Candice Tyson- Evaluation

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

• The idea of a thriller film is to create suspense, tension and excitement for the audience watching.

• The conventions of a thriller consists of a few main characters such as - 
• A Protagonist- The main character and the audience is intended to most identify with this character.
• An Antagonist- A character or group of characters  that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend.

• At the beginning of the sequence it is made obvious that Gabby is the protagonist as she is shown as the victim after being hit over the head by a baseball bat and dragged along the ground. The Antagonist's (villains) are hidden through the use of their costume and the way the camera is placed. As a group we felt by hiding who the Antagonist's were left the audience questioning who the antagonists may be, this helps build the tension. Hiding the faces of the antagonists also causes enigma- a situation that is mysterious.

Antagonist's costume

Costume of Georgia, Livi and Gabriella

• Mis en Scene was an important aspect of our thriller film, as we had to make sure our characters we believable and fitted the characters personality and motive. For example the antagonists were put in baggy overall's with a hood and gloves so that all parts of the body were covered and no shape was revealed through their costume so whether it was a girl or boy was not obvious. Georgia, Livi and Gabriella were dressed in average clothing suggesting they were not rich nor poor. We purposely wanted the girls to be dressed this way as we wanted them to look like "average" college girls.
• The camera throughout our beginning sequence of Perception is placed in a way to hide the antagonists face. Many shots are close ups of their actions rather than full body angles. However, when it comes to the camera shots of the protagonist there are more close ups of the face to show expression, particularly at the end of the sequence when Gabriella opens her eyes and you can see the pain and fear in her eyes.

• These props add to the antagonist's character as they show the controlling manor that they have over Gabriella (protagonist).

• This is a photo of the make-up we put on Gabriella to make it believable that she had been beaten and also distressed as her make-up is rubbed down her face like she has been rubbing her eyes. 

• We used low key lighting to create shadows of both the antagonists and protagonist. This was designed to represent the inner darkness in the antagonists, not only does it show darkness but it also creates tension as it is not clear what is going to happen next. Low key lighting is often used in thrillers as it creates an atmosphere.

This is an example of a flashback from the movie '127 hours'. They are often used in thriller movies to contribute to time and space disorientation and this causes confusion to the audience. They are effective because they enable the audience to have an insight on the past of a character that maybe they don't know a lot about.
The difference between this flashback in '127 hours' and Perception is that the flashback in 127 hours is very clear however in Perception it is very distorted. Reasons for this could be that when the man in 127 hours goes into his flashback his mind is calm however in perception Gabriella has been hit over the head by a baseball bat so her visions are not clear and extremely distorted.

The Dissapearence of Alice Creed:

We were inspired by some of the camera work used in 'The Dissapearence of Alice Creed' for example the shot shown on the left is a screen shot of when the van travels to the left of the camera while the camera tracks to the right of the van going in opposite directions. We felt this looked really effective as normally the camera would go in the same direction as the vehicle however the change in norm keeps the viewer gripped to what is taking place on the screen.

 
This is a screen grab of the part of our sequence where we used the inspiration of 'The Dissapearence of Alice Creed' to create one of our own shots while our three main actresses walk through the mall.This shot gives variety to all  the rest of our shots and makes our thriller more interesting.

The shot shown on the left if an extreme close up of the actions of the antagonist in 'The Dissapearence of Alice Creed'

We decided we would use similar shots in our own thriller as we felt that emphasising the actions of what the antagonists do is a very important aspect in our thriller. It also emphasises the way in which they do things like the agression shown in their actions.





















9 Frame Shot Sequence:

Analysis of 9 shot sequence:



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

Stereotypes:

Male stereotype- 

• Male characters not only in thriller films but in other genres of films such as horror are often presented as the 'bad guy' or antagonist. They are often presented as being powerful and dominating over female characters and that females fall at a lower standard to the male characters. However in Perception the antagonists are not revealed, this causes enigma and leaves the audience questioning whether they are male or female. 

