Mia Foden - Evaluation

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

A good thriller has the ability to keep the spectator in suspense throughout the film, and provides an interesting, unresolved storyline, which creates enigma and builds tension throughout, until the end, where the storyline pieces together with an interesting ending which fits with the rest of the narrative. There are many different types of thrillers such as: crime, psychological, and domestic.

Our product is psychological as the young male character is representative of the female character’s hallucinations. We have ensured that our thriller opening has the main elements which make up a thriller: enigma, suspense, tension, and anxiety.

This is the middle of the second shot in our opening (a medium shot). This shot gives the spectator their first impressions of the main character, and gives some context. Though the spectator can clearly see that this is set in a primary school, which is usually thought to be a safe and happy place, the cracked writing shows that there’s clearly something different about this school, and perhaps not everything is as simple as it seems. The shot isn’t quite a close up, it does however show clear facial expression and makes the character immediately likeable with an approachable, and friendly looking face. We have done this purposely as it is important that our main character is liked as she is the victim of our narrative and we want the spectator to sympathise with her. As soon as she stops speaking, tense, non- diegetic music begins. This is where slight tension starts to build as a fade to black introduces the title sequence.

This creates enigma for the audience by suggesting a number of different scenarios the main character is perhaps going to experience like: seeing something which isn’t real, or is paranoid of something happening, or what people think of her because something she has done, or has been accused of. The writing is clear and bold with cracks to increase the unsettling feeling. The tense music which plays in the background is parallel to the picture and storyline. We decided to present this to intensify the feeling of uncertainty.

This shot implies that the woman has a link to the boy on the front cover. The non-diegetic sound of ‘news reporters’ speaking over one another gives the spectator the first clue about the narrative. It is supposed to give the spectator an idea about what she is thinking and feeling. The bold heading on the newspaper also clearly shows that this pupil had died in a lesson, which clearly had something to do with the main character. The focus pull also draws attention to this writing and the young boy’s face in order to shock the audience, as it is very tragic when young children die. This creates enigma as the spectator does not know how he died, and they do not know how involved the teacher was, and whether in fact, it could have been a murder. This could potentially cause slight confusion for the audience as her normal, average, looking character doesn’t seem like a murder.

In this close up shot, as a spectator, we can clearly see that she is worried. This again lets the audience empathise with her character. The non diegetic soundtrack in the background is still playing at this point and still gives off a ‘spooky’ atmosphere which highlights that something is wrong.

This long shot, of her walking down the middle of the hallway, suggests the feeling of isolation that the character may be experiencing. It implies that she is on her own with this problem, and no one can help her. This again lets the audience sympathise with her.

This shot was a separate shot to the previous where, initially, the boy is not there. This is used to scare the spectator as he appears with a new non diegetic soundtrack, which we created using garage band, heightening in the background. We created this effect of the boy suddenly appearing as she walks past by shooting two different shots - one with just the woman, and one with the woman and the boy. By ensuring that the continuity is maintained, we used final cut pro to join the two shots together. We zoomed in, on final cut pro, so the second shot was slightly closer as there was initially a jump inbetween the two shots. It was important that we ensured there was no jump as continuity is essential to avoid confusion and to keep the spectator engaged. He is also noticeably pale as we used hard light to illuminate his complexion, giving the boy an ill/ghostly look. A well known film with a very similar looking character is The Omen.

Again, this is a shot with the child in the background, only this time he is running. This suggests that he never leaves her mind, as he follows her everywhere she goes. This indicates to the spectator that she was very involved with his death and she could be experiencing feelings of guilt. They still, however, do not know the exact link this woman has with the child, and whether she did kill him. It could confuse the audience, and create enigma, as they could be questioning her mental state, and whether she is just the average citizen which she is portrayed as at the beginning of the film.

This close up shot shows the disorientation the character is experiencing. This shot last for approximately 7 seconds as our actress is holding the camera turning around in a circle on the same spot. We did this to create a disorientating shot, which shows how the character is beginning to feel very uncomfortable and scared.

Our end shot is used to shock the spectator as non diegetic sound is used to emphasise the surprise of the child standing there. This again shows that she cannot get rid of her hallucinations of this boy, and they will not end until her problem has been resolved.

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

Our main character is a female teacher at a primary school. This is stereotypical as it is known that there are generally more female primary school teachers are women and she is the victim in our thriller. We decided to ask a female to play our role because women are typically more vulnerable than men in thrillers, and we wanted to make it clear that she is the victim in the narrative. Examples of thrillers that demonstrates this are: Panic Room, Flight Plan, and The Dissapearance of Alice Creed. These are all films with female main characters in films. I have found however, that men are more often the main character in thrillers and the additional characters like wives are often portrayed as vulnerable. A couple of examples would be, Seven, and Law Abiding Citizen.

