developed this idea of atmosphere by using a computer efftect when editing to create a evening/dusk effect. This adds mystery and susspence to the film. The film was shot at different times of the day, for example, the scene at the beggining in the house was shot in the evening and we used the lighting available in the house to create a warm homly atmopshere, no additional light was needed at the point in the film.
Editing is one of the most important things in a thriller film, the most common edit is the straight cut, this makes it seem like everything is at a fast pace and more is happening. We used straight cuts but tried to be unique by not making it fast paced and skipping the murder scene to the body on the floor. This created mytery and susspence.
When editing sound, diegetic and non-diegtic sound are both very important. The diegetic sound is the sound that we can see is being made when the non-diegetic can be a soundtrack or something we cannot see on the screen. Silence is a very common thing in a thriller, when everything goes quiet, it creates a certain effect which makes you scared. After the silence, there is normally a sudden burst in sound which is used to make you jump and be scared. In our film we used a soundtrck throughout to add suspision. This soundtrack we produced oursleves by recording us playing a piano piece we wrote to fit with the film. We wrote it ourselves so that it suggests to the audience mystery and it is inkeeping with the tone and pace of the drama that is unfolding.
One of the conventions is that something horrific could actually happen to you in a real life situation for example, like an innocent girl walking up an alleyway and getting beaten up by a group of unknown guys dressed in hoodies. This is what makes this a thriller.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
A social group is a group of people who share the same goals and beliefs. In our media product, we have a group of gangsters, starting from 2 and ending up with 4 of them coming out to stop the girl running away. This particular social group is a nasty one who team up together to do bad things, mainly hurt innocent people and make everyones lives hell. This social group consists of 4 males around 16-19 years old, from working class backgrounds, living in rundown block of flats in a poor area where there is high unemployment. This group hangs out looking for trouble and is generally feared within the community.
The following example shows how teen gangs can increase to persue a victim. The interesting thing with our film is that it was a group of males attacking a female which is often not portrayed in mordern day films as much as male attacking males as in the example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P3fWR50hmw&NR=1
From our film it is representing the growing increase of unemployed youth. The hoodie trend has come about in the last 15 years which has developed a stereotypical image of youths and trouble. Our film illustrates this in the social group of males that attack the female.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The main ones that would help distribute our film would be: Pathe
vertigo 
optimum releasing
or tartan films,
this is because they help make low budget films get shown to an audience, when they wouldn't usually be shown. An example of this is tartan films prduction of "The Victim" http://www.palisadestartan.com/Film.asp?ProjectID=%7B23D8942F-249C-48EC-B153-9A25312AFA86%7D&action=Select
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for our media thriller would be a 15+ because there is more than one scene of abusive swearing and the start of beating up a girl. The guidelines for a 15 rating film are:
Discrimination, the work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour.
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2/
Our thriller does not endorse discriminatory language as a whole however, there are parts where discrimanatory language is used e.g. "dirty slag". This is the opening scene, if the film carried on, it would not endorse this language and behaviour. An example of this is when the interrogator tries to deal with the suspect.
Sex, sexual activity may be portrayed without strong detail. There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour, but the strongest references are unlikely to be acceptable unless justified by context. Works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal or stimulation are unlikely to be acceptable.
There is violence in the scene but it does not focus on injury and the attack. It switchs from a gang crowding round a girl to the injured girl on the floor.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
The audience would enjoy our film because it creates tension and you get a feeling which will make you scared. The audiences knows the secret when the other characters don't know. This makes you feel like you should be able to tell the other characters on the screen what to do, but you can't so you get the feeling of not being able to tell them, which caused tension but you feel involved.
The opening scene will attract the audience as it is an action scene which immediatly gets you interested in the investigation.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
In our preliminary, we used good use of shots and angles, in the time that we had, now we have had more time to do this task, we have made our framing tight and have used more variety of angles and camera shots, for example: The concentration on the suspects eyes.
We also used lighting in a different way to our preliminary task. We used film lighting in the opening scene which taught us how to create atmosphere and tension. This was illustrated particually in the interrogation scene.
