1)In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?
We tried to ensure that our narrative formatted conventional thrillers. For our sequence we decided to ensure that the killer could not be seen. We also tried to make it as realistic as possible to make it more effective on our target audience. The concept of our thriller was of a working class teenage girl walking home being chased by a hunter. For the majority of the opening sequence you do not see the killer, the killer is represented by handheld camera shots and point of view shots to signify that the camera is the person. This kind of filming was inspired by such films like “The Blair Witch Project”
To see example of handheld camera shots and points of view shots this is the link for the trailer of the “The Blair Witch Project” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfnXbXKi2-s
2)How does your media product represent particular social group?
Our media product represents people from the ages of 16-30 we ensure that it had all the findings that we had researched via interviews and questionnaires. The actress we had playing the victim was a young urban teenager which we thought it would help them relate which is a typical convention within at the thriller genre because a young woman is typically the “damsel in distress” and is normally the first victim and is seen as dumb because they die in the most pathetic way i.e. they will trip over a lead and will start to crawl and the killer will get them. Our thriller sequence finishes with our protagonist being killed by her pursuer which verifies the stereotype of young women to be seen as helpless.
3)What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our sequence is likely to be distributed by UK media institutions such as working title but the funding would have to come from an American film studio which will help fund the advertising, the production and the filming. I think that working title would be interested in distributed our media product because it is a typical British film which shows social realism. The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is likely to be classified as a rating of 15 this would mean that no person under the age of fifteen years is to see, buy or rent the film. The reason for this classification is because it has quite a bit of violence and gore which could be seen as too explicit for the people under the age of fifteen.
4)Who would be the audience for your media product?
Looking at our research we found that most people liked thrillers that showed naturalism something that could be seen happening in their everyday life which would make the opening sequence have more of an impact on our audience rather than a film which had a lot of surrealism within it. Hence why we tried to make our sequence as realistic as possible, so the audience could feel like that it could happen to them. Looking at our interviews and our questionnaire we saw that people liked thrillers that had a lot of suspense and tension.
5)How did you attract/address your particular audience?
We attracted our target audience by advertising our film in places where our target audience is likely to see it for example: social networking websites and posters in places where they would be aware of our product.
The characters are relatable to the audience because they may feel that they can relate to the characters which I think will attract our target audience.
6)What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
The editing software helped enhance our final product because we were able to use very good transitions to make our final product look more appealing to the target audience. Mostly for our opening sequence we used point of view shot which i think we mastered well and We had a few challenges but with the help of having the editing software we were able to merge things together and make our opening sequence look good. We also had a lot of handheld techniques and we used a tripod for a few bits of our opening sequence i.e. when the teenage girl is waiting for the bus. We were able to find the appropiate music to connote each particular mood in this case it helped build supsense and tension and kept the audience at the edge of their seats.
7)Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I have learnt that making a film takes a lot of time and planning and if not done well the film is unlikely to be a success. Also the use of camera work is very important because each type of shot connotes something to the audience. Actors are also a very crucial essential to a successful film; the actors have to make the acting believe for it to have an effect on the audience. Our original idea was to have a group of teenagers at a house prank calling people and they start to call a strange teenager who turns out to be a killer, he starts to pick them off one by one. Sadly, we had to change our idea because there was a lack of organisation within the group and it was hard to get hold of another house, this has taught me to ensure that we have other ideas initially just in case the first idea goes wrong because that would of saved us a lot more time and we could have improved on our final product. I have also learnt how to blog my work onto a website and add hyperlinks.
Friday 14 May 2010
Wednesday 12 May 2010
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?
The concept around our idea is a simple one, a chase scene with the girl running away from someone or something that seems to be chasing her since she got off the bus. Following the conventions of a stereotypical damsel in distress in a horror thriller the girl was unable to defend herself from something that was going to hurt her. The selected music we used was set to a creepy theme to assist with setting the scene, the orchestral music was used in the chase for intensity and to enhance the eeriness and excitement.