Female stereotype- 

• Female characters in the majority of films are often presented as the victim and vulnerable to other male characters in the film. Although times have changed and some female characters are not presented as a victim for example Lara Croft, there is still a lot of stereotyping with gender. Even though Lara Croft is not presented as a victim she still wears raunchy clothing which supports the stereotype of a female being a sexual object. In perception the female character supports the female stereotype of being a victim, she is beaten up and left with flashbacks of the moments with her friends which also use female stereotypes particularly in the flashback of the girls getting their make-up done. 

How have the antagonists and protagonist been represented through the use of mis en scene, editing and camera work?

Protagonist- 

• It is made clear from the beginning that the protagonist is a young female supporting the female stereotype of being a victim. Many of the camera angles used in the sequence show Gabriella from a higher angle to show she is below the antagonists and they are looking down on her as the more dominating characters. In addition most of the shots shown of Gabriella are of her on the ground showing lack of power and vulnerability, many being close ups to concentrate on the blood and facial expression of Gabriella- this causes the audience to sympathize and feel sorry for her. When the shots change go from the dark scene to the flash backs the angles tend to change and Gabriella is shown to be equal to her friends. This variation shows the power that the antagonists have over Gabriella in contrast to her being equal to her friends in the other clips.

Antagonist- 

• The antagonists' gender was hidden from the beginning to create enigma for the audience. In the majority of the shots when the antagonists are on screen their head we often didn't reveal as this keeps the audience questioning who they may be and helps build the tension. However in shots like the one shown on the right, we would have the camera facing the antagonists from the back still making sure to hide their identities. Many of the shots were created with low key lighting as this is a main convention of a thriller and helps create the dark atmosphere we wanted to create.
• At the beginning of the sequence when the antagonists hit Gabriella with the baseball bat the distorted diegetic sound was in place to represent the force and power that the antagonists have over Gabriella. This force and power is shown throughout the sequence by the way the antagonists behave by dragging the body along the ground and even in the way they close the boot in an almost aggressive manor.

Who can relate to the character and how is these characters represented?

• I think that our audience would be most able to relate to the protagonist in our sequence and I think this because our protagonist represents a character that appears to be a bit of an outcast to her friendship group- particularly when the two friends are getting their make-up done and Gabriella is left at the side to watch. She also represents someone that is trapped and alone and I think that everyone has experienced the sense of hopelessness and loneliness before and so relating to this character is made easier because the audience can then sympathize with the way Gabriella may be feeling.

Audience feedback to thriller film:

• This screen shot shows what I sent to a few of my friends to gather feedback on my video to find out whether they thought it would matter if the antagonists were male or female. I asked this question in particular to find out if stereotypical views on gender are still around.

• This comment shown on the right shows that Tori does not have a stereotypical view of gender as she says females would make better antagonists. Normally in films females are shown as the victims so it was interesting to find out that someone had gone against this and said that no females would make the better antagonists in this sequence.

•  This comment also shown on the right made by Amy Gane shows how she doesn't think gender is relevant when it comes to what gender the antagonists are- also going against gender stereotypes. Similar to Tori, Amy thinks that females would best play the antagonists.

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

What kind of institution would best suite the distribution of my film?

• When researching independant UK distribution companies I came across Safecracker Pictures which I felt would be a suited company if our film was to be distributed. Safecracker Pictures have a passion for independant film and a commitment to support creativity. 'The Safecracker team are specialists in delivering maximum media coverage and awareness, including multi-platform digital sales, and have a large marketing and publicity department who handle all releases. It is fast becoming one of the UK's leading supporters of UK and International filmmakers in both narrative feature film, documentaries tv programming. It aims to aggressively increase market share by combining classic library titles with critically acclaimed new releases'. I felt that as Safecracker are able to deliver maximum media coverage this can be hugely beneficial to our independant film and to make it popular.

How will our film be distributed?

