AS Evaluation - Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

There is only one main character in the film. This character is a young female, which is a generic thriller convention. Female characters are used to display vulnerability and innocence to the audience, so the audience can form a relationship with the main character/victim. They form this relationship through sympathy for the situation that the female character is in. shows that 
The other character was also a female, this female also conveys the same things. I feel that we conveyed females/girls in a stereotypical way as females in media or society are stereotyped to be weak, more gentle and innocent. So I feel that we represented females in a very stereotypical way.

The characters could appeal to the audience as our target audience were between the ages of 15-25 this young character allowed the audience to sympathize with the young character. Also the character is a typical little girl which most of the audience will be able to relate to.

More on social groups....

A social group can be defined as any two or more people in social interaction who share expectations and responsibilities to the group and who share a unifying characteristic or sense of purpose. 

My media product represents two social groups. One of them is family, this narrative is based on a small knit family where the mysterious killer of a young girl (killer is the sister) seems to have gotten away with the act and moves on with her life after her sisters death. Family is an interesting social group as in a social ideal family is supposed to be loving, supportive, caring but this puts a twist on the idealistic view on families. It represents this social group as a secretive one, that things go on that you wouldn't know about. It also displays that families aren't as loving as they seem and that family doesn't mean hate doesn't exist. 

Another social group was a secondary one, the neighbourhood. As you can see in the opening scene of the opening thriller for 'Silent'. The atmosphere is very eerie, cold and has a lot of shadows. These are all conventional to the thriller genre creating mystery and suspense. However, it doesn't diverge from the fact that a neighbourhood is supposed to be 'safe' and 'sunny' well that's how media often portray neighbourhoods as a safe community street (social ideal again). However,  by our media product showing this it displays that neighbourhoods aren't as safe as they seem and that you don't even know whats going on in a house on your street. But we worry about a murder 30miles away when the murderer could be right next door and you wouldn't even know it.

Therefore, my media product mainly represents social groups as the opposite of what society wants us to be like. My media product puts a twist on the normal in everyday life and gives an insight to a murderers mind. And the 'real world' not the ideal but also keeping the thriller genre and conventional themes whilst doing so.

AS Evaluation - Question 1

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

A thriller is a genre it is either a book or film which is used to keep the audience/reader on edge with suspenseful and sensational action - wisegeek.com

For my media product we focused on the thriller(film) genre. There are many generic conventions that belong to a thriller film. The murderer/killer is known as the antagonist and the antagonist almost always has to have a protagonist - this creates opposites (villain vs victim), this contrast can also be referred to as good and evil. Low-key lighting, hidden identity, blonde female victim, certain iconography and more. These generic conventions are all used to support each other and create the effect of the 3 s's (Surprise, shock and suspense) for the audience.

Low-key lighting is a style of lighting for photography, film or television. It is a necessary element in creating a chiaroscuro effect. It has three point lighting uses key light, fill light and a back light illumination. - Wikipedia. Low-key lighting has a dark look which creates suspense and only shows parts of the surroundings, which creates enigma. Successful films such as SAW used low-key lighting. This is shown in SAW V (the picture is below) The low key lighting creates a contrast of light and darkness which also relates to the theme of the film/narrative (good and evil). This lighting creates tension for the audience watching as you can't see what's going to happen which then may make the audience feel nervy and inquisitive. 

Low-key lighting also creates shadows, these shadows create a sense of paranoia and anxiety for the audience as we don't know what's going to happen next and these shadows make it seem like the antagonist has already gotten to the protagonist. For example, In the film 'prom night' the Lisa chase scene we see a lot of shadows. During this high impact, fast editing scene it effects the audience by making them feel confused and nervy as the shadows made the audience not able to see where the antagonist really was. Low key lighting also creates an eerie atmosphere as we can't see the location clearly. The low key lighting also creates a mood for the audience, as dark is associated with bad moods, unhappiness and depression. This then transfers these negative moods to the audience which then allows them to connect with the situation the characters in and have these negative feelings towards the antagonist. And as it is a generic convention the audience will already know that the low-key lighting scene is associated with negativity/horror.

In thriller films the identity of the villain is almost always hidden or made unknown to the audience until a later time. This is to create mystery and again create tension for the audience, because if the identity was known to the audience from the opening scene the narrative would be quite hard to carry on, as you'd need a very good narrative to keep it going. One film that revealed the identity fairly quickly was the film 'Halloween' in the opening scene. Before the identity was revealed it made the audience inquisitive and more focused on the film and cinematography as the audience want to know what is going to happen next as they don't know who the main character was as the camera only showed the characters/villains view point. This was interesting as it created enigma and excitement for the audience to continue watching. And once the murder scene occurred it made us wonder why the villain did this, which makes it even more interesting as the audience starts to build up anticipation and tension to want to find out who the killer is. This built up suspense and once the murder scene happened it created shock and the reveal of the killer created shock. This is a good example of the 3s's occuring in one scene.

Hidden identity also makes the audience want to see the informative part of the film which answers all their questions. This shows how much enthusiasm the audience has for the film all through the use of hidden identity. Another film which used hidden identity successfully were the scream movies. In the film scream 1 it made the audience wonder who the person under the costume is and what their motives are. In  scream 1 the mask worn was also worn with a black gown this made the villain appear as something real and you forget that the villain is fictional and the really actor is the person behind the costume. I think this made the film even more scary as it felt as if the character was not human and lacked any emotion and wouldn't give up. So this made the audience constantly feel anxious about what was going to happen next.

