Media product evaluation

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

My project uses some real psychological media codes and conventions. For example, my film includes a character with a mental problem and fast paced shots. The teenager in my film is wearing a hoodie down an alleyway, this is a stereotype of teenagers that is commonly used in thriller films. Another way my media product is similar to the usual conventions of a psychological thriller is that my storyline is based upon real life situations, giving my media product realism. E.g. killing of a girl due to having mental issues. I wanted to give a large plot twist in mine due to many of the other psychological thrillers I watched also did this. I wanted to highlight the importance of judging people before you actually know what they’re like, giving a moral to the storyline. For example my storyline manipulates the audience into believing that Anna Dylan is the antagonist by what she wears and how she acts suspicious at the start as she states that she’s “not mad” which makes her seem as if she is denying her madness.

At the beginning I use non-diegetic sound (Muse – Supermassive black hole) I wanted to use this music as it has the sound of someone going insane adding to the ambiance. Similarly American Psycho uses music to make the character seem calm, then as the music progresses through the film, it gets louder and more wild. This portrays the antagonists characteristics of insanity.

Many psychological thrillers have titles that include their own background, some movies have credits running before the film begins e.g. se7ven. American Pyscho uses colour in the opening scene as you see blood dripping against a white background, setting the scene for this movie. The colour red is often used in psychological thrillers to represent murder/blood/romance, which features heavily within this genre of film. My film uses white text on a black background. My idea of this came from the film Looper, I decided to replicate this as I believed it portrayed the contrast between good and bad. The white text representing the main characters innocence, and the black background portraying her past and how she was wrongly accused. I also use text on top of the film while it runs in the background. I do this as American Pyscho uses the same technique. This clearly shows that I have understood what a psychological thriller is ans included a variety of conventions of real media products.

How it uses conventions of a media product

How it challenges conventions of a media product

My film challenges the conventions of a usual psychological thriller as my film was shot in broad daylight. In usual run away scenes where someone wants to escape from somewhere, they would be shot a t night so that they would be harder to find, instead of running away in broad daylight. However due to health and safety reasons, we did not shoot at night. We did however shoot when it looked dull and gloomy outside instead of sunny nice weather in order to set the scene as depressing.

We did use jump cuts originally in our piece, however, our targeted audience thought the jump cuts looked out of place in that particular scene. Also as jump cuts are usually used to skip unnecessary parts of the film which I didn’t feel we needed to do as many parts of our film are crucial to the storyline.

We haven’t used any weapons or dangerous objects in the mise-en-scene as this opening scene was shot in broad daylight. Therefore, if Robert Grayson (antagonist) was to bring out a weapon it would alert someone. However, with this said I could’ve had a weapon visible in a shot to show the audience that this weapon may be used later in the film.

When I filmed, I decided not to use any fast pans like in usual thriller films. I did this as using slower pans built to the suspense when Anna Dylan (protagonist) turned around slowly to see Robert Grayson standing behind her.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main character for my film opening is a white female around the age of 17/18. I used a girl in my opening scene as in thriller films, females are usually used in order to portray innocence, which is what I wanted to create.

Also, the majority of people who said in our questionnaire that they would be most likely to see a psychological thriller were teenage girls. Therefore, by making the main character a female around the same age as our targeted audience, it means they will be able to relate to her more. However, when researching, I found that males are more likely to see psychological thrillers. Due to this I made sure to include elements of actions to appeal more to that social group.

The gender of the main character (Anna Dylan) is represented in a stereotypical way of her being a vulnerable, young girl which you see a lot in thriller films. You can tell that our character is middle /lower class due to the clothes she wears (e.g. black hoodie) this persuades the audience to relate to her as our audience is teenagers, they are more likely to be of middle class also.

Anna Dylan is White-British race as in many thriller films they use a white teenage girl to further represent purity with the colour white. I don’t personally believe the race of the main character will affect who views the film, though there may be some people who feel they can relate more to her.

Robert Grayson is portrayed as a villain in our film due to the way he dresses and the way he talks. I made sure that their was as many differences as possible between the protagonist and the antagonist in order to separate them and create binary opposition. An example of binary opposition in the case of my film is the age difference between the two. These two mutually exclusive concepts creates conflict between the two as the villain would be stronger due to his age and gender.

The villain in our film is a male around 46 years old. This character allows us to further convince an older group of people to come and see our film, as we have a character of their age which they can relate to.

