evaluation

Evaluation

by justin colombini

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

Our media product follows the conventional narrative structure of many thrillers; we used basic ideas to help connect each part of our clip together so as to show tension and suspense towards the viewers. The characters we use are all male this is to help show towards the viewers that the two main protagonists are good friends chatting on a phone about going to a cinema.
We used low key lighting so as to draw viewers into this dark, gritty area of London that our character was walking through to emphasize more that our character is in a dangerous neighbourhood. Thus further implicating towards the viewers that something bad is likely to happen here.

We tried developing our thriller on more contemporary, modern films than to the old hitchcock plays, but in some parts to our clip such as the low key lighting it relates it more with the classical hitchcock style. As with most films that use femme fatals as the intended victim in the thriller we chose to use instead a male character to take up this role so as to challenge the viewers concept of what kind of person should take up certain key roles in a thriller, since traditionally woman were mostly seen as the innocent, vulnerable victim.

We used cross cutting to help show conversations between the two characters so as to give viewers a bit of free space to know more about what the other character is doing behind the phone, we also used point of view to show that our antagonist was looking at the protagonist as well as the black and white screen to help viewers understand that this is the antagonist stalking the main character.

The score that we used during this moment also helped to keep tension and suspense as to what would happen next such as when the score went louder as the antagonist grabbed the protagonist from behind and slowly die down and a new score slowly rising up as that character was being taken away by car this was to give more action to the viewer. The challenge of which we pursued was to use more modern day music for our clip, such as rock to give more heart pounding responses during which the crime was committed the reason we chose rock music was because it was very aggressive and loud and that really helped emphasize the tension and cruelty being done.

Throughout the clip we used contemporary conventions so as to make it a modern day thriller the theme of which was a hybrid genre using psychological and crime to make up our clip. The films of which we were inspired to use to help us in making a storyline for our clip was Saw and Phone booth, both for their use of psychology to break down the character and crimes they commit to panic and terrify the characters in the film as well as the viewers which we believed where very effective. Although both these films we chose were done in America we chose to make ours more British using places such as the urban streets of London, the way our characters spoke to further identify towards the viewers that this is a British film. In comparison with our clip towards the films we were inspired by we try to use several aspects from the films to our advantage which I believe do not stick out a lot but instead are very subtle, such as the scene in the beginning our character is tied up and blindfolded to a chair in a dark room with only a small light hovering above him this way it should make the character feel scared and nervous as to what is happening around him while he is struggling to break free.


How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For the character we have used they are all male around the age of their late teens who are all white situated in an area of west London and judging by the room that one character lives in he is a middle class person. The character walking on the streets looking at his clothes it would seem he is connected to some gang but by the people he talks to it would seem he has connections in higher places or that the fact he is an middle class person that is involved with a gang, we leave these answers to the viewers so as to not ruin the suspense as to who this character really is and why he is who he is.

With the attack on him by a hooded figure and being tied on a chair in a dark room it further strengthens the notion that he has some dealings with a gang. The conversation being held between the two characters on the phone also strengthens the idea that they are both good friends planning a night out. We use some stereotypes such as the hooded figure that attacks our character from behind although you cannot see his face, the way he moves and the clothes he wears it gives a stereotypical gangster individual, which is a quick and easy way to explain his character. But why he attacked and kidnapped the protagonist we leave that also to the audience to figure out so as to wanting to watch more of the clip as to what is happening. The scene at which the protagonist is being attacked may make certain viewers (certainly the male viewers) feel offended by the fact that a male character is being easily overwhelmed from behind, this was all done to show them that not only can the feminine can be the innocent or weak but also the masculine as well so as to open their eyes to the real world that not one sex is better than the other but are equal, again this breaks the classical tradition such as alfred hitchcocks work.

We use three different representations for our character; one is the middle class character, the other is gangster likely to have a poor and violent background and the last representation is a mix in between the two so as to show audiences a conflict between two dominant classes one being more financially better than the other but the latter being more resilient. You could say that the protagonist is a stereotypical character as he wears a hood, the way he speaks all pointing to a gangster but we try to break this by not changing his appearance or how he behaves but by the people he talks to. In London most often you would see gangsters speaking to other gangsters and no one else but in our clip we try to point out to the viewer that individual gangsters have personalities that are not so intimidating but more "average" would be the term we could use, as he talks in a normal southern accent through the phone, he asks his friend to go cinema with him. These key aspects of the character are what we show to the viewers so as to convince them not to be judgemental about the appearances of hooded teenagers.

