missa evaluation

1) 1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The forms and conventions of a thriller include cross cutting shots, montages, slow and fast editing and fast scores to cause the sense of mystery and intrigue the viewer. Location is normally somewhere exotic or somewhere scary and mysterious. The use of low key lighting is important in thrillers because it gives it a sense of doom and show the audience the mystery of the scene and maybe to tell them to pay close attention. The characters are important in thrillers as well because they have to look and fit the part for example is a good guy has to look innocent he cant exactly walk around with scars on his face for it goes against his role. Our thriller is a action thriller so it involves many chases, cross cutting, memory flash backs furthermore it is in a urban location so the characters must be quite young scary looking and this is what we’ve done so we suit the conventions of a action thriller furthermore we have included red herrings and cliff hangers to suspense the audience giving more of a thriller feeling.

The conventions of an opening sequence is to establish the visual style of the film, it introduces characters, location, narrative, genre and theme to the viewer. The opening sequence tends to be a short sequence of around 2-3minutes long aiming to capture the interests of its audience and draw them into the film as a whole.

The main characters are usually in the opening sequence allowing the audience to gain knowledge on their character and follow their actions throughout the opening sequence in order to determine their actions throughout the film, the audience can also become aware of the location and where the film will be set. It is clear that the reason an opening sequence is created at the beginning of the film whether before the opening titles or after is so that the audience can establish the overall style of the film, the gain an insight of what is yet to come. Furthermore many opening sequences tend to leave the audience puzzled and intrigued to what will happen next, leading them to watch the whole film. The opening sequence of a film is most important scene in the thrillers because this is what causes the audience to make their judgment on the movie... hence if the movie had a opening sequence involving red herrings and enigmas, mystery suspicion and cliff hangers this will be an ideal opening sequence because the viewer would tend to prefer to carry on watching the movie.

However if the opening sequence is that does not include those above, the audience would straight away presume that this would be a boring thriller. All opening sequences of thrillers tend to be the 'make or break' of the films so the directors always tend to focus time on the opening sequence to perfect it. Our opening sequence does suit the convention of a normal thriller because it does introduce our main characters furthermore it does and establishing shot of the location. It is also two- three minutes long and the score used in the opening sequence causes the sense of mystery and suspense moreover the end leaves the audience with a cliff hanger to see who got stabbed furthermore a red herring because we do not yet know who has been the killer.

I think our product fits in to a contemporary thriller because it is a action thriller which makes it fit more into the contemporary side then the classic side because it has more action in it. Also it is set in a urban place with urban looking characters which challenge the conventions of a classic thriller but fits well with the contemporary thriller because I am using the classic basis of a thriller but updating it and making it for more of a today’s audience. This was a risk taker because we didn’t stick to the normal classic thriller with good looking women, and proper murderous scenes but instead made it up to date and the risk was worth taking because from audience feedback some groups were interested because it was more about today and what life is like.

I think two main films helped us influence our film and that was ‘kidulthood’ and ‘adulthood’ because our film seems to fit in their category of a urban life of the streets of London and how is life like for those young adults. This is a British film for it is set in a London location involving London accents so I would classify our opening sequence as a identifiably British film and it varies from these Hollywood thrillers because we show what life is like in London and its not a exotic place with good looking women like all American thrillers seem to display.

Our film has developed the basics of a thriller by the sense of mystery cliff hangers and red herrings used but we have mixed up genres to produce a urban action thriller.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups? Our media product represents various social groups, which in turn make it appeal to a larger audience because more people will be able to relate to it. These include: gender, ethnicity, race, location and sexuality.

Gender is represented in our media product through the protagonist, Roache being male alongside antagonist Matthew and I. Roache is dressed stereotypically in a black hood and black trousers representing the stereotype people perceive of black people. We have incorporated stereotypical gender roles in our film by different costume and ethnicity.

The ethnicity of the protagonist being a black male challenges the traditional representation of a thriller film because it is highly uncommon in a thriller for a minority race to get the lead actor however challenges the lead actor being from the majority of the race. Although the majority race in the film is other than black so we decided to add ironic change in that the majority was more powerful. The message being given out in our movie about all the social groups is men are normally portrayed in violent acts and this is true, moreover it is the young men that seem to be involved in these crimes more than the older mature men. There is a twist in our message about ethnicity because we have added a change our black young male is the victim this is challenging stereotypes because they assume that all black males in society do the crimes and are main precipitants to violent acts.

The social representation of sexuality in our film is represented because we only used males characters, this is because we wanted to appeal more to the male audience and show a stereotypical phrase of the society is more ‘of a mans world’ a sort of survival of the fittest ‘alpha dog’ theme so we used all male characters to accomplish this. Our location is in a urban place this suggests we will have many different races and this is seen because our characters are every race except white this links in with class hence we are in a urban area its more of a middle class area and so the majority of minority’s live there. Furthermore we have chosen the same image about children of working class Africans or Asians involved in the crimes in our story for it best suited the role.

