Friday 3 April 2009
Thriller Evaluation
My media product uses, develops and challenge forms and conventions of real media products in various ways. A way in which my product does this is through effects such as slow motions. For instance, during the murder scene we used slow motion in order to create a heavily tensed moments which would increase the audience’s heart rate. There are different movies, which influenced us into creating our sequence similar in particular, ‘My bloody valentine’ that is a newly released movie. We were inspired by the idea of Valentine’s Day as it was around the time in which we were beginning to film therefore; we thought it would be a good idea to have our sequence based on Valentines Day. However, we challenged ‘My bloody valentine’ by instead of making a horror thriller like the one they did, we decided to turn it into a simple romance thriller, which is different to the movie released. This meant that our media product challenged the horror theme of ‘My bloody valentine’ as ours is not a horror based thriller.
As well as effects, our media product also uses different type of camerawork to develop our understanding of real media products. An example of this is our match cuts during the murder scene where the murderer is following the character. We showed the character being followed from different angles such as from the back, which then, pans to the murderer and focuses on them until we show the character being followed from the back again. There are also many different camera shots when the murderer is at the cemetery picking off rose petals. For instance, there were over the shoulder shots of the character throwing petals on the grave as well as, medium shots from the side showing the same action.
The sounds we used for our media product develops the forms of real media products. This is because we used slow, strings based music at the beginning of our sequence to create a calm and peaceful yet somewhat mysterious atmosphere. The sound gradually softens and you hear less of it when the murderer is following the couple up the escalator. The sound quietens slowly as it reveals the murderer following the victim. There are minor sound effects of knife slashing, in the background to show the victim being stabbed where the music is muted therefore this builds up the tension. With the slow motion of the murderer stabbing the character to the camera, there are just continuous heartbeat sounds to again, increase the audience’s heart rate.
Editing of our media product develops the conventions of real media products through the order of our clips in the sequence. For instance, it is very straightforward to understand how the day goes on as the order of our clips are chronological. There were not many effects that we wanted to use for our sequence apart from slow motion and fade. Even though we planned to, we never decided to make our thriller partly a flashback as we were running out of time and it would have been slightly too complicated. Similar to real media products, ours shows chronologically the murderer following the victim, killing them and then ending up at their grave.
Mise en scene was a key feature used in our sequence to develop forms of real media products. An example of this was our symbolic rose used in our sequence to represent valentine’s day and love. Hate was shown at the end when the rose is broken in half by the murderer. The snow also helped our thriller look rather scary as it reflects a cold-hearted feeling that the audience could feel towards the murderer. It also shows that it could have been another day possibly in the future, way after the murder.
Our media product represents particular social groups such as teenagers in London. This is because the main character who is the murder is a teenager holding a knife to stab the victim. This is a media panic in Britain and their contemporary ideas of a teenager holding knives are increasing therefore, we decided to base our thriller on these ideas. The age of the people who would watch our thriller would be 15 and over. This is because our thriller is rather violent and is about on sexual jealousy, which would not be suitable for a lower age. The audience may mainly be girls as they are more into romantic movies than boys are however, boys may want to watch it as it involves violent scenes. In addition, the idea of a female protagonist having a female murderer as well as a female victim is rather unusual in a normal thriller. This meant that we challenged the forms of real media products.
The kind of media institution that might distribute our media product would probably be British film release. In addition, Warp might distribute our media product, as they are interested in producing unique and different styles to other films as they focus on people with interesting tastes. This is because right at the beginning of our thriller, there is an establishing shot of ‘The Angel’ in the N1 centre which is significant to a London location therefore, it would be recognised straight away as the footage of the angel wings captured is quite famous. Also, our film has a teenager stabbing a victim with a knife which is a stereotypical judgement of urbanised culture in London about teenagers On the other hand, this could be a Hollywood Blockbuster as the quality of our thriller isn’t cheap and there are other similar Hollywood romance thrillers such as mentioned earlier, ‘My bloody valentine’. ‘London to Brighton’ is also a film, which influenced us as it was realistic and grimey, set in a British location that was cheap. We took on board their idea of realism and twisted it to our own idea by using female teenagers as main characters similar to ‘London to Brighton’ where females are the victims. As well as British films, Hollywood films also have a mixed culture where there is no specific type of race or religion of characters within certain films. Our thriller would not be suitable for just YouTube or through MySpace. This is because, the films shown on the internet are mainly of poor quality and not carefully planned like ours is.
The audience for our media product would mainly have to be young adults. It could be for people in Britain who want to find out about how the urban culture in Britain has developed such as ideas of teenagers holding knives. Similarly, our thriller involves teenagers as the main characters especially the murderer who is a teenage girl carrying a knife and not afraid to use it for her own purpose. People who are in relationships themselves or feel jealous about others in a relationship may want to watch our media product as they could relate themselves to the main character for example, knowing how the main character feels about being jealous of another girl having the man of her dreams. People would want to watch it as it is based on realism and it has a new and unique storyline involving two females as murderer and victim. Some people may want to watch it as it is quite gory involving violent murder scenes such as the murder scene in our opening where the murderer slashes the victim.