The antagonist is upper class which you can tell by the phone he uses, the car he owns and the clothes he wears. We wanted to portray the character as being well off to show that audience he is of high authority due to him working for the prime minister.

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

Ways to distribute our media product

• Television – available to a wide audience• Internet – free/easy to access • DVD – a film that can be watched again and

again and that will be available to an audience even after the film had been out for some years enabling it to still generate money.

• Cinema – High budget films with an institution that are distributed more publically using advertising.

As our film is not a high budget film, we would probably distribute it on You Tube. You Tube is a quick and easy way to create an audience fan base for a film and it’s also free. By putting a film on YouTube we will be able to get our product seen by a wide market. For example, Paranormal Activity was a phenomenon which was first shown on the internet. After building a solid fan base, it was converted into a mainstream film.

There is also a chance that our film would be produced by a film company in London called Microwave films. Microwaves films launched in 2006 with an aim to produce low budget movies over the time period of three years. This particular film institution distributes any genre of movie which makes it suitable for us. As it distributes many different types of films, it will have a wide range of audience, allowing us to find out who our target audience will be. It has produced a thriller before called ‘Shifty’ by metronome, which allows us to know that it has accepted thriller films before into it’s category of genres.

The ‘microwave films scheme’ uses different ways of distributing the film such as on DVD, in the cinema, and also downloaded from the internet. Our target audience is mainly teenagers who are likely to favour this type of distribution as it’s easily accessible for them.

As my film is a small scale budget film, it is likely to only be distributed in Britain as it would be hard to get attention from a large scale of international attention from places like America that include big institutions such as Walt Disney and Warner Bros. The film ‘28 days’ was a film originally distributed in England that managed to obtain the attention of the DNA, a British film company as it was an international success.

However, if I had the choice I would want Warner Bros to be the one to produce our film as they produced Harry Potter which is one of my favourite films. I also know from research from my own interest that the writer of the Harry Potter books, J.K Rowling had a bit part in the production of the films, being able to choose actors to play the characters and also being able to decide what scenes should be included and what scenes shouldn’t.

What would be the audience of your media product and why?

This data was collected from our questionnaire. This shows that most people who answered my questionnaire were teenagers. This gives us a target age group of an audience 15-18. This age group is perfect for my movie. I specifically chose the age rating 15.

I’m glad that our movie would be within a 15 as it gives us freedom to be able to use violence and some inappropriate language. If the film was aimed at anyone younger, we would lack the freedom within our movie, and would not be able to add as much violence /violent words which build tension for the audience.

How old are you?

16 year olds17 year olds

Originally I believed that the audience for our film would be teenage girls, due to the questionnaire feedback informed us that more girls were likely to see a psychological thriller. Three girls chose Psychological Thriller as what sub-genre they look for in a Horror. This questionnaire shows that most people chose psychological thriller which is important as it implies this is their favourite genre.

http://www.valuedopinions.co.uk/news/details/article/survey-reveals-women-like-thriller-films-more-than-men/ On this site a survey was conducted where they also found that women prefer Thriller films to men, which is similar to my findings.

I knew that if I were to screen my film, there would be a higher chance of it succeeding if I aimed it towards teenagers. I learnt from research that males enjoy car chases within a movie, ours doesn’t have car chases, but does have scenes with a car in which males would appreciate. As the main character is a young female, the women watching this movie would be able to relate to her.

We have dramatic non-diegetic music that matches with the fast pace action within our movie scenes. Their costumes are realistic, as Anna fits in with the usual stereotypical teenager “hoodie”. Anna also portrays a working class teenager, therefore other teenagers would be able to relate to her better. I made sure that within the movie was chase/action scenes appealing to males, and a character which females can sympathise with on an emotional level.

I have also realised that even though our movie is aimed at teenagers, there is still aspects that could encourage older males to see this film. For example, we have an older actor around 40-50 who plays the character Robert Grayson (antagonist). As there’s an older character, it may influence an older audience to see our film.

How did you attract you audience?

My questionnaire informed me that most people who wanted to see a psychological film were teenagers. This is how I discovered my target audience. Therefore, as their was a high percentage of teenagers within the age group of 15-18 that favoured a thriller narrative, I thought it was only logical to address my audience and create a Psychological Thriller. Using a sub-genre which my target audience favours is necessary, as they are the ones who will most likely be viewing the final product.

