Evaluation - Mark Summers

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

1.  Credits - Credits in any film are very important so it shows the audience what the film is, especially in the convention of as thriller. A film usually puts in credits in a style of the film, like for our credits at the end we had a blue and white light which is the lights the police cars have on top; as our opening was based in a police station and had police members we thought this would be another good way that our film was associated with the police. In the first screenshot of my comparison is Taxi Driver, in this the colour of the text is orange and white, which is the colour of the taxi's in the film which I thought was a good way to match the theme of the film.

2.  Over the Shoulder Shot - Over the shoulder shots are often used in many films to follow dialogue of some sort. In our film we used the over the shoulder shot in the dialogue sequence between the two police officers. This shot helps the audience follow the dialogue and so they know who's speaking at that moment in time. The screenshot I have compared this two was on Drive where the two characters were speaking to each other and allowed the audience to follow them speaking without causing the audience any confusion.

3.  Dialogue - Having dialogue in any film is quite important to allow the audience to understand what's going on. But in thrillers, dialogue isn't a key convention used to convey the genre. Dialogue is used in our opening and also in the film Drive which is also a thriller. It is used so that the audience have an ides who the characters are and can start creating links with the characters too. If our film didn't have any dialogue it would create too many questions for the audience and they would have no idea what is going on; which wouldn't be a good thriller to enjoy and watch. Also the way someone talks can give the audience what type of person they are, if they were talking the Queen's english they would have different thoughts of that operson to if they had say an east London accent.

4.  Shot Variety - Extreme close ups are fantastic in the use of a thriller film. They can be used as reaction shots, like in our opening, or just to see the emotions of a character. We used a reaction shot to the killer entering the room and straight to the victims eyes. The audience really liked this shot as I come to mention later on in my evaluation. Extreme close up shots adds a sense of tension and the audience can really feel attached to the character in the scene. I compare this shot to an extreme long shot used in Drive as you can see there is one character placed right in the middle of the shot. This can be used to convey the sense that the character is lost or out of place; and can be really effective in thrillers as this creates the sense of tension and the audience are wondering what to expect next.

5.  Props - Props are important in thrillers if the film needs them. By that I mean if it needs a prop to make the audience understand the plot/setting easier. In our thriller opening we used an evidence board, like what police stations have, to help the audience understand that we are in a police station. We also have a shot that points to the evidence board so the audience can see what's on the board and help them to understand who the victim is. A prop that was used in The Dark Knight is a gun, this has been used to help the audience understand how they are trying to get what they want, which is the money from the bank. having props can determine what the audience the audience think of the character using the prop, or help them to understand the storyline a bit easier.

6.  Location - Location is key in any thriller film. If you have the wrong location or the audience can't understand where it is, then the thriller could potentially be ruined. We chose, in general, a police station as our main location and we convey this with the use of the prop, the evidence board, the titling with the blue and white flashing lights, and also through dialogue with the two characters saying "Hello Officer". As you can see in my comparison shot, the location of  The Dark Knight is a very open, tall skyscraper setting; it makes it look like it's in a wealthy city. In this thriller they then go and raid a bank so the setting for a wealthy city works very well with the plot and the audience can understand this with the establishing shots used.

7.  Sounds - Sounds and Foley's are an important convention of a thriller. They can be used to create tension through a soundtrack, or used to over-exaggerate an action, this would be done with a Foley. In our thriller opening we used a very tense and suspense building soundtrack which the audience loved as I will mention below in this evaluation. Having a soundtrack like this in a thriller helps build the convention of the genre and keep that enigma there in the storyline. In the comparision shot above, a foley was used to add the effect of them shooting through the glass and a smash of glass foley was used in The Dark Knight. Using this foley adds the exaggeration of the smash to the audience and as the mood before that was very tense it makes the audience jump and that is an important convention of a thriller.