3) what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?The media institution that may distribute our film would be the same institutions that Kidulthood and Adulthood dealt with. I researched and found out that both these films were made independently on a low budget in London. The most suitable company to take our film would be a independent film company because it is low budget films that are produced in Britain. I would believe our thriller is suited here because we had no fund one camera and a few actors so it was a definite independent NO – budget-opening sequence. However from my own research I found a company called ‘working title’ that may distribute our film because they like to pick and find new talent. Our film is set in London so has a British background and this company is British so may support our film. On the other hand the research also suggested that this company is linked to universal studios, which are mainstream film company so makes it less independent. There are many differences between mainstream film companies and independent; firstly the mainstream budget is funded by many sources so their budget is very high to produce a very realistic film unlike independent films which have little budget or no budget at all. Secondly the mainstream films have the money to cast a-list actors that would appeal to more audiences then independent films that have new unknown casts. Finally the style and realism between both would differ because of the budget however the theme can still be the same in both movies just represented in different ways.

There are many different ways to distribute our film and this was through independent cinemas such as:

v Electric cinema

v Notting Hill

v Prince Charles

So all these are independent cinemas that show low budget independent films so hence I would try to distribute my film to these cinemas to try and get it across. On the other hand I would not try to distribute the film to a mainstream cinema like Odeon because these are for more high budgeted films that have been produced under great conditions. This includes equipment, budget and a-class actors.

Another way is through film festivals and the main one known in London is the ‘London independent film festival’ its held every April to see new talent from low costing films to try to distribute. Moreover you can try to distribute in student film festivals like ‘exposures film festival’ which is the leading student film festival in Manchester they give you the opportunity to showcase your movie to a cinema audience and also they give you a insight in how TV and film industry work.

Additionally internet sites like ‘youtube’ are ways for independent films to broadcast themselves to the world because internet is used by everyone all over the world and its fast and easy to spread the film across.

Also network-sharing sites like ‘facebook’, ‘myspace’, ‘twitter’ are all ways to distribute your film online. Also the fact that the internet is free to use it is a cheap way to advertise the opening sequence without paying however distributing it to the world.

Kidulthood and Adulthood reached the cinemas first, then DVD and finally to be shown on TV s our film would not straight away be on TV but hit the screens hence it is related to the films I have looked at, so I am only assuming. Cable could be an option because its full of over created content, they can put servers on air and these programs can serve the community. It is unlikely that it would be aired on terrestrial channels such as BBC or channel 4 because they don’t broadcast user created content.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product? When creating the film we considered the target audience, our groups aim was to maximize our audience as best as possible in order to gain a greater amount of viewers. The two main subgenres we were considering are the psychological thriller and the action thriller. our aim was to meet mainly the male gender, this is because we have chosen to film an action thriller. This is a sub genre that is more preferred by the male audience, involving guns, crime explosives are all ideas that we wanted to bring into our film. The age range we aimed at was 15-25, otherwise known as teens to young adults. The reason we chose this age range is because our film is mainly focused on younger people, we aimed to grasp the likes of younger adults as this will be easier for us to relate to, we considered what people of our own age range would like to see in a thriller film and put this into context.

Hence our target audience was 15-25 our BBFC classification guidelines allowed us to make a film with whatever context a 15 and above film can do. These were, “ can’t promote drug taken” furthermore weapons are allowed to be shown and used but not to cause bad influence.

I believe our opening film sequence does suit the target audience we have chosen (15-25) because at 15-25 many London teenagers in urban settings are involved in gang and knife crime involving mysterious packages and by creating a film that shows the life of the present teenage boys-men in London would interest them as viewers and those interested in the urban life. Our target audience was set for males and I think we have achieved this by doing a male action thriller. All our characters are teenage men that involve drugs, knife crime, violence; suspense, cliffhangers and these should attract more of the male audience than the female audience.

However the use of using a young cast may appeal to a younger audience because the audience would find it easier to relate themselves to the opening sequence and the lifestyle.

5 . How did you attract/ address your audience? We addressed our audience by letting them view our first draft of our film, we attracted them by doing as much as we could to our film at that time with our editing but it was not fully perfect. We got positive feedback and negative feedback from our audience; so much of the positive feedback attracted the audience to our film.

We constructed our film to appeal to our target audience by choosing an action thriller this would appeal to most male viewers. Our audience feedback was a good action thriller with much editing still to do; but they could see what it was about. Our film attracted the audience for the stunts and running scenes gave the feeling of an action thriller. Furthermore the urban settings attracted our audience because it is a different place to filming in school so it was quite intriguing.

Our negative audience feedback from our audience was mainly about the background sounds and some scenes were too long and distracted from the suspense. Furthermore the use of no titles didn’t help, however now the film has been constructed and all the negative feedback we received have been taken notice and worked upon and improved.

