Evaluation by Kazumi Hasegawa

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

Conventions of thriller:

• enigma
• suspense
• protagonist
• antagonist
• real life
• raising questions

Thriller opening film

This is a pan up shot of a main character's feet. The first shot of the whole sequence creates enigma by immediately raising various questions. (whose feet are they?, what's this about?, why somebody's lying on the ground?, where is this?) This shot already gives the audience information of the character, who is a girl. Because she  wears typical teen girl's cloth such as pumps and leggings for her costume, the audience would know she is teenager. The setting in this shot is the girl lying in the woods. This is typical scene in a thriller film, uses irrelevance between the character and the background to create suspense and atmosphere to start the opening of a thriller film.

This is an establishing shot of the woods provides to discover the situation between the character and the setting. This setting in the woods is also typical in a thriller film as establishing the surrounding of the main character tells the audience that something will happen to the character, and that create eerie atmosphere. Only the natural sunlight was used in this shot but we created silhouette effects so the woods look more mysterious and grotesque.

This is an extreme close up shot of the main character. The use of ECUs is conventional in a thriller. The main character is looking down so she looks ill or sad, leaves the audience with more questions of what's happened. The audience would imagine that she is not feeling well and that would make the film to have a good start as a thriller film. We filmed this shot with hand-held, as it is not steady which create uneasy emotion to the main character.

Extreme Close Up shot from Hereafter

This is a pan up shot of a guy trying to swing his baseball bat. We used a baseball bat for props in this scene. This is also often used in a thriller film. The guy wears all black, which is because black makes the character an impression of unknown, dark and scare so that fits into the murder character and also the leather gloves and the jacket makes the situation more serious. The lighting in this shot is quite dark and dim with a little of silhouette effects which leaves the guy looks more terrifying. Also with the low angle shot creates the guy more dominated and powerful.

Low angle shot from Inception

This shot shows the title of our film. The composition of this is organised well because the white font is easily seen with dark background and with simple font. Although there is some white space on the half top, the title still stands out. The running woods in the background might disturb the title but our use of dark space in the half bottom made it not difficult to read. Also the dull font is in contrast within this background. The title appears when non-diegetic sound plays. The non-diegetic sound is parallel to the scene, make them more mysterious and create eerie atmosphere and mood.

This is a close up shot of the girl's portrait photograph. The audience would immediately imagine wether she is dead or not from this shot. This technique is often used in a thriller film. Arranging the whole story in non-chronological order to create more suspense and enigma. Because the setting is changed to the house scene, the audience would think about the girl. In this shot, the setting is completely changed as we can see the background colour is warm red and the camera is also fixed, which convey the difference between the setting in the woods and this scene. The fixed camera tells emotion of calm and relaxed, no hurry and rushes in this shot. The use of portrait photography is also typically used in a thriller film. 

This is a shot showing props. These props are to show that somebody is relaxing and rich. The tea and the biscuits are symbol of slow down and unwind, creating the contrast to the woods scene. The magazine is also to create the mood of the relaxing, as people often read the magazine when they have nothing to do. The shot includes two people's legs behind the table to raise questions to the audience. (who are they?) The lighting in this shot is quite bright in contrast to the woods scene, to enhance that it is peaceful in this shot. 

This is an eye level 2 shot of a guy and a woman. This shot finally introduce two people who look like the parents of the girl. They are calmly watching TV, although the girl isn't there. This eye level shows that they are same position as the audience.  The lighting is very bright as well as morning or noon which create peaceful mood into the scene. Diegetic sound is used to realize normal life as near as the audience's to create more enigma. Real life setting is typically used in a thriller films.

This is a low angle shot of the guy opening the door. Since the door bell rings, the guy suddenly looks worried, from which he is dominated and kind of scared, so this low angle enhance his emotion more to the unsatisfactory way. The lighting tone in this shot is also changed slightly darker than the living room scene, to create tension. The sound volume is also turned down slightly, the diegetic sound is playing off-screen, because he walked out the living room so it's very quiet in front the door. Only the door opening and footsteps are able to hear in this shot, which increase tension.