We did, however, break the stereotype in some respects, as the character is smartly dressed in work clothes, with black trousers. This apposes to her wearing a dress or a skirt which would fit the stereotypical woman figure. This helps convey the idea that she takes her profession seriously and is a smart woman. Many films seem to challenge the stereotypical woman, like ours. For example, Mila Kunis in Max Payne, an action thriller, is in control holding a gun dressed in all black. From this low angle shot, looking up at her, we can see that she is clearly breaking the stereotype, and more and more modern thrillers are beginning to portray women in this way rather than the old fashioned stereotype.

As she is presented as a primary school teacher, this gives the audience an idea of how much she earns, therefore, her social class. This shows that she is middle class which is important as the audience can relate to her. Through research, Thriller openings often have very realistic settings which the spectator can relate to. This has purposely been done as it gives off the impression that what is happening in the story is real and could happen to anyone.

We also asked a young boy to act as the child who the woman is imagining.  This boy had pale skin, dark hair, and blue eyes. This is also a typical image of a ‘scary’ or ‘disturbing’ little boy in thrillers or horrors as The Oman. This is a well known horror, which cast a young boy with similar characteristics, as you can see in the photo.

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

Distribution: promoting films and getting them into cinemas and out od DVD/UMDs and downloading

- United International Pictures, Warner Brothers, Buena Vista, Twentieth Century Fox, and Sony are the five major distributors which dominate the UK film industry.

- Roughly 9 of every 10 films seen in the UK are viewed as a result of these distributors.


- Therefore, due to these factors, I would ideally want our media product to be distributed by one of them. Our thriller, however, is clearly a low budget film and filmed by an inexperienced camera crew.

- If our film were to have a higher budget etc, I would think Warner Brothers might distribute our product as it has distributed hundreds of thrillers, and would make sure it provides maximum advertisement in order to ensure that our product is well established in the market. This is their introduction with the logo - 

An example of a Warner Brother's thriller would be Unknown.

Unknown is a successful thriller. It is well established in the market, it has high suspense, and a storyline which makes sense and keeps the spectator engaged. The film clearly had a very high budget with proffessional, well known actors. Warner Brother's official website gives this summary of the film:

The star of Taken and The A-Team jumps back into action with brute force! Liam Neeson plays Dr. Martin Harris, who awakens after a car accident in Berlin to discover that his wife (January Jones) suddenly doesn’t recognise him and another man (Aidan Quinn) has assumed his identity. Ignored by disbelieving authorities and hunted by mysterious assassins, he finds himself alone, tired and on the run. Aided by an unlikely ally (Diane Kruger), Harris plunges into a deadly mystery forcing him to question his sanity, his identity and just how far he’s willing to go to uncover the truth. http://warnerbros.com.au/titles/details/unknown

This film was promoted by using trailers as T.V adverts, youtube, and large posters. This is how I would like our product to be promoted. I think if they were to ditribute our film, they would use the same promotional mix as most of thier films as they are clearly very successful.

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

We agreed that our thriller would be suitable for both males and females aged between 18 and 35. We chose this, as we felt the older generation may not enjoy the film so much as the actors are all young and there would be many jumps throughout the film which I don’t think would appeal to them. We did not think it would be appropriate for a younger audience due to possible violence and derogatory, adult, language in later scenes.

5. How did you address/ attract your audience?

We attracted our audience by presenting them with an average looking woman who does not look like a criminal or look any different from a normal person. This attracts the spectator as it implies that this situation could happen to anyone, therefore making it more realistic and involving the spectator more. As the opening goes on, however, they can see that she is more than just your average citizen.

Another attraction may be the slight horror feel to our film. She has hallucinations of this young boy, which they can see she has a clear link to in the narrative. This creates an unreliable narrator, as the audience are mainly seeing things from her point of view. This is intriguing as the audience will want to know the real situation, and what the link really is between this woman and the young boy. For example, this shot in particular shows her feeling of disorientation and confusion, which lets the spectator empathise with her as they can see through camera work how she is feeling.

The Unknown also uses the technique of unreliable narration as the main character had an accident and cannot remember certain events, therefore the spectator cannot be sure to whether his perception of things is correct. This is an effective way of keeping the spectator engaged as they want to get to the truth of the situation and know what is happening in reality.

The sudden thrill at the end is a technique often used in horror. We decided to create this thrill in order to make the spectator 'jump' to keep them engaged by keeping the film exciting. Thrillers often tend to start off slowly as they let you get to know the character like in Flight Plan, rather than beginning with immediate action. So we thought adding a slight thrill towards the end of the introduction was appropriate.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product?

