EVALUATION QUESTION SEVEN

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

The technical skills I learnt whilst making our preliminary task and used in our final opening are all the skills I have in terms of using using various shot types, camera angles, lighting and editing. The shot types that were used in our preliminary task were heavily influenced by other symmetrical camera shots from film such as those by Wes Anderson, however we were aware that the shot types needed to be varied and so included a low angle shot, some mid-shots, long-shots and tracking shots throughout. 
 

Preliminary task

Final thriller opening

The tracking shots used in our 
prelim were mostly used in our thriller opening as we felt they gave the most narrative and allowed the audience to follow the characters easily. The tracking shots for both also used the rule of three, as we felt this was the best framing to use in order to keep our audience focused on our character whilst also revealing the surroundings of our film. 

Another shot type we used and learnt from making our prelim was the mid shots that included our character placed in the middle of the screen. We decided to use this shot again, it created an aesthetically pleasing shot and gave our film an order surrounding the chaos of the plot. The mid-shot was an simple shot that we could use to simply establish characters and surroundings without any difficulty. 

The framing of our thriller film was quite simplistic as we did not think of it as much as for our preliminary, because we wanted to focus on the story- a feature our preliminary task hardly had. 
The lighting in our preliminary task was used to juxtapose the action we tried to present. With the warming candlelit Cathedral light against the possible story of a drug deal we felt this was the best way to present something out of the ordinary however for our thriller opening we realised this would not work. Our preliminary task,

due to the lighting and opposing atmosphere,created a documentary-like atmosphere rather than the thriller one we were looking for, and so for our thriller film we stuck to a natural lighting using the time of the day - evening with grey/blue lighting- as a pathetic fallacy to try and portray the emotions of our characters and the eerie plot. 

The editing for the preliminary task was fairly simplistic and required minimal experimentation, because we had filmed everything as we wanted it, there was no need to flip any shots, alter the colour or add any sound. This was different for our thriller opening as all of these features were needed due to the difficulties we had with re-filming and the clarity of the story. The preliminary task did help however for us to understand Premier Pro slightly better and therefore we could experiment with colour alteration and flipping the shots. (EDITING SCREENSHOT)
No editing techniques were used in our preliminary task such as cross-fades or fade outs as we felt it didn't need too much to in order to explain the story. The thriller opening did use some editing techniques such as: Cross fades for the flashbacks, fade to black for the ending and the sound needed to be faded in and out. These techniques were not too difficult to do after we had already learnt the basic editing techniques from our preliminary task. 
The sound for both films was difficult at first due to the lack of an external mic. This made the diegetic sound in both very quite and although this is a fixable problem within the editing program we still had trouble. Each sound clip, as mentioned in the previous post, would attach together and make it difficult to adjust the sound levels for specific sound clips. 

Through working on both our prelim and thriller opening I have learnt that working to s specific brief is fine although it does make it difficult die to the fact that there are restrictions with the amount of film, the genre and the shots we could use although it did help to keep the opening purposeful. This was a feature we found difficult to accept after the freedom of the prelim task. The generic conventions played a huge part in this, because our preliminary task held no genre or subject, we could use whichever shots and locations we felt were the most enjoyable rather than the ones that fitted the genre or style the best. The specific guidelines did help to eliminate the threat of our film merging genres however as our preliminary task seemed to do. 
The research and planning throughout both films was highly important and I feel the amount of research we had done for our thriller opening really helped us to decide on specific things within the film such as the camera movement coming from the research on the camera work in 'Psycho' or the non-diegetic and diegetic sound from the research of the sound in the film 'Sin-City'. 

EVALUATION QUESTION SIX

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Presentational devices used

The presentational devices used on my blog were used mostly to explain our opening and the research that went into it in the best way possible. The devices used included Youtube clips, Powerpoints, mind-maps, storyboards, drawings and, the most new to me, Prezis. Prezis were difficult at first to use however after experimenting with them, using various templates and even making my own, I quickly realised that they were an effective way of presenting certain pieces of work such as the genres of thrillers. There were a few areas I was unsure about. Firstly I found it difficult to insert a powerpoint into a blogpost, and so screenshot each slide and placed them in as I would photos-this could be something to improve upon next time. The other things I felt would be too difficult to approach and include throughout my blog was an audio commentary and a piece to camera. This is because I find it not as effective to explain a concept without the use of a visual aspect such as pictures or videos. This is another thing that I could experiment with next time. 

Technology really helped with research, being able to use Youtube videos and photographs to explain ideas was extremely useful, and allowed me to find out information on films and concepts that I wasn't aware of before. The technology used in planning was equally useful in both helping to scout our location using our mobile phone and DSLR cameras and in experimenting with various and slightly more difficult shots. 