Low angle shot from Inception

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

Social group (gender, age, social class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation)

There are three characters involved in our opening film, two females and one male. They all represent different social groups such as gender, age, and sexuality. 

The guy (protagonist) - male, middle age
The girl (antagonist) - female, young teenager

AGE
The guy is represented as a middle aged male. He has positive connotation for him as threatening and sinister. The girl is represented as a young teenager. She also has positive connotation for her as weak and pathetic.

GENDER
Both representations of gender in our characters, shows in stereotypical ways. The girl is represented as a femininity, weak and obedient, through her body language, as she is lying in the woods. Her costume also reflects to the stereotypical young teenager; leggings and pumps. The guy is represented as muscularity, strong, dominant, aggressive and in charge. As we can see his black costume suggests him as tough and villain. The dark colour symbolise darkness and hidden.


SOCIAL CLASS
We used flowers, statues, candles, a tea cup with some biscuits, table, and lamp for our Mise en scene to represent a middle class family in our film. Diegetic sound is used in this scene to show that they've wealthy lifestyle. We used Antique Roadshow in the background sound as it's TV programme which is likely to be watched by older middle class audience.

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

The most obvious media institution that would distribute our product would be YouTube. YouTube is easy and quick way of distributing media product for free. Anyone can access YouTube without an account, and therefore, independent filmmakers heavily rely on YouTube to post and distribute their short films. For this reason, audiences can view the short films for free, leave the feedback and even share these films with their friends through social media. This would achieve word of mouth effect and hence bring more people to watch the film.

METRODOME DISTRIBUTION

Another way of distributing our film would be via a British independent film company, such as Metrodome Distribution. Metrodome Distribution seems to distribute most horror, war, and thriller films, the age certifications of these three types of films are 15 or 18 which are the ages of our target audiences. Because we only have limited budget so it's beneficial to going for Metrodome Distribution as they possess low budgets.

It is beneficial to distribute our film through cinema and online streaming simultaneously. We would release our film on Friday as people are more likely to go to cinema on Fridays. Because contemporary films are mostly being watched online, we could distribute our film through video streaming website such as Netflix, iTunes and LOVEFiLM. Distributing our film online would not cost as much as releasing it into cinema or DVD, this would save our budget on marketing as well.

As our budget is very low, entering our film into local film festival or national film festival could make it noticed by people, and would cause independent film companies interests in making our film into a feature film.

Because our target audience is more likely to use Internet, it is beneficial to use posters, trailers or website ads to promote and advertise our film. The social media, such as twitter and Facebook, would be the most effective way of promoting out film, therefore we could put poster or trailers on there.

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

GENDER

Even though our product focused on a young female character in the beginning, the main character is male. This towards a male audience, as they would portray him better than the female character.

AGE The main character is belongs to middle age and the female character is clearly teenager. As these two character would related to the people who are age between teenage years and adulthood.

AGE CERTIFICATE After reading each age classification on BBFC website, I would class our film as 15. This is because our film contains violence and strong language. As we can see from our opening sequence, guy hits girl with baseball bat, and which is violence. And the main character, seems likely to be a gangster. Gangster typically and frequently use F words, which belongs to strong language.

British Board of Film Classification - 15 -

Real thriller films our audience would like;

• Pulp Fiction (1994)

• Se7en (1995)

Because these two films are same age certificate as our thriller film's, our audience would like these as well. Also, our audience would like both of these real films because According to IMDb, both two films are ranked in the top 10 of feature thriller film with more than 1,000 votes. Pulp Fiction ranks the best one, and Se7en is No.6.

US demographics of IMDb users

5. How did you attract /  address your audience?

Character

• Casting a young girl would create sympathy and attract young men demographic
• Introducing unknown victim silhouette in the opening scene to draw attention and create intensity

Narrative

• To retain attention from our audience throughout the film, we used the non-chronological order to reveal the story gradually

Editing

• By slowing down the pace of each cut keeps our audience wanting to watch further
• Questions are raised to the audience by using a majority of POVs to attract audiences' interests in finding out the answers

PACE IN EDITING

Sound

• Using Non-Diegetic sound in an exaggerated and enhanced way to draw attention from the audience 

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?

