- 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?
Long shot
Low Angle Shot
High Angle Shot
Close up
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.
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