EVALUATION QUESTION FIVE

How did you attract/address your audience?

1)Addressing the audience for our thriller film was considered mostly through the character types however there were a few other factors that we used in order to attract and engage an audience. 

The narrative for our opening used various narrative techniques, both enhancing our plot and engaging an audience. The first and most prominent technique we used was flashbacks. Flashbacks are often used in thriller films especially to allow the audience to gain a full understanding of the plot and to gain knowledge of the characters. Often flashbacks will show the audience something that the characters may not know, giving the audience a deeper awareness  and a sense of expectancy that,often in thrillers, will be taken away using an unusual plot twist or in not revealing the full amount of information in the flashbacks. For our thriller we intended for our flashbacks to show something that the main protagonist had not seen i.e both girls walking together and later her friend running. This gave the impression that our character did not know what may happen whereas the audience could have a rough idea. Through the naive nature of our character and the audiences awareness of what danger she may encounter, we could keep the audience engaged and waning to see what might happen. Many thrillers such as the TV series 'Fargo' use fist person flashbacks where characters experience flashbacks of past events either they have caused or been through in order to clearly present a characters feelings on something that has happened, however we felt since our actors were not experienced it would be difficult to clearly express emotion without it becoming obvious and therefore we decided to use flashbacks for the audience only. 

Some examples of thriller films that inspired our idea by using flashbacks for the audience are:

Don't Look Now: 
Don't Look Now(1973) 'A married couple grieving the recent death of their little daughter are in Venice when they encounter two elderly sisters, one of whom is psychic and brings a warning from beyond.'(IMDB)

The film features confusing and slightly horror themes throughout, with flashbacks revealing new and already mentioned information to help the audience gain an insight into the characters and an understanding of the plot. The trailer shows a few of these scenes:

Another narrative technique used to engage our audience was the character types. Our three characters included the antagonist, the protagonist and the victim-although our protagonist would also gain the latter title at the end of our opening. These three characters are the most common within all types of thriller film including crime, film noir and horror. We used these common features within thriller films as we felt immediately the audience could identify each character and piece together the story behind them. The binary opposites created between the protagonist and the antagonist; created using costume and camera focus upon each character, was used to engage audience in presenting these opposites we could enhance the obvious traits of the characters, the innocence of the protagonist and destructive nature of the antagonist, and make clear to the audience again who was who. 

2) Our opening ends on a cliffhanger to create suspense and keep the films ambiguity. We felt, because our film is only an opening, we needed to keep our audience engaged in order to keep the opening interesting and to establish it as only an opening rather than a short film. The opening ends with our antagonist's hand touching our protagonist's arm, after which the screen goes black and the sound of a static television appears. This created a finality to the opening whilst at the same time kept the plot intriguing allowing the film to end at an appropriate point and leave the audience wondering what may happen next.

3) The mise-en-scene throughout our film was a fairly familiar setting to our target audience. The film took place both in a small woodland area surrounded by the city an on a bus journey through it. For our target audience of 16-20 year olds these areas would be fairly familiar as most people this age live in, or near, the city and in most areas woodland is common both in parks and surrounding well known buildings. We used this more common mise-en-scene in order for our film to have an element of realism for the audience and create something that could possibly happen. The recognisable location also allowed us to focus on the plot, and not have to try and explain the surroundings in the film. Many thriller use this technique in order to create something common, a woodland, into something out of the ordinary, a murder scene. Films such as:

The Shining- The setting of The Shining is fairly average, with most of the film shot in a hotel, the audience are familiar with the surroundings and can identify themselves with the story and characters easily. 








 The Conjuring- Like most horror/thriller films The Conjuring is set it an ordinary family home throughout to keep the surroundings recognisable and in having a simple mise-en-scene the plot can be explored and made far more complex. 





4) Our characters, due to the age of the actors, mirror the target audience we were aiming to engage. This was due to both the fact that the actors we wanted to use were fairly young and that we wanted the target audience to be able to relate and engage with our protagonist. The costumes used, as mentioned before reflected the character types, however we also wanted to represent age within our costumes. The subdued, plain, pastel colours of our protagonist were used in order to present an innocence and youthfulness that reflected the youth of our target audience whilst also presenting someone that seems a realistic character. The costume of our protagonist did represent the age of our character, with the dark colours suggesting a lack of such youth, however we were more focused on the character type we wanted to present when thinking of the costume. 

