Evaluation

Thriller Opening Sequence: Self Evaluation

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

As a group, we decided to produce an opening sequence for a mystery Thriller. We searched in to what a mystery thriller involves and thought about how we could adapt our own ideas to create  an opening sequence that matched the criteria. For example, we produced a soundtrack that was made on GarageBand made up of creepy music and eerie noises to help bring more of an intense atmosphere. This was played through half the sequence and then stopped as soon as the mystery man woke up with a huge gasp. We then had a “boom” noise at the end when the title of our sequence came up to help bring the audience’s attention back to what the film would be called. Another characteristic involved within a mystery thriller is not knowing who the killer is. We were able to make sure that at no point could you see who the killer was, which helped bring suspense as to whether or not you will see him before the movie has finished. The only part of the man you do see is his arm when opening the door, which can also help the audience’s memory keep that minor detail in mind throughout the film. This was a positive on our part because it means that the audience will have a higher chance on remembering our film.

When it came to the timing of the production, we thought that the effects of the clips would have a good impact of putting suspense and tension on the audience as most of the scenes were blurry. From this is could sometimes make the audience feel confused as to what is going on, but we thought that if we had a continuous walking scene and a part where he wakes up the audience would understand that he may have thought it was a dream when actually it wasn’t.

We had a look in to different films that support our sub genre, such as Ghost ship, Momento and Abduction. These are horror/mystery and phsychologoical thrillers which helped us develop the sort of atmosphere we needed to create in our opening sequence.

2.    How does your product represent particular social groups?

I think our particular piece represents social groups, because when thinking stereotypically, when a group of girls are getting ready to go out, they normally wear more or less the same. For example, they may normal wear really short dresses and heels with straight hair and a lot of make-up, when in this piece we went for a more subtle look so that we didn’t take the attention away from what the scene was intending to show. Therefore our characters challenge the gerneral steriotype of young girls.

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

Personally I don’t think that any major distribution company, e.g. Paramount Studios, would produce our idea in to an actual film as this is a very basic and simple idea. For example, they produced a film called Paranormal Activity 3 which is a psyhological thriller. They make the film so intense that it would be tricky for us to follow in their footsteps. Also, they would be able to produce a more in depth and intense film. If they had the chance to create a film continuance from our opening sequence, I’m sure that they would produce and idea that has got all the criteria needed to make the audience feel satisfied. However, The Village which was written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, may take an interest in to our idea because even though they’re ideas are so originial, our opening sequence will be able to fit all the catogories that are listed within this film, for example, the mystery of who is going round on a murderous hunt.

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

In my personal opinion, I thought that our media project would be suitable for 13+ as you couldn’t see any violence or gory parts to the scene, and you couldn’t hear any rude language. When producing the research to look at more of a back ground to our specific genre, we see that the main effects in a 15+ or 18 normally contain a lot of horror and gore, a bigger fear factor and discourteous language. Our opening sequence had minimal gore, no unpleasant language and we had more of a jumpy effect than a horror effect. Our original target audience was aimed at 16-18 year old girls, however in my personal opinion; I feel that it would probably still be suitable for a younger age. Also due to the cast change now involving a guy instead of a 5 girls, I think that it could benefit girls and boys rather than just girls. We then asked our friends of a similar age, whether they would take an interest in to watching a film like this. The answers they gaave were very useful and it helped us develop more of an idea. We looked on the internet at past media productions from other schools that were doing the same thing, which helped us gain an understand ing of the types of things we needed to add in in order for the audience to be interested.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We did this mainly through our mise-en-scene and our characters. We made sure that the actresses involved were based around the same age as our target audience, 16-21 and that they were all girls in order for the audience to relate to the film. We wanted the audience to feel as though they could ask themselves “what would I do in that situation”. When creating and editing our sequence, we thought the best place to bring fear to our target audience was when Pip got stabbed and was lying on the floor with blood coming out of her hip. We were able to achieve this by making the blood seem more realistic by creating it ourselves and the way we had filmed it made it look like the murderer was looking over her. Another part that worked well was when the murderer woke up thinking it was all a dream. This scene was particularly jumpy which helped bring the fear factor higher because the gasp of air was so loud. When thinking of the mise-en-scene, we thought that it would be a good idea to use a knife in order for Pip to get stabbed as it would be interesting for the boys to watch. Steriotypically mos boys are interested in the violent sort of films. We also thought that we could build up the suspense with music. We created our piece of music on GarageBand which was helpful because we had loads of different sounds to work with. When looking at camera techniques, we had to be careful so that the audience couldn’t see who the murdedrer was. We did this by obeying the 180’ rule and by using the camera handheld at parts so it was as though you were looking through the murderers eyes.

