Thomas Herd's Evaluation

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

Conventions of a thriller

Enigma - It creates a mystery for the audience and makes them ask questions, for example 'Who are they?' or 'Why are they there?'

Protagonist - The main character in the thriller, most likely to be a women or on occasions a man or children.  They would be expected to mainly be the victim, therefore the audience feel sympathy for the character.

Antagonist – Generally the villain and almost always is a male or a group of males.

Binary opposition - This is where two characters have opposites between each other, for example whether one is a protagonist and one is an antagonist or it could be the difference in age or gender.

Low key lighting – This is mainly used in thrillers to create suspense and enigma (mentioned above) because of the dark lighting.

We have tried to include as many as these as possible:

The antagonist is shown at the very start, which is made clear by location, characterisation and clothing. As he is the first character shown it creates enigma and tension. Also, you don’t immediately see face, so the audience will start to ask questions.

The protagonist is clearly shown when he is being drowned. We used a number of shots to show it being very frantic as the character was fighting for his life. Again, this helps create enigma and tension through the panic and the audience wanting him to survive.

The sound bridge of the soundtrack shows that everything is happening at the same time, and creates an eerie atmosphere as to who these characters are.

We used a couple of establishing shots in the airport and swimming to let the audience can ask questions on not only the characters but about the locations. For example, why kill him in a swimming pool? 

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

Due to the fact we have an all-male cast, I feel represent certain social groups, especially as the ‘crew’ are shown as different ages. The first character we see on the screen is the oldest member of the group. We chose him as the first character shown, to show his power and authority amongst the other two members. Also, he has just come off his private plane, again, showing his experience in the job.

 

The two other characters in the group are dressed in a more casual way as they are completing the job. The character on the phone is shown as the ‘link’. We tried to portray him as the middle man and ask the audience questions as to who he actually was in the operation. Later on in the film we would find exactly who he was.

The final character, who is being drowned, is clearly portrayed negatively. His costume is designed to show what kind of people they are out to get. As the protagonist is usually a female character, we thought it we would show it from a different angle and go against the stereotypical character.

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

Through research I have discovered that times are changing. People are less likely to actually go and watch films at a multiplex but watch them on tablets, phones, game consoles or just on their TVs. As a low budget film it would be impossible to get our film on at a multiplex anywhere anyway. Therefore, we have to look at independent distributors because they are more likely to take it.

I think it would be a good idea to put our film on LoveFILM. The first reason behind this is that you can watch LoveFILM on so many different devices for example, PS3/4, XBOX one and tablets. The target audience for these products matches our target audience (males 15+) therefore we are likely to get more views on the film.

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

Due to our research I decided that our film should be aimed at males aged 15+. The reason why I selected this audience because of research on the BBFC website: http://www.bbfc.co.uk. This tells  us why films are put into separate categories and how they decide on which category it should be in. Most thriller films are aimed around that the male teenage age group, which is why we chose this set.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

 

I think to key to targeting the male 15+ group is to try and make it exciting and fascinating. If it isn’t, they get bored. If we ask the audience questions then they focus and concentrate on the film. For this to happen, we needed to create tension and interesting shots along with good editing.

Mise-en-scene

A real advantage for us is our locations we chose. The plane in the airport and the swimming pool give the audience something to think about and ask questions about why they are then and who are they. The location really suits the audience as it’s a little bit different and it isn’t relatable so they can use their imaginations.

Editing

Again, to make it that little bit more interesting, we decided early on that we should have a series of quick cuts mixed in with some medium and long cuts to make it exciting to watch. Also, the cut between different scenes, for example the airport to the swimming pool creates confusion and therefore, makes the audience watch and think about who these characters actually are.

Sound

The non-diegetic sound we put in at the post production stage creates tension in the atmosphere and an eerie effect. We were undecided how loud it should be over the diegetic sound. I think that we got it just right because the audience wants to hear the sounds that the characters can’t because it makes them more involved. However, making it too loud would overpower the diegetic sound and that would lose its effect.

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

Throughout both the preliminary and our final film I have learnt a lot about the technologies available to make our film the best it can be. Some were tougher than others and I needed to spend a lot more time to be able to use some of these technologies.