5) The lighting throughout our film was kept fairly natural in order to keep the opening as something that could happen however we were careful at the time of day we filmed for specific shots. The first few shots on the bus, with the non-diegetic sound of the murder reports, are kept quite dark in order to match the eerie sounds the audience were hearing. The later shots of our protagonist walking through the woodland before placing the flowers down are shot in an evening light, with the sun setting, both to present that these shots were not meant to be as eerie and also to represent the idea that something was about to happen- that as the sun goes so does the safety of our character. 

The final few shots of our protagonist and antagonist were again slightly darker in order to maintain the sense of doom we wanted to create, an inescapable feeling for both the character and audience. 

The sound throughout our piece was not complicated but included lots of different aspects in order to keep our audience engaged and interested in the story. The news reports we used were the most prominent sound feature, both reports gave a deeper narrative to our plot in adding more information on the murder and establishing our characters. 
The editing was kept similar throughout, using jump cuts to transition through shots. We did however use cross fades to clearly represent our flashback scenes, so that it would be explicitly clear that those shots were flashbacks.
We used various different camera shots throughout our piece to keep our audience engaged and our opening interesting. The main shots of the opening were standard shots including wide and long shots to reveal our characters. We took a few shot ideas from other thriller films, the antagonist was represented in the beginning using a range of hand held shots. This idea as taken, as mentioned in previous posts, from the Blair Witch Project, and helped to both present our antagonist and differ the style of filming to keep it unusual. (SHOTS OF HAND HELD PROTAG) 

FILMS MENTIONED BEFORE THAT HAVE INFLUENCED OUR OPENING

The Shining                                     Se7en

The Blair Witch Project                        Zodiac

These few films were chosen as inspiration and as the intertextual references throughout our opening as we felt they reflected  the story, setting and characters of the opening the best. 

OTHER FILMS THAT MAY HAVE HAD AN IMPACT ON OUR FILM AND AUDIENCE

The Woman In Black                          Misery

The Babadook                               

EVALUATION QUESTION FOUR

Who would be your audience for your media product?

The most obvious primary audience for our thriller opening will be a teen/young adult age, from 16 to 20s. 
Gender: //
Ethnicity: //
Sexuality: //

The media texts that may engage our target audience is hard to gauge as although the age range is small,people have varying tastes and therefore although a certain age range may enjoy our film more than another, it is fairly difficult to place the audience into specific likes and dislikes. Considering this I have tried to find pieces I enjoy and also ones that both fit our film and the idea of young people creating independent media. 


                                                 FILM











Some films that may have been reflected in our film, as mentioned before are 'The Shining' or 'The Zodiac' however i feel our film also reflected themes from slightly more independent films and not always thrillers.

Wes Anderson


Wes Anderson's films are often seen as independent films using odd themes and creative plot lines/scenery in order to create slightly bizarre films and keeping the 'independent' label despite their success. Each film presents a completely different plot although often the films will use the same camerawork or mise-en-scene giving a distinct look that is easily recognisable as Wes Anderson's work.

Our target audience may have an interest in his work as our opening is also an independent thriller with unusual plot points and interesting turns. 



                                      

                             TV

With our target audience being a teen/young adult, the TV programmes that would most suit our audience would fit the age group as well as fitting the thriller genre. 

American Horror Story:

American Horror Story is a thriller series targeted mainly at a younger teen audience. The series contains a complex plot line and features a distorted and confusing nature, giving the series an independent feel whilst keeping the mainstream title. 
The series would fit our target audience perfectly as not only does it match our choice of films for intertextuality in terms of mise-en-scene and story, but also gives an the independent unusual stance on TV. 
(Photo above taken from AHS website)

The X Files:

The X Files is a series based on two investigators of alien activity, targeting people of all ages and also presenting a thriller and slightly sci-fi sub genre. The TV series presents an unusual crime thriller, with the theme of extra terrestrials the series has a theme that not many other series have. This unusual nature creates again an independent genre but also fits with mainstream TV. The unusual characters and plot also enhances the arthouse feel, giving a perfect platform for our target audience of independent film enthusiasts. 
(Photo taken from Xfileswiki.com)




                              MAGAZINES

                       Little white lies 





















Little white lies magazine is a film review magazine, reviewing both mainstream and more independent films and includes interviews from celebrities in film and music along with articles about varying media topics. The Magazine also features interesting cover art by varying old and new upcoming artists appealing to the younger generation and fitting our independent arthouse genre.



(layouts of Little White Lies taken from their website)

Little White lies also has a website featuring articles from the magazines and video interviews with both upcoming celebrities i.e musicians, artists or filmmakers and also more familiar directors or actors. 



This magazine would fit our target audience perfectly as, as seen above, the magazine often features films that are of the independent genre; 'The Life Aquatic', 'The Darjeeling Limited' and 'Submarine' are all considered arthouse films that appeal to many especially young audiences due to their different and unique style. 

