Draft Evaluation - Jack

Draft Evaluation - Jack

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

PSYCHOLOGICAL

• First of all, we wanted to produce a thriller opening that laid heavily on the psychological thriller genre. There are countless thriller films that relate to the processes of the mind and a state of mental being to create great suspense and fear. Examples include:

 

The Sixth Sense, Black Swan, and Vertigo, all share a common convention of using ailments of the mind to create suspense and thrill the audience. Therefore, we decided to conform to this convention and use an ailment of the mind - insomnia, to create suspense and a sense of unsettling bewilderness, both for the character and for the audience.

SETTING

• We wanted to use two very different settings to display contrast and emphasise the bewildered, damaged nature of the character's mind. We wanted a scene set in the bedroom because this helps to establish the scenario of the story to the audience (the fact that she has insomnia). 
• We used a forest to help contrast with the bedroom and emphasise a dreamlike state. Forests are also commonly used in thriller films to express isolation or bewilderment, the idea of being lost in the forest amongst the swaying trees and forest animals.

Forests have been used in countless thriller films, particularly in:

In the Blair Witch Project, nearly the entire film is shot in a forest. The storyline lies heavily on the journey of the characters as they get lost deeper and deeper into the forest.

SOMETHING UNIQUE AND DIFFERENT

• Throughout the forest sequence we applied a filter to each shot to help emphasise a dream like state. The filter was a 'light ray' and made the sequence looks particularly distorted and dreamlike, really helping to emphasise this bewildered, dreamlike state. 
• This effect diverts and challenges typical media conventions, because often it can distract or even annoy the audience or lose a sense of realism. However, the filter was appropriate for our opening because of the context of a dream like state.

Examples of the filter effect

NINE DIFFERENT SHOTS AND HOW THEY APPLY TO THE CONVENTIONS OF A THRILLER

Shot 1

• Being alone in the shot, door closed, creates a feeling of isolation and loneliness
• Bed is unruffled, sleepless night?
• Lack of personal objects, makes the setting quite cold and unwelcoming
• Surveillance shot, already begins to connote that maybe somebody is watching her

Shot 2

• Character is framed by the mirror - connotes isolation, innocence
• Tablets may connote some sort of health problem, possibly psychological - enigma, maybe this character is vulnerable? Needs tablets to survive?
• Shadows of glass and mirror create a dark, unwelcoming, mysterious mood
• Her walk to the bed is very structured, very uniform, it almost seems as if it is some sort of ritual or routine, which ties in well with the mind and the conventions of a psychological thriller (rituals can often be asscociated with OCD or mind-games). This long-lasting shot helps highlight this routine

Shot 3

• Low key lighting, used which seperates her face, one side dark one side light, connotes maybe there is two sides of this character
• Editing by use of time really allows to see her emotion and her tired, insomniac eyes
• Camerawork allows us to get very close to the character and really witness her emotion
• Sound builds up at this point, is discordant and therefore unpredictable - mirrors the personality of the character, sets the scene for the unpredictable climax of the sequence
• Her facial expressions are glum and discontent, shows she is a troubled character

Shot 4

• Editing - filter used to emphasise dream like world compared to unfiltered normal reality. Makes it seem very bewilldering and uncomfortable
• Smilar to shot three, close up so emotions still visible and contrasted, one side of face still lighter than other, shows a similarity, that it is the same character, that there is a link, however overall the lighting is much brighter to connote she is much happier and more content - creates a false sense of security

Shot 5

• White dress shows innocence and purity, may connote emptiness in her character? Shows peace, like an angel - psychological, all of this creates an enigma around the character
• Camerawork shows she is about to explore and be enchanted by forest
• White contrasts well with relative blandness of forest flooring, again creating mood, she stands out, she is special

Shot 6

• The trees are almost her friends, shielding her from danger as she ducks behind them
• Important to mention the sound, it is dream like, happy, content, from popular culture so can be related to and familiarised easily by audience. These all help give across a false sense of security
• She is relatively small in proportion to the overhanging trees. This shows isolation and inferiority
• Movement is adventurous, excited, she is keen and happy about entering forest. This is HER world, where she is happiest, creating a mood of calm and peacefulness
• Walking puts questions into audience's head - where is she going? What is she walking towards? Walking is seemingly random and unstructured

