Balpreet's evaulation

Question 1
In what way does your media product use; develop of challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The opening sequence of our psychological thriller “Wrath” has replicated the conventions of a thriller to make it more appealing to a mass audience, as we are targeting a mainstream audience.

• Main character is disturbed – We have shown our main character as disturbed by using shot composition to show isolation. Types of shots that have been used are close-ups, and extreme close-ups to show her emotions. A point of view shot has also been used which shows her as a disturbed character.

• Women are seen as the victim – Traditionally the characteristics of the protagonist are of a victim, however her psychotic behaviour suggests that she is the victim of the situation. We would have scenes were there would only be objects rather than other people as we wanted to present her being isolated, which would show her presence as insignificant. Many close-ups and mid-shots were used to suggest her being neglected from society.



• Sound – We have used non-diegetic music, which developed throughout the opening sequence of our psychological thriller, to increase tension. At the beginning of the opening sequence we are introduced to the main character that is cutting images out of magazines, unexpectedly the music emphasised on the cutting sound of the scissors. The linear narrative of our opening sequence worked well with the sound track, as it created a realistic mood to the sequence.
  
• Mise-en-scene – The clothing of the main character shows her in casual clothing, which targets the teenage audience. When filming the bathroom scene, which was a two shot, accidentally the flickering light was shot. This however goes with the disturbing effect that we were trying to get across to our audience, to show her as a disturbed character, and this was in her imagination.
  

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

The social group that we were initially targeting were 17-24 year old, in order to do so we have used actors that are around the same age group, which would make the audience relate to the narrative. The impression that our audience will be left with after seeing the way in which we have represented the teenage characters, would be that they seem to very concerned about their image, and clothing, and also her psychotic behaviour towards her actions. She assumes that people do not appreciate here because of her image. Stereotypically teenagers have become more concerned about their image, which is related to the film "Mean Girls". "Mean Girls" has been one of our inspirations to represent the teenagers the way we have in the opening sequence. This is shown through camera shots, which include long shots and mid shots to represent them.

Looking at this shot the audience are able to see the clothing of the characters, this gives it a more realistic feel to the viewers, making them relate to the situation.

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

According to our narrative structure, there are many elements that make it a mainstream distributed, however it can also been seen an independent as there were some elements included. The conventions of a thriller that we have mainly challenged and interpreted are music clothing mise-en-scene. This was because from our finding of our product research, there seemed to be more focus on the sound either diegetic or non-diegetic, however with our opening sequence we have focused more on the non-diegeitc sound. Looking back at the films that were researched to inspire us on the techniques used to develop in our opening of a psychological thriller. "Flight Plan" has used many techniques such as sound both degetic and non-diegetic, which build up tension, many different camera shots, angles and movement, which give different views on the characters as well as building up tension. The use of editing the audience are shown two different scene, this has an effect of suspense and building up tension. We have used these techniques in a similar way to build up tension and suspense for our target audience. Both Flight Plan, and Flight Club are mainstream films, which have both been inspirations for our production. The way in which we have used the conventions of a thriller are typically known as maintstream.

Therefore I feel that the distribution company such as Twentieth Century Fox may be a good choice because they have previously distributed thriller movies. However Warner Bros can also been seen as another option, as there are films like "The Dark Knight" that are seen a thriller and distributed by the company. Both Warner Bros and Twentieth Century Fox distribute mainstream films. Therefore I feel that the best company would be Warner Bros to distribute our opening sequence of a thriller. This is because they have been very successful over many years, especially with their recent film “The Dark Knight”, which have gained them a lot of recognition. By doing this our psychological thriller will gain the same recongistion and will be promoted in high budget, by promoting of TV, radio and also the internet.

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

Looking back at my audience research, we as a group have produced an opening sequence that will appeal to them, which was clearly mainstream according to our narrative structure. The narrative has been based around jealousy, image and friendship, which was how "Means Girls" became one of our inspirations. Even though it was not a thriller, we have used elements of the narrative to adapt it to our opening of a psychological thriller’s narrative structure. "Mean Girls" was mainly aimed for teenage girls, although in our psychological thriller the narrative structure suggests that it is aimed for only teenage girls, it can also be aimed at a male teenage audience. In order to give our opening sequence a more of a mainstream feel, we have used motifs. We have used a diary, which has been shown in many of the shots that have been taken:-

• The first shot of the opening sequence is to illustrate the title sequence which is handwritten. This was done so that we could give it a sense of realism to bring our audience together.


