Thriller Evaluation - James Ely

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

James' Question 1

Shot 1

Shot 2

Shot 3

Shot 4

Shot 5

Shot 6

Shot 7

Shot 8

Shot 9

Our title sequence is similar to the title sequence of the film 'Se7en'. We took many things on board when watching this film before creating our film.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our media product, we didn't really challenge any social groups. We've stuck to fairly stereotypical character roles and developed certain stereotypes.

• Male antagonist
• Female 'damsel in distress'

 Gender.

• Our antagonist was stereotypically a male. We felt by having a male antagonist, the audience would be able to identify him more easily. Further more, as most thriller films have an evil male character, we stuck to these guidelines. I feel our audience (who I assume have seen other thrillers) will pick up on this, and again help them to identify the characters role. This can be seen as both a positive and negative representation of males. He is strong, powerful, and has a high status which is a positive representation of males. However he is an evil character, and a murderer which could be viewed as a negative representation of males.
• We have used a female to play the victim. This is stereotypical of most thriller films to have a damsel in distress. Again, helping our audience to identify the role of the character. This is quite a negative representation of females, as she appears helps and weak.
• We based the gender of our characters on other triller films. Most thrillers have male antagonist and a female victim. I feel this was because males seem to have more power than females in thriller films in general. Another example of a male antagonist and a female victim is the thriller would be 'Phyco' from 1960.

• We ruled out having a female as the antagonist because we see the antagonist hauling a big heavy bag around as well as a shovel. Typically, males are stronger than females, and it's unusual to see a female walking around with a shovel (in my opinion). Adding to this, we felt that a slim male is usually faster than a slim female. Therefor it made sense to have a male in pursuit of a female; especially a female who has just been jogging. 
• We put a lot of thought into the character's costumes. Their costumes help emphasise and represent their role and gender. 
• The male antagonist is dressed in all black clothing. We chose black clothes as dark colours (especially black) can represent evil and horror. The majority of his body is covered up, keeping all body features hidden. This makes the him more mysterious and dangerous. When ever he is in shot, the audience will hopefully feel tension and unease as a result of this.

Our male antagonist's costume

• Our female victim is dressed in appropriate gear for jogging. However, we made sure her outfit contained stereotypical feminine colours. For example, her top is bright pink. This emphasises her femininity and venerability. It's also a complete contrasting colour to the male antagonist's black clothing. This helps show off the identity of both characters and their roles. 

Our female victim's costume

• The male antagonist is carrying a shovel. I feel that a shovel is quite a masculine piece of equipment. This is another reason as to why we decided to have a male antagonist.

Age.

• In most thriller's the antagonists are adults. Therefore we've chosen for our antagonist to be a middle ages adult.
• I intended for the female victim to be younger than her male antagonist. I feel this again, gives the male antagonist a sense of more physical and mental power over his female victim. The female victim is in her mid 20s - 30s. Whereas the male antagonist is in his 40s.
• We had to be careful when choosing an age for the two characters. If the male antagonist is too old, (roughly 55+) he could appear weaker than his female victim.
• Our character's props are chosen not just to assist the characters with their actions, but they also help represent their age. Our female victim is wearing earphones as she is listening to music. This is a regular thing to do when jogging, however it also makes her deaf to whats around her. She has effectively lost her sense of hearing in a way. This makes her seem more venerable and weaker than others around her.

Our female victim wearing earphones

The female victim is also seen with a mobile phone. It seems to be quite an expensive phone, and also has a keypad. Therefor making it hard to use if she was an older lady. This again, narrows down her age group.

• It's unlikely to see an elderly jogger in tight lycra revealing her whole arms and most of her legs. Her costume helps indicate her age. She is out jogging on her own, so it's unlikely that she is a young girl. So this narrows her age group down further. All of this again, helps the audience identify her more accurately.  She is also jogging at a fairly quick pace. Once again, this helps us to identify her age group with more ease. 
• However, the male antagonist's clothes could be worn by any age group. This therefore emphasises his mysteriousness, and adds to his characters personality.
• He is also carrying a shovel. It's quite unlikely that a person of a younger age would own a shovel. And he is physically capable of carrying it around. These factors help us to accurately guess the characters age.

Social Class.

The male antagonist's is lower class. 

