Question 1 – In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our opening thriller sequence consists of many generic conventions of the thriller genre; our titles being one of them, as they are in white font over a black background, which is common to the thriller genre. This is common to thrillers as it engages the audience by grabbing their attention by using what is shown on screen. This technique is also seen in ‘The Village’ (M. Night. Shyamalan 2005) and is used once again to create interest and keep the audience engaged, grabbing their attention. This can also be seen in the flashback scenes, in which the female character is running away from the male stalker character in the woods. The location and setting in this scene, which is the woods, also is a common convention of the thriller genre. Similarly as the victim does by being the classic brown haired, pretty, young, passive female.
We developed theses common conventions further in the wood scenes by using them as flashbacks to tell the story and also used various other techniques such as darkening effects in order to darken the shots and also by using P.O.V and O.T.S shots. These P.O.V and O.T.S shots (see footage shots 5,9 and 10) are common to the thriller genre and we was inclined to put these in after watching the opening ‘The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez 1999). All of these techniques and effects were used with the intention of meeting and following the common conventions of a thriller film.
The thriller genre is commonly known to be slow and suspenseful and to build up tension, creating a creepy and strange feel. Our titles also do this by engaging the audience visually and then using our choice of sound which was the gradual increase of running water in order to grab the audience’s attention further and continue this eerie feeling, whilst building suspense and encapsulating engagement. Thus which is a common convention of the thriller genre (see footage from 0:00 to 0:31). However though, the music is quite ambiguous also, due to the fact is also similar to that of a horror sub-genre and psychological sub-genre.
In addition to this, our thriller opening contains no dialogue, similar to the psychological thriller ‘Donnie Darko’ (Richard Kelly 2001). The opening of this film uses little dialogue also with the intention of keeping the audience engaged and to introduce the setting. This was also done in order to make the audience concentrate on the main character and engage with the character through his feelings, facial expression and surroundings. We used this technique in our thriller opening in order to ensure that the audience stayed focused with the narrative and the protagonist.
The use of slow paced editing is another common convention seen in thriller films. The slow paced editing is used to start the film and is then increased at a gradual pace, which helps build-up tension and creates suspense. In addition to this we distributed longer screen time to our main actor, the male protagonist as he is most important and needs to be represented as dominant in the opening. The shots of the female are much shorter and there aren’t as many juxtaposing this. This was done in order to show that she was passive to him. (See footage shots 2, 4,5 and 7).
Question 2 – How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product represents particular social groups through, class, gender and age. In our opening we have a male and female as the main charecters and focus. In addition to this the age of the two characters plays an important role in our opening as they show the stereotypical characteristics and nature of the younger generation today as well as showing the films target audience. By the male protagonist being white it gives a stereotypical view of the classic ‘male stalker’ seen in most thriller films. The stalker is always male and white. Consequently, as a result of this our media product is showing representation of gender in a stereotypical character. As well as class, age, race and gender have been used in order to emphasize our characters with the purpose of keeping the verisimilitude high through this use of stereotypes and of use of stereotypical representation in order to also help the audience relate and engage to the characters.
Our thriller represents the white middle class male to be dominant and superior to women of the same class. We portrayed this by using typical stereotypical views by having a white male antagonist as the stalker/murderer and by having a young, white brunette woman as the innocent passive victim. With the male character playing the protagonist role is creates a stereotypical portrayal of the characters; the man plays the dominant, powerful and aggressive role, while the woman plays the passive victim who is confused and young and plays the weaker role. This means that our media product would most probably appeal to the middle class white male target audience and some female, as they would have alike ideologies and representations to ours.
The modern interior of the male charecters house, also shows his social status and class in modern society. It portrays how he is middle class dues to the modern home he possesses. This can be seen by the use of props and furniture and gadgets within the house etc. Nevertheless though the groups consideration of mise-en-scene could have been better by as group us thinking about it more as we seemed more to focus on the woods and costume of the male as opposed to the females clothing and the location for the makes house etc. if we were to do this again I think the group should have defiantly picked a better location for the male’s house.
Editing is another aspect that is used in order to represent the dominance of the male character above the female character. Longer takes, more shots and longer screen time of the male character draw attention to his dominance above the woman also contrasting the shorter takes, less shots and fewer screen time of the female show her weakness. The diegetic sound we used of the panting and screaming merged with the non-diegetic sound of a heartbeat also show how the female fears the white male stalker (See footage shots 5,6 and 9), once again backing up the stereotypical vies of the woman being inferior to the male.