Bullett 

Bullett magazine mainly features popular culture; music, art and design, film and fashion. The magazine has a huge following of young adults and teens through including modern culture and providing provocative articles.  This mainstream magazine produces articles on both mainstream media such as popular films or music, and also slightly more independent media with art from varying artists old and new. The magazine being specifically targeted towards a young adult audience fits our thriller openings target audience of 16-20s perfectly. The magazine also targets all social groups with no specific gender or sexuality being targeted, this is reflected of our film as we didn't feel it necessary to target specific social groups. (taken from Bullett.com)

Both magazines show upcoming young creators and specifically target these with various articles on differing subjects throughout media and therefore because of this lack of a specific target audience, within the young adult age range, the magazines fit our fairly general target audience of between the age range of 16-20s perfectly. 

NEWSPAPERS

Many newspapers such as The Guardian and The I both feature reviews within media; arts, drama/theatre, film and writing and feature more cultural articles such as within The Guardians Art and Design section. Both newspapers do not necessarily target our age range however they offer varying new and upcoming ideas within the media and create a newspaper that may interest a younger adult audience. 















(The I//The Guardian culture section)






The I also has a 'student' section on their website, with articles and news from different universities and promoting activities/opportunities for students. 

MUSIC

Finding specific artists or even genres of music that our target audience would enjoy was fairly difficult as, obviously people have varying tastes, however there are a few genres/artists that many people of our target age range enjoy.  

Although it is hard to say I would expect our audience to enjoy fairly mainstream music rather than, for example, heavy metal. This may be as from the TV, magazines and film choice I have made for our target audience, mainstream or music along the alternative side would be slightly more fitting. 

EVALUATION QUESTION THREE

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

POWERPOINT

EVALUATION QUESTION TWO

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our thriller opening mainly focuses on the representation of gender however it does feature aspects of other social groups such as age or social class. The representation of gender throughout our clip was kept conventional to the thriller film genre in order to keep the simplicity throughout and for the audience to be able to immediately determine which character plays which. In most thriller films females are presented as having characteristics of weakness or subordination,resulting in them becoming the victim of the antagonist. Males however are usually presented as a binary opposite,powerful and dominant, this representation is seen throughout the media and shown in thriller films, especially with a protagonist and antagonist, in a way to create a clear power difference between the genders and allow for the two characters to be defined easily. A perfect example of this is 'The Shining', the antagonist of the film is a male who attempts to kill the victim who is a female,this stereotyping reinforces current social structure and conforms to traditional gender roles.
(http://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1hsu6l/the_shining_axe_loop/) 

A contemporary example of a film that reverses these gender roles is 'Fatal Attraction', throughout the film the gender roles are challenged as the female character antagonises the male, presenting him as a less strong character and keeping the females power dominant throughout. However this power is taken later in the film as, inevitably she is murdered. 
This theme of the deviance of a female character is often stopped by having the character die or go through some form of retribution, commonly this plot is seen in film noir's femme fatale and originally was a way to present that a female's deviance will lead to punishment in one way or another. This representation again seems to fit the traditional gender roles within the media of female 'weakness' and males as a strong figure, and is another reason why we chose to fit these stereotypes in our opening. 

We kept the traditional 'innocent' female character, maintaining subordination against our male antagonist through the costumes. The protagonists costume, as mentioned in the costume post, is muted with colours such as grey,pink and beige to heavily contrast our antagonists dark and dreary costume consisting of black and dark greens. As mentioned before the intextual reference for costume came from the character 'Amelia' from 'The Babadook' and although she was much older than our protagonist we felt the muted colours of her costume allowed a youthful innocence to be presented that was perfect for our female character.  

The representation of age in another feature in our thriller film. Although the age of each character is not revealed it's fairly clear that, because the age of the actors, they could be teenagers or young adults. The antagonist of our film however is established in the beginning quite clearly as a 'man', the recording from the news report reveals this, and so presents two ages within our opening. 
The relationship between the young adult and teenager is extremely negative, the young adult is the antagonist and teenager the protagonist and victim. The interxtual reference for age was also taken from the character 'hannah' from the TV series 'Remember Me', Hannah is a young adult who, the same as our character, is presented as a young adult with the use of a bus. The bus allows the audience to recognise that maybe, although she is old enough to drive, she has not got the money to keep a car and therefore is a fairly young person. 

The representation of social class is shown through Geoff's character, he is presented as a drug user or someone how may be homeless-this representation is shown through costume and is references in the costume planning post. Class is not necessarily shown in our our thriller however both protagonists take the bus to the location, this could infer a lack of money or a lower class status however we did not focus on this idea as our film was mainly concerned with the representation gender and age.