In the opening scene the person chasing the girl is not seen, instead the hunter is represented by P.OV shots and different handheld camera shots such as running with the camera making it seem as if the person is running. This is the sort of style used by the makers of “Blair witch project” however in our opening scene the cameraman is the pursuer. Not showing the chaser helped develop the convention of mystery, as the audience were not aware of what the appearance of the killer looks like.
The pace of the scene is relatively quick when action is taking place and there were a couple of themes included such as isolation, vulnerability, loneliness all represented through the female being chased. The use of conventions indicate what kind of sub-genre the scene is from, just from having the woman being chased would indicate to the audience that its likely to be a horror as the woman is in danger of her life. The main thriller that influenced by groups opening scene was Blair witch project.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product had one main character which was a female, for any other horror thrillers the woman is always the victim such as Casey from Scream. In most thrillers the males would play the antagonist (serial killer) however the protagonist is the savior that has to defeat the villain this is mostly men but can be women. In our opening scene the woman was represented as a young black girl, between the ages of 17-19 coming back from college. The gender is represented in a stereotypical way because she seems passive and submissive to run away from danger. The audience expects a woman to be physically weaker then a man as this is realistically possible, seeing a man being overpowered by a weaker person would be developing the conventions.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product, and why?
The kind of media institution that would distribute our media product would be a major Hollywood film production, a production company like Miramax studios would be interested as they have distributed other thriller films with a horror sub genre such as Halloween: curse of Michael Myers and Dracula 3. The film would firstly be shown in Cinemas and distributed worldwide, firstly UK and USA. The movie should then raise a substantial amount of money from other opportunities also such as merchandising, selling clothes and action figures. After 6 months it can then be shown on television and recoup more revenue from broadcasters airing the film.
4.Who would be the audience for your media product?
The primary audience for our media product is young adults 19-23 and older teenagers 16-18, this is the main audience in relevance to the narrative and style of the film. The main actor is a student which the audience will relate to as they will be either studying or just come out education matching the characters with audience.
The secondary audience is the middle aged adults 24-30 based on the reception on a similar film, Blair witch project. The reception for this film was warm due to the publicity however the film was widely marketed on the internet, our film will be marketed on television where we will target out audience through advertisements during different peak time slots.
5) How did you attract / address your particular audience?
We attracted our particular audience by making the film relate to them, as the character is around the same age of the target audience they will be able to understand her actions. For example, most students can recount times when they left college by themselves and had to walk alone on their journey feeling as if they are being watched, especially females. That moment of the opening scene will grip the female section of the audience engaging them into the rest of the film.
The audience are also allowed to put themselves in the position of the killer, with the point of view shots they feel as if they are the killer themselves which adds more intensity for the male section of the audience, having the experience of being in the film makes it more enjoyable and also for the audience it backs the suspense with the audience thinking what would they do next and then seeing what actions the killer actually takes.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
The camera equipment was a massive help with ensuring out sequence was of the best quality, with the filming process we faced a couple problems such as not having actors but it was easily resolved with a person from the group electing to do it. When media technician showed us how to use all the equipment such as the camera and the editing software everything was quite simple to operate, the camera man was able to use the camera to its full ability which helped the editor, myself, to have more shots to choose from. Final cut express was quite easy to use when I learned the instructions and all the short cuts such as learning how to use different effects to change shots and to make it black and white which was used to give the opening scene a scary and thrilling end product.
7) Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
What we have learned is that a lot of input and planning needs to be put in to ensure something great comes out the other side, after planning exactly what we wanted to do its became more easy to produce the thriller, just by knowing what shots need to be shot and what editing techniques are going to be used everything was done more swift. Doing research into the genre helped us know what is expected and the storyboard outlined the storyline.