8.  Costume - Costume and clothing on characters is a vital part of a thriller film. The types of clothes the character wears lets the audience decide what they think of the character. For the gang member we used a hoody in the evidence board photo's and slightly more sophisticated clothes to fit in around the police station, this lets the audience know that the character isn't as incoherent as they may think he is to wear the different clothes to get into the police station. In The Dark Knight the characters that break into the bank all wear masks to hide their identity from anyone knowing who they are. This creates the effect of suspense to the audience as they don't know who they are.

9.  Editing - Editing is a massive part of making a thriller. With the right editing you can make a film from good to excellent. Continuity editing is one of the most important types of editing for a film; to make sure everything is perfect and no mistakes made; for example in our film we used the shot/reverse shot sequence. This is a form of continuity editing and if we got this wrong, cut it at the wrong bit, it could have turned out disastrous. Another continuity editing form we used was match on action which worked really well with the hand shake, and again very precise cutting is required to make sure all the shots are alined correctly. I can compare our thriller for editing with Casino Royale, and as you can see from the screenshot, post-production editing has been used to make the shot brighter and add an effect of a flashback which was what this was used for. People use editing techniques to enhance their film and use it in a way that conveys the thriller genre and creates the required tension and suspense to make sure the audience enjoy the film they paid to watch.

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

Our victim in our film was a male character, this breaks the sometimes used 

female character of being the victim as you can see below. We don't fully represent any of the female gender as we haven't got any in our opening of our thriller; but if we did have a female in our thriller she would have been a police officer as you get more and more of these nowadays compared to the past. 
Like in The Bourne Supremacy (2004) where there is a high up female leading the operation to hunt the male as seen in this screenshot to the left. This is a more modern way of representing femininity.
Where as in the film Black Rain which was released in 1989, there were no female officers at all as you can see from this screenshot below So in the case of our thriller so far, ours is similar  to Black Rain and more traditional way of representing masculinity as we have no female officers and ours is different to more recent films.

We chose a male victim as it creates a different slant on the story and as the character was in the police force partaking in a tough job to be an investigator we thought the male character would represent this better. Also as this character was going into a gang we thought a male character would be better suited as you don't see many female members in a gang.
As seen to the left is a gang with only male members in. Along with our film we created a evidence board like the police have; here was a photo we took for it to show the attacker in a gang. By using mise en scene and with the characters in the gang all having their hoods up, this creates the sense that this is a gang as the hood is a key symbol for a gang. We therefore are representing the gang as bad as possible as they have killed one of the officers and therefore helping the audience understand why the police needed to arrest them to stop them killing anyone else.

The gang member as seen in the photo to the left has a status of power; he is seen towering over the police officer as if he has more power than the police officer, also in the same scene the police officer acts as if he is scared and frightened.

Both the officers in the scene to my right are represented equally, both wearing a shirt, although the chief wearing a shirt which suggests he has a bit more power than the other officer. This is shown in the shot/reverse sequence.

Another example of a film where a gang member goes around killing people is Rampage (2009) where he kills police officers with his two machine guns then kills anyone in his way, a fantastic thriller movie and is similar to ours. Here is a screenshot of the gang member chasing a victim out of his shop and then shoots him dead. 

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

I would want my film to be distributed by a company called Hammer Film Productions who are based in the United Kingdom. I would like this company to distribute our film because they have distributed many thriller films before including Dracula (1958), The Mummy and also Frankenstein which all did really well and sold many copies of it. As they have 78 years of experience in the trade and also experience in distributing thriller films,  as they would be able to distribute it to the cinema's and then to DVD and reach our target audience effectively aged 15-30 years of age. Here is the full list of films Hammer Film Productions have distributed, as you can see this is a huge list and this is why I hope Hammer distribute my media product. Not only have they released high budget films, but also low budget films, like ours, for example Beyond The Rave, which was a low budget film and also sold very well on DVD.


