Evaluation - Question 1

Evaluation - Question 1

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

Our film opening sequence follows the forms and conventions of real opening sequences, but it also challenges and develops some of these conventions. ‘Remembrance’ is based around the genre of a psychological thriller; however it has aspects of horror due to the deaths of innocent people that will occur. We therefore constructed an opening sequence using some conventions of these genres to make it familiar and recognisable for the audience. However, we wanted to keep the genre mysterious to the audience until the end, when they get a shock. Our opening sequence follows the same form of most openings by Introducing the main character, Introducing the narrative, indicating the themes, including titles throughout, incorporating music and having a visual reference to the film title. The visual film reference consists of a rough, preliminary sketch of the ‘Preminition’.

Our opening sequence doesn’t follow the conventions of typical opening sequences; it has a unique twist. Throughout our opening sequence there are several hints as to the themes of our film which are similar to many themes of other thriller/horror films - things such as dangerous, psychological puzzle, thriller and hidden meaning. We chose this because it keeps our audience on the edge of their seats and constantly engaged.  

Common in other psychological thrillers such as Memento (2000) the film centres on the theme of mental illness is a large part of our film as our central character has been affected mentally by his experiences and this clarifies his on screen actions. Memento is a  American psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, This film is often used to show the distinction between plot and story. The film's events unfold in two separate, alternating narratives — one in color, and the other in black and white. We worked alongside the message sent out by the main character-instead of  showing distinction between the plot we decided to show the character having split personallities.

This theme is also common in Psycho (1960) with Norman Bates who is psychologically affected shows similarities between our main character and plot.

Our film challenges the conventions of typical thriller movies to characterisation. The main character plays a hero and villain but in the eyes of society and everyone around him he’s seen as a villain as it seems he planned to destroy the world trade towers, but really he was just in a state of mind to see into the future. We make the audience feel sympathy for him at the start while he’s admitted to an insane asylum. The audience believe he’s mentally ill, but really its one of his split personalities kicking in. Affected deeply, it has made him unsettled and disrupted his life in other words he’s seen as a social outcast. We challenge forms and conventions of a typical thriller killing innocent people; we made a slight twist to show the character is actually normal depending on the state of mind he’s in.

We did not challenge conventions of a typical thriller/horror film because we incorporated scary music in the background of certain scenes-this was to keep suspense . Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller and Horror genres. However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre, in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre.

Conventions of the sound devices are creative as the soundtrack is quite ominous, dark and depressing and resembles the heart beat in some parts. This tone of music is conventional of the thriller genre and is used to keep the audience on edge and build up the suspense.

We also challenge a lot of the conventions usually associated with a thriller to create interest among audiences. A main part is lighting as we had a dark setting in a office, props such as a lamp towering over the main character throughout the scene in the office helps recognise the them and teaches the audience who’s the main protagonist.

Our opening sequence follows a classic narrative pattern, showing the character waking up, getting ready and preparing for his evil actions that will follow in the rest of the film. Throughout our sequence there are indicators of disruption, such as the nightmare, the news broadcasting, the newspaper articles and images. Despite the fact that the character is doing everyday ordinary things such as waking up and sitting at a desk, it is edited in a way to make the audience feel insecure. This was common in thriller movies, where everyday circumstances are changed into a frightening situation, putting the audience on edge.

As our opening sequence follows a classic narrative pattern and is a linear sequence, similar to other real thriller film openings, we tried to stick to our continuity measures. Various camera and editing techniques were used in order to achieve this as effectively as possible such as transitions of fades and dissolves during the mains characters black out to convey a slight passing of time. We also shot the nightmare from varied angles and distances so that we could edit this together and present the idea of disorientation and make it quite jumpy for the viewer. Also the technique of blur helped show what the character was seeing at this present time.

Evaluation - Question 2

Evaluation - Question 2

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

Way’s in which a character is represented has an impact on the interpretation audience’s have. Factors such as costumes, facial expressions and dialogue are key when showing what social group that the character belong’s to. There is only one character that has a major appearance in our opening sequence. The key character is Cornelius, and the way he is represented is determined by various aspects like  camera, sound or mise en scene. Our media product focuses on certain social groups. This includes young males aged between 18-45, and also American citizens due to this happening their country.

Characters commonly associated with the thriller genre would be the male villain and killer, an example is Norman Bates in Psycho (1960), a young male psychologically affected, but in this case our main character has a number of different personalities within his own body.