Afterwards dealing with the equipment our confidence was raised as the group had used it before therefore had experience and had a idea of how to make it work e.g. the useage of final cut express allowed us to use techniques we used in the preliminary task. If the group hadn’t done the preliminary task we wouldn’t had been able to make the opening scene what is was, It would have been more amateurish.
The concept around our idea is a simple one, a chase scene with the girl running away from someone or something that seems to be chasing her since she got off the bus. Following the conventions of a stereotypical damsel in distress in a horror thriller the girl was unable to defend herself from something that was going to hurt her. The selected music we used was set to a creepy theme to assist with setting the scene, the orchestral music was used in the chase for intensity and to enhance the eeriness and excitement.
In the opening scene the person chasing the girl is not seen, instead the hunter is represented by P.OV shots and different handheld camera shots such as running with the camera making it seem as if the person is running. This is the sort of style used by the makers of “Blair witch project” however in our opening scene the cameraman is the pursuer. Not showing the chaser helped develop the convention of mystery, as the audience were not aware of what the appearance of the killer looks like.
The pace of the scene is relatively quick when action is taking place and there were a couple of themes included such as isolation, vulnerability, loneliness all represented through the female being chased. The use of conventions indicate what kind of sub-genre the scene is from, just from having the woman being chased would indicate to the audience that its likely to be a horror as the woman is in danger of her life. The main thriller that influenced by groups opening scene was Blair witch project.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product had one main character which was a female, for any other horror thrillers the woman is always the victim such as Casey from Scream. In most thrillers the males would play the antagonist (serial killer) however the protagonist is the savior that has to defeat the villain this is mostly men but can be women. In our opening scene the woman was represented as a young black girl, between the ages of 17-19 coming back from college. The gender is represented in a stereotypical way because she seems passive and submissive to run away from danger. The audience expects a woman to be physically weaker then a man as this is realistically possible, seeing a man being overpowered by a weaker person would be developing the conventions.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product, and why?
The kind of media institution that would distribute our media product would be a major Hollywood film production, a production company like Miramax studios would be interested as they have distributed other thriller films with a horror sub genre such as Halloween: curse of Michael Myers and Dracula 3. The film would firstly be shown in Cinemas and distributed worldwide, firstly UK and USA. The movie should then raise a substantial amount of money from other opportunities also such as merchandising, selling clothes and action figures. After 6 months it can then be shown on television and recoup more revenue from broadcasters airing the film.
4.Who would be the audience for your media product?
The primary audience for our media product is young adults 19-23 and older teenagers 16-18, this is the main audience in relevance to the narrative and style of the film. The main actor is a student which the audience will relate to as they will be either studying or just come out education matching the characters with audience.
The secondary audience is the middle aged adults 24-30 based on the reception on a similar film, Blair witch project. The reception for this film was warm due to the publicity however the film was widely marketed on the internet, our film will be marketed on television where we will target out audience through advertisements during different peak time slots.
5) How did you attract / address your particular audience?
We attracted our particular audience by making the film relate to them, as the character is around the same age of the target audience they will be able to understand her actions. For example, most students can recount times when they left college by themselves and had to walk alone on their journey feeling as if they are being watched, especially females. That moment of the opening scene will grip the female section of the audience engaging them into the rest of the film.
The audience are also allowed to put themselves in the position of the killer, with the point of view shots they feel as if they are the killer themselves which adds more intensity for the male section of the audience, having the experience of being in the film makes it more enjoyable and also for the audience it backs the suspense with the audience thinking what would they do next and then seeing what actions the killer actually takes.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
The camera equipment was a massive help with ensuring out sequence was of the best quality, with the filming process we faced a couple problems such as not having actors but it was easily resolved with a person from the group electing to do it. When media technician showed us how to use all the equipment such as the camera and the editing software everything was quite simple to operate, the camera man was able to use the camera to its full ability which helped the editor, myself, to have more shots to choose from. Final cut express was quite easy to use when I learned the instructions and all the short cuts such as learning how to use different effects to change shots and to make it black and white which was used to give the opening scene a scary and thrilling end product.
7) Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
What we have learned is that a lot of input and planning needs to be put in to ensure something great comes out the other side, after planning exactly what we wanted to do its became more easy to produce the thriller, just by knowing what shots need to be shot and what editing techniques are going to be used everything was done more swift. Doing research into the genre helped us know what is expected and the storyboard outlined the storyline.
Afterwards dealing with the equipment our confidence was raised as the group had used it before therefore had experience and had a idea of how to make it work e.g. the useage of final cut express allowed us to use techniques we used in the preliminary task. If the group hadn’t done the preliminary task we wouldn’t had been able to make the opening scene what is was, It would have been more amateurish.
Tuesday 11 May 2010
The Running Dead
The Running Dead
Media evaluation
Nathan Bowen
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?
Our opening two minute sequence of a thriller is a very simple idea, our idea was to have a girl running away from someone or something that is chasing her, preventing the person or thing perusing her from coming into shot. This was a result of us as a group believing that the scariest horror thriller films, the genre we were entering, are those that hide the identity of the antagonist. The pursuing antagonist of our horror is represented by point of view shots, hand held camera and shots of chasing and looking for the woman. This copies styles like ‘The Blair Witch project’ and ‘Cloverfield’ but still using more common regular shots of the running woman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZu1cTg-xUM Trailer for The Blair Witch Project, an example of handheld camera angles creating tension and mystery.
The women herself is a stereotypical damsel in distress as found in many films with many different genres, she runs away from what is chasing her in a helpless attempt to escape and is killed at the end as many female characters are in these horror thriller style genres. The music helps to build the tension of this chase scene, the music itself Is a very slow eerie music very similar to many other horror thrillers like ‘Frankenstein’, the music helps to create a very dull, scary and tense atmosphere and helped us to get our desired atmosphere of our film across to our audience.
From the beginning when our group was planning our opening sequence and we were still in the pre production stage I was very interested in doing a Jack the Ripper style opening sequence as one of the best thriller films I have seen was ‘From Hell’, This film again hid the identity of the killer ‘Jack the Ripper’ until the very end of the film and this I felt created a good way of keeping the audience guessing and interested also allowing for them to get more involved in the film by trying to solve the mystery. We tried to incorporate some of these ideas and styles of filming an editing into our opening sequence for example the eerie music and dull lighting and colour helps to create a cold and scary atmosphere.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our opening thriller sequence only consists of one character, a woman. For a horror genre thriller a young woman fits as a very common damsel in distress and first victim of our film. Films like ‘Scream’ and ‘The Decent’ both use women being chased and tormented by a killer to help their movie appear scarier, as women in many films are portrayed as weak and helpless, sheep to the slaughter. The young woman that is being pursued in our sequence is also a black woman, there is a stereotype that surrounds black people in horror films, that they will be killed before the end of the film, this is taken into comic effect and laughed at in films such as ‘Scary Movie’ but the stereotype can be seen to be true in films like ‘The Hills Have Eyes 2’ and ‘Alien’. Our sequence itself ends with our black female being killed by her pursuer fulfilling this stereotype.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product, and why?
Our film would be produced by a major Hollywood film studio for widespread distribution, this would be funded by finding private investors to help us raise the necessary funds for filming, advertising and production of DVD’s and other movie related products like shirts and the movie soundtrack.
Paramount would be one film company that I believe would be interested in our style of horror thriller as they do fund these style films with ‘Shutter Island’ that is currently screening in cinemas across the world, ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘The Uninvited’, these all fit our style of film, trying to grip the audience and involve them in the mystery of the film.
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
We are looking to aim our film at young adults and older teenagers between the ages of around 16 – 24. This we believe is the most realistic age group to aim for in our chosen genre. This is because our movie contains images of a horrific nature that will cause for a more mature audience to watch, also swearing causes for barriers as well. The rating for our film would be 15 as there is some strong violence and infrequent but ever present swearing that may be considered in appropriate for the younger generations.