• A good method of distributing a film is to release it into the cinema on a Friday as this is a peak time for people to go out to the cinema as it is the beginning of the weekend. You are more likely to get more people watching a new release film on a Friday than a week day as the cinema tends to be quite empty during the week due to people working and teenagers at school or college. However, from experience I found that Wednesday's are one of the busiest days at the cinema due to 2 for 1 on Orange. So from this I would choose to release our film on a Wednesday as I feel it would be most successful in drawing attention.
• A film festival would also be a good way to show the film before going into the cinema as it would show how popular the film is before spending all the money to show the film in the cinema.
• As our target audience is mostly female above the age of 15 so mainly teenagers, Lovefilm or Netflix would also be a good way to distribute our film as these websites are very popular among teen girls and are now a lot more easily accessed through other devices such as smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles.

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

GENDER-

• From my point of view I would think that it would be mostly females that would be attracted to our film and reasons for this is because the main characters in the film are female and this often affects how someone views a film. Often if men see a film consisting of mainly females they automatically assume that its females that the film is aimed at so aren't as interested as they would be if the film consisted of mostly males. Another reason for why I think our film Perception is aimed at females is because it is easier to relate to a character of the same gender as yourself, so this will of course attract females to our film as they should be able to relate to how the characters feel. 

AGE-

• A motion picture rating system is designated to classify films with regard to suitability and I felt for our film a suitable age rating would be 15+ as the film contains some violence and would likely to have bad language used throughout. I asked the question to a number of people what age group they think would be most suited to our movie and here are how people responded:

4321 Trailer:

• This is the trailer of the film 4321. When thinking of ideas for our opening sequence we thought of different films we had seen that inspired us to make a sequence similar or that we liked some of the ideas from. The main aspects from this film that we used in our own was the the group of female friends being the main characters. In 4321 there are a group of four female characters, the difference in our film is that our group of female characters only consists of three people. What we liked about the female characters in 4321 was the fact the girls broke the gender stereotype of the females always being the victims in films. Instead they took quite a masculine role and throughout carry weapons and take part in what would be seen as masculine activity. This inspired us and we decided we would also break the gender stereotype and use females instead of males as the antagonists- this is not shown in our beginning sequence to keep the audience questioning who the antagonists are. We thought by hiding the antagonists face this may make the audience automatically assume that the antagonists are male due to stereotypes.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Feedback on film:

Did you feel like you could relate to any of the characters in the opening sequence?

Jess's Reply:












Is there anything you feel that could have been improved in this opening sequence?

Jess's Reply:











What age rating would you give the film and why?

Jess's Reply:

Who do you think is likely to be attracted to this film and what attracts you?

Jess's Reply:

How we attracted our audience:

Setting-

• We chose this setting of an ordinary house to make it easy for the viewer to relate as it is a setting they will come across everyday. We also used other setting such as the shopping mall as these are also everyday settings.

Characters- 

•  we chose to have three female actors as we aimed to attract females to our film in particular teen girls. In the title sequence they appear like three average girls and this makes it easy for other teenage girls to relate. The way Gabriella appears to be left out also helps other teenage girls to relate as most teenage girls have experienced or been in a similar position to this.

• By covering the antagonists in overalls and having their identity hidden creates enigma for the audience and this automatically attracts whoever is watching as they want to find out who the antagonists are.

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

Video about learnt technologies:

Transcript:

• There were 5 main pieces of technology that I needed to learn how to use in order to make my 2 minute thriller sequence.The first was a video camera, it seems quite straightforward however learning how to do the white balance and even remembering to do the white balance was a challenge. The camera was the main key of our thriller as it enabled us to film each part in a way that keeps the audience gripped to the action taking place on the screen.

• Lighting was also an important part of our thriller as it helped us create the atmosphere we needed. This was mostly done through the use of low key lighting to attract attention and also to add to the dark atmosphere of the thriller. In a lot of films and TV shows the lighting often appears to be natural however what is not shown is that the lighting is not always natural and is set up around the cameras.

• The next was learning how to use final cut pro on the Macs. Getting my head around how to use the Macs was the starting point, once I had a bit more experience on these it made it easier to learn new things about final cut pro and how to cut down and edit our film. The editing of our film was the most important part is it enabled us to make our film appear in the way we wanted it to look.
  