           

Our main character:

• Black, African British male
• Young, aged 24 years old
• Occupation- company receptionist(works from home)
• Possessed with numerous personalities and his body takes the fall for the split outcomes

This is shown as the camera pans onto the male when he was sleeping normally, but shortly wakes up in a trance. He appears stable until his eyes frantically open, but is mentally unstable we are made aware from the opening sequence that this man was originally stable but then another personality comes into play.

mise en scene is a main factor of the character's costume. In order to give the impression that Cornelius was a smart and educated man, dressed in a baggy formal shirt and thick black rimmed glasses. aformal shirt and glasses show someone is educated and sophisticated, however the fact that his costume is scruffy and messy goes against and challenges his sophistication, which leads to confusing the audience, letting them unknowingly gain an insight into his character as his schizophrenia would cause him to act in a ambiguous manner.

Other social groups are represented are the American citizens, this is heard from the ‘voice over’  as the protagonist’s draws up the two world trade towers it is clear because the sound interlinks with the on screen images about the world famous September 911 devastation.  We are made aware that the collision happens during the news real as killings and citizens are victims of death from this tragedy. 

During our voice over for the news report on the television, we had to take a lot of factors into consideration. The person had to represent and be similar to real news reporters. We made a decision to use a variety of news reporter voices and accents due to the devastation being heard world wide demonstrating a serious incident. The representations of different ethnicities represented a range of cultures which added to the seriousness of the plot. We aimed for it to be intense and as powerful as possible. In order for the person to be suitable for the role, they had to be able to speak as clearly and as comprehensible as possible, with no comical effect but putting on the accents.

Camera shots to portray our main character include extreme close ups, when his eyes open.  This rapid movement represents him as being quite an unpredictable character, quick movement. The extreme close ups also only allow the audience to see selected parts, which also could be representative to show he has a very disjointed mentality and people are forced to seeing only parts of his personality at any time because of his mental disorder. This is seen in the close up where his eyes roll back, which represents him as being a abnormal person as it signifies that something extraordinary is happening to him which is not a usual action.

  Setting the location, we chose to place our main character in an ordinary office in                    London. It’s not overly-furnished but filled with folders, books/papers and appears completely average to reinforce the image of a single, middle-class man that lives alone and therefore adds to the realism. The setting represented the social group our main character belonged to because it was an office, normally the work place of a working class citizen.

Overall I think our film opening sequence represents particular social groups effectively and appeals to people, especially those who belong to these social groups established within the voice over to make the opening sequence more engaging as well as signifying how the story covered across the world, consisting of different accents to represent various nationalities which consisted of British, Indian, Australian and American accents

Evaluation – Question 3

Evaluation - Question 3

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

Our film is a low budget student production and would struggle to achieve a place for viewings in large chain cinemas. It cannot compare to blockbuster material as it doesn’t have that image normally associated with blockbuster movies. Due to our film being a low budget production made by students, it is unlikely that we could reach out to large chain cinemas such as Vue, Cineworld and Odeon. Mainly because a low budget production would easily fail to compete with mainstream blockbusters.E.g. Warner Bros would not distribute our film because they dont produce films that aren't accessible to a large target audience because of the lack of cast members that are household names.

It is therefore likely to be distributed on a much smaller scale such as:

·         You tube

·         Film festivals

·         Local cinema(screening day of student material)

·         School assembly’s

      Without much exposure it would struggle to gain status!

On the contrary Guerilla Films may wish to take our film under their wing. The company makes it clear that they are entirely supportive of British films, and since 1999 have mainly concentrated on distributing films British and Irish films. The distributor plays a really important role in the film industry such as:

·         It offers exposure for films in order to gain larger audiences to improve how successful it is.

·          Once the film is delivered, the distributor comes up with release strategies and the release date.

·         The distributor presents the film to exhibitors and negotiates agreements to have the film shown in cinemas.

·          They develop a marketing campaign to interest the target audience and then launches the film.

Our film could be shown at independent cinemas, such as the Phoenix cinema in East Finchley. It offers regular events, festivals and one-off screenings which would be ideal for distributing our film as we could have a one night screening at a student film festival for example.