• His clothes are very simple, and don't look expensive. 
• We see him in what appears to be a shed. There is no light and only a small table and chair. Again, this seems to indicate he is not financially well off.
• He carries a big black bag and a shovel. Again, these items are not of a high nominal value suggesting he is of a lower class.
• As he never speaks, we can't really tell if he is intelligent, which could rule him out of higher class.
• The female victim is middle class.
• Her running gear looks fairly expensive that someone of lower class status could probably not afford.
• We see her listening to some sort of mp3 player. This is a luxury item. To be able to afford such luxuries she would have to be middle class or above.
• The very fact that she has bought running shoes and jogging gear shows us that she is at least middle class status. Because you can go jogging in any type of sensible clothing.
• She owns an expensive looking mobile phone. It's debatable if a mobile phone is a luxury, but her's looks very expensive. This again implies she is a middle class woman, or higher.

Ethnicity.

Both our antagonist and victim, are White, English and of no clear religion. 

• We only had English actors which limited our choice.
• If one character was Spanish, and the other English. Both could've been seen as a negative representation of their ethnicity. For example, if the killer was English, and the victim Spanish, people might have made the assumption that we think English people are more likely to be murders than Spanish people.
• If I had the choice, I still would've used two English actors. This is because the film is set in England, and by making the characters English, the audience might find it easier to relate to the characters.
• We chose not to incorporate religion into any of our characters because we felt it was simply not relevant to the story line. And again, by varying the characters religions, people might have felt we represented certain religions in a negative way.
• Both actors were white, purely because we only had white actors. If I had a choice, I would still choose two white actors. This again is because by using characters of a different colour, we could negatively represent one of them, or both.

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

Before Distributing.

• Firstly I will obtain the rights and clearances of our film (BBC - Film Network). We can then approach cinema's and try and get them to show our film. 
• Then approach the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) and get our film certificated. This will enable us to release our film not only in cinemas but also on DVD creating more ways of distributing our film.

Cinema.

• One of our means of distribution will be through cinemas. 
• UK cinemas take in over a million pounds each year, and the figures are for ever rising. 
• This is a screen shot of a page from The British Film Industry (BFI) (Link to the British Film Industry) showing the UK box office takings in 2009. 

Screen shot showing box office takings.

• This shows that many people go to the cinema each year, and therefor by getting our film into cinemas, hopefully many people will view or hear of our film.
• As you can see, the figures are rising year by year. This hopeful means that the risk of the UK film industry figures falling are considerably smaller than the figures rising. 

DVD high street and online retailers.

• By putting our film onto DVD, we will therefor be able to get institutions such as DVD high street and online retailers to stock our film.
• 'More than 207 million discs were sold' in 2011 (www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment)
• 'Sales of DVDs in the UK slipped by 7.2% in 2011 according to new figures from the British Video Association (www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment). This could be seen as more of a risk than distribution via cinema
• We will approach online dvd retailers such as Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk), Play.com (www.play.com), and Zavvi (www.zavvi.com). 

Screen shot of www.amazon.co.uk

Digital downloads.

• Digital downloads do not involve a physical product. It's simple, fast and less time consuming than going out to the shops to buy a DVD.

• However, unlike dvd sales, 'downloads and digital rental transactions went up by 12%' in 2011. (www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment) So DVD retail isn't. Therefor it might be better to avoid high street retailers. This however could be a good and safe distribution method.

• We will approach Digital stores such as iTunes and Netflix (www.netflix.com)   

Screen shot from iTunes

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Age of target audience 

• 18-35 Because of violence and horror in our film, it cannot be enjoyed by children under the age of 15. (Certificate classifications)
• I feel the film will not be enjoyed by people over the age of 35 because the characters in this film are based on young adults around the age of 20-30, therefor allowing the audience to relate to them; Hence why the target audience of our film is 18-35
• I feel people over the age of 40 might not be able to relate to the characters.

Gender of target audience

• The film could appeal to both genders because there are male and female characters in the film. 
• Might only appeal to males. This is because males tend to prefer violent films more than females. However this is just a stereotype, and could be incorrect.

Other thriller films our target audience might have seen.

• 'The Shining', 1980, (Certificate 15). This film like ours, has a male killer. It features a chase scene between the killer and his victim similar the the chase scene in our film.