Prelim task  /  Main task

We had a few issues through our preliminary task. We used too strong lighting, and were unconsidered about composition and  framing. So we made improvements against issues we had previously.

We used lighting for both preliminary task and main task. Through the prelim film, the lighting was set as our daily lighting tone, however there was just one shot, we used the lighting too strong and bright. Though it was used only for a second, it was quite obvious compare to the other shots. Our main task was not to make each shot too different from other shots. As it is conventional to use low-key lighting in a thriller film, we decided to use small lighting instead of LED and big lighting in every shot to create the ambience in the woods scene.

In the preliminary film, we had a small problem when filming the main object, a table leg was blocking the view of Charlie's foot. We should have filmed Charlie's foot without the table leg. We really learned to think about composition for our thriller film and spent more time on finding out right position. By doing this, we were able to create better ambience in our shots and the shots became more photographic.  Therefore, I was able to layout the title in appropriate and great position into a frame, as editing was my responsible and was within my role. In the prelim film, we did not have any texts, as it was only to show camera work and editing cut techniques. 

We had an issue with framing in our prelim task. There was a big space between Zoe's head and the top of the frame. The camera had difficulty to follow her movement as she was walking and trying to sit down. Because we had the problem with framing, we have been more careful with handling character movement and camera movement in our full product.

Through all the works, I feel I have progressed hugely in my skills, especially with editing and sound (foley). This is because editing was my responsibility in both prelim task and main task. I have improved using Final Cut Pro and Garageband enormously. I was not able to use any filters in Final Cut Pro before, but I can now use/change things such as motion, colour correction and cropping easily. For Garageband, I could only add sounds when I started using it but could not change the volume, now I can adjust the volume easily. I am now more skilful in using these software to construct narratives.

Charlotte Faber Evaluation -

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

Thriller Conventions - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP-sSJJJW6o

• uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements
• restricted narration
• creates an enigma for the audience
• red herrings
• plot twists
• cliffhangers
• usually a villain-driven plot
• Puts the audience of the edge of their seat

Opening shot is an establishing shot, allowing the audience to see where it's taking place. This convention is used in the thriller "Road to Perdition"
Low key lighting, to create silhouettes of the trees, creating a dark atmosphere, accompanied by the soundtrack creates tension. Filmed as P.O.V of man walking in woods (handheld camera work, diegetic heavy footsteps). Creates enigma, as the audience don't know who this person is. Non-Diegetic music creates a tense atmosphere.
This shot raises questions for the audience - "who's in the woods?". This setting (woods) is also very common in thrillers.

'Road to Perdition' - Establishing Shot

This shot uses restricted narration  so that the audience can't work out who she is, and whether she is dead or alive. The shots of the girl's body are cross cut with images of the woods. This disorientates the audience as they try to piece their idea of who the girl is. Low key lighting and non-diegetic music builds suspense as the audience become closer to knowing more about the girl.

'44 Inch Chest'

 We took the idea of disorientating the audience to whether the character was alive or not from the thriller '44 inch chest' - however the audience in this film thinks the character is dead until he blinks - plot twist. Raises questions for the audience.

This shot is a MS tilt up of the murderer (low angle) gives him a dominant status. The camera tilts but stops below the neck. This is so that his identity is hidden from the audience, this restricted narration creates enigma. This technique is often used to restrict the audience's knowledge. The costume of leather, and black give an ominous feel to the shot. Glimpse of the bat shows the audience the weapon. A film which uses the same technique is 'The Usual Suspects' (see clip below). Here the head is out of the frame, so that during the film the audience have to work out who Kaiser is.

In our title sequence we uses a panning shot of the woods. We used low key lighting, to create a silhouetted  effect. This gives it a dark and mysterious feel. Although there is slight white space at the top, the simple title still stands out against the black. This is paired with a sound bridge of the bat hitting the girl and non-diegetic music which creates apprehension in the audience. The use of music in the title sequence to build this tension, is a very common convention in a thriller.