The normal camera movements to an intro to a thriller film is usually panning and tracking, this usually shows the particular group of people the audience should be interested in, probably the best example of this is The Dark Knight intro ( the band heist scene ), we used panning and tracking in our opening to show the events that took place in the past, where Mr Collins leaves his work place and goes home. This enables the audience to understand the sequence of events. In thrillers, it is a rarity that you should zoom in and out, this is only used once in The Dark Knight, during an action scene. The main type of framing shot is the close up, this is used to build suspense, it is used to create the effect of mystery at the beginning of a film, we used close up shots throught the film, to emphasise location and establish action.
A common shot is also the long shot, this is used to let the audience see where the action is taking place later on in the film. The most common angle that is used in thrillers are low angles and high angles; high angles are used to show the power of a certain character, the opposite for a low angle. We challenged this not using high angles in the conventional way but we used it to create effect, we did use low angle shots during the interrogation scene to show power for both characters. The mise en scene of a thriller consist of key lighting, location and the objects; the lighting is usually used to set up a particular overriding tone or atmosphere. We developed this idea of atmosphere by using a computer efftect when editing to create a evening/dusk effect. This adds mystery and susspence to the film. The film was shot at different times of the day, for example, the scene at the beggining in the house was shot in the evening and we used the lighting available in the house to create a warm homly atmopshere, no additional light was needed at the point in the film.
Editing is one of the most important things in a thriller film, the most common edit is the straight cut, this makes it seem like everything is at a fast pace and more is happening. We used straight cuts but tried to be unique by not making it fast paced and skipping the murder scene to the body on the floor. This created mytery and susspence.
When editing sound, diegetic and non-diegtic sound are both very important. The diegetic sound is the sound that we can see is being made when the non-diegetic can be a soundtrack or something we cannot see on the screen. Silence is a very common thing in a thriller, when everything goes quiet, it creates a certain effect which makes you scared. After the silence, there is normally a sudden burst in sound which is used to make you jump and be scared. In our film we used a soundtrck throughout to add suspision. This soundtrack we produced oursleves by recording us playing a piano piece we wrote to fit with the film. We wrote it ourselves so that it suggests to the audience mystery and it is inkeeping with the tone and pace of the drama that is unfolding.
One of the conventions is that something horrific could actually happen to you in a real life situation for example, like an innocent girl walking up an alleyway and getting beaten up by a group of unknown guys dressed in hoodies. This is what makes this a thriller.
This is a 2 shot/ medium close up we used during an interrogation scene, this is similar to the one in harry brown:
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
A social group is a group of people who share the same goals and beliefs. In our media product, we have a group of gangsters, starting from 2 and ending up with 4 of them coming out to stop the girl running away. This particular social group is a nasty one who team up together to do bad things, mainly hurt innocent people and make everyones lives hell. This social group consists of 4 males around 16-19 years old, from working class backgrounds, living in rundown block of flats in a poor area where there is high unemployment. This group hangs out looking for trouble and is generally feared within the community.
The following example shows how teen gangs can increase to persue a victim. The interesting thing with our film is that it was a group of males attacking a female which is often not portrayed in mordern day films as much as male attacking males as in the example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P3fWR50hmw&NR=1
From our film it is representing the growing increase of unemployed youth. The hoodie trend has come about in the last 15 years which has developed a stereotypical image of youths and trouble. Our film illustrates this in the social group of males that attack the female.
Harry Brown is an example of the hoodie culture
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The main ones that would help distribute our film would be: Pathe
vertigo optimum releasingor tartan films,this is because they help make low budget films get shown to an audience, when they wouldn't usually be shown. An example of this is tartan films prduction of "The Victim" http://www.palisadestartan.com/Film.asp?ProjectID=%7B23D8942F-249C-48EC-B153-9A25312AFA86%7D&action=Select4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for our media thriller would be a 15+ because there is more than one scene of abusive swearing and the start of beating up a girl. The guidelines for a 15 rating film are:
Discrimination, the work as a whole must not endorse discriminatory language or behaviour.
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2/
Our thriller does not endorse discriminatory language as a whole however, there are parts where discrimanatory language is used e.g. "dirty slag". This is the opening scene, if the film carried on, it would not endorse this language and behaviour. An example of this is when the interrogator tries to deal with the suspect.
Drugs, Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse. The misuse of easily accessible and highly dangerous substances (for example, aerosols or solvents) is unlikely to be acceptable. This does not apply to our thriller because it is not used.