• Another shot is when the main character is writing the diary, which shows a personal view of her character. The audience are not able to see who is writing, which adds a more mysterious feel. The shot that was used to represent this was a close-up, which made the audience focus on what she is writing.
  

This diary scene has been inspired from the film "Seven".

Question 5
How did you attract/address your audience?

When the final product was completed, it was unloaded onto Youtube so that we were able to get our audience feedback on their thoughts about the thriller. I have used to same people that I had used for my audience research, this was so that I have able to see if we as a group have meant their views on what an opening sequence of a psychological thriller would attract them. There were some questions that have been used so that the audience are able to give their feedback.

These questions include:

1. What do you like about the opening sequence?
   

There is one particular shot that our target audience like, which is the corridor scene when Joe is walking away from the camera and we see a door closing. Many of them said that it gives the opening sequence a feel of suspension, and mysterious. They also said that the narrative is easily seen by the shots that have been used, but also want to find out what will happen in result of the finished film production. A few people said that the soundtrack went well with the scenes, as it would build up tension in every new shot that was shown. The target audience particularly liked the bathroom, the way in which the girl disappears, and also thought that the main character reactions were well acted as it showed her confusion, and also jealousy.

2. What do you dislike about the opening sequence?

Many of the targeted audience did not understand the concept of having the title sequence written in the diary, this would confuse them slightly. A few thought that the scenes would have been shot during the evening hours, as they were comparing it the other thriller films that they have watched which would have been shot in a much darker atmosphere. They felt it would give the films a more psychological thriller effect.

3. How well did it function as an opening sequence?

Overall the targeted group thought that the film was well narrated and has an understandable story line. According the psychological thrillers that have been watched by them, they felt that it has the same effect as it was building up tension, which was mainly because of the music that we used. It made them want to find out want would happen next, what the main characters intentions are.

4. What improvements could be made, so that it is more a psychological thriller?

A few people said that if we were to show some violence or mixed emotions, it would give the main character a more psychological side, so that she looks more of a psychic character. This could have also been improved by dialogue, as it would express the main character emotions and intentions.

Overfall looking back our audience research, I feel that we have meet there thoughts on what conventions they think makes a pyschological thriller. Looking at the pie chart below music one the most feature that builds up our target audience tension and suspense.

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

There are a few difficulties about the technology use in the process of constructing our opening sequence of a psychological thriller. Over the period in which we were given to complete the opening sequence I have learnt and developed the use of technical skills, especially whilst editing the shot that have been filmed with additional techniques. Throughout the project, during filming we had to be very carful with the shot composition, we did not want to have people or objects that do not have a meaning. For example, the library scene we wanted to show that the main character was hard working so we would have text books on the table.

When using the Apple Mac computers there were also some difficulties, of this was the editing. There were many transitions that needed to be added so that we were able to show the connection of two shots. Overall the music was the hardest to edit, as it was meant to contrast the shots. The music was in hands of one of our group member, who was able to put together a soundtrack that worked well with our opening sequence.

Above is a screen shot of imove, the programe which we used to edited our opeining sequence. As i have not used imove before, it was my first experience to do so, which was very experimental while adding transitions. The panel on the right is called the clips pane, this is were we would import our clips from the camera. We would then drop them down to the time line to create the order our opening seqeunce (narrative structure). Within the timline there are three clips, one of which is for the video, and the bottem two are for audio clips.

This is were we able to add transitions between the shots so we could show a connections between them and to also build up tension. We would experiment with a few techniques to see which one would work best, and give the effect that we wanted.

There is also effects for the titles, however we did experiment with them. We then deiceded that we would continuoue with the hand-written in the diary thoughout the opeing sequence.

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





I think we all as a group have been able to meet set targets and have worked together to produce our final opening sequence of a thriller. As we had time left, we were able to experiment with the transitions in order to put the shots together. Looking back at out preliminary task I noticed that there were not a range of shots used. We had only used long shots, wide-shots, and mid-shots. And now looking at out final piece, we have been able to experiment with different camera shots, angles, movement, and the composition of the shot. These different shots have been used to emphasise the characters emotions, and different views on them.

One improvement that could be made to the opening sequence, is the title sequences towards the end. Throughout the opening the titles have been written in the diary, however when we edited to include titles such as “produced by, directed by and edited by” they had been typed up over some of the shots. I feel that it divides the sequence into two, as we have a mixture of titles on the diary aswell as typed.

Overall I feel our opening sequence of a psychological thriller has meant the requirements of our targeted group. This is because from the feedback that was collected, there were more likes than dislikes, and not much improvements that they thought should be made.