Our movie will be aimed more at males than females, the content of blood and gore will attract the more masculine audience to the cinema also the use of women as the victims in our movie again appeals to the male audience more as there is attraction to the actresses as well as the film itself. Our research that we undertook before our production of our sequence showed us through the use of questionnaires and interviews with the general public that a big attraction for men is an attractive female lead and a gory storyline, but for the women a griping story line with mystery, we tried to incorporate all these aspects into our sequence to attract both sex’s to our film.
5) How did you attract / address your particular audience?
Our audience will be attracted to our film firstly bringing the younger audiences in with the action in the film, the blood and gore of the film and the thrill of the film. Also the use of young actresses will help to lure wide ranging ages of male audiences. Finally the older more towards middle age audiences will be attracted to our film because of the gripping effect that the film has on the audience, the involvement of the audience in the film trying to solve the mystery of the film and the identity of the killer will help us herd in the more mature audiences but still appealing to the interests of the younger audience.
Our opening sequence has been taken well by those that have seen it, it is a very simple chase scene through a cemetery and introduces the genre and action of the film well, also leaving the audience guessing the identity of the killer and the reasons for the killings.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
Our group as a whole found the equipment provided to us by the college, the camera, tripod, dolly, sound equipment and editing equipment all very good for our particular sequence. As the cameraman I found the equipment easy to use and found myself working the camera well. The understanding of the camera and equipment helped me a lot to easily perform certain shots like tracking shots, zooms and even pull focuses in our filming on set.
With the editing we found that after instruction from our teachers, the computers themselves and the software we used was quite easy to work with when joining our shots and merging them together. The effect we used most in our editing was the black and white colour as we felt this gave a spookier and more thrilling effect to our sequence.
7) Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
From the end of the preliminary task to now, the end of production, I myself and the group as a whole have learned many new skills not only surrounding the equipment an techniques used for the filming but also the planning an production of the sequence itself.
We had to create the story and the characters and also develop the script, learn the different camera angles and camera shots, the use of diagetic and non-diagetic sound, natural lighting and artificial lighting and so on, the development of the story and the script in particular was a key foundation of the sequence itself as it is the essential part to the entire sequence, their needed to be a good solid story before any sort of filming or production could follow, this helped to work as a group to develop a good solid script and story for our sequence.
We then had to gather actors and give them scripts, practice our different camera angles and shots so that we could achieve the desired effect on our audience from our sequence, as we all group we all gained skills in team work and production of this sequence, we learnt to use various filming equipment like cameras and lighting, we gained skills on the computer through editing and bringing our film together and finally we now have learned to blog our film onto the internet and show people our step by step production of our sequence and the skills we as a group have learned in our production.
Media evaluation
Nathan Bowen
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the forms and conventions of real media products?
Our opening two minute sequence of a thriller is a very simple idea, our idea was to have a girl running away from someone or something that is chasing her, preventing the person or thing perusing her from coming into shot. This was a result of us as a group believing that the scariest horror thriller films, the genre we were entering, are those that hide the identity of the antagonist. The pursuing antagonist of our horror is represented by point of view shots, hand held camera and shots of chasing and looking for the woman. This copies styles like ‘The Blair Witch project’ and ‘Cloverfield’ but still using more common regular shots of the running woman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZu1cTg-xUM Trailer for The Blair Witch Project, an example of handheld camera angles creating tension and mystery.
The women herself is a stereotypical damsel in distress as found in many films with many different genres, she runs away from what is chasing her in a helpless attempt to escape and is killed at the end as many female characters are in these horror thriller style genres. The music helps to build the tension of this chase scene, the music itself Is a very slow eerie music very similar to many other horror thrillers like ‘Frankenstein’, the music helps to create a very dull, scary and tense atmosphere and helped us to get our desired atmosphere of our film across to our audience.