Question 3 – What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I think that a major Hollywood studio could produce our media product. I think this because there are all ready similar existing products out there like ours such as ‘Friday 13th’ (Marcus Nispel 2009) and ‘The House Of Wax’ (Jaume Collet-Serra 2005). An example of a Hollywood studio that could produce our media product is Universal Pictures, as they have also produced similar films to my groups and have been victorious in doing so. Accordingly they are now very experienced in making films of a similar style to mine and are also well known for producing films of an high quality of film. Therefore they would make a good choice of Hollywood studio.
My media product could be released and could be produce then circulated world wide, which then means that a large audience can consume it and as a result a high number of sales will be made resulting in maximum profit. After my film had been released at cinemas it could be released on DVD in order for the audience and consumers of the product to buy it. This is a typical move of other media products of similar style.
However there is a limit in franchising and merchandising of the product, which is due to the mise-en-scene of the product, because the style created in my product is dark, scary and sinister it makes the merchandising of the product difficult as it restricts which aspects of the product, can be merchandised, making this very difficult to do. In addition to this, specialised collectors merchandise of the product could be made available to the niche collectors market in order to make further profit. Despite the fact that there would be not much synergy connected with our media product of which would appeal to the mainstream of viewers.
From our research with the BBFC and then from watching our finished piece, our thriller is aimed at a 15+ audience, as this is the certificate rating it fits into.
The narrative of our thriller focuses upon teenage characters, both male and female around the age of 16/ 17 years old, therefore this film will appeal to people of the same age as that, predominantly male, however females may be interested in the film also. Furthermore, due to the fact that the protagonist is male and the victim is female, this may be another reason of why our product may be more appealing to the male audience. We also chose not to centre on lots of gore, swearing and explicitness in our thriller in order to keep it in the 15-certificate rating and instead, make it a psychological thriller and as a result my product would appeal the teenage male audience as well as adult audiences.
The Results from our audience research survey also show that our film appeals more to the teenage male audience rather than the teenage female audience, backing up what I previously stated. Films such as Friday 13th’ (Marcus Nispel 2009), The House Of Wax’ (Jaume Collet-Serra 2005). and ‘I know What You Did Last Summer’ (Jim Gillespie 1997) are films that follow a similar genre and style to mine but in spite of this these films have more of a horror/ “teen-horror” style and genre, nevertheless though, the target audience is still the same.
Question 5 – How did you attract/address your audience?
Prior to making our thriller opening, it was fundamental that we addressed our target audience with the intention of establishing ways in which we, as the producer, could attract the target audience we wanted. We decided to do this by creating a questionnaire in order to find out exactly what the viewers wanted to see, not to see and how they like a thriller to look. This enabled us to acknowledge what the audience wanted to see and didn’t want to see in a thriller film, which helped us to accomplish the best, most effective thriller opening as possible. Additionally, when our final animatic was created it allowed us to see exactly what we did well, what we didn’t do well, what could be improved and whether we followed the target audience’s responses and ideas.
A strong and suspenseful opening is most effective when appealing to a male audience, in addition to this, as do the jumpy flashbacks. However even though these effects are just right for our target audience of 15+ and male, these jump cut flash backs would scare younger children due to the audience being put in the position of the character on screen its self and also because of the camera work (see footage shots 6, 9 and 10). In addition to this, because our opening uses teenage characters as the main focal point, the audience will be mainly teenagers also.
The female character, the victim, who is seen in the flashbacks would also make this media product appeal to a male audience, due to the fact that is it symbolises men as the more aggressive, powerful and controlling gender and portrays women to be more passive, weak and inferior. As well as this, the male character has more screen time than the female character, in order to get the audience to connect with the male character through his use of facial expressions and actions and through the camera tracking him in his environment, setting the scene and creating an atmosphere, hence mainly appealing to a male audience. The antagonist also has a variety of shots, such as mid shots, tilt shots and close ups in order to establish his character and connote his role as the dominant, aggressive male stalker. Whereas the female character on he other hand, has a small amount of time on screen in comparison as she has quick shots in order to indicate her fear and relate in with the narrative.
Before creating our thriller opening, we had to make an animatic using our storyboard and shotlist. After photographing our storyboard pictures, this task was carried out using Adobe Premier Pro to create the final animatic. We then added a variety of sound effects in order to create tension and suspense and give impact to the audience. These sound effects included the footsteps, the sound of running water and also non-diegetic background music to fit over the piece. However when it came to our final piece we decided to use more diegetic sound in order to improve the piece further and make the narrative clearer to the audience and in contrast a quieter background music was used as we felt the one we used was to loud, dramatic and in your face which draws the audience away from the narrative.
Moreover, the animatic could have been vastly improved, as we chose to draw the images and then photograph them rather than taking photographs of actual people and props as when the class and teacher watched it back they said that the narrative became confusing in the animatic. Our teacher then suggested using photographs could have helped the audience establish and understand what was going on in the frame and therefore would have understood the narrative better rather than not knowing what some shots were. What's more, using Adobe Premier Pro for the animatic was a good idea as this meant it allowed us to get to know the software better which would give us an advantage when filming our final piece.