Evaluation - Quratulain Siddiqui

• 1.)In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?
  Our film didn't challenge the ideas of psychological thriller as elements of the film were imitated.
  In comparison to other thrillers such as 'Fight Club' our music began of very calm which lead the audience to believe that some sort of incident was going to take place and then it ended quite softly, whereas normally in thrillers the music would build up tension throughout the sequence. An example of this is in The Shining, although I am aware that 'The Shining' is a horror movie, the music was very mysterious and if we used something similar it would be enigmatic for the audience. However our music still worked well with our opening sequence.
  (Only until 2 minutes)
  
  
  We replicated the conventions of a thriller for our opening sequence rather than challenging them, we did so to appeal to our mainstream audience and this was shown in our opening sequence through;
  
  • Our Protagonist- We used Anastasia as our disturbed character. Through the use of close-ups and extreme close-ups we showed her behaviour as neurotic, the close-ups allowed the audience to build a relationship with her and as a result sympathise with her situation. We also used a point of view shot to portray her as manic. However this shot also allowed the audience to build a bond with our protagonist as they were able to see from her point of view.
  • The victim as a women- We used the protagonist to be a women. Through the use of shot composition we illustrated her to be isolated, as when shooting her in the scene we only had objects around her rather than other people; this showed her to be insignificant. The mid shots and once again the close ups suggested her alienation from society. Although our protagonist’s characteristics aren’t traditionally percieved to be of a victim’s, her psychotic behaviour suggests that she is in fact the victim of her situation.
  • The music-we used non-diegetic sound which complimented the music well, we chose not to use dialogue because it didn’t work well with the opening sequence. The linear narrative of our opening sequence worked well with the music as it created a more realistic mood.
  • The mise en scene- We dressed the protagonist to be casually dressed, this helped us attract our target audience which was teenage girls. We accidently shot a two shot in which the lighting was flickering, however when we watched over it, this gave a disturbing effect which was useful.
  
  2.)How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We also gave our actors a very cliched look, especially the second girl which was played by Amina Kara. We used Courtney Cox as an inspiration for Amina's look. Courtney Cox is quite charismatic and she has a mysterious look therefore by portraying Amina like here, we were trying to achieve a more curious narrative.

Anastasia, our protagonist was given a very typical college girl sort of look, this was done so that our audience could relate to the narrative. We also used narrative that was more appealing to a female audience and therefore we used female teenagers. We done this as previously from our target audience research we established that the majority of teenagers who go to the cinema to watch films were females. We tried to base our narrative around our target audience's interest. Therefore I think that using Anastasia as a main lead was wise because she was able to relate with her own character hence she playe it well. I think that because we shot Anastasia in casual clothing and the setting was very home like our target audience were able to relate more with her, because teenage girls usually have phases where they are conscience about their appearance. After watching the film most people will feel that teenagers have alot to cope with, we used fades to leave our audiences wondering therefore at the end of the opening sequence most people will want to know about these teenagers as they have been shown as confused and almost dangerous. The constant shots of Anastasia could also gives an impression that teenagers can get so stressed out that they turn mani and obsessive. Finally the two shot of Amina and Anastasia would give the audience an impression of teenagers as very image conscience especially teenage girls.

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

Although our film had a very mainstream feel to it, our narrative could have been independent, however because we used such stereotypical characters it was more mainstream than in dependant. We tried to convey Anastasia as quite stereotypical college girl as she wore casual clothes, no make up had her hair natural, this was stereotypical as most teenage girls don't dress up to go college. Joseph was also very stereotypical, he also looked a bit older which was useful because the original idea was to have an older male actor. I think we could have made the film independant if we changed the narrative a bit and instead of having a female protagonist we should have had a male one. This would have come across as independant because teenage guys aren't usually represented as obssesive stalkers in films. I feel that distribution companies such as Paramont Pictures may be a good choice because they have previously distributed thrillers which have been quite successful, their range of Mission Impossible films weren't thrillers but they were highly promoted and had very high budget marketing which as a result gave them a mainstream success. Warner Bros are also quite a helpful institution that could distribute our product becuase their Dark Knight was a huge success, and recently they have been distributing few other thrilles. Lionsgate is also a very good distribution company and it may be helpful to us because they do a lot of horror films such as Saw, My Bloody Valentine 3D, and although they aren't thrillers Lionsgate have a very good overview of the industry therefore they know where to distribute. However Lionsgate is an independant film distributor although it has had mainstream successes, so although they would be good for distrbution for our opening sequence as they have had previous experience on thriller movies, they cannot gurantee mainstream success, which we are looking for. Therefore I think that the best choice for us would be to go for Warner Bros because they are very successful, and especially with The Dark Knight they have gained a lot of recognition therefore it would be sensible to go for them if we want mainstream success. They promoton is very high budget, they market a lot on TV, radio, bilboards etc... Most their films do get promoted through McDonalds aswell, such as The Dark Knight where they were action figures of 'The Dark Knight' in certain McDonalds such as Croydon and Thornton Heath on. Therefore I think that Warner Bros would be the most useful one because their promotion can gain us recognition and also the marketing is very high budget and typically is very mainstream.