This is a MLS tilt up a fireplace/mantelpiece. This is a stark contrast from the previous scenes, because of the high key lighting. The lighting tied in with the picture of the girl, makes the audience wonder whether she is actually dead or not. The colours of the setting (red, gold) and the props (bronze statues, flowers) symbolise wealth and a middle-class English house. Most thrillers typically use ordinary suburbs or cities. Having a high status house in this thriller disorientates the audience from their preconceptions of a thriller &  makes the audience question the motives behind the girls death. 


This shot is gives more incite to the families social status and lifestyle via props and sound. The props represent a relaxing and slow paced lifestyle. This contrasts to the woods scene. The shot includes two people's legs behind the table (restricted narration) which makes the audience wonder who they are. The audience can also hear the diegetic sound of 'Antiques Roadshow' which gives them an idea of the type of people they are. High key lighting is also used. 


This is a low angle  medium shot of the Father opening the door. The low angle allows the audience to see that the father is in fear/nervous of the person behind the door and hints to the fact that the Father has more knowledge on the situation more than the Mother, as the low angle gives him dominance and status. The lighting tone in this shot is cold, to create tension. The sound changes to diegetic sound of the Father opening the door, which draws the audience into the importance of the door and creates a bigger impact. The use of different angles to portray emotion and status is a common element in thrillers, for example Inception.

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

Young Girl - Protagonist.

We chose the victim of our piece to be a young western female girl. We represented her by the choice of costume (childlike - leggings, and checkered shirt), and showing her vulnerability by camera angles (P.O.V shots), lighting techniques (low key lighting) and sounds (non-diegetic music builds tension). The fact that we represented this character as a young female, reflects societies view of women and children of being weak and vulnerable. This therefore makes our piece effective as the audience can fully believe and sympathise with the piece. However, if we wanted to challenge the audience's view of vulnerability, a strong man as the victim, but we felt that for our audience we were better off sticking with stereotypes.

Murderer - Antagonist

We chose the villain of our piece to be a man. His identity remains a secret, so we're actually hiding his identity from the audience. We did this with the use of a black leather jacket & gloves, and dark jeans. This is so that the audience can't guess who the Antagonist is by his status in society. The only social group they can see is his gender. A male shown with by a low angle to have significant power over a a young girl - typical stereotypical views of gender.

Father - Protagonist

Gender is shown via the typical clothing of a middle-class man (suit). This also shows the audience his social class - this is supported by the mise en scene of the living room & the diegetic sound of 'Antiques Roadshow' & 'Call The Midwife' (both shows are associated with the older middle class). This diegetic sound also represents the age of Father (mid 50's) - this is also reflected in the slow pace of the house scene.

Mother -

Social class is represented via the Mother. Drinking out of a tea-cup and saucer, and eating chocolate biscuits are associated with luxury and also feminine. The props of a magazine open on Kate Middleton, also reflects societys view of women always reading celebrity gossip, however the choice of the celebrity being Kate Middleton reflects the Mother's social class (middle class). The fact that the Father goes to answer the door and changes the channel, also reflects that the Man is the head of the household.


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

Youtube - The most popular way of distributing films is via YouTube. It's free, simple to use and can make your film viral. You can also get sponsorship deals if your film gets a certain amount of views.

NetFlix - and other online film/television websites are fast become very popular. They are also quick and user friendly, however may be hard to get your film straight onto their site, as you'd have to apply.

Distribution via X-Box also becoming easier to do. A lot of new indie films, are being put straight into X-Box's film system. Making it easy for the consumers to download and watch at home.

For advertising, social media networks would be the best way for the world to know about our film. It's free, and we can target our audience. Flyers posted around town, and places associated with our target audience. If we had a bigger budget, we could have larger advertisements i.e. bus stops, commercials. This would really raise it's public profile.

