Media Evaluation Presentation

By Yas, Magda, Emily and Sofia

DVD

COVER

Conventions

Our main task combined the same fragments associated with thriller genres. These include what camera angles and movements, lighting, sound and editing you use.

These are all very important because with the right camera angles and movements, lighting, sound and editing you can shape a movie into a good thriller. For

example…

Camera Angles/Movements:- Low angle, point of view, extreme

close up shots, panning movements.

Lighting:- Low key and under lighting.

Sound: - Ambient, dark, slow and low

sounds or music.

Editing: - Sharp cuts.

These help to create emotion and suspense while creating a frightening and an eerie atmosphere.

Connotations

In our main task we also took in color connotations into consideration.

For Example…

- At the beginning of our piece Yas is wearing a red jacket. Red symbolizes strength as well as danger, it also symbolizes strong emotions.

- She shows strength by saying that they need to get to the border as she promised that she would keep her friend Sofia safe.

- She shows strong emotions by getting upset but still not giving up. They’re in danger because someone is after them and they’re all alone.

- Sofia is wearing a black jacket. Black symbolizes fear and sadness.

- She shows fear and sadness because she’s also frightened. Sadness because they’re lost and still have a long time to get to the border.

Research

- After considering different storylines and genres we decided to create a horror/thriller opening sequence.

- We had a lot of different ideas for the project; we looked at different film companies and their titles.

- Our group looked into ‘Rogue Pictures’ they produce ‘high-quality suspense, action, thrillers and urban features with mainstream appeal and franchise potential’.

- We looked at 4 different trailers from the many titles of Rogue Pictures; these include, The Return, The Unborn, The road The Strangers and Cry Wolf.

- Each of these trailers had a lot of common, but the sound used in each trailer had the most similarities. It’s very dark, mysterious and sharp. It also contains a lot of non-diegetic sound, for example, screams and quick breaths. There are also times in the trailers where it goes quiet and

suddenly there’s a loud noise or a scream etc.

- We created a questionnaire to gather information of what genres people mostly enjoy watching, how many times they watch movies and what they expected from horror/thriller movies.

Planning

- We gathered all the different information from our research, this includes questionnaires and watching different trailers.

We thought of a storyline and then we decided where it would take place, how many people were going to be in the film, what props and costumes, what camera angles

and movements would be suitable etc.

- Originally we were all going to act in our project, however it was then decided that two people would be enough (Yas and Sofia.)

- Two young females making their way to the border.

- They would be wearing rough jeans and big jackets and boots as it is cold and as it was set in a barn. Make-up would include messy hair and messy eye make-up.

- Not many props were used except from a block of wood to start off our opening sequence as we wanted to focus on the two young females all alone desperate to

get to the border and see their families again.    

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life media?

During the process of creating our media, our product has used and developed typical conventions from a typical thriller film. This is to

enforce the fact that this is a thriller film. Those following conventions (as mentioned before) are, dark lighting, dark theme, stereotypes of characters and setting, and creating enigma. We decided to change our film from being a typical thriller movie. We wanted to challenge

the stereotypes and decided to use two females as the main characters rather than like in most thrillers where the females are

always seen to be the more vulnerable ones who are in need of help.

Sub genres are often used in thrillers which are for example, crime, action, psychological etc. We wanted out film to be very mysterious

so that you wouldn't be able to tell just from the opening which subgenre it fits into, which would only make it more interesting for

the audience as they would want to watch more. I think the fact that our opening doesn't give to much away only makes the viewer want to carry on watching as they want to find out why or what something is happening. We thought one very effective way of doing this was to include a Voice-over. Our voice over gives a very rough idea that the

girls seem to be running away from someone or something and towards something else, the border. Yet the Voice-over doesn't give away why, or how. It keeps the suspense going as the audience isn't

sure as to why they are running away.

The isolated location is often a convention of a thriller movie. We knew straight away when we found our location that it would be perfect for our

type of genre that we were filming. An isolated location creates more tension as if anything were to happen, there is no one to help you. This makes our characters more vunerable, especially as they do not know the area themselves, it makes the whole thing seem more dangerous,

and increases the audiences fear.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real life media?