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

With the resources we had been given and the people who had helped us with mise en scene and despite our lack of tools and equipment for more refined images our clip would be listed among the Independent because of our low budget and the fact it would have to be done in a British studio. Since all the major cinamas companies like Vue or Odeon would never distribute an independant film such as ours since the films they distribute are by filming studios such as Universal studios and Warner Bros which are not independent film studios.
There are different ways of which we can distribute and exhibit our clip; Through Independent Art house cinemas Waterman’s in Brentford, Electric in Notting Hill etc. Film Festivals like Short film or Student film festivals, we could also easily put on video websites such as YouTube or Myspace this way we create funds by charging people for each download and commercial broadcasters on television like Channel 4 which is a public service broadcast.


Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our media product would be targeted at Mainstream audiences giving them a non-linear narrative so as to show them how the character regrets what is happening and what has happened. It is mainly targeted at the teenagers and mature viewers in the mainstream audience so as to show them the consequences of getting involved in gang related activities as well as to better understand the entire social group of gangsters towards the more mature audience who are quick to judge them by their appearance. The theme of which this film is based on would most likely attract the gangsters as this relates to them and they would want to see how people view them, this is similar to the british film Kidulthood and its runner up Adulthood which both explain the gangster life during their teenage life and their lifes in the future after the past actions they have done that make them who they are today.

In my opinion I would say this meets the suitable standards of viewing for the audience as although there is moderate violence there is no blood, scenes of sexual nudity or any use of drug related paraphernalia and so since their was no concerns of breaking the age restriction we have not made any changes to the clip whatsoever.

How did you attract/address your audience?

I discussed with my colleagues as to what attracts the viewers to a thriller film, violence was one of those key aspects as this is found most common in all thriller genres without it it wouldnt be a thriller, and another aspect we decided to use to attract viewers was psychology a perfect example in the use of psychology would be the Saw movies. The use of psychology attracts many viewers to the film as it gives them something to find out and analyse in their mind thus further persuading them to watch on.

We looked at audience feedback and found that people had a hard time looking at what was happening since in some scenes it was too dark for them as well as the score being too loud which drowned out the characters voices. So during editing we found the problems and put up the tone of light enough for viewers to see but dark enough to keep its low key lighting of a dark, gritty street as well as lowering the score down for audiences to hear the conversations between the two characters. The conventions we used specifically to the audience were the timing of certain parts of our score to create tension as well as a plaque near the beginning to help audiences understand the timeline in case of confusion.

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

Use of technology such as non linear editing has helped alot during our editing since we could film the ending on our first day of filming and edit it to be at the end of the film which helped us in filming different scenes for our clip in the same room and edit them onto our film giving an illusion of being a smooth well timed layout. It was also very helpful in allowing us to cut and paste certain clips together, removing any unwanted footage in which with out it we would have to redo the scene over and over again until it was right. At first we only used the internet for our research as well as our blog to help publish what we researched about and what we intend to do, the internet helped us a lot in finding images, websites such as BBFC and finding footage of other films for us to view and compare.
The internet has helped us to find websites with copyright free music for our score and to view audience feedback on how our film was and what needed changing. To help us with doing non-linear footage we used Imovie to help us with our editing sequence and to also apply the score and play with it to experiment with new ideas such as raising the volume in key events to changing to black and white in various scenes. Even though their wasn’t a lot of dialogue in our clip due it being a part of the thriller convention we wanted to lower the score down so as to allow audiences to hear what they were saying and since we recorded the scenes on camera during night we had to raise the tone of light higher for audiences to see properly.

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

Looking back at my preliminary task I found that when doing certain camera shots I would also have to rely on the actor to get his timing right such as when doing a panning shot I had to make sure that I wasn’t too quick or to slow when the character was moving, to combat this problem I decided to loosen the tripod more and keep my head closer to the camera so as to imagine I was the camera to get the movement just right this helped out a lot as well during my main task especially when in the dark in London.
Another thing which I had learnt from my preliminary task was when sorting the scoring out during editing when playing the score during the clip I found they did not match very well and so sifted through many other tracks but could not find the right one to counter this problem I decided to keep to my original score but this time cut and extend to match the timing using the various tools on Imovie by doing this it helped made my scene look very effective thanks to the timing and volume adjustment to the score which in turn did well on my main task the choice of score was also important for our preliminary as we decided to do a comedy drama genre clip we choose a clip that had that gangster style but also a bit of comedy attached to it as well which helped bringing to life to our clip, we put this idea again on our main task but this time since it was a thriller we chose rock and like I explained from above it was because of its aggressive, rough soundtrack which was very effective in putting tention and suspension in our scene .
In researching various locations for where we would shoot our scene we decided best we used an area that we found familiar and close to home and since it was to be a thriller we thought of using the darkness to help us and so we waited till night that we started our scene, we had done a similar idea during our preliminary although we did it during the day time we used the shadow of the buildings instead to add emphasis to our footage. When choosing the street and room to where we would shoot we had to make sure it matched or was similar to that on our storyboard that way their would not be any confusion when looking at our blog.