Evaluation
My media product would be targeted at 15-18 year old, white, males audiences, the age targeted is mainly because the themes are mature and may disturb younger audiences. Our target audience is mainstream as the action thriller hybrid genre applies to most teenagers needs. We used films such as Reservoir Dogs in our research to come to this conclusion, although a more mature audience was discussed as films such as Kill Bill were very successful but it's content was more advanced. To make sure I got the needs of my target audience Rowan went to the local Vue cinema and gave several viewers a questionnaire that had just come out of the film Non-Stop, a new action thriller film, to find out what interested them into the thriller genre and why they went and saw the film Non Stop. Predominantly the answer that was most common was that they went to see the film because the main storyline gripped them as soon as they heard about it; so I then pitched my films storyline to them. 35 people out of the 50 I asked said that they would go and see my film if it came out in major cinemas. I then asked the 15 people who said no why they wouldn't see it and they said that the film didn't have any stars but the concept was good. As this was a school project with a minimal budget I couldn't get any stars to perform in my feature film I explained and a further 13 people said they would then see it, so my film then appealed to 48 of the 50 people I asked. In our film, to appeal to our target audience we used tense and suspense music used in the video game Far Cry 3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaAL4uwXgTE), as a key piece through my film, this piece of music is a convention used in most thriller films, with loud crescendos and quiet sections this should grab the audiences attention in the action scenes and to create tension; used by Hitchcock in nearly all his major thriller films. My film had no dialect in the opening 2 minutes which went against all the codes and conventions we researched in my film analysis, however the people I asked in the Vue cinema said that films with no dialect in the beginning have a deeper storyline that makes them think in greater detail. We also shot our main character in casual clothing instead of wearing a suit showing him to be a 'normal' teenager, this initiates the audience to connect with the main character faster than if he was shot in formal clothing, this is also used in Terminator 2 where the main character John Connor is shown as a teenager in his everyday clothes, this clever use of mise en scene shows the main character to be young, vulnerable and not deserving of the situation he is placed in making the audience sympathize for the protagonist, this bring the audience closer to the main character (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMzsDsYtnFc). The use of parallel editing was successful in the thriller film Memento; my film also used parallel editing in an attempt to attract a similar audience. This link below is to show how parallel editing is used in hit films such as silence of the lambs. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts1x6uADFtM) Although The Silence of the Lambs was an 18, the editing techniques are transferable and can be effective in lower rated films such as Memento. Our main character was also used to attract teenage audiences, his pubescent aesthetic look not only shows him to be naive and innocent to the world but also allows the audience to sympathize with him as he a 'baby' face. He is also aesthetically appealing to teenage girls, this would mean that single girls would come and see the film; also girlfriends would go to see the actor and the boyfriends would go to see the actual film for the plot. The countertype of using a male in a vulnerable scene in the opening intrigued many people I asked at Vue cinema, with several asking why we hadn't chosen a females, like in the stereotypical Hitchcock thriller films. This is because I felt using a blonde male would attract audiences as it is unusual for the male to be the vulnerable one.
Our main character in our production is wearing casual
clothing this shows him to be a young character and allows our audience to
connect with them because they are of a similar age.
During the film the character is attacked and from the start the
audience see him as a defenceless character this makes the audience sympathize
with him. Equally when he wins the fight against the masked attacker the
audience start to fill uplifted and start to rejoice. Then at the end of the
film when then character has his head in his hands the audience sympathize with
his at his life changing event that a boy of his age should never be involved
with.
Some
of the shots of the main character are high angle shot. This represents the
character is weak, compared to some of the shots of the Masked Assailant that
are low angle shots that show him in a position of power this again makes the
audience feel sympathy for the character during this part of the film.
Similarly
in films like “Scream” there are also teenagers escaping a murderous masked
character; this stereotypical portrayal of teenagers being vulnerable in
situations involving masked assailants.
Equally our Masked Assailant is a stereotype to other masked characters in Horror films like Scream, Texas Chainsaw, Michael Myers in Halloween and Jason Vorhees in Friday the 13th. Masked Assailants are also featured in thriller films like the
Masked
Criminals in the Purge.
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"Polite Leader" in the Purge
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| Our Masked Character |
Characters that wear masks wear masks to strike fear in to there person there attacking. The masks dehumanises them to strike more fear into the victim; this also strikes fear into the audience, which further develops the relationship with the protagonist.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We also developed conventions used in other films when using techniques like the use of black and white in a colour production. A good example of this black and white in colour film would be the original Wizard Of OZ, where it only turns into colour film once Dorothy left Kansas. This was to signify to the audience that disequilibrium in the plot has occurred, because she now has the arduous task of getting home. In contrast to that we used the black and white as a memory of recent past event in our opening and colour to signify the present.