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

There were some strengths and weaknesses when using the camera, I think that one main positive was that I knew how to work the camera as I had used it before starting this project, one negative however is that after a large amount of time, the camera can become relatively heavy and then you lose focus of what you are filming because your concentrating on not dropping the camera. When using Final Cut software, I thought this was fairly difficult as it was on an Apple Mac computer and I have never used one of those before. As I have hadn’t used either an Apple Mac or Final Cut, when it came to my turn to edit, a few problems were raised. For example, as there were people in our group who had had experience in these things before, they were able to use it quickly, however it took me a whole lesson to edit 3 scenes. Duriong the filming process, more and more problems started to rise. Foe example, when we were filming in Southampton, it began to snow. So we had to wait for the snow to stop first before we could do anything. We also had to wait for all the other actresses to arrive. After we had finished this part of the filming and we started editing this, we realised that we hadnt filmed for long enough in most of the scenes, so we had to take more shots in order for them to flow. This became a problem because we were  using up a lot of the time we had before the deadline. I learnt that from these, we need to plan ahead incase these problem,s happen again. W had to put all of our blogs that we had created of the filming process on to a software called Blogger. This was once again an easy process as I have used it before and use it quite regularly, however, I didn’t know that you could have more than one person put blogs on the same page that you could. This was a good experience because it was able to help me catch up with what I had missed from previous lessons. Also it helped me develop the blogs further. For example, a post of the main characters was put up which helped me develop the blog of Final Costume.

We also used a software called Garageband. This was a simple process as I had used it before. However, I learnt how to turn the actual music that we had created in to an MP3 file and put it on itunes, which will come in handy when doing the upcoming creations. 

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

I think overall, that for a start, the planning for the preliminary task went relativly well as we were all able to put some form of idea in and manage to come up with a sequence that had a comedic side to it. We were able to make fast decisions on what we were going to produce and what we wanted the audience to feel. On the other hand, when trying to create and opening sequence, instead of creating an idea straight away, it took us a number of weeks to produce an idea that we were all happy with. I have learnt from this that teamwork is a major skill to learn, along with tolerance and patience. When filming, I was able to improve more on my knowledge of how to use the camera and the FinalCut software. I was also able to learn more about what shot angles can be used and what effect they had because we were doing it ourselves rather than watching someone else. With the editing, it became easier the more I used it. There are still a few pieces that I don’t know about, such as fading out music and scenes and adding the music to the sequence, however, I’m sure that these skills will improve over time as we continue through the course

Lauren Stokes, Individual Evaluation.

Question one

 

Our media product was to create a opening sequence to a thriller film, our sub genre was a mystery thriller. When researching into the Thriller generic conventions it is recognised that in our film we have conformed to a lot of them and haven't really challenged the conventions. For example the generic convention of a Thriller narrative normally revolves around a crime, you can see this in our opening sequence through the murder scene. You see a person having flash backs to someone murdering a girl this is showen in the first two minutes of the film which conforms to the general conventions of narrative.