We would attract/address our audience in different ways. For instance, we could attract them by having characters that look appealing to the audience’s eyes. The characters may be attractive which could encourage the audience to watch it. We could also market our thriller through the genre, as it is kind of a psychological romance thriller. The genre appears interesting to people so they may want to watch it to find out more about this particular genre and how it fits to our thriller. We would advertise our film through a trailer as there could be many dramatic scenes that could be edited into a trailer, which would make it appealing and interesting to watch. Possibly, we could advertise it on an internet campaign as many people are using internet nowadays and it could catch their attention. However, advertising our film in places as if McDonalds would not be a bad idea as our film is pretty much aimed at young adults therefore, it would be more likely that they would eat in McDonalds and see our advertisement and be attracted by it.
I learnt many things about technologies from the process of constructing this product. For example, the practical experience of filming was very new to me because I have never done anything like this before. This gave me a taste of what it would be like actually working in media and actually creating a film yourself. I felt like I was actually a real actor and director at one point! I learnt a lot about camera such as different shots like long shots, medium shots and close ups and how to shoot them. I also learnt able different angles of shots. I also learnt that by using close ups, it enables the audience to view the character’s facial expressions in order to recognise their feelings and thoughts. This helped me analyse other films that I watch at home or in cinemas. Using final cut pro was also new to me because it looked so difficult at the beginning and I thought I would never understand it. Finally, the more I had a go at using it the more I enjoyed it and got the hang of editing our video. We were taught how to use final cut pro by playing around with a clip from a film, which we had to cut different clips and put it together in order to make sense. The first time I did it, I could not make the editing to look clean, instead it looked a bit rough and it did not really make much sense. However, the more I practiced in editing it the better I got at it and I made sure I used the skills I picked up for our thriller opening sequence editing. The blogging enabled me to reflect on what I did each day and how everything went during the film making process and it allowed me to plan for what we would do different next time if we had made a mistake. When we released our video on our blog, we knew that other people who made their own video would be watching ours and comparing it. This allowed us to receive feedback from them as they would come up to us and tell us our film was good or bad.
Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a lot in the progression from it to the full product. This is because the ‘match cut’ exercise we done allowed us to see many mistakes that we have made during the process. For instance, we saw that while we were shooting, we left a lot of headspace for our actor, which made the camerawork appear quite low. This meant that, before we edit our actual media product next time, we would make sure that the headspace is not how it was in our preliminary task. The storyboarding and planning allowed us to carefully set out what we needed to do and make it perfect, as we are aware of what we are doing in each step. The full product compared to our preliminary task showed a massive improvement through quality and standards of the film. This is because our full product actually looked like a real movie whereas the preliminary task looked much lower in quality.
As well as effects, our media product also uses different type of camerawork to develop our understanding of real media products. An example of this is our match cuts during the murder scene where the murderer is following the character. We showed the character being followed from different angles such as from the back, which then, pans to the murderer and focuses on them until we show the character being followed from the back again. There are also many different camera shots when the murderer is at the cemetery picking off rose petals. For instance, there were over the shoulder shots of the character throwing petals on the grave as well as, medium shots from the side showing the same action.
The sounds we used for our media product develops the forms of real media products. This is because we used slow, strings based music at the beginning of our sequence to create a calm and peaceful yet somewhat mysterious atmosphere. The sound gradually softens and you hear less of it when the murderer is following the couple up the escalator. The sound quietens slowly as it reveals the murderer following the victim. There are minor sound effects of knife slashing, in the background to show the victim being stabbed where the music is muted therefore this builds up the tension. With the slow motion of the murderer stabbing the character to the camera, there are just continuous heartbeat sounds to again, increase the audience’s heart rate.
Editing of our media product develops the conventions of real media products through the order of our clips in the sequence. For instance, it is very straightforward to understand how the day goes on as the order of our clips are chronological. There were not many effects that we wanted to use for our sequence apart from slow motion and fade. Even though we planned to, we never decided to make our thriller partly a flashback as we were running out of time and it would have been slightly too complicated. Similar to real media products, ours shows chronologically the murderer following the victim, killing them and then ending up at their grave.
Mise en scene was a key feature used in our sequence to develop forms of real media products. An example of this was our symbolic rose used in our sequence to represent valentine’s day and love. Hate was shown at the end when the rose is broken in half by the murderer. The snow also helped our thriller look rather scary as it reflects a cold-hearted feeling that the audience could feel towards the murderer. It also shows that it could have been another day possibly in the future, way after the murder.
