Draft Evaluation- Emma Chamberlain

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

The hidden identity of the phone owner along with the putting the phone in a isolated setting, shown by the original establishing shot, creates confusion within the audience which is a typical convention of thriller films and allows for the audience to ask questions which results in them being more inclined to watching. The following characters allowed us to have a limited depth of characterisation and due to this lack of detail the audience is once again forced to ask questions on how the characters relate to each other, why they are all being rung by an unknown number and most importantly, why have we chosen to show this as our opening.  These questions where what we tried to achieve within our opening through the use of thriller conventions that we

have previously studied.

 

'21 grams' 3 characters

 

Our 3 characters, hidden faces.



Our opening was similar to ’21 grams’ (a high budget thriller film) in that there was little depth in to each character shown and therefore we struggle to understand what is happening using this restricted narration. The tittles and the sound where typical to a thriller in that the soundtrack was contrapuntal to the action and it also reflected the thrilling feel we desired in the eerie piano notes and climactic instruments.  The camera movement such as slow establishing shots, allow the audience to see the remote setting which connotes isolation and fear within the audience which is a typical convention of a thriller film and is used in many other thrillers to allow the audience to understand the setting such as Donnie Darko where we see a long shot which stretches longer than most first cuts allowing the audience to really notice the setting.




Donnie Darko-Establishing shot



Establishing shot

Other long shots of the characters and framing shots through a window for example, create a sense of hidden point of view and the characters being watched.


Through the window shot in the programe 'Wallander'



Through the window shot in our product












 This is a typical thriller convention and is seen in programmes such as wallander which is a famous thriller programme. Another way we used forms of a thriller film is in our sound effects that where added using mainly garage band. The alarm clock noise was sharp and violent which came as a shock during the calm and flowing feel created previously by wipe cuts but disrupted by this sound effect. This shock effect makes the audience slightly worried and aware something possibly dangerous and frightening could be about to happen. The sound effects where louder than the soundtrack and where used mainly to keep the audience on edge as well as to enhance the naturalistic feel to our media product.

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

Our product represents gender traditionally, such as the male character is shown coming out of the gym to represent the typical stereotype of men being strong and hard. In comparison to this the women are shown to be in typical female situations such as in the kitchen cooking, reflecting the stereotype of women are housewives, and in the bedroom brushing hair to show how women traditionally care about their appearance more than anything else. 

Our representations of gender in the final product

 This representations are traditional for gender. The costume chosen represents gender traditionally also- the man wearing a blue top and the women wearing pink trousers. Props such as the ring on one of the females fingers and the surrounding hair and beauty products for the other female also represent a typical gender stenotype, women are more concerned with their appearance compared to the man who is walking but has no bag or accessories, to show that men care less about these things.  However, the sound focusing mainly on the phone ringtones is not traditional to gender stereotypes. Both male and female have standard ringtones that do not connote any gender stereotypes, this breaks the traditional representations of gender. Another way in which we broke the traditional gender representations is that the male character is leaving a gym. Typically males are not assumed to care about their appearance but here we show a man who clearly does and therefore we go against any traditional stereotypes.

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

When discussing the media product and it’s target audience as a group we came to the conclusion that the best institution for our production is Diffusion, followed by BBC short films to distribute our product. This distribution company focuses on short films from british filmmakers. Our piece fits this description and also the short film category prevents the need for us to stretch the film out any longer  than necessary. BBC short films is open to everybody with internet access, which slightly restricts our audience however it has already hosted many short thriller films such as ‘playground’ a 9 minute long thriller made by a university student.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/p00fwg9h



This is a similar film to ours and as it has had such good feedback from the BBC short films website, it ensures that our product would be suitable for this website also.  In turn we wish to get our product aired on television such as BBC3 to widen the audience, (you can see on the link the audience is mainly '16-34 year olds focusing on new talent') BBC3 is a good channel as it’s not prime TV and wouldn’t be attracting an audience of too larger scale however it would still publicise our product better than any internet page could as more people watch TV. The bonus’s of airing our piece originally on the internet is that the distribution costs will be considerably less, It would be suitable for our chosen target audience though because we are aware that 15-21 year olds would have internet access and are more likely to watch films using the internet than an older generation therefore we will hopefully get positive audience feedback.  Being on the internet however relies on word of mouth, our audience will most likely watch our piece because it has been recommended rather than accidently, which is a possibility for TV audience. Due to this we are aware the audience will be considerably less but the costs saved from our choice of distribution will make up for this. By distributing our piece online we will stop any confusion, the audience are ‘getting what they pay for’ rather than if we tried to air our product at the ODEON cinema where the audience will have higher expectations that will fail and therefore we will receive negative feedback. Another choice we made as a group is to release our film on a Wednesday as the competition for new films is less- it’s an ‘off-peak’ time for releasing new films. This will hopefully boost our views and achieve good feedback and recognition.  