We also used forms of conventions from productions such as kill bill one, and two. Through the use of a black and white opening, this was further developed with the user parallel editing and cross cutting.This production challenged the conventions used in this particular Kill Bill as we never used any character dialogue.The flashbacks were used and developed similarly to kill bill As the past events are all shot in black and white then present is in colour.Our cross cutting and parallel editing was inspired by "silence of the lambs" and their effective use of cross cutting, which mislead the audience into thinking they new what would happen. Thus creating a plot twist which engaged their target audience even further.
From our title research we deduced that the best possible type of credits and titles was bold white impact with a fade in and fade out. We used these and and got "green lights" from the focus group, it also follows the same effects as the titles from reservoir dogs, as they use bold font and a fade in transition.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
During this product the main backbone for the use of technology is learning how to use blogger. As i have never used it before, it took some time getting used to but I would now say I am proficient at it.
I learnt how to use Sony Vegas Pro 12 for the editing because i found it easier to use than Final Cut Pro.Luke also learnt to use photo shop because of I wanted to create a completely digitally created shot list as opposed to trying to using sketches that would be scanned into a digital format we went for the second option as we realised we could get more detail out of the high quality sketches I made.
I learnt how to use Sony Vegas Pro 12 for the editing because i found it easier to use than Final Cut Pro.Luke also learnt to use photo shop because of I wanted to create a completely digitally created shot list as opposed to trying to using sketches that would be scanned into a digital format we went for the second option as we realised we could get more detail out of the high quality sketches I made.
By making this product other members of the group learnt that size doesn't matter. This is because we used rapid advancements in smart phone camera technology to record our production Alongside a Cannon D600. Opposed to the use of Industry standard logistic camera equipment such as Handycam, Proaim, Senna and Walimex, which can easily cost upwards of £1000.They can also be a lot bigger and bulkier in some cases which makes them harder to transport, we never had those issues.Although i still think it is arguable that they can produce a lot better quality footage.
Advantages of Technology We Used:
The use of the Nokia Lumia meant we were were able to communicate more effectively almost instantaneously, over long distance which would not be possible otherwise. An example of this would be when Luke sent Me images for location scouting showing him where we would be working in the future.
Another advantage of using the Mobile technology is that Rowan was also able to communicate with his focus group via a YouTube app, and was able to question them, reply to their response and make the production more appealing to our target audience on demand.
An example of this would be when the group motioned that we needed to use a different shot type for a specific point in the film.
We listened and we tried to incorporate that into the film.
For are music choice we came across some copyright issues, we tried tackling this by asking the owner of the music if we could have the right to put it into our production, sadly they never responded to the request so we decided to use copyrighted music freely available on the open source music, as well as having a connection who could produce some dramatic music for us. However shortly after implementing the non copyrighted music we had conformation that we could use their music. But decided to keep what we had used as it was more subtle and our target audience felt that it suited it better than the copyrighted music.
We listened and we tried to incorporate that into the film.
For are music choice we came across some copyright issues, we tried tackling this by asking the owner of the music if we could have the right to put it into our production, sadly they never responded to the request so we decided to use copyrighted music freely available on the open source music, as well as having a connection who could produce some dramatic music for us. However shortly after implementing the non copyrighted music we had conformation that we could use their music. But decided to keep what we had used as it was more subtle and our target audience felt that it suited it better than the copyrighted music.
Disadvantages of this technology:
The battery seemed to drain very quickly and it could of limited us to the number of shots taken, because the battery's capacity is not like that of logistic equipment that would be used in industry.
Capture quality was slightly lower but that is too be expected with new technologies which still needs to be tweaked and modified to reach its full potential.This meant that we found it hard to get closeup shots of actors faces in key moments of the film. For instance when the attacker turned into the person at a tactical disadvantage.
It was also hard getting used to the hardware like the new cameras which i have had no experience with before, meaning it was a steep learning curve when looking at YouTube tutorials for using both the Cannon 500 / 600 and learning to use our Nokia Lumia smart phone camera as well as it runs on a operating system that takes time getting used to.
It was also hard getting used to the hardware like the new cameras which i have had no experience with before, meaning it was a steep learning curve when looking at YouTube tutorials for using both the Cannon 500 / 600 and learning to use our Nokia Lumia smart phone camera as well as it runs on a operating system that takes time getting used to.