Constructing our film to appeal to our target audience required much time and effort, we looked at other London films that attracted the age range we chose and that was ‘kidulthood’ and ‘adulthood’. Our theme was about gang and knife crime how everyone is linked somehow and we knew this would appeal to our target audience because there is much use of knife and gang crime around that age, so by using a theme that relates to actual life we figured that would be a big attraction. We also picked it to be a action thriller, our target audience are 15-25 males and what they would prefer is a action thriller. Location was in a urban setting, the use of both high key and low key lighting well emphasized the mood of the period and style and costumes was also that of a urban style (hoods, jeans, trainers); also each character looked in part and suited their roles. Urban style was the big base of our opening sequence because it’s just an interesting background that would intrigue and interest people moreover it can also relate to people. Our score suits each situation and in our editing this is represented; we have suited most aspects of a thriller with cliff hangers red herrings mystery and intriguing our target audience and this is how we appealed to them.

6. What have I learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? Whilst constructing our media film we have learnt a lot about the technology involved considering never made a sequence in our life so basically we were starting from scratch.

New media helped us a lot while making our film like the use of the internet helped with our research helped us look into our location and what it was alike around some parts, new media also helped us get free non- copyright music to put as a score on our shots.

Using low budget non – linear editing software like imovie saved us paying for new better software when imovie contains the basics of editing software plus more the impact of this non –linear software is that its cheap and handy for low budget films so it can fit their costs.

We used different websites on the Internet in the researching stage of our product to find out about current thriller films and give us an insight to the conventions of a thriller. We were also able to use the Internet to copyright music, which helped a lot in the editing stage of our movie cause it fitted in well with the shots. We also used Youtube to get it to our viewing audience and for them to leave feedback so we can learn from our mistakes on the way. We used iMovie in the production of our film, which gave us the ability to edit and perfect what we had recorded thoroughly. So editing in chronological order as not needed we could sort out other parts to slot them in order.

The film formed in the editing process and we could see a development from the original storyboard to the final product. The use of non-linear software gave us the ability to try new things that proved to be a positive to the product. The mini dv cameras proved to be trouble because the quality of footage was not great so it relied on our editing to get it to scratch, furthermore the battery life was so short that every time it died we had to go wait to charge it, which wasted more of our filming time.

Moreover dv tapes gave our film more of a realistic look so it made it feel more urban and independent more real and not a new movie in Hollywood it helped us represent it is a low budget film however still did give a perfect setting for the chase and flash back in our opening sequence.

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? Looking back at the preliminary task I feel that we have developed on many aspects and has been a learning progression most of the way. With our preliminary task we made a storyboard and a script furthermore we used characters and had a go at using a camera and taking different shots. Our preliminary task was short and it was a given task that the whole class had to do, we had a set time and I believe ours turned out well. However this much differs to our final piece because that was a first try however with our opening sequence I believe it was another shot at it and we had to do a sequence that was two and a half minutes long, moreover it was a piece done outside of school so we had to get the mise en scene right alongside the lighting, location and the fact was it was not a given task and it was a choice of our own.

However this was similar with the full product because we had trouble editing at first because it was our first time editing a movie, furthermore we had trouble with timing and lighting so we had to film on the weekend the first time we started shooting the clips they were not up to standards maybe this was because we never filmed a proper clip outside of school, however this was accomplished and filmed for the second time; what we did learn from the preliminary task was how to use the camera or the tripod.

After editing our first draft we still thought it needed a big change so we did a lot of cutting down, recapturing and re-filming to sort this out but at this stage we knew how to edit properly so the third time editing something was good.

In the preliminary task we did not have time to fit a score so we were not used to it so when it came to the drafting of the final product we had learnt how to fit music into the parts we wanted also the use of ambient sounds so it all looked like a jigsaw (were everything fit together), this also helped us to deal with any background sound that didn’t seem right.

I believe the editing process in the preliminary task was very difficult because it was the first time using this editing software and we were not used to it so the editing was not great along with the fact it had no score, I feel that we have progressed a lot in the editing side of the filming because on our final piece we found it easier to cut and paste and add scores to fit certain emotions.

The preliminary task helped us learn the basis of camera work and editing I thought this was a very important task because if it was not done, we would of struggled when it came to the real shooting of our film. This gave us a basis and a understanding of how to edit and how to shoot in schedule by following a storyboard.

We used various type of technology during the production of our thriller mostly we learnt how to utilise the editing software on a Mac; we also learnt how to shoot our different angles and shots with a low budget dv camera. The tripod needed a little getting used to. We developed the knowledge on how to pick angles for different shots to also use the natural lighting provided. We also learnt that filming once is not good enough and it takes a good two days of filming for you to get some decent footage. We also had to close lens and screen of the camera to save battery because we needed all battery power we can get when out filming.