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

Our social group that we wanted to attract was initially 17-24 year old. To attract our social group we used actors around that age group so that the audience could relate to them. We are not as limited to our target audience because from our narrative it was clear that our opening sequence was very mainstream, and when we done target research after the opening sequence was finish the majority of people came to the conclusion that especially with a linear narrative, it is a very mainstream film. Therefore to give it a more of a mainstream feel we used motifs (recurrent features), which we research whilst doing auteur's theory. We used the diary as our motif, and we showed this in various shot.;
- whilst the girl was writing messages; this was an extreme close up which was enigmatic for the audience because we were unaware of who was writing, this also portrayed the psychological element of the opening sequence.
-We also illustrated it through the title sequence which was handwritten, this gave the opening sequence a sense of realism and was also effective in bringing our audience together, because a lot of teenage girls write in their diaries hence they could relate to the opening sequence. Again we used close ups so that our audience could focus on one thing and not only that we tilted the diary at an angle to suggest the confusion the protagonist felt.

We used the opening sequence of 'Se7en' as in inspiration for our title sequence;

5.)Who would be the audience for your product and why?
Our main audience were teenage girls between the ages of 17-24 hence our narrative was designed especially to suit them. We did so because most teenagers who do go cinema to watch films are usually over 15 anyway but having a older audience would allow us to develop our narrative more because they would be able to understand it clearly. We based our narrative around the theme of jealousy, image and friendship, it could be said that we were motivated by the theme of 'Mean girls', which although wasn't a thriller, it had psychological elements in it;

I think that our target audience was aimed at the right age group because from the feedback we got from the audience it was clear that more girls were able to connect with the opening sequence rather than the guys. However some did say that they would have preffered the main girl (Anastasia) to have more make up and look like she was more image conscience, we could have portrayed this through mise en scene.

6.)How did you address your audience?

After the opening sequence was finished I gave a number of students the film to watch and also put it up on youtube so that I can gather some feedback on it. Some responded on youtube:

Some didn't have the facility to. Therefore I gathered a small audience and asked them to comment on it, the responses were very good and it turned out that most people understood the narrative by observing the film. Previously we noted that most people thought that the music was the main element of the thriller, luckily from the feedback we got from our audience we noticed that most people thought our music went well with the images. The question they were answering was; Which one of the following do you feel is the most element of the film? Another thing I noticed from the target audience research was that they prefer having adverts on Tv and thought this was the best way to attract them, so if we were to produce the film then the best way to do it would be through Tv adverts. The pie chart below shows this.
We had a narrative that females could relate to more because from the previous research I had done illustrated that more women go cinema in comparison to men.

I also gave out a questionnaire to ask the audience what they thought of the opening, I gave it out to approximately 20 people. The questions I asked were;
-Did you like the opening sequence?
-Did you not like the opening sequence?
-Did you think it functioned well as an opening sequence?
-Did you think that the opening sequence could have been improved and if so what improvements could have been made. From the results I gained, I made a bar chart to make the results clearer.

The people who thought that the opening sequence could have been improved, said that they weren't able to relate to the main girl and suggested for next time we used a girl who looked as if she was image conscience, so she should have been wearing more make up. Some said that it would have been better if it was slower paced. I think we should have done the target audience feedback before we finished the project.

7.)What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I think that this project gave me a lot of experience especially with the technology, The Apple Mac was helpful for a lot of editing which did take a long time to get use to. However once we got the hang of using The Apple Mac we didn't find it hard, but it was more a matter of time. I felt that it was hard getting used to the timeline and placing everything in order because a lot of the time we had to change it and sometimes the clips didn't flow well together. I also realised that once we cut the opening sequence shorter it was easier because previously we had added too many special effects. Below is what The Mac looks like;
We also found it hard to get background music that complimented the images because previously we were using ones with a beat to it, we were going to get my brother to make music which was similar to this;



However our final music was made and then added onto a PC and then we used FL Studio; a music based programme to edit the music. We asked my brother to create the music piece as he is already aware of the programme and is used to making beats, however this also gave me a chance to learn techniques from FL Studio's programme as well, which will be helpful for the future.
We could only shoot outside school if we had a camcorder that would play mini dv's although I had one, we wouldn't be allowed to take tripods and other equipment therefore we thought it would save us time shooting in school. We used Imovie as it had a lot of editing functions, and the music was easier to do in it. I think in comparison to Windows Movie Maker, Imovie was a much better option, although it was hard to get the hang of it the end results were much more professional. It's also good on a larger scale because people who do have the Mac can easily use the programme as it is already installed on the Mac.