Being aspiring film producers, we don't have a big budget, distributors or sales agents that can get us into big cinemas. However, we could use a small independent British distributor company like 'Coffee Films' and also get into independent film houses like the Duke of York Picture house in Brighton.

Duke of York Picture House

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



Gender -

Our main protagonist is a male (the Father), with the main themes of our film being violence, gangs and extortion. Therefore our film is more targeted towards males, as these themes are more associated with a stereotypical male interests.





Age  -

The main protagonist is middle-aged and the victim is a teenager. Therefore I think that the target audience for our film is 18-45.

Certificate -

Even though our target audience is 18-45, the language and violence is appropriate for a certificate of 15. I feel that the level of violence, themes and language are appropriate for a rating of 15.

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/15

The violence of in the opening sequence is only implied and shows no blood/gore. Therefore we could get away with a certificate 12 - however, I feel that if we made the whole film, there would be more violence and language used within the film.

Other films our audience would watch -

The Road to Perdition & The God Father uses the same themes as our film. Gangs, violence and family are the main issues in this film, and are the same main issues in our film. The use of low key lighting to create a dramatic effect is also used in the same way.

Pulp fiction and Kill Bill are filmed in non-chronological order. We have also used this technique as restricted narration as the audience try to work our who the antagonist is.

5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

Character -

• Young girl victim, makes the audience sympathise with the characters, wanting to work out who would want to murder her. 
  
• Unknown identity of the murderer makes the audience intrigued towards the end of the film. Throughout the film we wish to lead them on different red herrings, until the plot twist of the Father being the murderer. The initial shot of the unknown identity of the murderer is a black silhouetted figure, engaging the audience right from the beginning.
  
   

Narrative -

• We've chosen to have our film in non-chronological order, as it will retain the audiences attention throughout the film. It also changes the way the audience would usually piece together a thriller, leading to an even more effective plot twist ending.  

Editing -

• Fast pace in wood scene compared to a slower pace in the house, keeps the audiences attention alive during film. 
• Cross-Cutting to restrict narration and create an enigma. Keeps the audience engaged as they have to be constantly involved with the action on screen. 

Camera work - 

• Using camera work (shot sizes and P.O.V shots) questions will be raised by the audience, as we can hide certain objects from the audience and specifically choose the information the audience receives. 

Sound - 

• Using Non-diegetic sound enhances the action on screen for the audience, and build even more tension. 

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?

In our preliminary task we had problems with our lighting. We used a harsh lighting, which never matched

with the next shot. This broke the audiences concentration as the reality kept on breaking. We learnt from this mistake, and used low key lighting in the woods, to create a dark and mysterious atmosphere. We managed to control all of the lighting so that the shots lighting were fluent with each other. We achieved this by using LED lights and a main light with reflectors. This allowed us to control exactly how much light was being poured into each shot. This created a dark ambience in this scene.

In our preliminary task we really didn't think about composition. On the left image, you can see that my foot is being blocked by the table leg. This really broke the audiences concentration with our piece, and made it seem very amateur. This mistake made us very careful with treating each shot like a photograph and placing everything within the frame. This gave a professional cinematographic feel to our opening scenes. We really thought about how the composition of a piece changes a character's role/status in the scene. For example, the killer being directly in the middle of the P.O.V shot, to symbolise the victims attention is solely on her killer, and then switches to a CU of the bat to show she's noticed it.
The composition of the tracking shot also allowed us to place the title in an appropriate place and font so that the audience can read it clearly. There was no text over images used in our preliminary task so this was a new skill we learnt.

Our framing in our preliminary task was very poor. We had a shot of Zoe walking towards the table and sitting down, but it was out of time with the camera, resulting in a gap between Zoe's head and the top of the frame. We learnt from this, and realised we had to use 2 shot's to create this effect. In our final task, we had the same sequence but in reverse, so we had one shot of the couple sitting down, and then a cut to him standing up - this resulted in no extra space in the frame.

In our preliminary task we added in simple foley effects - e.g. watch clicking. However in our final task, I learnt how to record my own sounds (television, door & biscuit) and use these to create a realistic atmosphere.