Our media product represents particular social groups such as teenagers in London. This is because the main character who is the murder is a teenager holding a knife to stab the victim. This is a media panic in Britain and their contemporary ideas of a teenager holding knives are increasing therefore, we decided to base our thriller on these ideas. The age of the people who would watch our thriller would be 15 and over. This is because our thriller is rather violent and is about on sexual jealousy, which would not be suitable for a lower age. The audience may mainly be girls as they are more into romantic movies than boys are however, boys may want to watch it as it involves violent scenes. In addition, the idea of a female protagonist having a female murderer as well as a female victim is rather unusual in a normal thriller. This meant that we challenged the forms of real media products.
The kind of media institution that might distribute our media product would probably be British film release. In addition, Warp might distribute our media product, as they are interested in producing unique and different styles to other films as they focus on people with interesting tastes. This is because right at the beginning of our thriller, there is an establishing shot of ‘The Angel’ in the N1 centre which is significant to a London location therefore, it would be recognised straight away as the footage of the angel wings captured is quite famous. Also, our film has a teenager stabbing a victim with a knife which is a stereotypical judgement of urbanised culture in London about teenagers On the other hand, this could be a Hollywood Blockbuster as the quality of our thriller isn’t cheap and there are other similar Hollywood romance thrillers such as mentioned earlier, ‘My bloody valentine’. ‘London to Brighton’ is also a film, which influenced us as it was realistic and grimey, set in a British location that was cheap. We took on board their idea of realism and twisted it to our own idea by using female teenagers as main characters similar to ‘London to Brighton’ where females are the victims. As well as British films, Hollywood films also have a mixed culture where there is no specific type of race or religion of characters within certain films. Our thriller would not be suitable for just YouTube or through MySpace. This is because, the films shown on the internet are mainly of poor quality and not carefully planned like ours is.
The audience for our media product would mainly have to be young adults. It could be for people in Britain who want to find out about how the urban culture in Britain has developed such as ideas of teenagers holding knives. Similarly, our thriller involves teenagers as the main characters especially the murderer who is a teenage girl carrying a knife and not afraid to use it for her own purpose. People who are in relationships themselves or feel jealous about others in a relationship may want to watch our media product as they could relate themselves to the main character for example, knowing how the main character feels about being jealous of another girl having the man of her dreams. People would want to watch it as it is based on realism and it has a new and unique storyline involving two females as murderer and victim. Some people may want to watch it as it is quite gory involving violent murder scenes such as the murder scene in our opening where the murderer slashes the victim.
We would attract/address our audience in different ways. For instance, we could attract them by having characters that look appealing to the audience’s eyes. The characters may be attractive which could encourage the audience to watch it. We could also market our thriller through the genre, as it is kind of a psychological romance thriller. The genre appears interesting to people so they may want to watch it to find out more about this particular genre and how it fits to our thriller. We would advertise our film through a trailer as there could be many dramatic scenes that could be edited into a trailer, which would make it appealing and interesting to watch. Possibly, we could advertise it on an internet campaign as many people are using internet nowadays and it could catch their attention. However, advertising our film in places as if McDonalds would not be a bad idea as our film is pretty much aimed at young adults therefore, it would be more likely that they would eat in McDonalds and see our advertisement and be attracted by it.
I learnt many things about technologies from the process of constructing this product. For example, the practical experience of filming was very new to me because I have never done anything like this before. This gave me a taste of what it would be like actually working in media and actually creating a film yourself. I felt like I was actually a real actor and director at one point! I learnt a lot about camera such as different shots like long shots, medium shots and close ups and how to shoot them. I also learnt able different angles of shots. I also learnt that by using close ups, it enables the audience to view the character’s facial expressions in order to recognise their feelings and thoughts. This helped me analyse other films that I watch at home or in cinemas. Using final cut pro was also new to me because it looked so difficult at the beginning and I thought I would never understand it. Finally, the more I had a go at using it the more I enjoyed it and got the hang of editing our video. We were taught how to use final cut pro by playing around with a clip from a film, which we had to cut different clips and put it together in order to make sense. The first time I did it, I could not make the editing to look clean, instead it looked a bit rough and it did not really make much sense. However, the more I practiced in editing it the better I got at it and I made sure I used the skills I picked up for our thriller opening sequence editing. The blogging enabled me to reflect on what I did each day and how everything went during the film making process and it allowed me to plan for what we would do different next time if we had made a mistake. When we released our video on our blog, we knew that other people who made their own video would be watching ours and comparing it. This allowed us to receive feedback from them as they would come up to us and tell us our film was good or bad.
Looking back at my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a lot in the progression from it to the full product. This is because the ‘match cut’ exercise we done allowed us to see many mistakes that we have made during the process. For instance, we saw that while we were shooting, we left a lot of headspace for our actor, which made the camerawork appear quite low. This meant that, before we edit our actual media product next time, we would make sure that the headspace is not how it was in our preliminary task. The storyboarding and planning allowed us to carefully set out what we needed to do and make it perfect, as we are aware of what we are doing in each step. The full product compared to our preliminary task showed a massive improvement through quality and standards of the film. This is because our full product actually looked like a real movie whereas the preliminary task looked much lower in quality.
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