Horror, strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.
Imitable behaviour, dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorised.
Language, there may be frequent use of strong language ("F" word). The strongest terms(the "C" word) may be acceptable if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeated use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable. We have used the "F" word occasionally throughout the opening scene. This is allowed for a 15.
Nudity, nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but without strong detail. There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context.
Sex, sexual activity may be portrayed without strong detail. There may be strong verbal references to sexual behaviour, but the strongest references are unlikely to be acceptable unless justified by context. Works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal or stimulation are unlikely to be acceptable.
Theme, no theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate for 15 year olds.
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2/
The opening scene would only be accepatble if this discrimantory behaviour is not continued throughout the film and the message we would have portrayed is that the suspects would have got caught and punished for the crime they have committed.
The opening scene would only be accepatble if this discrimantory behaviour is not continued throughout the film and the message we would have portrayed is that the suspects would have got caught and punished for the crime they have committed.
Violence, violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable. Strong sadistic or sexualised violence is also unlikely to be acceptable.
There may be detailed verbal references to sexual violence but any portrayal of sexual violence must be discreet and have a strong contextual justification.
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2/
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2/
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
The audience would enjoy our film because it creates tension and you get a feeling which will make you scared. The audiences knows the secret when the other characters don't know. This makes you feel like you should be able to tell the other characters on the screen what to do, but you can't so you get the feeling of not being able to tell them, which caused tension but you feel involved.
The opening scene will attract the audience as it is an action scene which immediatly gets you interested in the investigation.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
In our preliminary, we used good use of shots and angles, in the time that we had, now we have had more time to do this task, we have made our framing tight and have used more variety of angles and camera shots, for example: The concentration on the suspects eyes.
We also used lighting in a different way to our preliminary task. We used film lighting in the opening scene which taught us how to create atmosphere and tension. This was illustrated particually in the interrogation scene.
Lianne - Evaluation questions.
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
A gang
We cast a group of teenage/ young adult gang made up of males and the viewer can see nearer the beginning of he scene that two members of the gang are white. This is a negative representation. The below is a screen shot from the movie ‘the Lincoln lawyer,’ and although both gangs are different they are both represented as intimidating and wearing dark colours such as black which stereotypically represents the protagonists in movies such as Luther.
The male character (suspect/ antagonist)
The Detective
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
Camera
Top left: Using a dissolve. We used this to show that the scene is returning back to the present time from a flashback from the past. We also used a darker lighting to show it was getting dark.
Top center: A typical theme for a thriller. This is a medium shot of the detective and suspect in the interview room. We made sure we showed the tape recorder and surroundings to le the audience knw wherer it was.
Top right: We showed the protagonists following a girl. We made the character steriotypical making the protagonists big and scary, dressed in black and confident whilst the victim is small and female. She is dressed in a way that shows she is feminine and walks hunched and fast making her seem wary. The low angle we used to shoot this shot made the villans look even more big and dominant and the victim more vunerable and small.
Middle left: This shot make enigma in the scene. In the previous the detective asks “can you tell us where you were at the time of the attack?” immediately following with a flashback of where the suspect was. He sees something and hides which makes the audience ask why he’s hiding and what he’s seen. The flashback then stops and the next scene is of the interigation room again. The suspect replies “I don’t need to answer that, why am I even here?” which then makes the viewer wonder why he is not saying where he was.
Middle Center: Another typical theme for a thriller having a dead body. After the gang beat up the victim, they show her lying on the floor, the ringleader of the gang gives the body a kick making the scene even more horrific and shocking and once again creates enigma and makes the audience ask why the girl got attacked.
Middle Right: We showed the suspect walking home from work and he’s just about to walk up and see the attack. The sillohetted tree and dark lighting creates a bleak, scary and mysterious feel to the scene. It contrast with the happy sounds of birds tweeting in the background.
Bottom Left: A prop we used fo the interrogation scene. It was a good idea because the mise en scene we used really conveyed that the set was an investigation room.
Bottom Center: This is a shot of the suspect after he has been questioned in relation to the attack. We used dramatic irony and showed the audience that the suspect didn’t do the attack although the detective doesn’t know this and thinks he did. We intended the suspect to come across as the antagonist character and got him to wear bright clothes that didn’t seem evil or criminal. Also we cast a character with an innocent look about him so he seemed even more like he didn’t commit a crime.