With regard to methods of distribution the film would go down the traditional route of entering the cinema first and then go onto to DVD; but not at the same time as I think it wouldn't bring in as much revenue as people would either go to the cinema or buy it on DVD, if we do a staggered release then people will watch it at the cinema, and if they like it, buy it on DVD and therefore earn more money.

Another massive organisation this film would go to would be onto the iTunes store. The iTunes store was originally just for music, then time moved on, in 2005 offered videos and in 2009 started to offer rentals of films. this is a big step for any film as they can distribute it to the iTunes store and download it straight to their device and watch it from home, without leaving the house to go and buy the DVD/go to the cinema. This would then be able to reach our target audience of 15 - 30 years of age and also anyone else who wants to see it from the comfort of their own home.



This film would advertise on social networking sites to get the word around with an extended trailer so they can see what the film is like, but wouldn't show the entire film on any social network site as I think it would lose too much money and the film needs to at least break even.








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

With regards to who would be the audience for our media product, I conducted some research on Facebook and some face to face feedback; our audience suggested that our film should be from the age of 15+ as you can see to the image on the right of a screenshot from Facebook. So it's really looking at the younger generation from 15 - 30 years old. 


With regards to gender some of the feedback I received said it would be good for both genders to enjoy as they liked the thrill of the opening; but others said as there was just male characters it would be more suited to the male gender. I would target both genders because I think the female gender will enjoy the action and thrill 
of our film as well as males would, even if there are no female characters in our opening. The
audience also liked the fact that enigma was created and enjoyed that of the opening. We also chose a young protagonist, the gang member, to attract our younger generation of people to come and see this film; I think that having a young protagonist will attract that lower end of our target audience as they think that they can relate to the film and feel they have a connection which was exactly our intention in the first place.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

One of them ways was through the variety of our shots. Our audience appeared to enjoy the extreme close up on Chris's face as two audience members said it suits the genre, it's intense and thrilling. Through a variety of shots we can make the character seem sinister and creates the effect of suspense which excites the audience. 
Our female as well as male audience liked this feature and said it created a sense of thrill in the film. By having a close up it shows emotions of the character and the audience can really connect with the character and feel his emotions as well; as our audience liked this and they felt it was an intense shot, I felt that our shot variety was a good mixture.

Another way we attracted our audience was by our soundtrack. The soundtrack created suspense and worked really well it's the film; from our audience feedback they really liked the soundtrack, one response was it creates a good atmosphere of suspense, which was our intention of the music to build suspense and tension. Especially some of our female audience who said they liked the soundtrack! We chose a soundtrack which would go well with the theme of a police station and also that it would create tension which is one of the main conventions of a thriller; and from our audience feedback it looks like we have achieved this and picked a good track for our opening.

I conducted some audience feedback and all that responded said they really enjoyed it. Quite a lot commented on the fact there was enigma in our film and they liked the idea that it left them thinking and on a cliffhanger and asking questions to themselves. 

The female audience also enjoyed the enigma in our opening; so us targeting both genders has turned out to be successful. As we managed to create enigma in our opening and the overall feedback from the audience was positive I felt the opening attracted our target audience well and conveys itself as a good thriller opening.

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

Here is the final video:





Here is a link to our opening as said in the above video. Click Here!

Below is the transcript I used:

Throughout the process of constructing this product, I have learnt so much about thetechnology I used for this movie. Below is the HD camera we used in our film, as you can see on the bottom right hand corner of the camera is a little dial; this dial was formanual focus which we used for a focus pull in our movie as shown here:

I personally had never used manual focus before and so it was a first to me, it took a while to get used to the speed that it did focus on but we managed to pull it off in the end and made a good focus pull shot.

With regards to framing, in our first session of filming our framing was poor. We discussed this within the group then chose to re-film the shots that had bad framing, below is a photo of: at the top after we re-filmed and below before were-filmed.

 

As you can see the framing is a lot better from the re-film as it's a lot closer in and can see the characters a lot better. We also used a wide variety of shots in our film, from extreme close up shots to extreme long shots, below there aresome photos of these shots with some captions below them to show what shot size they were.