Another generic convention in a thriller is the existance of a protagonist which is exploited by the antagonist. Our film contains A few different Protagonists who are different girls and they are exploited by the Antagonist who is the murderer. Throughout the film you have the question who is the antagonist but it is found out in the end. It is also is said in a thriller you see a protagonist in danger but is resolved in the end, which is the same as our film because you see the main character matt having flash backs of different girls being put in danger and being killed but you never know if it is going to get resolved in the end because your made to think it is not the main character but in the end it is resolved to who the antagonist is.
Furthermore, another example to show generic conventions we conform to would be in a thriller it has a series of or one important enigmas and is set up in the opening sequence of the film and carries on throughout the first half of the film and only resolved at the very end, the film abduction using the same convention. our film conforms this because in the first opening scenes you see a character having flashbacks and dreams of a girl being murdered and this character walking away from the crime scene this leaves confusion with the audience but by the end of the film it is all resolved and explained. One of the generic conventions in which our film challenges is the title of the film because it is normally shown to relate to one of the characters weaknesses such as vertigo or insomnia but as our title is called playback which doesn't give away any thing to the audience what is actually wrong with the character it makes the audience. For our thriller we choose mystery, looking at sub genre conventions for mystery we found it quite hard to find conventions in that genre, but it shows many mysteries have a main investigator who tries to solve the mystery, our thriller conforms and challenges other mystery thrillers, because you see the main character facing these flashbacks/dreams but trying to solve who they are and why he keeps seeing them because he thinks its not him as he cant remember doing any of it.~

Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?~

In our thriller we have different characters, who are from different age groups.However, our opening sequence represents the social group of young people in general. First of all you have the main character Matt who is in his thirties. Who is facing the flashbacks/dreams and doesn't have anyone to turn to for help and tries solving these mystery killings he is seeing, he doesn't know if they are all dreams or real until one day he sees missing posters of some of the girls. There are about five girls from a university living all together in a flat who the people he sees in his flashbacks/dreams and on the wanted posters, when he figures out they are the same people he realises it is real and he starts to try and find them because he thinks they could be still alive and what he sees in his flashbacks may not be true. When he finds the bodies in a old apartment he owns he think someone is trying to frame him, he is more determined to find out who it is. After a lot of discovering and it turns out to be him behind the killers because he has a split identity and doesn't know what he is doing when he is someone else. This is figured out when he is not himself and about to kill someone else and he snaps out of his split personality to himself, he realises its actually him. Matt is in his thirties, he is british and is middle class, he has been working for the police and is training to be a detective. The five girls are from the ages 18-20, living in a house in there second year of university. We have represented the main character Matt to conform the stereotype of being dominant to women because they are his victims but also we have also made him a vulnerable character because he hasn't got anyone to talk to about these flashbacks/dreams as he doesn't want anyone thinking he is different and to ruin his chances of being a detective. The girls who are shown in the film that are being killed have been shown as typical university students, partying and socialising until they get taken by the killer and get killed, and then are shown as vulnerable too because they don't want to die. Our film was said to be targeted to mostly girls/women on the age 17 and above, this links to our film because the film is made up of characters in the same age group. We did this because we could make the audience relate to the characters because of there age and then people who are in university would know it is realistic

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product? why?~

Due to our original idea not succeeding and changing half way through, we came up with a good idea that went well with the filming we ended up with. I think the movie wouldn't become a major hollywood studio film because our idea was very simply and minimised it is totally opposite to what normal hollywood films are like. I think our film will be a independent movie which would reflect in our mise-en-scene because it is very simply compared to hollywood, if it was a major hollywood film the location would be set in a very big place which would cost a lot of money but ours is set in a university, in houses and in streets, in our opening sequence we haven't used any props, but throughout the film there could be more different used but not loads. The costumes are very opposite to what you see in hollywood films, which is very extravagant and big but for our film we use very little costumes, it is set in everyday life so all the clothes are very casual. The lighting in our film is very ambient to show everyday life and if it was a hollywood film they would have big lights to emphasise scenes in the film. Our film being an independent film Would not normally be shown in major cinemas but maybe be shown in art centres and in local film houses, also it will probably go straight to dvd and online for people to buy and watch. Our film is quite original and there is not many films with the story line and settings as we had chosen, even though there is some films which have chosen to do films with the character having a split personality but I don't think there are many with the same story line and characters. The film would be released to fill a niche market in the movie world because as I said there are not many films with the same ideas as this one. I do not think this film would offer any opportunities for a franchise because you find out in the end who the killer is and why he was doing it. It think if it was made into a franchise it would not be appreciated by the audiences and wouldn't receive much interest because every thing has been done in the first film. Some films have merchandise made for there films but seeing as our film is not a major film and be hugely popular I think basic merchandise would be made like film posters but nothing else.~