      Another method that could be used to distribute our film would be the internet. This method is a lot cheaper and can achieve popularity quickly through word of mouth. The internet is also a cheap way to market our film and get more people attending the viewings. An example is www.youtbube.com

Evaluation – Question 4

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Evaluation – Question 4

The primary target audience that we have aimed our media product at is:

• People of ages 15-20.
• Both genders – we originally thought it would appeal to males more as it is stereotypically a male genre seeing as men like to be in for a fright; However after we conducted our audience screening, the feedback that we received was positive from both gender and the majority of males and females said they would watch the rest of the films.
• males are more interested in psychological thrillers than females
• Of all ethnicities, but mainly American audiences as it is more familiar to them.

We chose this range because we believe the film will appeal to a younger audience as they can relate to the main character and the themes and topics of the film as they are recent and modern, everybody knows about (911) and the conspiracy theories along with it. We discovered that younger generations of people tended to like psychological thrillers and intriguing plots due to our sample questionnaires we handed out around classes, and we therefore decided to base our age around this similarity in interests into what actually happened and what was the cause of the (911 attacks). A high percentage of the school kids had broad knowledge about the attack and all followed this up with different beliefs of how it came about.

Our secondary audience is:

• Wider age range 16-60

• We chose a wider audience as we believe anyone with interests in the theme of our film would be interested at these ages and of any gender – people interested in the government actions of war overseas in Iraq. Also people who never understood the full story of what occurred on the 11^th of September 2001.

For Americans it is more relevant and personal to them due to the setting being in America, the actual event taking place there. An audience of a different ethnicity may be more negative towards the issue because it didn't exactly concern or affect them.

Evaluation – Question 5

Evaluation – Question 5

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We decided to stick to certain conventions of thrillers and appeal to what the audience knows and will therefore enjoy. It is also a genre that is popular with our target audience; therefore this will also gain their attention. However we also challenged and changed some conventions in order to create further interest and curiosity among the viewers.  The opening sequence is extremely important because it influences the audience to keep on watching, and generates the first impression of the film.

An opening sequence offers what the film will be about and slightly gives an insight into the narrative, and establishes factors such as main characters and the primary setting of the film. Ensuring our opening sequence focused on aspects such as camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene of a psychological thriller, as well as working together to keep the audience interested.

the nature of our chosen genre had to create suspense and mystery in order to keep the audience guessing and engaged, so that they don't get bored. This was done by experimenting with what shots we used, as well as the effects and sounds.

We then wanted to build up the audience’s anticipation as the protagonist leaves wakes and sees into the future. The audience is now aware that he is the main character, but become anxious as to what’s he going to do and who’s it going to happen to.

We also wanted the audience to ask questions in their head to create and build up mystery in order to interest them into watching the rest of the film. This was successful as many of our audience at the screening commented that they would be interested in watching the rest of the film. Also many wanted to know why and how he had multiple personalities, which would be revealed later on in another series.

As the main storyline involves actions that have taken place recently; 911, we thought it would relate to people who have had real a wide understanding of the incident and how that may affect the way they think about the attacks.

We also used what the audience knew and therefore included a voice over to match and also showed a detailed drawing of the standing towers this made our opening sequence familiar and realistic.  Overall I think we successfully addressed our audience and attracted them to watch our film.

the first shot the audience witness is the date "21st June 2001", straight away we have attempted to make our opening appeal to the target audience by showing them the date that has no significance to them. This will appeal to them as they question them selves the relevance of what they are seeing, seeing a date would urge them into thinking why it might be important. The shot then fades into a long shot panning across the room, in order to establish the setting. Within the room we used low key lighting to make it seem more ominous as well as build anxiety.

Evaluation – Question 6

Evaluation – Question 6

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

The camera:

• A Cannon XAHI camera used to film the footage
• The camera could then be attached to the tripod (libec LS800), which I had to learn how to use effectively whilst filming. It gave us a wider range of shots, such as more movement, different angles and distances, it also held the camera steady and in place
•  This variety of shots enabled us to make our opening sequence more interesting.
• The lighting in the location chose was too dark so a tall lamp was used to focus on the main protagonist.
• Tracks
• Boom pole
• Clapper board
• Windshield system
• Sennheiser headphones
• Sennheiser microphone

Editing:

·         Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 was the main programme used to do the editing.

·         We also used After Effects and Photoshop to design the titles/credits that we placed throughout the sequence. The newspaper articles and images featured in places of our opening were also done on these programmes, we cropped each letter and pasted together to make our names and roles e.g. (sound and continuity Alex King)

       

     Sound:

·         A sennheiser microphone was used-we also used the windshield in order to block out breathing being hear due to the sensitivity of the mic (I also learnt however that microphones often pick up unwanted sound and camera sound)

·         We recorded a voice over as group, all having a go at different accents and impersonations of news reporters.