Above is an example of the programme we used, the bar at the bottom is known as the timeline, this was used for gathering clips in the order that we wanted to, we could drag shots from the clip pane and add it in the order we wanted to. There are three bars the top one was for video and the bottom two were for the sound. We also had to bring down the music when the images didn't fit in, for this we had to fade the music out and this was all through the timeline. Next we added transitions and video effects. Below is an example of all the video effects we could have chosen for;


I also learnt how to import and export, I exported the opening sequence onto Youtube after it was finished, previously I hadn't done this so for me it was a new experience and I also imported shots and music, this wasn't hard but through this i gined some more knowledge of The Mac. I think editing was one of the best panels that IMovie had, it was very well developed and it wasn't hard to use we just had tomake sure the shots fitted in well together. Below is an example of the dissolve we used.

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

I think we managed our time pretty well, and because we had extra time we were able to experiment more with the shots we wanted to do. We also had a range of shots in the end in comparison to our preliminary task rather than just mid shots throughout. Examples of this are shown below;

Long shot
Low Angle Shot
High Angle Shot
Close up

I think we all in the end acted quite professionally, because we did have problems as a group but it was good that we put that aside and got on with the work, and in the end our final product didn't turn out to be too bad. I also feel that I gained a lot of future knowledge, such as which shots are good/bad and which shot will suit what event, and in editing I feel my skills have developed a lot. I think if I was given another chance to do this then I would stick to the storyboard as it doesn't take as much time when it comes to shooting if you have a storyboard and you know exactly what you want. We also as a group wanted to do a shot of the fire fading out, an example of this was shown in Sleepy Hollow;

(Only need to watch until the first 20 seconds).



However because we didn't have enough time we could therefore we had to get rid of that idea, hence next time I would like to leave a bit more room for the shooting rather than the editing. We also thought that we made an error with the title sequence, because when we inserted our names for the credits, the font style was different and we didn't have enough time to change it therefore we thought that it would have looked better if we just took it out, and in our final piece we took it out although not many people noticed it however we didn't want to get marked down on it. This is how it looked like before we took the credits out.

Our preliminary task was not great because bits of it were very shaky, however in our main task we used the camera very carefully and the result was much better than preliminary tasks. In our opening sequence we used tripods whereas in the preliminary task most of the shost were hand held and as a result they didn't look proffesional. We also has some trouble with the lighting and from our preliminary task we learnt how to over come that and decided not to do many shots outside because they lighting differs every time we shoot outside. Hence the scene we did outside had to be filmed on one day. Below is the preliminary task, from which you can notice the changes and the developments in the camera shots and changes in the editing.

FINISHED =D

Today was our deadline, we have been doing a lot of work all this week therefore it wasn't as bad as we though it would be, we used period 4 efficiently as we edited a lot, me and Balpreet done the title sequence whilst Fadila offered some helpful advice. At lunch me and Fadila filmed the last bit where Anastasia was to turn the pages, this took a few mintes. Throughout lunch Balpreet edited the music, and the other filming we had previously done. Fadila didn't have a lesson therefore she decided to add the final touches. Balpreet kindly stayed in for another hour even though she had to go somewhere, and I stayed after my lessons were finished aswell. I finished the editing of the music that Balpreet had begun and finished the editing whilst Fadila done the Titles. The end was quite productive and we hope to achieve a good result as it was a stressful but an unforgetable experience, and in the end we were all quite pleased with the opening.

Update on whats been happening!

Their has been a few misunderstanding with in communication of the group however this has been sorted and all group member seem to be communicating much better. Today during period 4 me and Annie when an edited some of the footage that we have which went well we now know what scenes need to taken out and needed to be edited so that everything is to perfection. Also during period 5 Annie filmed with Balpreet as she had not done enough filming from what i heard the filming was successful and as group tomorrow we will edit it alongside everything else so that its completed on time. We will fix our music as there are some minor errors which need to be tweaked. Hopefully me and Annie will stay after school and finish of any major editing that needs to be fixed.