Evaluation - Megan Trigg

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

1. Eyeline match - Eyeline match is useful in thriller films, as often a character will see something before the audience. This is the case in this scene from Midsomer Murders, as shown in picture 1 and the picture here on the left. We have used eyeline match slightly differently to the way it has been used in Midsomer Murders, as here eyeline match is used to create a sense of enigma for the audience, as it uses restricted narration. This means that we are kept in the dark about who the attacker is, something which frequently occurs in Midsomer Murders. Though useful for them, this would not have worked well in our opening as it is essential that we understand the relationship between the victim and the attacker.

2. Male victim - In thriller films, the victim tends to be female as women tend to be portrayed as weak and vulnerable. In the case of our thriller opening, we decided to challenge this with a male victim instead. In Midsomer Murders, the victim varies between male and female characters, though in this particular episode, the victim is female. We chose to go against this stereotype because we thought the male would fit better to the police force stereotype, which was of greater importance in our opening.

3. Depth of Field - Depth of field is commonly used in many genres of film, as it can direct the attention of the viewer to a certain prop, or can foreshadow certain events. We used depth of field to pull the focus from the Victim to the background, making him appear unfocussed and foreshadowing the idea that he might be at risk. Midsomer Murders used depth of field, as shown by shots 3 & 5. 5 helps indicate the impact of the action.

4. Cross Cutting - Cross cutting is useful in creating suspense as you are cutting between two important pieces of action. In this episode of The Bill, cross cutting is used while the man reveals the truth about a crime he was involved in. As this is happening, the police are uncovering additional evidence, which helps to add to the audience's understanding of the situation. We used cross cutting in our opening to build suspense as well as to further audience understanding of the situation. 

5. Parallel Sound - We decided to use this common convention of a thriller in our opening as we felt that the sound helped to build the suspense. Parallel sound in Midsomer Murders helps to create an understanding of what has happened without actually showing the death - so as not to give away the mystery of who committed the crime. 

6. Use of Dialogue - Though not a common convention of thriller openings in particular, we chose to use dialogue in our opening. Our main section of dialogue occurs in a scene much the same to this one from The Bill. Interview scenes obviously have to include dialogue to make sense, but can be used quite effectively to still maintain the mystery element. For instance at this point in The Bill, the man is asked the same thing repeatedly until he answers, building suspense for the audience.

7. Shot/Reverse Shot Sequence - As a shot/reverse shot sequence requires dialogue, again this is not especially a common convention of thrillers. However, like in The Bill, we decided to use this to create communication between our characters. We felt it was easier to do a shot/reverse shot sequence than using a two shot for example, as it makes it more interesting for the viewer.

8. Lighting - We found lighting quite tricky to work with in our opening. The office environment did not allow for much variation, and if we had wanted to use more varied lighting we would have had to have included an extra part of our plot into the opening. This would not have been problematic had we have initially planned for this, but we did not originally realise the limit to the lighting and then it was difficult to alter our plot. The lighting in Inception is much more like a typical thriller opening, with the inside dialogue sequence being dimly lit to create a more sinister mood.

9. Extreme Close Up - More interesting camera angles are often used in thriller films as a means of creating enigma and creating empathy with certain characters. We decided to adopt this convention in our own opening with an extreme close up of the victim's eyes to show the surprise felt by this character and to create a relationship between him and the audience. As shown here in Midsomer Murders, interesting camera angles combines with different uses of lighting can be very effective in creating certain representations of characters.

LINKS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTMF852fEsg&feature=relmfu Midsomer Murders Episode

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wI-yys12Bo&feature=related First Episode of The Bill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt2V_Y0VNms&feature=relmfu Second Episode of The Bill
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?


Our opening primarily demonstrates a representation of gender. This is shown through our use of male characters. There is no real representation of women, which could in a sense be seen as stereotypical for the police force, as it is only recently that women have started to be given more influential positions. There are the three characters we used in our opening; a gang member and two police officers - one of which was also our victim.

Both of the police officers are represented positively in our opening, even though one becomes the murder victim. The positive representation comes partly from the shot/reverse shot sequence as the characters are having a conversation which the audience can relate to and understand, as well as through the use of camera work and mise en scene. The costumes that the characters are wearing are very neutral and are what we would expect to see in this sort of setting and workplace. The tie on one of the officers helps to emphasise his authority over the other character, though is not as intimidating as a suit jacket would have been.


I feel that the gang member 

is represented in a negative manner, through the use of close ups of menacing facial expressions and the way in which he is mostly filmed from behind which creates an element of tension and suspense for the viewer as they cannot see his face, which would suggest a negative representation. The character's body language combined with the camera angles that we used creates an image of power for this character. 






This shot in particular shows the power status of this character. He is clearly towering over the 'victim' character, which emphasises his power and makes the victim look weak in comparison. This two shot is important to the sequence as it helped us to show the murder by letting the audience assume what has happened.




I do not really think that the representation of age is addressed in our opening, though all of our characters are quite young as we used actors that were available to us. This challenges the age of characters which would usually be expected in this environment, though not necessarily the age of characters usually used in a thriller. I feel that choosing young characters worked well for our opening because it makes them slightly more easy to relate to as an audience instead of an older side of the force which is more commonly represented  in other film and TV drama. 

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

• HanWay Films was founded in 1999 and I think would be great to distribute our film
• here is a list of thriller/action films that HanWay Films have distributed.
• According to Wikipedia, the company is an independent British international sales, distribution and marketing company which specialises in theatrical feature films.
• IMDB is also useful to showing the success of this institution for the sort of distribution that we would want.