• 'P2', 2007, (Certificate 18). In this thriller, a business woman is pursued by a male psychopath.  The character roles and genders are alike in our film. (Male antagonist, female protagonist)   

• 'Eden Lake', 2008, (certificate 18). The whole thriller is based in a woods, where murders will happen; much like our film.

How did you attract / address your audience?

There are many elements in our film that will make the audience enjoy it. For example, 

Characters.

• we have a mysterious antagonist who is seen cutting out pictures of missing people, and then burying a big black bag. 
• This character creates suspense and keeps the audience glued to his every move. 
• His typical black clothes and limited facial exposure fits perfectly with the stereotype of the 'villain'.
• The audience can identify him and immediately sense that this character is dangerous, therefor filling the audience with anticipation that he will do/has done something terrible. 

• The lack of light in this shot creates tension because the audience cannot see the person very clearly
• the dark colours set the tone of evil. Again, gripping the audience and allowing them to identify the characters role. 
• The decor of the room (dark, simple, pictures) increases the tension made by the character

• We also have, a female character in distress.
• This is fairly common in thrillers and allows the audience to identify the characters role, and imagine what might happen. 
• Her bright clothing allows the audience to decide what her role is in the film.

Camera Work

• We use shots of the antagonists shadow to create tension. 

• The black of his shadow emphasises the fact that he's a 'villain'.
• The shadow gives a sense that he is not all there. Eg, maybe have sort sort of mental problem. This is achieved by showing character's the shadow instead of the character.

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

Camera.

We used a Sony HD Handycam. There are many different camera techniques used in our film that we learnt about. Before we started the task, I had no idea how to perform a focus pull. We use a focus pull to change the depth of field to emphasise a certain thing. For example, in our film we focus on the man in the background, while in the foreground we can see an out of focus shovel handle. As the man walks over and grabs the handle, we switch the focus to the shovel handle creating a shallow depth of field. A focus pull is done by turning a dial on the camera which increases and decreases the depth of focus.

 

• I also learnt how to set the white balance before every change of shot.

• I picked up the basic controls of the camera on my own and very quickly. (e.g how to turn it on and off, how to play back, how to zoom in and out, and how set the focus) 
• I learnt how to use various accessories on the camera such as a tripod and a steady cam to change the shot type. When using a tripod, the camera is very still and stable, and can pan very smoothly. When using a steady cam, the shot is very wobbly and moves about a bit. Here is an example of a steady cam.

Lighting.

We learnt about the various lights we could use.

• LED lights 
• Spotlights. 
• The LED light is very bright and can the brightness can be increased or decreased manually. 
• The spotlight is a bigger light which has a longer range of light than the LED one, but is not as bright. 
• I also learnt how to use a light reflector. By using a light reflector we could bounce light off of the reflector and onto to part we wanted. 
•         
•        I also played with the level of the LED light by smoothly turning the brightness up and down while filming to create a lightning effect. It looked very real, however we decided against using that technique in our final project. 
• 
  
•         However we only used the LED lights and light reflector in our final film because the LED light is brighter and can be more accurate. They were used in the shed scene (where the man is cutting out pictures). By using the LED light and reflector, we were able to project light onto the table and wall of cut out pictures but not onto the man cutting out the pictures. This creates tension as we cannot see this mysterious person, but we can see what he's doing. 

Editing Software.

Final Cut.

I learnt how to… 

• import footage from our camera into final cut. This is obviously a key part of the editing, and was trickier than I expected. 
• Cut clip length. Once our footage was in Final Cut, we could shorten the length of certain shots. This enabled us to create various match on action shots.

(Here is a match on action created in Final Cut. We see the subject directing the shovel towards the ground. In the next shot we see the shovel impale the ground.)

   

Import music. 

• We downloaded various (non diegetic and diegetic) sounds from Garage Band and www.jamendo.com. 
• However we used sounds from our footage as well.
• I then learnt how to cut the lengths of the sound clips in Final Cut and position them where we wanted to match the on screen image. 
• We also learnt how to increase and decrease the volume. By turning the volume up on certain sound clips (amplifying) we could emphasise significant noises 

At 2.00 minutes we imported a non diegetic sound to increase the tension and build suspense.

Picture Editing.

We learnt how to adjust the colours of out footage in Final Cut by looking at youtube tutorials (similar to the video below). By changing the colours in certain scenes, it changes the mood. For example, here is a clip of a before and after. 

