Harry Quilley's Evaluation

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


Me and tom looked at some good camera angle for which we could end the scene. We came across this clip of DiCaprio, we imitated in the angle of the camera and the positioning of the character, this give us the idea of hitting the bottom, or in our case, dead.

The biggest inspiration we had for our pool scene was the 'let the right one in' clip that we found before we started to plan our opening. it really gave us something to aim for when filming our film scene, less in the fact of a savior but more for the camera angles we used for the scene and the way the attacker held his head to keep him underwater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ6qh0z48Uk



2. How does your media product represent particular social groups? 
It is clear from the opening that a there is a common occurrence with age and gender of all the characters. With them all being male, is a clear female stereotype, this gives across that women are not likely to be involved with murder or assassination, but are often seen as a victim within films as they are deemed as weaker and an easy target. 

It is quite clear from about 43 seconds in when the guy is thrown into the pool, this implies he is the protagonist  of the opening. Men are regularly portrayed as the antagonist because they are more dominant. This also suggest that the person committing this murder is the antagonist, as well as the other character/s through-ought that we have seen listening to the voice message telling him that the murder is being committed. We are never told who the voice message is for, as its only for one. this creates the enigma of who is part of the assassination and who is unaware. Both characters were similarly clothed to not give any distinctive ideas to who the message was for. This creates enigma around these two characters and who they are. in relation to the drowning scene.
In our movie their is no female characters, we had options to include them as either antagonist or protagonist but chose against, we didn't want to follow most stereotypes and have a female protagonist as it seemed to cliche and would make the story line more confusing to the audience and would make it seem like a simple murder.
All character except the one who start from within the plane, are all similar age, this is to add to the enigma, by contradicting their normal recruits and maybe have an older member  or they keep it young and fit.
The voice mail voice over was key to the Representation of the males as it the deepness and seriousness in his voice wouldn't be the same if played by a female antagonist.

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

As a low budget British indie film we need to think realistically  on who will distribute our film. Choosing someone like Dreamworks or Universal studio would not be a viable option.
The company that distribute the film is the company who get the film to the audience, either via cinema, consoles/television and devices (phone, tablet, iPod). The distributor will market the film, this is things like adverts, signage and the production of the film onto Film or digital device. Our film will be distributed via ADSL. ADSL is a way of digitally screening a film rather than printing it all on to film. the main reason for this is the cost, with film costing £2000 to print onto the film this is very expensive for cinemas to rent. Having to pay 40%  at £800 is too much for cinemas so they started to store the film digitally which keeps down costs enabling independent cinemas the ability to rent movies too, digital films cost £560 to rent over the £800 for film. 
 When trying to find a distributor for our film we have to think realistically in terms the size of company and whether or not they will agree to distribute our film. I searched for a up and coming British indie film producer because i think that as a new company will be trying to impress and could really help with the popularity of the film. 
I think a company like axiom films would be suitable..
Although originally going for an up and coming company we decided to go for a more experienced lesser known distributor because of the experience it will bring. I believe they would the correct company to distribute our film. they have have expertise in all film and will help in develpoing our movie on multi-media. They are a company that market and distribute many different genre of films. They also have a connection with lovefilm and iTunes meaning  their new releases are also available online to rent after the movie is released. I believe the best way to premiere the film would be via console. Xbox/Microsoft to be precise. As our film as a thriller, with a lot of action, the best audience to aim at was 14+,  with Xbox having such a high number of teenagers on the console would give the film a lot of teenagers to release to. Distributing to premiere on the Xbox would best be done over the weekend/Friday  as this is when teenagers play and are online the most and would gain the most exposure.
Soon after release, renting it out to places like Lovefilm would these type of sites are growing ever more popular and will increase the audience size. as well as this they can be watched anywhere via smartphones and tablets on the go.

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


It was clear from the start that we would be aiming at an age group similar to ourselves. 12+ seemed the right decision for our movie. The reason for this is because of the violence we see in the swimming pool scene which is a little strong.

From the 5 people I had watched the film, i was told that this was the correct age rating for the movie, however one said that they would rise the age limit because of the drowning scene. She(my mum) felt as if this was to much for someone as young as 12 and suggest a 15. I searched through the BBFC website. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/search/releases/drowning . this was pretty similar to our rating, with variations from 12A to 15 I believe 12 is correct because there isn't any other violence or bad language within the opening.  I also did some research of other movies with drowning and 12A is a common occurrence within most that don't involve further violence.

The movie was aimed to be viewed mostly by male, stereotypically because of the violence between the males and that they are all male characters. The violence and action will instantly attract most males whereas females will think nothing of it. This will enable men to relate to characters and even look up to them.