From my questionnaire, I did find that 3 women voted that they would see a psychological thriller whereas only two males voted that they would see this genre. However, even though women were found to be more likely to see our movie, I decided to still incorporate cars into the thriller, and also chase/violent scenes where the protagonist is being manhandled. I did this as men are known to favouring action scenes within movies, and are known to stereotypically enjoy thrillers, therefore I still believed it was necessary to include factors which would be favoured by the teenage male population. I will also maintain the captivation of the male audience by using quick shots with different shot distances to show action.

My storyline is based on a real life events, for example Anna Dylan being based on a person called Sharon Carr who murdered her first victim at the age of 12. Even though my main character (Anna) is innocent, and is not the killer in my movie, it still influenced the creation of the plot within my movie. As you can also see below, the storyline was voted the most important aspect of a film by our target audience. Our film has a very strong storyline within it with underlying morals also. Therefore, by making the storyline the focus of our film, I was able to use this in order to attract our main audience.

This shows that our target audience finds it fitting if rock music was incorporated into our film as they are a good match. Therefore, in the very first 5 or so scenes of our movie, you hear rock music. More specifically, this song which is played by a well known rock band called Muse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj-XfDAdqOM As we used a rock song in our opening sequence we were able to attract our target audience.

Our leading female Anna was played by my sister Emma Cottenham is an attractive young female. Men who find my sister attractive will be more likely to continue watching this film as she becomes the female interest for them. The same applies to females, as when I asked some females within our media class why they would see the movie “shutter island”, they answered with by saying “because it has Leonardo Dicaprio starring”.

My narrative structure includes a cliff hanger at the end which adds suspense, leading the audience to be attracted to my movie as they will want to find out what happens. The cliff hanger at the end of our movie is accompanied by non-diegetic music, which is added to build suspense. We used this suspense track from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NL4hpgYw5g

My media address the audience as it includes action which gives them the thrill they are seeking from watching this psychological thriller. It uses suspense by the way in which Robert Grayson (antagonist) is introduced by standing behind Anna Dylan (protagonist) which is an enigma code as it keeps the audience captivated by out opening scene. Therefore I feel I have successfully included everything that teenagers want from our film, The Run.

My film includes realism, therefore my target audience (teenagers) will find it easy to relate to my characters and situations. My location adds to the realism as it was shot in an alleyway. This means that teenagers will be more captivated by our movie as they will find it more relatable. The low key lighting within our movie makes the location more believable as the natural lighting helps the audience to feel as if this is a real setting and not artificial.

My product includes many plot twists such as the appearance of an antagonist and the diary situation. I have considered in detail their favourite aspects of thriller films in order to appeal to them.

For our filming we used a snowball microphone for voiceovers, a tripod, a canon camera, iMac, YouTube and Final Cut Pro

Throughout this project I have learnt how to use different types of technologies. For example I have learnt how to use; a Canon camera, iMac, Final Cut Pro, tripod, and a Blue Snowball microphone.

At the start I didn’t know how to properly use a Canon camera apart from taking photos with it, therefore I made sure I filmed three times before our final shoot. I found it wasn’t too hard to use as I learnt how to function the buttons properly. There is a red button on the Canon camera, above the screen that is the button you press when you want to start recording. I also learnt how to delete parts that we didn’t need and play back the footage we got. I found this camera to be good quality, however, it doesn’t let you film at night easily, therefore we just had to film during the day instead.

I also learnt how to set up a Sony tripod and place the Canon camera on top of it. I learnt that to get a stable shot, using the tripod was the best way to go about it. We were also able to get panning shots from using this tripod. For example, when Anna Dylan turns round to see Robert Grayson behind her.

I have also learnt that when filming and using dialogue, that it’s best to use a microphone to catch the sound better. However, as I didn’t realise the sound was bad till after I filmed the shots, I couldn’t of changed it by this time as it was too late and we didn’t have time to re-shoot before our deadline. The sound was bad in our film due to how windy it was.

This was the weather forecast for our filming schedule date:

(The weather forecast also stated it would be windy) Here is a link to the weather report I watched to find out the weather forecast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Zi1MNwJVs

I came up with an idea to sort our this issue we encountered which was to use the Blue Snowball Microphone to do voiceovers on the scenes where you couldn’t hear the dialogue due to the wind.

By cutting out the sound of the wind and dialogue meant I could get my dad (Robert Grayson) to re-record his lines using the microphone then edit it in so that it fitted the way in which is spoke. I also added in the diegetic sound of the wind so that it sound realistic. However, I got the wind sound from another part of the film so the wind wasn’t too loud. I edited the film this way using Final Cut Pro.