Camera - White Balance, camera shoulder holder 

The cameras were fairly easy to use but there were still some important information to know. White balance is so imperative to get right, if you don’t then your shots may go off colour and will not look good in the final cut as shown below. I had an issue where I didn’t set the white balance which I will explain below. We didn’t use a tripod as much as the camera holder mounts. Both were easy to use and set up but I felt more in control with the holder and I felt we could make more attention-grabbing shots with it than the tripod. The tripod uses up more space and in some of our locations like Gatwick Airport inside the plane, there wasn’t a lot of space to move.

Underwater Camera

Every piece of equipment is important but without the underwater cameras, our film would not be the same. As we learnt quickly they were very similar to the normal cameras but it still took time to get used to them. They were obviously a massive help getting interesting shots from below the water which would not have been possible without it. Tom Corbett and I were the two members of the group who used the two cameras. I thought we did a good job considering we hadn’t done anything like this before. However, one of the camera’s white balance was not set which was my mistake and therefore, we had to colour correct most of my shots in post-production. This created a little bit of panic at the time but we did well to get through it.

Lighting 

The most important thing I learnt about lighting is that you must always use it. Due to our issues in the preliminary task, where we couldn’t actually see a character in a shot, we knew it was important to get the lighting right in the final product. We only needed to use small lights because most of our scenes were outside, so we didn’t need as much lighting. The small lights were easy to use as were merely required to screw the lights onto stands and put them where we wanted. We did have to careful we were using two cameras. Not to get the lights in the shots, which we successfully did.

Macs – Final Cut Pro and Garage Band

First of all, I had very limited experience of using Macs. At times they got frustrating to work on as the mouse and keyboard is different but as you went on, they were ok to use.

I had never used Final Cut Pro before this project so it took time learning how to use it and all the shortcuts you could press to make it easier and quicker for yourself. We I learnt the basics for example, cutting each shot, it became easier to use and I thought we used it effectively. Also, I learnt how to use text to create our title. Again, when you knew the basic buttons and where everything was, it was easy to use.

Another programme I used on the Mac was Garage Band. We used this to put on soundtracks and sound effects to create the right atmosphere and tension in our final piece. It was fairly simple to use as all the effects we could use were displayed on the right hand side. There was one difficulty which was because it was an American programme. This meant that some words were not recognised when you typed them in. Overall, I love our soundtrack we used and the effects worked well with the action on screen.

Blogger

Like most of the other technology, Blogger was another aspect of which I hadn’t used before. The key thing with Blogger is you have to remember to use hyperlinks and images to get your grade as high as it can be. I struggled to get to grips with it at first but due to the fact that you could get it on your phone, it was more accessible to use. I found it easier to write on Word and then transfer it onto Blogger because it was less difficult to change fonts and sizes of texts. Also, getting images where you want them can get annoying but it is worth taking time over it. I feel I could have used Blogger better by putting more images and hyperlinks and less text to use it at its full potential.

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

From watching it back, I felt in our preliminary task that we could have used a wider variety of shots and angles throughout the minute. Also, the shots were a similar length in terms of distance, because of that, the shots we ended up using were too long so the pace was extremely slow and consequently made the piece uninteresting to watch for the audience. From this we learnt that we needed to spend an extended period of time to plan a broader range of attention-grabbing shots that would help create plot and establish characters along with other features.

An example of this is in the first part of our preliminary where we have one character walking for a long period of time - the shots were all long and extreme long shots. To compare this to our final film, at the beginning there many different types of shots, for example, the plane taking off at the very start and also, a mix of lengths while inside the plane with a close up of the older male character taking his belt off (all shown below).

The improvement in the camera work links in with the development within the editing side of the production – sound and visual. In the final film, the sound is much cleaner and precise as we decided early on that we would take most of the sound off in ‘Final Cut Pro’ so it was easier to add in afterwards. Therefore, we would have the exact sound that we wanted throughout our piece by using our own sound effects and foleys. In our preliminary, our sound wasn’t as good as it could have been due to the fact we kept the original sound on the visual cut because there was dialogue. Additionally, it was just one soundtrack throughout the whole one minute which went over the dialogue; this can get boring for the audience to listen to. Therefore, we tried to put as many sound effects and parts of soundtracks in as possible, if they were needed to create an increase of tension and enigma.

In conclusion, I felt that our final film was much better than our preliminary because of lots of different aspects. Especially, camera work, lighting and sound. I think this was due to us taking more time and care over what we were doing and therefore, it ended up an improved piece.