Through the process of constructing our product, I have learnt about a number of aspects about technology. First we were taught about the different shots and camera angles, and camera movement. During the production of our film we tried to ensure that we used as many different angles and shots as possible to keep the film interesting. We did, however, first make the mistake of not filming at enough angles, which made our film too long, and did not have enough differentiation of time between our shots. This meant that we had to go back to the school and refilm certain shots and add more. The different shots also demonstrate the different feelings of the characters. For example, we included many close up shots in order to communicate the feeling of paranoia. Where the character leaves the room, we took this close up shot.

This shows that she is worried. This keeps the spectator engaged as it creates enigma. What is she worried about? Why is she looking around the room? Is something following her?

Another thing I have learnt is how much lighting can make a difference. Earlier on in our blog, it shows us trying out different types of light. To give the young boy’s character a spookier look, we put the light on its brightest level to illuminate the boy’s pale skin tone. http://foundationportfolio1271.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/lighting-homework.html

 

We used the editing software ‘Final cut pro’. Through this we cut shots, we cropped shots, and we put them together all in order to achieve continuity throughout the film. This could be challenging at times, however. For example, we had to ‘flip’ a shot as we broke the 180 degree rule. Once we had done that, the footage followed a lot better, and made sure that the character was walking the same way, rather than in opposite directions, which would have confused the spectator. The flip had this effect -

This looks far better than originally because there is no confusion as she is walking in the same direction.

I learnt that you do not have to have sound at source, but you can add it later to much better effect using technology. We also used ‘Garage Band’ to create sounds such as: the school bell ringing, with children talking and cheering in the background. This was important as we needed to make sure it sounded realistic. This is a print screen of where Isaac and i were creating the diegetic soundtrack.

The blog was easy to get the hang of after a while, but there are some difficulties as you cannot copy and paste photos straight onto the blog, you have to save them into a file and then upload them. On my laptop, I am unable to save print screens into my documents, which is a problem. I have learnt to overcome this by going to college and uploading them there, or using someone else’s computer. Another difficulty was uploading videos from YouTube. We overcame this too, however, as the Mac computers in the media suite were more advanced compared to the computers in the classrooms, and had no problem with uploading the videos. Blogger also tends to randomly change things which you have not done, and when you try to change them back, it can be difficult. The writing, for example, has changed on a couple of my question titles, but i have done everything i can to change the writing, and it will not change. This therefore, proved to be a challenge as Blogger clearly has some faults which can be very frustrating.

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

I feel as if i have learnt a lot since filming our preliminary. Firstly, my knowledge of the editing software has expanded by far. In our preliminary i only learnt basic skills such as: putting the clips into the timeline and then putting the clips together into a sequence, and inserting text over moving image. I am now familiar with many other editing techniques. For example, i was unaware that you could find your own text on the internet and put it into the final cut pro software. We originally used this writing for our preliminary -

But we when we found out that we were able to change the font to something more suitable for our thriller, we chose this font.

I also learnt how to create a soundbridge. A soundbridge was used to ease the transaction between the shot of the clock and the shot of the main character speaking to the children. This was fairly easy to do, and i am happy with the results. We also created a number of short soundtracks using garage band. A few examples would be: the school bell ringing with children talking in the background, the track which begins as the title is introduced, which carries on throughout the film, and the tense and 'spooky' music climaxing up to when the spectator is introduced to the young boy.

Another thing i learnt about the software was that i was able to join two shots together, and make the boy suddenly appear. This is explained earlier in question 1.

Lighting is not something we used in our preliminary. We only used the college main lights, and natural light. In our thriller, however, lighting is crucial. For example, the hard light to luminate the child's pale complexion ensured that our character looked ghostly and had a slight horror look. Another few shots where i feel we made particually good use of lighting were the shots outside. As it was dark, lighting was essential. We tried to make sure that the lights were not on a very high setting as we did not want to make it look artificial. We lay a light on the ground on the right to the camera in this shot, which shows that she is running and the spectator can still see that it is clearly in the evening.

In our preliminary, we attempted to represent and construct characters but we did not have completely appropriate clothing or props. In our Thriller the construction of our main character was very important. We considered: mise en scene, camera work, sound, and editing in order to construct both our characters.

For example, from the beginning of the film, we have a shot of a clock surrounded by large numbers with the multiples written on them. This is a clear sign showing they are in a primary school, which is accompanied by a diegetic soundtrack with a bell and children talking.




The soundbridge of the main character is then introduced as the childrens talking begins to quieten. From the first shot of her character, we can clearly see is a teacher from the way she is dressed in smart clothes which shows that she is an authority figure. In our preliminary, however, Frankie, acting as a school headmistress, is wearing much more casual clothes. The only way our spectator can tell she is the authority figure is through dialogue.

As for the young boy, we asking him to wear his school uniform as this is supposed to be what he was wearing when he died in her lesson. It also reinforces his age and the tragedy it is for such a young child to die