Shot 7

• Blue sky often asscociated with happiness and trainquility
• POV shot puts us in her shoes, often used in cinema to make audience feel empathic
• Lighting makes trees look almost dizzy, blurred, creates a sense of distortion

Shot 8

• Tunnel may create sense of claustraphobia, certainately isolation
• Character is framed and squished in, inferior, dress looks more yellow - tainted? Is something bad about to occur?
• Sense of exploration
• A sense that there must be something at the end of the tunnel - seeing as by this point the music is coming to an end, it might be something climatic

Shot 9

• Gun shots very emotive, very sudden, very surprising, should act to shock audience whom were plunged into a false sense of security
• Completely black screen, what is happening? Mood of mysteriousness, of bewilderment, of the unknown
•  No fade, but simple cut from shocked face to black, adds pace and suddenness of shot

• OVERALL - Variety of shots should keep you guessing, keep you engaged, suspense kept until the very end

Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The link below is a YouTube video all about stereotypes of women in the media:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emqq-P0FFEo

There is only one character in our opening thriller sequence. Her profile is as follows.

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

WHAT IS A DISTRIBUTOR

•  A film distributors job is to distribute and release the content of  particular film.

• It is also their job to publicize the film as much as possible, through advertising campaigns, film premieres, award ceremonies, or by film merchandise. 

• By doing this, they should strive to earn as much money as possible.

HOW DOES IT WORK

• Traditionally, film distributors would take a cut percentage of the profits of the film. 
• They would produce analogue rolls, copies of the original cut, and distribute them to various cinemas across the country. 
• In the digital age however, the processes have changed. There are different ways to distribute a film:

There are various different means of distributing any generic media product:

• Through cinema (either multiplex or independent)
• Through smartphones
• Through DVD rentals
• Through Television
• Through the Internet

In terms of our own media product, we would distribute it through an independent cinema. The closest and most notable independent cinema to us is the Duke of York cinema in Brighton. 

We are producing for a local, independent film company, and therefore this would be probably be the route we would choose, showing our film to a local, select audience. 

We would then ask a distributor to license the video to various media outlets, such as the BBC on TV, or Micrsoft Xbox Live Marketplace, on all Xbox 360 Games Consoles. This way, we can achieve a broader audience from all around the world, without having to pay excessive amounts for analogue rolls of film.

 

Duke of York cinema, the venue for our world premiere

Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?


TARGET AUDIENCE

• We pitched the target audience as being young people, through the use of a young character. This makes the piece much more related to audience, making sure they are more engaged 
• This is an emotional age in someone's life, therefore the emotions explored will relate with the target audience

This is not necessarily meant for a female audience, so we kept the colors neutral, unisex, and therefore helping to engage with a more broader audience

 WHAT IS OUR FILM LIKE?

I would compare our film to the following:

• The Butterfly Effect is like our film because it too uses a young protagonist, in the form of relatively youthful actor Ashton Kutcher, to target a younger, teenage audience
• The Blair Witch Project, like our film, is set in the forest. It follows the adventures of three students, again targeting this audience and dealing with the emotions that young people, and indeed female protagonists may face
• Vanilla Sky features heavily around a 'dream like world'. Tom Cruise would draw a younger audience because he is often seen as an idol, a global superstar. While we didn't have the global superstar, we did use a character who would be able to relate to the audience

MORE TEXT TO PUT UP V. SOON
WHAT RATING WOULD OUR FILM BE?

Every film has to have a certificate, decided by the British Board of Film Certification. Anyone younger than the age stated on the certificate is legally not allowed to see the film. Reasons for this can include:

• Violence
• Sex/Nudity
• Drugs
• Explicit Language
• Discrimination
• Fear

I would rate our film as a 15. I think scenes further on in the film would likely to be based heavily on fear and therefore a 12 certificate would be too low, yet I think the other categories would be widely avoided and that if it was given an 18 certificate would mean that much of our teenage audience wouldn't be able to see the film.

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?


FEEDBACK
I asked a few of my friends to watch the film and comment. They were a suitable test audience because they were all between the ages of 16-25, our target audience.


