In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When we first began planning our media production; we discussed in our production groups what type of genre we would like to aim to convey.
We soon decided on the thriller genre. While the horror genre was easily accessible for us, we saw the thriller genre as a lot more sophisticated and a greater challenge with the requirement of a higher quality storyline; whereas horror generally only requires a simple narrative with a lot of blood, death and darkness.
The fantastic thing about thriller films is that they always seem to have the audience asking numerous questions in their head; who killed them? Why did they kill them? Etc. When the film encourages the audience to get excited like this, it makes them want to keep on watching to find the answers. The film will almost take the audience on a journey; they may be scared of the possibilities of what they might find, but they are willed to go on by their thirst of adventure (in the safety of the cinema or their own home) and their need to find the answers to their questions. We would hope with our film’s beginning (if built upon) could develop into a text which could provoke the audience in this way.
Once decided on this genre, we considered all the different elements and conventions; dramatic music, violence with a hidden purpose, a fast paced and shocking narrative, a ‘hidden evil’ of some kind whether a character or object; a house, car, box etc.
The fantastic thing about thriller films is that they always seem to have the audience asking numerous questions in their head; who killed them? Why did they kill them? Etc. When the film encourages the audience to get excited like this, it makes them want to keep on watching to find the answers
We had formed all these ideas from our own experience of film, and thriller films which for example, can experiment with a psychopath killer on the loose or government espionage. These are seen in films like ‘Se7en’ or ‘Pulp Fiction’.
In the end of the planning process we came up with a simple idea for the first 2-3 minutes of the film, where the male lead (Jonathon) followed his normal routine from waking up in the morning to breakfast and leaving for work. He follows this routine up until he attempts to hang himself, though after a couple of seconds he decides against this and attempts to remove the noose from around his neck, only to be killed by a stranger that removes the chair from beneath Jonathon’s feet then continues to walk down the hallway and out of the front door. This is the point that the audience is left with, because our opening finished here.
We studied ‘The Birds’ an Alfred Hitchcock film and ‘Se7en’ a David Fincher film. This is a good way to learn about some valuable techniques, which we then used in our film. We spotted conventions such as dramatic music, when the birds were going to attack in ‘The Birds’ or when a body was being discovered in ‘Se7en’; these were used to build-up the tension of the scene, so to get the attention of the audience. There were techniques such as a shaking camera, when a character was being attacked. This was used to compliment the mise en scene by making the attack, in this case, look extreme and serious.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our short bit of film we are only able to represent one social group because of the small amount of film we were allowed to film, and the lack of characters in our first scene. Jonathon conveyed a businessman with a decent house; with no indication of anyone else living in the house - family, partner, friends - it is suggested that Jonathon’s character is a middle class businessman, possible consumed by his work, leaving him no time for other social engagements with friends, family or potential romance. If we had been able to continue our film we would have been able to develop other character profiles and represent a vast range of social groups. The killer for example could be a kind of ‘gangster’ or he could be just in that type of costume to hide his true identity.
There aren’t that many film production companies which produce only one genre of film, but I always find New Line Cinema associated with films with a more serious theme, ‘Se7en’ was also produced in association with this particular production company, which clearly shows the companies popular reputation and success with highly rated films.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
So if we were to professionally produce our film, then we would use Warner Bros. to distribute our film, this is because we would like our film to be known as a serious production by the audience, as if the audience feel that the film is serious then it will be much easier to take in the real messages and narrative of the film. When someone sees and advertisement for a Warner Bros., they expect it to be of high quality and a serious production. This helps, because the content of the film will only be suitable for young adults and adults to view. Warner Bros. would help us produce our film with a professional editing/filming team, which will also help us to get our film to be taken seriously. Once the film was produced, Warner Bros. would be able to use their strong reputation to get the support of different film theatre chains throughout the nation and advertising companies to work hard to sell the product. As Warner Bros. is such a well known and wealthy institute, once it had convinced a reliable advertising company of promoting our product, they would be able to fund the advertising for the film; trailers, posters, flyers, merchandise, to get the attention of a possible audience.
Who would be the audience for your media product and why?
There are a wide range of people, who can watch a thriller film and enjoy it, but due to the content of my film, the minimum age certificate of the film will be a 15, with the lack of a full narrative for the whole film, we can’t know an exact target audience. If the film was about government espionage then you can expect an audience interest from 18 maybe 20-40 years old, as a film about a dodgy government would affect an audience of this age more; as adults there are many things involving the government which would also involve them.