How does your media product represent a particular social group?

Teenagers, in our type of genre that we have chosen, thrillers, especially females, are usually seen as being the

ones who are naive, oblivious, and insecure of what's happening around them. Our product represents the social

group of girls. Stereotypically they are portrayed as vulnerable, and their inability to defend or be able to look

after themselves. These stereotypes increase the fear of the audience as it keeps them on guard thinking the girls will live

up to their stereotype.

In our opening, we decided to challenge this stereotype. Instead of using two male characters, we decided to open our film with two female characters. The beginning alone where one of the girls is talking to the camera about their journey, demonstrates and introduces you to the the fact these girls have been surviving for weeks, therefore challenging the stereotype that girls are weaker, and unable to protect themselves, as our characters have been doing just so.

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

Realistically, our media product is most probably not likely to be a major movie blockbuster. We are really happy with our outcome however it does not

compare to professional productions, as we don't have a big budget, Hollywood a list actors, a short time scale, or the highest quality cameras.

The most realistic way of distributing this movie would be an Internet release.

Nowadays, people our age, our target audience, mostly watch films online anyways, whether it's on YouTube, Netflix, or even illegal sites. We would look into uploading it onto sharing sites such a YouTube or vimeo. Doing this would make it world wide accessible, and people can share it, but without promotion

from a big institution company, it is unlikely to receive many views.

If our film was to be distributed, our chosen institution would be 'Rogue Pictures'. As mentioned in our initial research on all of our blogs, Rogue

pictures, has around 25 titles under its name with films, there disperse, "high-quality suspense, action, thriller and urban features with mainstream appeal and franchise potential". We thought this was the perfect one for us as they

only release genres as already mentioned. They have movies such as Hot Fuzz, The Strangers etc.. Under their name.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We feel like our main target audience is aged 15- 35.

Film Classification.-

As a group we classified our film as a 15. this was well thought out from the beginning.

We knew our film wouldn’t be child friendly as (in the opening AND the rest of the film) there would be scenes of violence, moderate language and crime. So to find out what would be a suitable classification we went to the British Board of Film Classification website this was really interesting as we found out lots more about other ratings too.

12A or 15?

We weren’t sure whether it would come under a 12A or 15. However we were looking at the differences between 12′s and 15′s and it was clear that although a 12 allows some allowance for puns on strong language, aggressive uses of strong language may result in a film or DVD to be placed at the 15 category. Another point we found is, in a 12 there should be no emphasis on injuries or blood, but in our storyline for our film there will be bloody scenes and violence. 

How did we attract/address out audience.

Thriller

When we sent out our questionnaire most people

By using actors our audience age

By using a hand help camera

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF

CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

I think, as a group we have definitely learnt a lot throughout the process of creating out

opening. When we first started on our preliminary task, Sofia, Magda and Emily had never edited before. We all knew how to use a camera, but we were never away

of certain rules you have to follow, for example, the 180° rule.. Which we happen

to have broken in our preliminary! Once everyone in the group had grasped how to

to do this, we found everything pretty straight forward.

Lights

One of the difficulties we faced was with the lighting. As we were filming in a closed environment, the barn didn't allow us to make the scene look as dark as we wanted it to as there were lots of gaps in the roof which we couldn't reach that was letting light through, so we found it hard to create that dark settings to create the mood. I think if we were to do this again, we would have to find a way to cover the gaps and holes and create a controlled lighting environment with artificial lights. I think most of our shots do look effective, we wanted them to look cold, and not very colourful to create a dark and mysterious atmosphere.

Progression from the preliminary Script.

What was our preliminary task?

The preliminary task was the first time in experiencing in depth filming.

For some of us it was our first time writing editing as well.

Since the Preliminary we have improved our script work and editing and it has come through on our end product of our film opening.

As a group we feel we have mainly improved with filming.

We thought more about mise en scene.

Over all we feel we have progressed a lot since the preliminary task.

Camera Shots

Editing Techniques

Match On Action – Shot Reverse Shot

From Page to Screen