We used a HD camera in order to film out 2 minute thriller opening. This was very good and effective and you didn’t need a long time to work out how to use the camera, as this was simple and easy. However, even though the camera was simple and easy to use, it did reduce the quality of our shots as the camera kept going in and out of focus which meant we lost the high definition quality we was hoping for. In addition to this, we found out that the camera we were using wasn’t very effective at capturing sound even though it gave a high picture quality. Even so we found a way to over come this problem and that was to use a separate sound recorder during filming and then drop the sound into place on top of the footage In the post production stage – editing. This was much better as the sound couldn’t be heard when using the camera and didn’t give the high quality results we were hoping for. As a consequence we only had a few trivial problems with the equipment.
The problems we faced and over came included; during the filming process we found that the tripod was extremely useful and effective in terms of holding a steady shot and level, but nevertheless we weren’t without any problems. We found that when using the tripod it would some times get stuck when tilting or panning resulting in jumpy, poor quality shot. Then, when filming our long shot and zoom shot of the door (see footage shot 1) we came across the problem that the camera would zoom to quickly. In order to overcome this problem we decided to use a different type of camera, which had a much slower zoom on it.
In addition to this for the duration of the evenings the sun would go down very quickly, changing the lighting in each shot we filmed so in order to prevail over this problem we decided to film during the middle of the day when the sun was brightest and then use Adobe After Effects with the intention of darkening the footage (see my blog post ‘Darkening Footage’,).
When we first started out my knowledge of editing and the Premier Pro software was none. However overtime this gradually built up and after using the software for previous tasks before I final piece such as our animatic and our continuity task etc I soon found that it wasn’t that hard to use and so my basic skills soon advanced.
When we set out making our animatic we, as a group all found it difficult at the start to use Premiere Pro effectively and efficiently as only one member of our group had any experience using it. Other than that it was all new to us. Conversely after getting used to the software I found it much easier to use ad began to learn to edit effectively with help from other group members.
When collecting sounds for our animatic we found it quite difficult as most of the sounds and background music we wanted to use were copyright; In spite of this after widespread research we eventually came across an excellent website with a large library of copyright free sound called ‘freeplaymusic’. By the time it came to doing our continuity task I felt much more comfortable and experienced using the software as I had had quite a lot of practise in using it and I now felt I could edit more effectively.
Delicate editing, fade transitions and darkening effects resulted in giving us a feel for the software and helping us get to know it and programs linked to it such as Adobe After Effects; this then led to a high quality finished product.
Question 7 – Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at my preliminary task I have learnt many things from the progression to the full product. This is mostly down to learning to plan effectively. Researching into the genre and creating an animatic also helped us as it meant we could see what we had done wrong, needed to change and could improve on our mistakes.
To begin with my group found it very difficult to come up with an initial idea for our project, nonetheless after some extensive research and watching some openings to existing thriller films we soon came up with some ideas after seeing what sort of thing we needed to include and what was out there all ready (see blog post ‘Initial ideas’). In addition to this, this research supplied us of what sort of narrative is expected, what the common codes and conventions are of a thriller film and also provided us with some ideas of the common shot choices used in thrillers for example O.T.S, C.U and P.O.V.
After much discussion and planning, as a group, we chose to base our thriller on the psychological sub-genre and so hence carried out extended research on the psychological sub-genre. This then enabled us to see the common codes and conventions of this genre, as well as helped us see what the narrative was like, what the audience expect to see and once again helped us establish the type of shots used, the mise-en-scene, e.g. props and costume, that we should use in our opening. Additionally, by creating our animatic it allowed us and to see how our opening would look based upon our initial ideas from the shotlist and storyboard and this then showed us what we did well and what we didn’t. One improvement we made was that we decided to hold our shots for longer to allow the audience to engage better.
On the whole I feel that my confidence with the using the edition software and programmes as well as my filming and editing equipment has grown from the start of the task.
Our media product is engaging, high quality, has a good narrative and meets the codes and conventions of a thriller film. Therefore I believe our media product is successful in fulfilling the task. In comparison to our practise filming task, continuity task and our animatic, it is clear that our edition and filming skills have significantly improved as this can be seen in our finished product (see blog post ‘reflections – final opening’).
In our finished product all of our shots were steady and by experimenting more with different shots such as tilts, P.O.V shots and O.T.S shots. In addition to this in general our editing has also improved significantly contributing to an excellent high quality, fine edited piece of media. Having an extended deadline meant that we had more time in order to spend editing our final product and getting it to the highest standard we could.