As you can see we had a variety of shots that we filmed and having a variety is a good way to demonstrate different views of the character.

Second to filming, another technology we used to create our product was the Mac. With the Mac we used Final Cut Pro which was for editing the film, GarageBand for editing the sound and adding foley's and finally we used Motion which is a package that let us create our credits which came out really well (show link toYouTube video for credits or just create clip with credits on)

With final cut pro all members of the group had basic knowledge on how to use it which was good, but also we didn't know a lot about the advanced knowledge, with adding effects and also titling which we struggled to find, even we thought that would have been the easiest function to find but we struggled; eventually we found how to use the advanced features but took a lot of getting used to. (Include final cut picture)

As you can see by the final film (post link) our editing came out well!

We also used GarageBand which again we only ha basic knowledge in how to use it so took us a while to find where stuff was, for example where the foley's were. After we had a grip of the program we used it to our advantage and found an amazing soundtrack which created tension and added it to our film. After that we looked at our film and the clip (show clip of Robert walking) with Robert walking, the footsteps were very quiet so we had a look for some foley footsteps and we found some and added them to our film, we did have to match it up with the footsteps but that didn't take us long as we found out how to move the sound around. After saving the video though and tried to upload it to YouTube we had some problems with the GarageBand sound on YouTube, it just wasn’t there so we had to put it back into final cut and then save it, which was a bit of a pain but we sorted it in the end and you can see the clip at (show YouTube link)

We used lighting in our film, which could have been a bit darker to create suspense at the end of the day but the use of lighting we had was really good and made the characters faces look clearer on one side than the other. Finally another technology we have used throughout this project is the blog, constantly updating any progress we have made, research etc. has really kept a good record of what we have done and what we need to do, for all members of the group and is a really good way, I think, to be able to prove how much work one member has done and overall keep progress of your entire film as you go along.

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

Shots 1 to 9 are from left to right.

1.      Credits – I learnt that credits in a film is very important as it shows the audience what film they are watching and through credits it can show a lot about the film. Without credits the film is very open-ended to what it is, and who is acting. Often credits are coloured/displayed in a way that fits with the film, like in our thriller film we have the blue and white light effect over the credits to show that the police have something to do with our opening. 

2.     Framing - Framing is very important when it comes to films, you don't want to have too much space around the characters. As you can see in the shot above, in our opening the characters area lot closer in and tighter together and there is not a lot of space around them; whereas in the prelim photo there is a lot of space around the character, the opening was such an improvement to framing and learnt a lot about it. You don't want to have a lot of space around the character so the audience are just concentrating on what you want them to look at, not the background or what's on the wall which we learned from our prelim; the thriller's framing was a lot better and no space around the characters so the audience only looked at the characters and can then get to know the characters better.

3.     Dialogue - I have learnt that dialogue is very important in any film as you can learn so much about the character by how they speak and the vocabulary they use. Therefore the audience can get to know the characters better and can then relate to them in the film. Also without dialogue the audience wouldn't understand the storyline and therefore it wouldn't be a very good film if the audience didn't understand the plot.

4.     Wide variety of shots – Using a wide range of shots, I learnt, is very important in any film. The film then becomes more varied with the shots, and also less boring for the audience to see the same shot all the time. Also it can show the characters at a different angle and to see a different side of them just by different shot variety. Using shots like an extreme close up can show the emotions of the character and the audience can feel a connection with that character. also with the extreme long shot we used in the prelim this can show that the character is lost or feels out of place; I have learnt that all these feelings the audience can take in just from the variety of shots.