Who is the audience for your media product?

We chose to target our media product at 15-21 year old males and females from a modern British lifestyle. We decided it would be suitable to certificate our product as a 15 which according to the BBFC allows for: ‘Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.’ In the storyline of our film it creates a thrilling aspect to it and although the horror within our storyline isn’t to the point where it would create anxiety within the audience it is enough to be exciting which will also attract our older audience members such as 21 year olds. We also use Imitable behaviour is also used, this also allows for an exciting drama feel to our product which keeps the audience entertained as well as attracting the older end of our audience. We decided to change our original idea for an 18 certified film as we used younger actors that will attract a younger audience such as 15 year olds, this allows us to still have a thrilling and exciting feel whilst able to attract an audience as young as 15.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We where able to attract our target audience using different affects that created a thrilling feel that teens desire such as an unknowing protagonist, slow and long pan shots that create a build-up feel. These things combined with the eerie soundtrack and loud sound effects all create a thrilling feel which our target audience of 15-21 year olds desire. The actors and characters we used in our product will reflect our target audience and also allow for them to feel empathy with the characters. This relationship between the characters and the target audience will help to build the audience’s emotions towards the characters and therefore feel empathy towards them when drama effects them within the story. All these factors allow us to address our audience correctly whilst also conforming to the thriller conventions that have previously been mentioned. The minor violence, dangerous behaviour and horror styled action can help attract not only the younger range of the audience (15-17 year olds) who desire the action and thrill that they would not get from a film that is certificated below a 15, but the older and more sophisticated audience will also be attracted to our film despite its 15 certification and the limitations that come along with that. The older audience will still be attracted by this and we know that because they can still enjoy our complex storyline with features such as a hidden identity and the restricted narrative.

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

·        Learnt to set white balance and why its important,

·        How to shorten the clips to cut out any ‘waste footage’

·        Add sound to an already finished movie

·        Use garageband to add sfx that are vital to create a realistic film

·        180 degree rule etc

·        Mirrors when filming, avoid getting the camera in the shot.

·        Using the tripod to create stiller filming, avoiding the handheld effect that is only good for specific shots.

·        Zooming in to avoid moving the camera, better quality. Used this a lot
·        Pace is created not only with the length of shots, establishing shot at the beginning of our scene, but the music. Without our music

Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you've learned in the progression from it to the full product?

Our prelim task was constructed using basic apple software that restricted us from editing to a higher standard and including effects that can only be found on software such as ‘imovie’ and ‘final cut’. After filming our final product we decided to get the best results we would need to use more advanced software to get the best results and so, we used ‘imovie’ and ‘final cut’. I feel in the process of using these editing software’s I have learnt how to use effects that before weren’t possible and use different transitions such as wipes as well as recognising when each transition was suitable to make the product fully effective in creating a thriller feel. Not only did we learn to use better editing software but the camera itself was a better standard. This new HD camera had different controls for the filming as well as using different memory storage- a tape was no longer in use. Because of  these differences I feel I have learnt to adapt to different software that will suit our product best, changing the technology in order to achieve the best results as we learnt from using the standard software and technology in our prelim task didn’t achieve the high level of quality that we wished for. Location was another big change from our prelim task as we where allowed to film off site and in any location that we thought was best suited for our thriller opening. Due to this we where able to have a selection of interesting settings that reflected our characters to help the audience see characterisation and feel empathy for them. Props, costume and all other areas of mise en scene where discussed and prepared thoroughly before filming. The pre-planning techniques used within our final product compared to our prelim where vital in getting the results we wanted. Each person in our group needed to have a particular role and needed to be prepared to bring to each set, the vital equipment. I took the role of props and sound and was in charge of the phones and radio predominately. After the prelim task I think I became more aware of how important it is to plan affectively and be prepared to have all props ready for the filming before hand. The storyboarding stage was also different in our final product as we found in the prelim task that drawing on paper was not clear, hard to change when we needed to adjust shots and ended in confusion. In our final product we decided to use post it notes for each camera shot which allowed us to make changes where needed. We also introduced the use of animatic to show our storyboard in a more creative way that we could also compare our final footage to so that we could see changes we made along the way. This was never used before and so it was a new and useful technique used compared to the prelim task. Part of my role in the group was to focus on the sound of the product, in doing so I learnt effectively how to use garageband to create sound effects, cut the sound to fit the action and put the sound and the action together to create a final product. In the prelim task I didn’t have any experience with garageband.