From the beginning when our group was planning our opening sequence and we were still in the pre production stage I was very interested in doing a Jack the Ripper style opening sequence as one of the best thriller films I have seen was ‘From Hell’, This film again hid the identity of the killer ‘Jack the Ripper’ until the very end of the film and this I felt created a good way of keeping the audience guessing and interested also allowing for them to get more involved in the film by trying to solve the mystery. We tried to incorporate some of these ideas and styles of filming an editing into our opening sequence for example the eerie music and dull lighting and colour helps to create a cold and scary atmosphere.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our opening thriller sequence only consists of one character, a woman. For a horror genre thriller a young woman fits as a very common damsel in distress and first victim of our film. Films like ‘Scream’ and ‘The Decent’ both use women being chased and tormented by a killer to help their movie appear scarier, as women in many films are portrayed as weak and helpless, sheep to the slaughter. The young woman that is being pursued in our sequence is also a black woman, there is a stereotype that surrounds black people in horror films, that they will be killed before the end of the film, this is taken into comic effect and laughed at in films such as ‘Scary Movie’ but the stereotype can be seen to be true in films like ‘The Hills Have Eyes 2’ and ‘Alien’. Our sequence itself ends with our black female being killed by her pursuer fulfilling this stereotype.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product, and why?
Our film would be produced by a major Hollywood film studio for widespread distribution, this would be funded by finding private investors to help us raise the necessary funds for filming, advertising and production of DVD’s and other movie related products like shirts and the movie soundtrack.
Paramount would be one film company that I believe would be interested in our style of horror thriller as they do fund these style films with ‘Shutter Island’ that is currently screening in cinemas across the world, ‘Paranormal Activity’ and ‘The Uninvited’, these all fit our style of film, trying to grip the audience and involve them in the mystery of the film.
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
We are looking to aim our film at young adults and older teenagers between the ages of around 16 – 24. This we believe is the most realistic age group to aim for in our chosen genre. This is because our movie contains images of a horrific nature that will cause for a more mature audience to watch, also swearing causes for barriers as well. The rating for our film would be 15 as there is some strong violence and infrequent but ever present swearing that may be considered in appropriate for the younger generations.
Our movie will be aimed more at males than females, the content of blood and gore will attract the more masculine audience to the cinema also the use of women as the victims in our movie again appeals to the male audience more as there is attraction to the actresses as well as the film itself. Our research that we undertook before our production of our sequence showed us through the use of questionnaires and interviews with the general public that a big attraction for men is an attractive female lead and a gory storyline, but for the women a griping story line with mystery, we tried to incorporate all these aspects into our sequence to attract both sex’s to our film.
5) How did you attract / address your particular audience?
Our audience will be attracted to our film firstly bringing the younger audiences in with the action in the film, the blood and gore of the film and the thrill of the film. Also the use of young actresses will help to lure wide ranging ages of male audiences. Finally the older more towards middle age audiences will be attracted to our film because of the gripping effect that the film has on the audience, the involvement of the audience in the film trying to solve the mystery of the film and the identity of the killer will help us herd in the more mature audiences but still appealing to the interests of the younger audience.
Our opening sequence has been taken well by those that have seen it, it is a very simple chase scene through a cemetery and introduces the genre and action of the film well, also leaving the audience guessing the identity of the killer and the reasons for the killings.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
Our group as a whole found the equipment provided to us by the college, the camera, tripod, dolly, sound equipment and editing equipment all very good for our particular sequence. As the cameraman I found the equipment easy to use and found myself working the camera well. The understanding of the camera and equipment helped me a lot to easily perform certain shots like tracking shots, zooms and even pull focuses in our filming on set.
With the editing we found that after instruction from our teachers, the computers themselves and the software we used was quite easy to work with when joining our shots and merging them together. The effect we used most in our editing was the black and white colour as we felt this gave a spookier and more thrilling effect to our sequence.
7) Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
From the end of the preliminary task to now, the end of production, I myself and the group as a whole have learned many new skills not only surrounding the equipment an techniques used for the filming but also the planning an production of the sequence itself.
We had to create the story and the characters and also develop the script, learn the different camera angles and camera shots, the use of diagetic and non-diagetic sound, natural lighting and artificial lighting and so on, the development of the story and the script in particular was a key foundation of the sequence itself as it is the essential part to the entire sequence, their needed to be a good solid story before any sort of filming or production could follow, this helped to work as a group to develop a good solid script and story for our sequence.
We then had to gather actors and give them scripts, practice our different camera angles and shots so that we could achieve the desired effect on our audience from our sequence, as we all group we all gained skills in team work and production of this sequence, we learnt to use various filming equipment like cameras and lighting, we gained skills on the computer through editing and bringing our film together and finally we now have learned to blog our film onto the internet and show people our step by step production of our sequence and the skills we as a group have learned in our production.
Sunday 9 May 2010
The Running Dead
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge the form and conventions of real media products.
The implied violence in our film is resonant of old controversial films such as Scream (1996). As in Quantum of Solace we also used a brief shot to add more tension such as the brief shot of the villain’s feet slowly walking, helps to create a nervous and tense atmosphere, leaving the audience anxious to know who the killer is.
The use of a frightened female character in our opening sequence could compare to recent films which stereotype females to be the more frightened and weak characters, such as in Scary movie, Scream an d Paranormal activity. Male tend to be more villains as females are seen more as the victims in movies.
Our production brought the viewer straight into the action, with the use of a long shot showing a bus then straight away we zoom in on the girl on her phone. This demonstrated an everyday situation to suggest to the audience that "it could happen to you." As with classic thrillers, this leaves the viewer wanting more...
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The main character was a black young female (victim), and the other character (killer) was a black young male . The female character represented many of the stereotypes of young females being weak unreliable and afraid, and also the female stereotype of always being the victims. The male however are seen as the dangerous, violent and unstable ones.
The clothing of the female character suggest that she was a young female coming back from college as she held a bag and was dressed quite casual. This represents our young teenage of today and could also appeal to the young audience as it is an everyday activity which therefore illustrates that it could happen to them.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
A U.K television station such as channel 4 might be interested in showing our thriller as the downbeat of the story might put off a major Hollywood studio as it loves “happy endings.” Hollywood films are seen more as fantasy type films, whilst our film is more realistic with a more pessimistic view of the social environment within the U.K.
It is likely that our production would attract a BBFC rating of 15; this means that no one under the ag e of 15 would be allowed to see the film in a cinema or even rent or buy a 15 rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game. We believe our production would attract a BBFC rating of 15 as there is no violent literally shown to any degree but the imitable techniques might cause this film to be classified as 18 (depending on context).Distribution could be in digital format too; for example through the Digital Screen Network and also by using website and posters, this could advertise our film to the audience.
Government organizations such as the police might want to use the film to warn viewers about the dangers of girls/ young women walking home alone. It was shown in 2007/08 that the risk of a person being the victim of a violent crime was 3.2% but for women aged 16-24 it was 6.4%. Also it showed that single people were more at risk than other marital status groups (7.8%).
Who would be audience for your media product?
The production is mainly aimed at 16-25 years old and uses a cast from that age group. Our research it indicated that this group would prefer a fast moving plot with tension building. For example throughout the production, instrumental music (string instrument and piano) was played which puts the audience on edge. Also, at the end of our production the female character screams then we suddenly fade to black which builds up tension, leaving the audience anxious about wanting to know what is going to happen next.Our production has the ability to attract the attention of teenage audience as it feature s this age group predominantly. We used characters in the age group of our target audience, which allows the audience to identify with them more easily.