4.What would be in your target audience for your media product?~

Our film was created and targeted for girls/women from the age of 16-20, we thought girls of this age would enjoy our film because they could relate to the girls in the films because they are the same age. The narrative is quite gory and could involve a lot of blood, this is why we put the rating of a 15 to the film. Even though we said we targeted it to women/girls I do believe men would also be interested in the film because it might frighten them as well, but we believed it would attract girls more then men. There are some films that have the similar locations and the same gore such as sorioty row which is also set in a university but theres is an american film. There is also some films that look at the same issues as we did which was split personality, for example black swan.We asked the audience by using questions, we gave out pieces of paper with questions about them, so how old? what films they enjoyed? would they enjoy a film like ours? and we got an equal amount of people to answer each and when we got them back we looked deeply into these and constructed our film around this, to help us fully relate to the audience. Simular films who have had the same target audiences have been Sorioty Row and prom night.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?~

After changing our idea throughout the course it was hard to think how to attract the audience but we decided to put characters in the film that are the same age as the people who watch it and the girls could relate to them at university but not when it turns bad. We knew that a lot of people had different fears and wasnt sure what terrifies everyone but we choose not just simply gore but throughout the film it would get scarier and could terrify them when watching the film. We had to put the age rating to a 15 so we aimed the film at 15 and above. In opening sequence we used a lot point of view shots so the audience feel like they are that person and they put them selves in that characters shoes and it makes them feel like they are witnessing the murders.

What have you learnt bout technologies from the process of constructing the product?~

In the process of making our opening sequence i have leant different things about creating a media product. I was able to use different technologies such as the camera which at first I was a little bit scared because I wasn't sure ho to use everything, but after being explained how to use it all I thought i used it very well. My weaknesses of using the camera is when i had to do hand held shot i wasn't able to keep my hand still and made it a bit shaky. My main strengths was I knew how to set the camera up and use all the buttons. Using the equipment i feel very confident to using it all. During our filming process we faced many different problems, we headed southampton and thought we could get all the shooting done in the time we got, but when we got to southampton the cast which was my sisters friends were not available till Later that day, when they arrived we started filming, during filming we faced different problems with the lighting, because in the kitchen we wanted it to be darker but the window didn't have any curtains or blinds and it was quite bright outside which made it bright it in the kitchen. Also when we arrived at southampton it was raining so we had to change the shooting schedule and not film out side because the camera would get wet and it wouldnt look good in our film. The biggest problem we faced was when we got back to school and added all our filming to final cut pro we realised we had a lot of mistakes and we could not work with much of the filming. We had t think about what we could do to improve our film. We decided in the end that I would go back to southampton and reshot some scenes, such as the stabbing scene. After i filmed this and got back to school we realised again we had faced another problem we needed a walking to the scene with the point of view shot. We sorted this out by asking a friend who lived close to the school and we filmed walking to his house. We thought this would solve all our problems but we decided when looking at it, we realised we were still missing parts, we decided to use my brother in my house waking up and realising there is bloody knife on the floor also walking away from the house again. Having these problems we faced it made us realise our first idea would have to be changed and thinking what our plot could be. After getting all the shots complete the end process of the editing became much easier. To create the soundtrack for our opening sequence We used garage band this was very useful because without the sound effects it made our thriller look very dull and it didn't look right, but once we had created it, it made it look so much better. Using garage band was very straight forward but it just was difficult to find which ones we wanted and which ones sounded the best.~

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

When we first started using the cameras to film the preliminary, i have improved my knowledge on how to use them and looking back at what we created at the start of the year we thought it was very easy to create the short piece and edit it, but after filming in southampton and facing all the troubles we came across we realised it was much harder then what we thought. Having those problems when trying to edit made our process not as smooth as others. But using the camera a lot of times because of our problems i was able to improve my skills with creating different shots. Creating our piece had its many different weaknesses and strengths, and i do think our end product has turned out better then what i thought it would have been like during the editing stages.~

As we had to change our idea to a similar but different idea it made us realise all the planning stages didn't fit with what we have created so this meant we had to plan to different ideas, our first plan was quite straight forward and if the filming went as we planned it would have turned out better, but when we had to change our idea it made us realise we had to make our film fit with a new idea.~

Our filming and editing to make our final piece was not as successful as i thought it could have been and creating our final product faced a lot of problems which made it not as a success as i wanted it to be.