Or if the film was about a murder involving gang crime and the general urban culture, then the target audience would be between 15 and 25; the general age for members of gangs, although people of an older age may be interested in these films also, as they may be curious about these different lifestyles and how they may affect them.
How did you attract/address your audience?
While our opening to the film does not hold much content, things like the character’s routine of getting up, showering, eating breakfast etc can be easily found to be relatable, once you have made some kind of link with your audience, in this case the morning routine of the character, an audience immediately feel more comfortable and ready to endure a film or a television program. This helps the audience to be more open minded and accepting of the future events of the film. The age of the actors and the intended age of the character itself also helps to attract an audience, whether this comforts the audience or (if the actor is well known, and known for certain assets) the audience comes to watch the film in support of their favourite actor; of course making the film a lot more attractive.
If we could have produced the film professionally we could have had actors with great reputations starring. Of course while our film was an amateur production and didn’t hold any well known actors, this is sometimes an appeal also, as some people love an amateur film with a sometimes unknown style, or they love to see the beginning of a possibly great actor’s life in film. In our film this is the case, as the main actor of the short clip Jonathon Patton may be a future star of film, and people may be attracted to this new talent.
Here is a Pie chart below to show our statistics:
What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have previously had many experiences in amateur film production, so the technologies involved are not particularly new to me. We used an HD camcorder, tripod and Windows Movie Maker - Windows 7 edition, for editing our production. The camcorder was good and easy to use and gave us good results and fulfilled the requirements we needed. The tripod provided us with a few problems with some random unsteady shots and jolts of movement instead of smooth actions. I have used Windows Movie Maker on numerous occasions but never for a film. While known as a simple and ‘easy’ editing software, it caused a few problems and the lagging of the film footage while using the software was a great annoyance as it was difficult to see the further edits we were required to carry out. So, from the process of constructing my film, I haven’t gained that much technical knowledge as I have had a lot of experience in the editing process with previous projects. I know if we were ever going to re-edit we would use a professional editor which would help give us a higher quality film, which would be much more enjoyable for whatever our audience.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When we started our preliminary task; as well as having a larger group, the group was less experienced in knowledge of the media industry and its techniques. So the preliminary task was a brilliant way of helping us work as a team to create a quality piece of work and with this experience it was much easier to use these already learnt techniques in our complete film production.
We learnt many camera techniques which help sustain the flow throughout a scene; such as the 180 degree rule and ‘Match on Action’ and the shot reverse shot, these were greatly useful the creation of our ending product. The 180 degree rule is useful to keep the scene correctly orientated, so not to break the flow of things being conveyed in each scene. The ‘Match on Action’ shot is when some action occurring before the temporally questionable cut is picked up where the cut left it by the shot immediately following.
This helps to maintain the continuity throughout the scene, and make the story on screen more natural and easier to accept for the audience.
The ‘Shot Reverse shot’ is a film technique where one character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each other. This once again is a type of continuity editing, which helps the audience to understand they conveyed story a lot easier.
During the editing process of the preliminary task we found many mistakes with our original camera work; some of the reverse shots didn’t match, and so it appeared as though the character had jumped from one place randomly to another which would make no sense to an audience.
These mistakes helped us be a lot more aware of our camera work, and while in our finished production the camera work was sometimes slightly jolty, this was the fault of the camera stand alone.
This earlier task also made us aware of the dangers of continuity issues, these continuity mistakes are easy to make even the most little mistakes can cause a lot of confusion for the audience, and this confusion can easily make the audience feel uncomfortable.
The only thing the preliminary task did not prepare us for was creating an enticing and accessible storyline for an audience. So as well as learning how to edit and film in a successful way we also learnt how to write a short narrative to fit our desired theme and genre of thriller. The preliminary task also did not contain a specific genre, as it contained a simplistic plot, of a man meeting his boss and being fired from his job, the development of our final production also meant the development of our vast knowledge of genre, or in our case Thriller.
Even though we learnt these lessons from working on the preliminary production, we were unable to involve any form of obvious binary opposition in the film, which would have been a great addition to the film clip. When the audience is shown something with an opposite, for example a character representing a coward, the audience can also compare this character to a hero type character; of course the opinions and beliefs of these different types of people are completely based on the current cultural impression towards a ‘coward’ or a ‘hero’, and this cultural impression will change quite rapidly and in many different ways. This is from advancement in technology or knowledge, or if an eventually more mature attitude towards different minority groups.