Bottom Right: Camera use. We wanted to shoot a variety of angles and distances throughout the short film and though this angle on the suspects eyes. If the susect was guilty he would look more shifty and wouldn’t make eye contact. So we wanted him to look innocent so we did an eyeline match making the suspect look straight at the detective being sincere.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
A gang
We cast a group of teenage/ young adult gang made up of males and the viewer can see nearer the beginning of he scene that two members of the gang are white. This is a negative representation. The below is a screen shot from the movie ‘the Lincoln lawyer,’ and although both gangs are different they are both represented as intimidating and wearing dark colours such as black which stereotypically represents the protagonists in movies such as Luther.
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| The gang from Our thriller |
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| The Gang from 'The Lincoln Lawyer' |
How is the gang represented?
Mise en scene and editing:
We made sure the characters wore dark hoodies to make them seem even more intimidating and scary. We edited our shots together and used folly sound such as a hard kick when the ringleader of the gang kicked the victim.
Camera angles and lighting:
The shots of the gang were nearly always shot from a slightly low angle to emphasize their size and power over the victim. They are filmed in a dark lighting to make they seem mysterious and people with darker personalities. We did one shot from a POV ass one of the gang members. This gives a fee of how they are all running towards the girl and how they are catching up with her fast.
Why did we represent the characters in this way?
We represented them in this way because stereotypically, males are the villains and we wanted the audience to be able to relate to it and other thrillers. The gang are violent and beat up a female and we did this to create anger amongst the viewers and a dislike for the characters who are clearly the antagonists.
Who is our target audience?
Our audience is for teenagers and young adults and we are going to make the certificate age 15 as its unsuitable for anybody younger because of the amount of violence. We also think that an older audience won’t perhaps enjoy it as much as its quite shocking and some scenes may be a bit disturbing for some people.
The Female character (victim)
Once again. This is another negative representation as it makes the female seem vunerable and weak.
How is she represented?
Mise en scene and editing:
She wears a skirt and jewlery to represent this. And she is small compared to the characters in the gang in height anyway so this makes her seem even more defensless.
Camera Angles and sound:
We nearly always shot the female character from a high angle or surrounded by the gang so she always looks small, weak and powerless. We had a calm but minor non- diagetic soundtrack playing in the backgroup which works as a soundbridge over all the scenes. It shows how mysterious and unfriendly the situation is.
Why did we represent the character in this way?
We wanted the audience to be horrified by the scene where a group of 4+ men attacked a small girl. She was dressed in a skirt and jewelry making her seem even more feminine and makes her seem sweet and vunerable. She doesn’t look fierce or strong so we hope the audience can feel sympathy and emotion towards the character and want her case to be sorted out in the rest of the movie.
The male character (suspect/ antagonist)
The suspect is male and white. This is a positive representation as he comes across as the antagonist character.
How is he represented?
Mise en scene and editing:
He wears brght colours making him instantly seem like he is the antagonist because in movies the protagonists genrally wears dark and mysterious colours. He is very open with the way he moves and doesn’t try to hide himself away. He is clearly upset about what happened because we did a lot of dissolves showing he was thinking back to the attack scene and then looking upset when he remembered and we cut back to him in the present. The lighting only lights half his face which creats enigma and mystery.
Camera angles and sound
We shot the suspect from a low angle making him seem like he has power and we did a close up shot of his eyes as he directly looks at the detective as if he has nothing to hide. We have diagetic sound of the detective and suspect speakinging and the non diagetic soundtrack playing througout,
Why did we represent the character in this way?
We wanted him to seem innocent although have an air of mystery about him as he saw the attack but he’s denying it. We want the audeience to like him but to be unsure of his motives which creates enigma.
The Detective
Inspector hunt is quite patronizing and you can tell he’s from a middle class background because of his job and the smart quit he’s wearing. This is a positive representation although I don’t think the audience will like the character very much.
How is he represented?
Mise en scene:
He wears a suit and the tie is quite messy and his hair so you can tell he’s quite laid back about his job and knows he is going to do well however he looks as he acts quite cocky. He is in a room with no windows and has a tape recorder and a table so you can tell what his job it and what he’s doing.