Preliminary and Production Comparison
Looking back at our preliminary task and our final piece of film, our production is more complex because of the amount of editing techniques used. For example in our preliminary task the lighting was not edited in post-production where as in the scenes where we were filming outside, the shots needed to be darker due to the brightness of the sun. 
<-- Production Lighting
Preliminary Lighting --->
Since our preliminary we have done more in depth research in to different types of shot like close-ups and tracking shots, we implemented these into our final film. There where only 7 different shots in our preliminary and around 50 in our final film.
For our preliminary we did a small amount of research into different camera shot and camera angle, but when we did our research for our production we found that all the aspects of our film needed to be researched like text and the equipment we used.
For the outside shots we uses a Cannon 600D
And for the outdoors shots we used the Nokia Lumia 1020's Pro Camera
We did this because there was not a lot of room in the room we where filming so Luke used the 1020's camera on a tripod (thanks to a special phone case) in the room.
The technology let us down Luke's memory card got corrupted and we lost all of the footage we had filmed the previous week. This meant it had to be rerfilmed. Because of the corruption I backed-up all of our footage as soon as we recorded it.
because the preliminary task was only a small task we did not need to do any in depth research into codes and conventions for it. But for our production we had to follow certain codes and conventions of a specific film gene (Thriller). we used common codes and conventions of thrillers in our final production like close-ups, black and white scenes and parallel editing/cross cutting.
The code and convention we used the most in our final production was the black and white scenes because black and white scenes.
1) Distort the Time in the Film
The technology let us down Luke's memory card got corrupted and we lost all of the footage we had filmed the previous week. This meant it had to be rerfilmed. Because of the corruption I backed-up all of our footage as soon as we recorded it.
because the preliminary task was only a small task we did not need to do any in depth research into codes and conventions for it. But for our production we had to follow certain codes and conventions of a specific film gene (Thriller). we used common codes and conventions of thrillers in our final production like close-ups, black and white scenes and parallel editing/cross cutting.
The code and convention we used the most in our final production was the black and white scenes because black and white scenes.
1) Distort the Time in the Film
2) Confuses the audience/viewer
3) Gives Audience Insight into the Past
4) Used in Key/Important Scenes in the film
An example of using the black and white scenes to confuse the audience is the first black and white scene in our production, when you see the Protagonist and the Antagonist of our production fight. we confuse the audience further by not including the start of the fight, instead you join part way into the fight.
We also believe that the audience would be confused by the man in the mask when they see him and would then relate to other thriller or horror film that the man in the mask is the Antagonist.
One of other factor that effected our Production was the Planning Process. For our preliminary task we did minimal planning and was filmed in around an hour. Where as for our production we did multiple mind maps for our 4 main ideas and then did a more in depth one when we chose the main idea we wanted to do for our film.
For our production we also did a simple story board and a more detailed storyboard. We took the more detailed story board with us when we filmed. Our Production took much longer than we expected it would. We filmed for 3-5 hours over 3 days (Including the day we lost the footage for).
While doing our production, as a team we have learnt that research and planning are both really important factors in the making of our final production.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? (Evaluation)
Planning - Compared to our Preliminary our final production had a lot more planning involved. We made multiple mind maps before choosing the one for our final production. Also the scripting for our preliminary task was not planned and was more impulse acting than scripted.
Location - There was no location planning for our preliminary task. Whereas there was alot of location planning done for our final production. We used google maps to help plan multiple routes that we could of filmed our production down and location shots of the area where taken before we arranged to meet for our first session of filming.
Lighting - In both our preliminary and our production we used natural lighting. Our preliminary is very simple, there was only one type of lighting used. Whereas in our production the lighting was fixed in post-production. Also in our production we used black and white scenes.
Mise en Scene - in our preliminary task there was a small amount of planning for mise en scen, and we only used the items that where available in the room. Whereas in our production props like the prop gun and the mask needed to be bought especially for the production. We used props like irons, ironing boards, cupboards and a prop gun to help make our fight scene more exciting.
Editing - In our preliminary task we did not use any of the editing techniques we he had researched. Whereas in our production we used editing techniques like Black and White scene, which are 1 of the codes and conventions of thriller films.
Sound - Sound was on of the hardest thing to find for our final production, it took us a week to find the correct song and sound effects to use in our final production. We made various copies of our final production with different music in the back ground, then as a group we decided on one. Whereas in our preliminary we didn't have any music because we believed it wasn't needed. We then discovered it might of helped because there was alot of background noise.