• When distributing our product, I think we would aim for a same-day release of the film onto DVD and Blu-Ray, as this is increasingly popular and I feel would boost sales more due to the accessibility of the film. 
• This release day would preferably be a Friday, and perhaps during times of school holidays. However, we would try to avoid releasing our film around the release date of a larger, more hyped film as we would obviously not be able to compete in terms of revenue and we would like to have the best chance of making a profit as we possibly could.

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

• I think a suitable certificate for our product would be 15, based on feedback we recieved
• As for audience, based on feedback and my own opinion, I think they would be around the 15-20 range and most likely to be male as I think they would find the plot more interesting than females would.

• These screen grabs are taken from Facebook, and both were asked who they thought would be an appropriate audience for the thriller
• Through more research I found that my audience enjoyed other thrillers such as Shutter Island, Panic Room and What Lies Beneath. Though not necessarily similar to our film, I think that finding out more about what the audience is interested in helps confirm that our age range and gender are appropriate, as many females that I asked claimed that thriller films were not something they normally would watch.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?


I think we attracted this audience in many ways.

• The opening is effective and engaging - this audience would find the build up of tension and the murder interesting
• Variation of shot types - e.g. the extreme close up of the victim's eyes engages the audience as it is unexpected but shows a distinct reaction
• Soundtrack uses parallel sound to create suspense - attracts the audience as they feel a connection to what they are watching.
• I think the narrative is quite easy to follow, which also attracts an audience in the opening stages of a film. If something confuses the viewer from the start - particularly towards the lower end of our predicted audience age range - they will get bored or perhaps frustrated and lose interest early on in the film.
• Mise en Scene is important in attracting our audience in many ways. 
• The office and corridor setting is believable and helps to add to the realism of the opening. Also, the costumes are what you would expect in this sort of environment which is engaging. I think the prop of the evidence board is one of the key points for attracting our audience as it not only gives a greater sense of realism, but is interesting to look at.
• The characters we used are easy to relate to because of their age, and the relative age of our target audience. This helps to attract them because it is easier for them to empathise with a character close to their own age.
• I think our audience would enjoy the film as the opening is engaging and the plot is not too confusing even from the start, although it is not necessarily obvious and would be exciting.

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








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

(1 to 9 - left to right in both)

1. Over The Shoulder Shots - I think that we improved our over the shoulder shots a lot in progression from the preliminary to our actual opening. Our overall framing was much better in terms of how much of the character and the background is in view. We also improved upon our initial first takes of the over the shoulder shots as we felt that they were poor in contrast with what we could have achieved. The final result is much more like what you would expect to find in a real TV drama or thriller.

2. Match on Action - Our match on action has improved drastically from the preliminary to our opening as we have edited it much better as well as being a lot more creative with the amount of match on action we used. In the preliminary, our match on action caused huge continuity errors throughout, as the character starts with the piece of paper, then it seemingly disappears before he takes it out of his pocket.

3. Titling - We did not use an titling in our preliminary, so any title work that we did would have been an improvement. However, I feel that our first attempt at titling was pretty good, though in hindsight I also think we could have done it a lot better if we had had more time and experience. We should also have experimented a lot more than we did, though we had an idea in mind when we first began making the title.

4. Shot Variety - In the preliminary we used a lot of mid shots, which were fine but could have been a lot more varied. In our opening we tried to change this by using a wider range of shots, such as extreme close ups and more obvious over the shoulder shots. We also tried to use more interesting angles, and did actually experiment with panning in some takes that we shot. However, we decided not to use these as they did not seem to work very well in keeping up the flow and pace of the opening.
5. Props - The only prop that we used in the prelim was a piece of paper, which did not really hold much interest for the viewer. In our thriller opening we decided to add a lot more props, such as the book for the officer and evidence board on the wall. The evidence board was added in in our reshoot as we felt we needed to make the setting a lot more realistic and interesting. As you can see from image five, we included many photos, memos and maps to create realism to the situation.  This post and this post show how much we edited the evidence board before we actually used it in filming.
6. Continuity Errors - Following quite a major continuity error in our preliminary, we were very careful when filming the thriller opening as we did not want to face the same problems in the editing suite. However, there is a slight continuity error where we refilmed the phone call shot where our actor was wearing different clothes. This was quite easy to fix in post-production, but it is still slightly noticeable. If you compare what the character is wearing in this shot to the phone in shot number 6, you can just about notice the bottom of a white shirt - something which is not part of the costume he was wearing in the shot before.

7. Non-Diegetic Sound - We did not use any non-diegetic sound in the preliminary, and it was very boring because of this. We decided to use a soundtrack in the opening to create suspense, which was a vast improvement. We chose the soundtrack from GarageBand, after a lot of looking elsewhere for others. However, the soundtrack we chose goes incredibly well with our opening in terms of timing the action with the more exciting paced parts.

8. Framing - I feel I have learned a lot about framing in progression from the preliminary to the opening. When we first filmed our opening, our framing was a lot better than it had been in our preliminary, but it was still not as good as it should have been. When we then refilmed, our framing improved drastically again in terms of our shot/reverse shot sequence. We were also a lot bolder with our framing in the phone call sequence as we cut off quite a lot of our actors head.
9. Plot/Character Development - Our preliminary left a lot of room for character development, but we did not really develop either of them much at all. In our opening we tried to develop characters much more through mise en scene and the dialogue used. Our evidence board also helped in constructing character development. Plot was also more developed in our opening as we had a much wider understanding of how to do this, though I still feel there could have been room for an extra part to have been added in to our opening to make it more interesting.