·         We had headphones attached to the camera so that the sound technician, allocated to someone in our group, could check the sound whilst filming shots.

      Overall my skill in the programmes that we used throughout the project developed hugely and I learnt that you can improve a lot of things and solve a lot of problems using these technologies.

Techniques:

During filming, the hardware we were using meant we could record sound effectively without it being unclear. We also could include camera movement such as pans and tilts as we had the tripod. We could also play with lighting what we were trying to make it look as professional as possible. During editing we could use techniques such as capturing footage, rendering clips, adjusting speed and duration, cutting up clips, adding audio (soundtrack) and also including visual and audio effects and transitions.(blur/black and white)

      As well as technologies from shooting and editing, I learnt other things such as how to use Blog as I hadn’t used this before. I learnt a lot about these techniques and realised that these technologies really add to the final piece and can help gain a lot more marks.  Adobe Premier for our preliminary task, to its functions I was able to digitise the rushes quickly and efficiently due to our previous experience. We did this was by making a connection between the camera and the computer hard drive with a firewire lead. All the shots we digitised were saved onto a 80GB LaCie drive, which served the same use as a USB.

Evaluation - Question 7

Evaluation – Question 7

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

Preliminary Brief: Film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character. A couple of lines of dialogue must then exchange between characters & match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule should be demonstrated.
Video Brief: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes (all video and audio material must be original, produced by candidates, with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source).

After reading the brief, the next stage was the PRE-PRODUCTION; research & planning.
This stage was kept fairly short for the preliminary task due to time constraints, however I still learnt a lot from it. strengths and weaknesses of the previous task and helped utilise upon shot/reverse shot, the 180-degree rule, match on action as well as have characters exchanging dialogue. Demonstrating understanding of those things, the preliminary task acted as a base to build skills that were then incorparated in on for the main task. The knowledge we gained from the preliminary task was vital, for the reason that it would have meant more time trying to get familiar to the equipment rather than making our open sequence pioneering and of a high standard.

Before we could begin shooting our short sequence, we were able to produce:

• A storyboard
• Dialogue script for our final idea.
• storyboard,
• dialogue script,
• shooting schedule
• location recce

The storyboard allowed us to visualise the sequence and ensured that every member of our group had the same vision for the sequence. The shooting script meant we could order to shoot specific shots, ensuring we used our time efficiently. We were also able to do location reccys for the pr PRODUCTION. The storyboard had a large influence on the outcome of the work, summarising the concept of our sequence and ensuring all shots were carefully planned in relation to the script of dialogue that had to be carefully spoken.

The storyboard was beneficial as it ensured that the whole group was seeing a similar outcome, as well as being a visual evidence of our shots so we could manage our time efficiently and wisely during shooting.

At the production stage of the preliminary task we could not have a test shoot or reshoot due to shortage of time. This meant we just had to shoot the final piece, allow no space for big mistakes and really think it all through thoroughly.

However we had produced a:

• Shooting script and arranged the shot order of how we were going to shoot. This organisation meant we saved time and knew every shot that we had to shoot, ticking them off along the way.
• The process of running a shoot used during our preliminary task was very efficient. Before we shot each individual shot, the director would say “sound ready, camera ready” and then name the take and then say “action.” We carried this method into the production when filming our opening sequence to a film. It meant we could check everything was ready before we shot and when we came to editing, we would be aware of what take and shot it was.

From the final opening sequence however I have learnt that a location reccy as well as a test shoot and re-shoot is important. It allows you to correct mistakes or change things that you didn’t notice whilst filming.

From the progression from my preliminary task to the full product I have learnt in this stage that:

• We need test shoots
• Re-shoots are really important
• There needs to be time allowed for more takes of shots so that you can pick the best take
• I have also learnt that it is useful to shoot with more shot types of angles and distances; this was especially worthwhile for our nightmare sequence.

Once we had all our footage, we could begin the next stage; POST-PRODUCTION/EDITING.
During the preliminary task our main aim was to construct something that makes sense. We didn’t have to consider a story behind it, it didn’t have to be a film opening and restricted time meant we just had to keep it as simple as possible. This editing process reminded me of the basics needed when editing, such as capturing, adding onto timelines, unlinking, razoring, chopping up clips and re-ordering the sequence.