Media Studies Evaluation

For my coursework my group and I which consisted of Sarah Nightingale and Anna Hickling filmed an opening sequence to a psychological thriller.

My contributions to the project were as follow: I first helped come up with the initial idea for the sequence (along with the rest of my group), I split the filming with Sarah and together we shot the opening sequence.

One of the sequences I filmed was the tracking shot of Sophie on the ground and pulling up into the sky.

I also helped with blogging but my other main responsibility was choosing the music and I edited it as well and I also helped with the overall editing.

Introduction

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

For our film we used several techniques such as cross cutting and flashbacks. In the pictures shown above we split the scene to flash back to another scene this made our film non-linear and more visually interesting to an audience.

Our film used some classic conventions of a thriller such as being non-linear, raising enigmas and unconventional editing. All of these things were important to our film to show it was a psychological thriller.

Our group was successful in meeting the requirements of an opening sequence . We showed it was a psychological thriller, introduced the main characters and didn’t give to much of the plot away but raised enigmas

Our choices proved to be effective as 80% of our testing audience wanted to watch the rest of the film and 100% knew it was a thriller

We represented social groups in quite a stereotypical way with the cool kid and the loser, Sophie was the typical ‘freak/loser’ who has no friends, talks to herself, lives in a isolated location and wears undesirable clothes, as well as seeing her taking various amounts of pills.

Ashley is the ‘cool’ kid he wears trendy clothes, hangs out in town, and has lots of friends (shown by him talking on the mobile).

Although we played to the stereotype of a social divide between youths, we did challenge the idea by having a quick flashback of the two talking. We chose to do this to raise enigmas about their relationship but also to break the social norm and mix two groups together.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Although we played to the stereotype of a social divide between youths, we did challenge the idea by having a quick flashback of the two talking. We chose to do this to raise enigmas about their relationship but also to break the social norm and mix two groups together.

We also chose to do this to send the story in a direction and create this twist that the audience didn’t expect

Our group looked through different institutions, like Working Title and Warner Brothers but decided we wanted to make and Indie film in a British style.

After researching different institutions Film 4 seemed the best option as they are responsible for Trainspotting (1996). That was the style of film we were aiming for.

I believe Film 4 would distribute our film because it matches many other previous conventions of their other films such as being; low budget, having a controversial theme and using natural resources (lighting). Film 4 is very famous for its indie films and I believe they would distribute ‘Mentality’

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

Our main audience is 16-25 year olds of any gender. We want a young audience who can still grasp the concept of our film.

Our film is a British Indie film so the audience would also be British. People who mainly watch Hollywood wouldn’t enjoy our film because it requires you to think about the film and look for other meanings not simply escape into a fantasy.

While there is no social class to our film working class may be the main target audience as this film is dark and gritty and deals with issues such as escaping (Sophie wants to escape her life of insanity).

Who would be the audience for your media project?

The following link is too our audience feedback and it was overall positive and most of the people we tested on reacted well to the film

http://casansac.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html

The audience we tested on were all teenagers so they were our primal target audience and since they reacted positively we succeed in reaching our target audience

How did you attract/address your audience?

We initially attracted our audience by establishing the main character Sophie. We started off with a voice over as we pulled up from her body this attracted the audience by raising enigmas of who this girl is and how she died

What made our film different was we started off with the disruption and moved into the equilibrium of her taking pills in her day to day routine. This would attract our indie audience because it is out of the normal

The unusual editing would also attract an audience with its black and white images in-between colour and flashback to establish timeline and show it isn’t in sequence

We addressed the audience in the first sequence by having a voice over talking directly to the audience

One particular scene we used that would attract an audience was the strangling scene. During the strangling sequence we used a ghost trail effect and slow motion this made the film visually interesting for the audience and makes them think if it is real or not which addresses them.

We kept our audience interested through our choice of music which helped to build tension

The unusual editing and effects such as the ghost trail effect used in the strangling scene helped keep an audience captivated because it held there attention

We also established early on during the pill scene that this film was about mental issues and I feel this kept the audience’s interest because with such an unusual concept anything is possible and a twist could happen at any moment

As well as all these factors I believe the enigmas raised were the main reason we kept an audience interested because they would always want answers and keep wanting to know what happens

Because I was co-filmed the project with Sarah I learnt how to use many different pieces of technology.

Firstly I learnt how to properly use the camera and set it up for different shots and of course record and rewind etc..

Along with learning to use the camera I also learnt to set up the tripod for different shots.

I also learnt how to sample music and cut and mix two different pieces together and add them to our movie.

Using Imovies I furthered my editing skills and learnt how to add transitions and different effects (e.g. slow motion and cross cutting)

Most of all I learnt how to properly blog and how to upload date and videos onto our blog.

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

Here are some behind the scene shots of us working on our film

This is Anna editing Sarah editing Me editing

And all 3 of us editing together

http://casansac.blogspot.com/2010/01/preliminary-task-video-and-reflection.html

Here is a link to our pre-liminary task and our reflection on how we feel we progressed

In our pre-liminary task we didn’t have a varied mix of shots and wasn’t experimental in the way we filmed so it looked very basic unlike our full project which we put a lot more technique into (tracking shot, extreme close ups)

We didn’t use a microphone to record dialogue like we did in the finished project we just used natural sound

We also didn’t use a diegetic or non-diegetic score The hand-held shots and panning shots were flowed a lot more in our

finished film unlike in the preliminary task which looked rather shaky

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

We also learnt how to use titles in our pull product which we didn’t do in our preliminary task

The editing looks better in our final film as there are no sudden cuts or jumps

And our characters are better established

Loser

Cool Kid

Overall I feel our opening sequence is very good and meets many of the requirements, It captures an audience by being visually interesting and constantly making an audience question things

The non-diegetic score complements the rest of the film and they both work in unison to create a tense and dramatic film

The only flaws would be the running scene which seemed slightly shaky but we filmed it as best as we could

I think the best part of the film is the titles as they are really smooth. If we could make our film in full I think it would be very interesting and would make a great film.

Conclusion