After editing

Before editing

As you you can see, the colours on the right are colder making the mood quite dark. These cold colours portray the negativity and horror of what happens in these woods

We also learnt how to use transitions to link clips together. We put in a fade transition at 0.44. this emphasises the change in time and setting. 

We also used a fade transition at 2.41 to create a blinking effect. 

A media technician show us how to  

Titles.

• Harrison and I learnt how to use Apple Motion to create our title sequence and credits. 
• Another student showed us how to operate the program.

• We were able to select the font, colour, and animation of out title.

• However we felt that none of the animations or fonts suited our thriller film. We therefore decided to create the title sequence and credits on Final Cut itself. Ollie (a media technician) showed us how to edit the…
• Font
• Font size
• Font colour 
• Animation of font.

For our title we… 

• chose a black background and the font 'Ariel'. 

• A grey font colour. 

It is a dull colour and a simple font. We felt this maintained a tense atmosphere created by the previous scene. And for the title transition, we decided to use a simple cut in and out. 

For our credits we...

• used a white font because is stands out from the dark colours
• overlaid the text onto top of our footage
• used a fade in and out transition to fit in with the parallel non diegetic slow music.

Garage Band.

We learnt how to use foley sounds from garage band to accompany our footage. Harrison and I also experimented in Garageband by importing a clip with no sound in, and adding some foley sounds of rain, thunder, and lightning over the clip. It fitted in with the light adjustments of the footage and looked very convincing.

Blogger. 

We were taught in class how to set up a group blog. On this blog we uploaded videos, pictures, and essays to show progress of our final project.

Question 7.

Mistakes.

We made a couples mistakes in our preliminary task. 

• Not setting the white balance

• Breaking the 180 degree rule

In our preliminary task, we broke the 180 degree rule by filming our two characters taking to each other from both sides. This meant that when we edited our footage together, the two characters would switch places with each other, confusing the audience.

While shooting the footage for our preliminary task, we forgot to set the white balance in some shots. Again, when editing the footage together, this was very noticeable. It ruined the continuity of the film and looked amateurish. Therefor by making these mistakes we made sure to not make them again in our thriller opening. 

In our preliminary task, we learnt how important it is that all costumes, hair and make-up, and accessories remain the same on every shooting day. Once our character was wearing different earrings on different days. We learnt from this and didn't make the same mistakes in our final thriller task. 

We also learnt that costume choices are critical. A characters costume will show the audience what kind of person they are. (eg, an evil character would wear dark coloured clothes.) We therefore put a lot of effort into our costume choices in our final thriller task.

Protagonist Costume

Antagonist Costume

Camera Work. 

We experimented with many different types of camera shots. We used…

• Close ups
• Extreme close ups
• Medium shots
• Long shots
• Tracking shots

By trying out all these shots in our preliminary task, we were able gain confidence and perform these shots to a better level when shooting our thriller opening

We used a non HD camera for the majority of our preliminary task. However we wanted to experiment with slow motion, and to do this we were given a HD camera. To shoot in slow motion, the camera would shoot 3 seconds worth of footage before we pressed the record button. When we looked at the slow motion footage, it looked fantastic; and really emphasised the action. Although we didn't use slow motion in our main thriller opening, we felt confident about shooting slow motion footage if we were to.

We also tested out different camera techniques and ideas in some of our spare time. This gave us a good idea of what worked and what didn't.

Camera testing

Editing.

To edit our preliminary task, we used the program Final Cut. None of us were that familiar with this program, so we only really used the basic tools to edit our preliminary task. We learnt how to…

Cut clip lengths

Increase/decrease clip volume

Import music into our project

Set the white balance in Final Cut

As stated above, in some shots we forgot to set the white balance. We therefore learnt how to set the white balance using Final Cut. This was done by looking on the internet.

(This is a screen shot of a helpful website telling us how to set the white balance)

We also experimented in Garage Band by importing a movie clip with no sound and adding foley sounds in from Garage Band. This helped us when editing our thriller task when choosing what sounds to use.

Blogger.

(www.blogger.com)

We were also shown how to use a blog to keep a record of our progress. This enabled us to access our project from home as well. Our teachers were also able to comment on our blog and give us advice, which of course was vital when planning our final media product.