"It was really good, the music was really emotive and was unnerving. The shot of the girl in the mirror was awesome"
"That was an awesome shot" [girl in the mirror]
"The song is really good! It works really well"
"Really creepy and unnerving, especially at the end when she gets shot, it makes you want to find out what's going to happen next"
"Maybe the sound effect for when she is in bed moving around wasn't brilliant but other than that I thought it was cool"

ATTRACTING AND ADDRESSING OUR AUDIENCE

• The musical choice would appeal to our audience. The song 'Hushabye Mountain' can be related to easily as a song heard by people years.
• The character portrayed was young too, so this helps the audience relate to her (if we had portrayed a much older character, the audience would be much less likely to familiarise with them and relate to them)
• The emotions explored might reflect those of our audience, such as isolation, stress, loneliness or happiness
• The setting, particularly the bedroom, were specifically made to be unisex, thus appealing to a unisex audience. A bright pink bedroom would detract a male audience, so by making the colors and the props fairly neutral it means that we can attract a broader audience

Question 6 - What have your learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

This is a YouTube video of me commentating on this. Below are the key points described.

PLANNING

• How to record voice using a microphone
• Research into particular filming methods, titles, opening sequences
• Preliminary - finding out about lighting methods, framing, simple editing and titles

FILMING

• The significance of light - when we started our first round of filming the result was decidedly blurry with a great deal of noise in the darker sections of the shot. This was down to our lighting.
• Again, we used the wrong lighting in the first round of filming. This made it look very unrealistic - the room looked like daylight instead of in the night time.
• The quality of cameras. The HD camera used in the first round wasn't particularly good, especially when it came to close up shots.
• White Balance - we used this with a filter. This meant the white balance was wrong. We should have taken the white balance, THEN used the filter, not the other way round. We fixed this in the second round of filming
• Tapes/SD Cards - in the second round of filming we had everything set up, in the forest, Amy dressed in character and the camera on - yet when we went to record, nothing happened. I cycled back to my house to get a new SD card, this didn't work. In the end it turned out we needed a tape. We had to borrow a friend's camera and film the entire thing using this.

EDITING

• We used Final Cut Pro to edit our sequence. It was an incredibly frustrating piece of editing software, being very difficult to learn and handle, and particularly time-consuming when it came to rendering files. Something like Sony Vegas, of which I have lots of previous experience using, would have worked much easier.
• The Apple computer are also difficult to master. We had all been used to using Windows software, so this was a big difference and it took a while to learn and gain a basic understanding of how to load and save our files correctly.

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

First of all, we have improved our knowledge of title sequences. Our preliminary shot was a simple wipe

with a very basic font. Our final credit shot was quite complex, its fade fitted well with the dream sequence and the font was pre-selected for its 'wood-like' structure.

I think we also improved with framing. As you can see, in the preliminary the cable for the light

is in the shot, and the characters are not in the centre. In the final cut, the shot is balanced

really well, and every important object is in shot.

In both of these shots we have tried to use lighting to highlight two sides of Amy's face. As you can see,

the lighting in the second shot is much more dominant and emotive.

Sound is used in both sequences. In the first sequence we relied heavily on ambient

noise. It was both muffled and difficult to listen too. In the final cut we used both a really clear,

really emotive soundtrack, and we backed this up with some foley sounds that could be heard really clearly.

The camera shots used in the final cut are much more varied and much more interesting. The second sequence

was also filmed in 16:9 resolution (widescreen) which enhances the visual experience.

The use of editing through lighting filters and fades makes the final cut much more emotive and more interesting to watch compared to the first sequence. The setting is also much more varied, the sprawling

trees helping to add a sense of bewilderment. This isn't really carried off in the first sequence because it is

a very basic location.

Again, lighting is used in both of these shots to highlight a shadow, yet the final cut's lighting

really emphasises the shadow, while in the prelim you would hardly notice it. Note the use of mise-en-scene

(or lack of it) to connote isolation in the final cut. In the preliminary this isn't dealt with, there is a bin in the way and a poster in the wall. 

I do think there are some things we could have improved on:

• Use of more foley effects to enhance audio
• Tweaking of visual effects to make them look slightly more professional
• Fine-tune some continuity editing
• Add more titles, names etc.