Our production could also appeal to people who like the horror genre, as our produ ction builds up tension which is what the audience tends to expect in a horror genre film. It would also appeal to those who prefer the typical understanding of gender in films, such as female being the victim and male the pursuer. Many women would relate to this situation as an almost everyday occurrence e.g. coming back from college but then suddenly being aware that someone is following you, a situation which then becomes very frightenin
How did you attract/address your particular audience?
From our interviews and questionnaire we found that most people liked thrillers most preferably thrillers which are believable rather than fantasy. Therefore this could relate to our production around an everyday situation of a young girl coming home from college, who just suddenly aware of someone following her. the audience could easily identify with this situation. Our findings illustrated that the viewers liked horror thrillers more than action thrillers, due to the suspense and tension building, as well as the ‘stork’ factor associated with the horror genre.
Our plot tries to draw in our audience through allowing them to identify with the main female character for ex ample when the female character got off the bus, we could easily identify this to the audience as it is seen as an everyday routine. The everyday situation that turns into torture, allows the audience to further recognize their fear. This production would be suitable for younger viewers age 14-15 due to the violence implied, whilst the guarantee of violence might attract an older audience age 17-18.
We used a hand-held camera which was chasing the young female, which makes the audience tenser and also makes it more realistic as the use of the point of view shot makes it as if it is them in action. The audience was kept in futher suspense as the girl's death was not shown in the scene "off-screen" which leaves the audience on edge, and nervous to know what would happen to the female character.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
At first they were some complication regarding the location were we wanted to film our opening sequence, so we decided to do it in an area/location were every member of the group will be able to attend. The location we found had a nice lighting coming form the outside which made our scene more realistic and also added atmosphere, from this we learnt that using natural lighting could also be very useful.For our shot of the girl getting off the bus we used a long shot which was then zoomed in. this made the audience focuses more on the girl. The camera color balanced was adjusted a couple of times, as we were trying to make the lighting as good as we could. From this experience, we learnt that it is important to be trained properly with the use of all equipment before hand.
When looking back at our finalized shots I concluded that it would have been much better if we filmed during night time as it would have made the scene much scarier. Therefore to prevent this problem during our editing I tried making the whole sequence black and white to try and make a more frighten look.
We experienced further complications when it came to the editing part, even though the editor tried putting the scenes together it was found that we needed more shots to make the sequence flow better, from this we learned that we needed better coverage on the shoot. However I learnt how to create enough effects which would help the shots flow much better. Also I learnt how to insert music to our production, which enhanced the scene more and created much more tension.
Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When planning the preliminary task, I found it challenging to work as a team as during the preliminary task only two members were at the filming which was Nathan and I. However as a producer I though that we would be more organized when it came to the main shooting, but it seemed that whenever I asked for some work to get handed to me, it would always be handed in late, which therefore delayed the whole group. We can see from our shooting that not everyone was giving their best as only two members of the group attended which, yet again, were Nathan and I. from this we learnt to plan things better and to try and learn more about our own role as it would of help to make the production much better.I believe that there was a big challenge for us because during our preliminary task there was a lack of expertise from members of the group as we had never filmed before and also lack of planning and actor arrangement for the production. Nevertheless by us doing the preliminary task it help us practice how to shoot better and also help us to know more about how to edit our work better. When coming to editing our main production we learn how to organize the rushes so that editing them on the timeline was quite straightforward.
There were fewer problems in the thriller production as by this stage I learnt to plan in more detail but it seemed like we didn’t perform to the best of our ability. From the preliminary task I believed that our editing improved, we were more confident in using the Final Cut Pro software.
Overall from this experiment I have learnt that planning earlier and trying to work more as a group than an individual, would have made our group on task and also there would have been more time for putting stuff together e.g. more ideas and more editing on our production. We also learnt how to use blogger which is where our evaluation was posted.
Here is the link to my video: The Running Dead!
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