In this respect I found Final Cut Pro very helpful and easy to use, as I was able to connect the microphone to the computer, and record the voiceovers on Final Cut instead of on a separate programme.

For the shots before a flashback in our film, there were voiceovers used. I believe this helps the audience follow the storyline better.

I used this link on YouTube to find out how to do voiceovers on Final Cut Pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opG21CGOz3U

I also used this link from YouTube which told me how to use transitions in Final Cut Pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX0J-rehgV8

Finally, I used this link from YouTube in order to work out how to add the black and white filter to the flashback shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-PNThbF9yg

I have learnt how to use Blogger by looking at how other people have put work onto their blog, such as by using slideshare which allows you to embed a presentation onto your blog. This allowed me to be able to use different forms of presentation on my blog.

I used YouTube to upload my videos easily onto blogger. I had to create a YouTube account to be able to put up all my media work on. To put a video from final cut onto YouTube I had to convert it using Quicktime.

I also used PowerPoint to create pie charts that I could later use to show my data and analyse the evidence. I knew I could then upload my work to slideshare and embed that into Blogger.

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

product?

During the preliminary task I have learnt how to worked together as a team properly.

The preliminary task let me get use to using a Canon camera, on it’s own and with a tripod. If I didn’t do the preliminary task, I wouldn’t have been able to produce the film I did to my best ability. In our preliminary task we shot mostly basic shots, for example over the shoulder shots and medium shots.

Here’s an example of the different shots I used:

(Camera angle example shots from the website: http://rcantle17.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/camera-angles-and-shot-examples-used-in.html)

While creating our preliminary task we created a storyboard to go by. Creating this storyboard allowed us to plan each shot which really helped when we were filming so that we didn’t miss out any shots.

From the preliminary task I learnt how to crop the shot by pressing “command B” on the keyboard and making a cut which I then was able to delete from the preliminary task. I learnt a lot about how to properly edit a short film sequence such as removing the sound. I found out to remove sound from the preliminary task I had to lock the film part the highlight the sound and delete it. At this point I didn’t know how to edit music into the film therefore I only left it silent, however I later learnt how to edit music in by using this link off YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkxrNVTRcLA

I also learnt how to upload a film onto Blogger and onto YouTube by following the steps that the two sites took me through. It did take a while to upload however, therefore I had to leave it overnight to load. Knowing that I had to leave it over night was good to note as it meant when I came to my opening sequence I knew to leave the film to upload over night so it will be uploaded for the next day.

Here is the instructions I used in order to upload a film to Blogger:

I can tell how far my skills have developed by looking at my preliminary task and then my finished version of my media product. I can see how both my filming and editing skills have changed, but creating less shaky shots and by being able to crop and edit a film so that it looks professional. I have also learnt how to achieve high angled down shots to show the importance of one character.

I never thought of taking close-up shots before my preliminary task. I learnt that taking shots of the diary in the preliminary task showed that this particular object will be showed as a enigma code.

Here’s an example of a close-up shot from our preliminary task:

From the preliminary task I learnt how to do a panning shot when the character goes across the classroom to sit at the desk. I never thought of doing a panning shot before, however, once I did it I realised they are helpful because it shows you the characters action and where they are.

In the editing of the preliminary task I learnt how to put transitions into shots. However, I didn’t need to use transitions I still thought it would be necessary to try it out just to get an idea of the different edits I could use on my opening sequence later on.

I also learnt the importance of taking more than one shot for each. Some of the shots would have people talking in the background, or someone walking in shot. Therefore, by making sure we had two shots of each gave us a variety to choose from.

A problem we came across with the preliminary task is that the lighting was too dark when one of our characters was in the hallway. I looked around on the edits that you can use on Final Cut Pro and I found a colour corrector. The colour corrector allowed me to make the hallway shot brighter so that you could see her. However, the shot is still slightly dark. Therefore, I made sure when it came to our opening sequence we looked at the weather report to make sure that our setting would be bright enough so that our shots didn’t come out dark.

I have also learnt how to plan for my opening sequence, by writing a list of props that will be used in the opening scene, and also what location I will be using at what time really helped me to plan my opening scene as we were able to get our filming done in all one time.

From the preliminary task I learnt the risks of filming such as equipment not being charged, not bringing equipment, public walking in shots, the actors not turning up and it equipment is to be broken on set. I discovered the severity of these risks which helped me to be more careful while I was filming my opening sequence.