5.     Props – Props were important for both the prelim and our actual opening. For the prelim we used the piece of paper in our match on action as our prop and in the actual opening we used the evidence board which was a fantastic prop which made our setting look more like a police station. The use of props helps the audience understand either the location or help the audience understand storyline a bit better. But props can be very irritating when it comes to continuity, as we found in the prelim with the piece of paper; where it was in some shots when it shouldn't have been; but we made sure these errors were not in our final opening and the prop we used was kept the same for each shot and it worked out really well and learnt a vital element when it comes to film making.

6.     Location – Location is vital when choosing to make a film. For our location for our prelim we chose an open space where we could film. It took us a while to find a good location for our thriller opening, but we managed to get permission from Sainsbury’s to film in an office and along a corridor inside there. Our location for that was fantastic and worked really well for what we wanted to do. For your location you need to show enough to the audience to understand where you are otherwise you could be anywhere and the audience will be asking themselves the question "where are they?" which is not a question they should be asking, and should be concentrating on the plot rather than location. For our prelim we chose a 'loud' location where we had background noise, which was not what we intended; so when we picked our location for our opening we picked quieter places, with a background noise of an office environment which worked well for the police station.

7.     Sounds and Foley’s – Sounds and foley’s in any film are very important, foley’s are extras you add to the film post production to emphasise on the video, for example in our thriller opening we used a foley for the footsteps which worked really well and emphasises the fact that he is walking. We also chose a soundtrack for our opening as we had no soundtrack in our prelim; the soundtrack worked really well and creates a good level of tension within the opening. We chose the soundtrack as it would create that level of tension and suspense a good thriller needs. Our audience feedback really liked the soundtrack as well which is good as that feeling of suspense needs to be created for the genre. We chose no foley sounds for our prelim as we felt we didn't need to exaggerate/improve any sounds on any of the clips; but on our opening we felt the footsteps had to have a foley over so the audience can understand the corridor has an echo and feels a lonely place; in the end the foley worked well and created a good level of tension.

8.     Character – I learned about trying to develop characters in our film. What the character wears, acts and speaks all effects how the audience perceives that character as. Lets take the gang member of our opening; the audience will know why the gang member entered the office of the officer because he previously arrested him and wants to get his own back. The audience still don't know the whole story of the character either so creates a sense of enigma and therefore makes it a good thriller. How a character acts as well can then make the audience choose sides between the characters on the situations they are faced by. In our prelim both of our characters were school kids completing homework, and can only really perceive them on what they say and also what they are wearing, whether it is a sophisticated school or maybe not as much. The clothes the officers wear in our opening make them look smart and as if they could be police officers and the audience could understand this.

9.     Editing – I have learnt so much about editing for both the prelim to the opening thriller. I have been able to cut the shots at the right point with a very delicate eye to make sure the shots are perfectly lined up and making no mistakes as if you make one mistake in editing that can cause a huge problem when it comes to editing another clip later on. Continuity editing is vital when it comes to editing, because if it is done wrong, and the audience spot it, it can be a massive problem for your future reputation in the film industry. Our continuity editing features were for our prelim: match on action, which I thought we did really well and all the shots lined up fantastically. This helps the audience know what the characters are passing each other and gives them another view and as if they are connected to that piece of paper. For our thriller opening we had: match on action with the handshake between the two officers as they hold a meeting with regards to the gang members, eye line match with the officer pointing at the photo on the evidence board. All of these features took time to master, and gives the audience a view as if they were looking at it from there point of view and makes it like they are involved, which creates suspense for a thriller. Additionally we used parallel cutting with the gang member walking to the officers room, and the officer in the room; as the audience are following that action and are not sure where that gang member is walking to, but most likely is the room where that officer is in; this builds suspense as we are unsure where he is off to or why he is about to walk into the officers room. We didn't use parallel cutting in our prelim and I think it was good we used it in our opening as it works well with the conventions of a thriller. We also used shot/reverse shot to follow the dialogue of the two characters and so the audience feel they are involved and connected to the characters, we also used this in our prelim and used it in our opening as we felt we could do this for both and it worked well. Overall my editing has become more efficient and to a level which created a professionally looking film.