  
• When it came to adding sound to our video we needed to firstly learn how to export sound effects from garage band to final cut pro- this was the simple bit. Not only did we need to use garage band sound affects but we also needed to create Foleys to make our film more effective and real. This meant learning how to use the voice recorder, which was quite challenging in the beginning, however became easier towards the end.

• It took me a while to get my head around how to work blogger, however once I had learnt the simple steps on how to use it I found it was a good way of presenting my work for the planning and research task.  It enabled me not only to write the important information but also enabled me to upload videos and pictures to make the blog more interesting.

Other technologies learnt from the process:

• Other than the key technologies there were also additional things we needed to learn in order to make a successful thriller. We had to learn how to make our flashback shots fade to white to show people that it was a thriller, in addition to this we also needed to learn how to make the shot appear distorted and unclear to show the mind of Gabriella after being hit over the head with a baseball bat. Once the effects were added our thriller movie started to look more realistic. What was very time consuming was adding the title sequence over the top of our finished film as we then had to figure out how we wanted out credits to appear on the screen in a font that would go with our thriller etc... Once we had figured out how to add the credits and where, this process became very easy and quick once we got into it.

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

Preliminary Task:

http://foundationportfolio1336.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/final-video.html

Final Task:

http://foundationportfolio1336.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/title-sequence-perception.html

Comparison of camera work:

Preliminary

 The development between the preliminary task and the thriller task is very clear as both the framing and lighting was not very good in the preliminary task. His face was not lit very well and so his facial expression wasn't as clear as it could have been. Also part of his head is cut off as well as his chin making the camera shot look lazy and like it hasn't been thought about. However, in the thriller task the shots were thought out a lot more and  the shots were carefully framed  as well as the lighting being placed in the correct areas.



Thriller Task

Mis en Scene:

Thriller Task

Preliminary Task

• The costume worked in both the thriller and preliminary task as the costume were both planned and well thought out. However, things like lighting were not thought about in the preliminary task and we used natural lighting or the ceiling lighting as we were lazy in lighting our settings. Once we had realized how important lighting was in filming we then made sure that in our thriller we had lighting as it also helped create the atmosphere we wanted.

• Props and make-up were also used in the thriller sequence to add to the atmosphere and character of the actors. There was a gun prop in the preliminary task however this was not realistic and the character holding the gun didn't seem to fit the sort of person that would own a gun. In the Thriller task the baseball bat was a lot more realistic and fitted with the rest of the characters costume and manor. 

• Another thing we learnt was about how sound can change the whole atmosphere of a film. When choosing the sound for our thriller different sound tracks would change the mood of the thriller depending on the instruments or tempo etc... We didn't use many sound effects in the preliminary. However in the thriller we used both diegetic and non-diegetic sound as we realized how important this was to our thriller. We also created foley's to make the sound even more realistic.

Editing:

Thriller Task- fade in from white

Preliminary Task- match on action



Thriller Task- graphic match

• The editing in the thriller task was a lot more time consuming and technical than the preliminary task. The editing in the preliminary task was simple to carry out and are the simple techniques that are used in filming everyday that we don't even notice when watching a film or TV show. For example a match on action- we used many of these in the preliminary task. With a lot of playing around on final cut pro we managed to create the technique of a graphic match and also worked out how to do a fade in from white to create distortion.

Overall:

I feel that our thriller sequence improved significantly from our preliminary task, not only did the camera work improve but so did the overall storyline, editing and mis en scene. We had a limited amount of time to think of a storyline when it came to our thriller and this was quite challenging, however what we found was that even though our filming didn't  go exactly to the plan of our storyboard we still got things to work. For example the main location of our thriller we had to change last minute as our previous location was no longer available. This was quite an important thing to learn as it made us aware that some things don't go to plan and you have to improvise along the way.

 

Our thriller task was different to our preliminary task as in our prelimnary task lighting and sound were not important and the camera work was what we focused on the most. However when it came to our thriller the lighting and sound became the most important aspects of our thriller as it made it all come together. Our preliminary task also used very minimal editing skills so it took a lot of quick learning when we came to edit our thriller task. The lighting and editing was what improved the most from our preliminary task to our thriller, in particular the sound as we learnt how much difference a little bit of sound can make to a film.