5. How did you attract/address your audience

The very first shot of the plane taking off is an instant hook, being so popular it hooks people in. This will
instantly get the attention of many, once they are hooked the rest of the opening will continue to interest them. With the location of the airport this will attract mostly males as this is a male dominated place, in terms of engineering and flying. 

Having all male characters will relate to many guys which will keep them watching. The use of a rare setting, a place were people do not visit or go to everyday, will make it seem out of the ordinary on what happens during the movie. 

Creating enigma in which character is linked to the assassination will really making viewers think about who it is and will make them watch too the end to find out whether they thought right or wrong. 

The main point we used to attract our audience was the action. A violent drowning scene to surprise them from what they have seen prior to the event. Violence is always a good way of hooking in an audience as it is something that most men enjoy watching 


6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Adapting to the access of technology we had we was vital to getting our thriller opening to the best it could be.

Camera
A big part of this was using the camera to its full capabilities. ensuring we set the white balance every scene was key to making the film look smooth and professional. On a couple of occasions we forgot to do so which meant we had to remove the footage and we could not use it in the opening.

Blog
Using the blog fully was something i took advantage of to begin with and didn't use it as I should have and posted very little. The blog really shows the story of how we made our film, when looking back it helped us in the final stages of our film with editing and making sure the 180 degree rule wasn't broken.
Taking the blog even further, uploading vlogs helps to explain things in greater in detail as wel as using multi-media which is needed for our blog.

Final cut/garage band
Final cut was something that really help us in our film, cutting footage as well as removing sounds to time the match on actions perfectly is something that we used to our advantage. it also enabled us to add a fade at the end which really adds to the suspense at the end of the opening. using colour correct enabled us to save part of our filing that went wrong because of no balance and really helped with creating intensity at the end of the opening. We used garage band to find a track to run all the way through our opening. this really added to our piece, creating enigma and adding tension.

Voice Recorder
This is what tied our entire opening together. without it our film wouldn't link and wouldn't be connect  to each scene. the voice recorder enable us to recorder toms voice to put over , without it the thriller opening wouldn't make much sense.

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

Making this opening has made me realize that from the start of the preliminary opening, to where I am now, is absolutely massive. not just by myself, but as a group. I feel as though all areas of my thoughts have gradually got more realistic progressed to where they are now as I was always overdoing ideas trying to make ideas seem realistic when they are just to out of the ordinary. It is clear that have learnt many things that will help me drastically next year.

• Lighting: Since the preliminary task I have started to realize how important lighting is to show the emotion in the characters as well as how they are portrayed. As we can see in this shot from our prelim task, The lighting has been done poorly in this shot as tom is barely visible which adds confusion to the audience leaving him expression less because you can see his face. Compared to the next shot below, which is taken from our Thriller opening. although no artificial lighting was used, we had to move location in the swimming pool as the place in the pool we filmed all of the drowning seen was too deep and we knew that if we filmed here the lighting would very dark. This is isn't visible because the editing and lets us see his facial expressions clearly.
• Editing: Editing was also something I have improved in since we completed the prelim, especially in sound editing. Being introduced to Foleys  as well as non-diegetic sounds really widened the variety of thoughts on how we could improve our Thriller opening. as well as this, knowing about adjusting sound from our original filming to increase pitch to emphasize a certain event happening. We used this effectively with the first splash in the thriller to enhance the volume to increase intensity. There isn't really and image to compare with this because the preliminary task didn't have and specific places to increase the volume.
• Research and Planning: At first, I was trying to hard to figure the entire story line, even though it is almost irrelevant and only a vague idea is needed to create our prelim. Again I was over complicating things unnecessarily which was wasting time that could have been spent story boarding or doing additional research and planning. When the we started the thriller opening I made sure to stay away from that. This also gave us more freedom within the thriller opening, not having to plan an entire movie gave us more flexibility within the storyboard and planning that wont hold back ideas for the opening.
• Using camera angle and shot to portray a characters emotion I also something that has gradually increase since we shot the prelim. a clear example would be in these two shots. the one on the left being the thriller opening and the right the prelim, it is clear the camera angle and shot is both clearer of facial expressions as well as the camera angle suggesting mystery like he is being look at, this is done by having a corner of the fence in the shot to make it seem like peeking.

• Filming: Run-Off during filming as well as re filming shots 3-4 times to get the correct footage that we needed to ensure smooth editing for match on actions. this is something that cause large problems when putting together our prelim as some footage wasn't right, this meant we had to edit parts out because there was a loud background noise they we didn't realize would affect the sound on the camera but when re-watching in we noticed it drowned out toms speech. Filming for 5-10 seconds before and after each clip was key to getting the match on actions correct, this gave us enough footage to edit and move around to get the perfect timing with our match on actions. I feel as though the match on action of the door into the hub in the first clip was slightly out of sync as the characters position was slightly different although this couldn't be seen in real time, only if it was slowed down.