Camera angles:
He is shot mostly from low and eye level angles and close up which show he has status and power. And when there is a close up of his mouth this could represent that he knows what he’s talking about.
Why did we represent the character in this way?
We wanted the audience to know that he’s the dominant character in the situation and to feel like he’s a bit of a douche as he is putting the suspect down constantly even though the audience probably thinks he’s innocent. He’s very cocky and self-confidant which could be annoying to some people.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The aim for our audience is for teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15 and 30. Obviously older views can watch and enjoy it but the language and themes of the thriller is quite modern and swear words used could perhaps shock and offend
An older audience.
An older audience would have grown up with legendary thriller films such as strangers on a train by Alfred Hitchcock.
Strangers on a train
Most 50’s thrillers were a lot less violent than modern thrillers. In the strangers on a train trailer, when somebody got shot there was a element of comedy about it. They made it very clear there was a love story wrapped into the story and not many modern thrillers would do this, which I think is a bad idea as it may attract more females and create a wider audience.
- The credits are quite cheesy and look like they belong in a cartoon, which makes the movie not seem very serious and not quite so sinister. Whereas in a modern thriller a more somber text would be used normally.
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| Credits from Strangers on a Train. |
-There are still similarities because the protagonist is wearing black and anonymous and the antagonist looks vulnerable and wear lighter colours.
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| The antagonist and Protagonist from the movie Strangers on a train. |
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| The protagonists and antagonist from our thriller. This movie is more for Males because usually they enjoy movies and games with violence in more than girls. Females may also not like the movie due to the negative representation on the main female character, which makes her seem weak and dependable. Below is 2 graphs showing the ages and genders who watched the thrillers ‘The Bourne supremacy’ and ‘Good Will hunting’ In both the age group who watched the thrillers most was 15-24 and the gender that watched thrillers more are male. We aimed to achieve the same audience in our thriller. |
5. how did you attract / address your audience?
I think the audeince will like our film because we have used steriotypical charachters (the girl being the victim, the protagonist being annonomus males) and steriotypical scenes such as a brutal attack happening in a dark alleyway.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
Camera
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| Before (our preliminary) |
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| After (our thriller opening) Camera angles. I think in the preliminary, because we had Joe in our group, our camera work was very good from the beginning as he was great at getting a tight frame all the time and with our input on ideas for camera angle it worked out really well. The only thing that we improved on with our camera work was our confidence and how we had the confidence to use more unusual and unique angles to make our thriller more interesting. We also used some shallow depth of field in the first scene, which we didn’t use at all in our preliminary. Sound Editing We had a non-diagetic soundtrack playing in the background of both videos. Both were parallel soundtracks and complimented the films very much. We added some folly sounds (such as a kick, ambient sounds and birds tweeting) into our second video making it more effective than the preliminary, which only had the diagetic sounds recorded in. Visual editing and continuity editing
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| After (the thriller opening) In the preliminary we only used straight cuts. In the Thriller, we used dissolves and fades throughout the film as well as putting the credits on the page while there were images moving instead of just on a black screen at the end like we did in our preliminary. We did really good continuity editing in both films making sure that every detail was perfect. Such as in the preliminary when jack puts his hat on and when he goes through the door. We also filmed the scene when the girl a boy talked over a few days so we had to make sure the chairs were in exactly the same position. And then in the thriller, we made sure that the female character and the gang was standing in the same places when we cut to different camera angle. We also had the main male character opening the door and the detective pressing the button on the recorder so we had to make sure it looked although they did it in one smooth movement. Character Building and construction of the story. In the preliminary we don’t really build up the characters much as there was not much time so the audience don’t really know anything about them whereas in the thriller opening, you could tell; The main Male character works in a kitchen as a chef: We can tell this because of his clothing, (an apron and white hat) the tables, the sign that says red wine on it, the noises of plate crashing in the background and fire extinguisher.  The detective has works in the police station and is interrogating the male character, because of the room with no windows, the table with the detective and suspect sitting either side, the tape recorder and how the detective is in a suit.  |
The story in our thriller is a lot more built up because we had more time and used 3 different scenes to make it more interesting. The preliminary was shot all in the same place. There are also more characters in the thriller and unlike in the preliminary the audience doesn’t know what’s going on and what’s going to happen so its creates enigma unlike your typical romantic movie.
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