The theme of antagonist vs. protagonist is also kept in a lot of thriller films as it is a generic convention that the audience are use to seeing. The antagonist vs. protagonist gives the theme of good vs. evil and dark vs. light. This then allows the audience to see things from two points of views and have a judgement on the two opposite characters. The reason this is used is so the audience has feelings towards the characters whether negative or positive. These feelings are then allowing the audience to connect with the film and/or the characters which keeps the audience entertained. Antagonist vs. Protagonist theme also allows the producers.directors to include fighting scenes, chase scenes and argument scenes. This again creates entertainment and excitement for the audience. This theme usually makes the audience sympathetic towards the victim. This victim is then made to seem innocent, vulnerable due to the victim coming across as weaker than the villain in the chase scenes, fighting scenes etc. And the victim is usually very relate-able to the thrillers target audience, (typically young people, but not always) so that they will then put themselves in that position and feel even more sympathetic towards the victim. So I feel that this theme is put in place for many reasons.

In the film se7en the theme of villain vs victim is clear with the involvement of police officers. This film includes several victims, these victims all die which makes them come across as weak, vulnerable and causes the audience to feel empathetic towards those victims as they are somewhat displayed as 'not strong enough' to defend themselves from a evil character. As the evil character/murderer in the film is displayed to be a psychopath who has mental problems. The film also displayed the killings in a brutal way to have a negative view towards the man (villain). Therefore, this theme distorts our view and allows us to have these normal and typical judgments of these characters due to their doings in the film and how they are portrayed to the audience. Which then allows the audience to side with who they feel is in greater need of help and who's situation they can relate to the most.

   Victims in thriller films the victim is typically Blonde this is another generic convention. Blonde victims are used because f the stereotypes that surround them, not very clever, ditsy, vulnerable and innocent. These stereotypical characters aren't true in real life but in films these characteristics of a character allows us to feel sympathetic towards the victim. Feeling as they didn't know any better and that they didn't deserve it. Blonde victims are used in many scream and saw sequels. A few images to support these points are below. I also think a female victim is used because females usually display emotions better this is probably a stereotype. But in media men are supposed to be less emotional and more macho. Where as women are the more emotional ones who are not really looked down on if they cry or scream. So In thriller films when a women is attacked they make more of a 'fuss' which then scares the audience even more as they almost feel sick for watching this happen.

The next convention is iconography. Iconography are the props used in a frame. Thriller films typically use iconography such as phones and knives. Phones are used in the film as contact with someone who can provide them help or to show how normal there life was before the villain came or contact with the villain. This phone can have a lot of impact as it can be the reason a character lives and also makes the audience high with adrenaline, excitement and tension as they the victim to survive or escape. Phones are used in many thriller is one thriller that focuses a lot on the phone is scream 3 the scene 'the cutting room'. The phone was used for contact between the villain and the victim. This phone created mystery along with the scary dialogue (from the villain) and also allowed us to see the reactions of the victim (Sarah). This then showed us her facial expressions and made us panic with her as we the audience didn't know what was going to happen next.

Another type of generic iconography in thriller films that seems almost vital is a knife. A knife to anyone in the audience shows danger and quickly signals death when held in the hands of someone dangerous. Knifes are also very important as it shows control, the person with the knife has the most control as they have the choice whether the person lives or not. This choice can also cause tension for the audience as we don't know whether the villain is actually going to follow through, where he's going to attack the victim and if we are going to see all the goriness. One example of a thriller that used knives really well was the film is fatal attraction the scene is called 'Bathroom Brawl'. The clip can be viewed below, once you watch it you will understand my point on control. 

A knife also allows the film to show the audience the brutalness of the murder as a gun would not do that it would only shock us by the sound but hardly terrify us. But the sound of the knife and the response of characters pain from the knife. Makes the audience so terrified they look away and the film starts to give a sense of realism as we forget that it's just fiction and none of this is just a film. So a knife can really share the audience but then make us feel sympathetic towards the victim that was murdered.

Lastly, cinematography contributes heavily to the success of many thriller films. A typical, generic shot would be close ups and mid shots. Close ups are used to display the characters face close up this is so the audience can read the characters face and see what they feel like and then channel that facial expression into sympathy for them. And allow us to then connect with the characters. I have mentioned this point a lot but one of the main aims for a thriller is to connect the audience and the on screen actors. Because if we didn't we the film wouldn't seem realistic and would possibly just com across as funny. A great example of a close up would be in the film psycho the shower scene. It allowed the audience to feel how the victim was feeling and feel how terrified she was in that situation and then imagine how terrified we would be in that position.

There were a lot of ways our film followed some of the generic conventions. The main conventions we used were female victim, low-key lighting, hidden identity and certain iconography.

In our film the victim was a female, this allowed the audience to feel sympathetic towards her and feel like she's a vulnerable, innocent character who had no reason to be attacked by the villain. By using a female character in the film allowed the audience to connect with her. 

Another generic convention I feel like I used well was low-key lighting. I feel like we used low-key lighting well especially right at the beginning of the clip. The aim of using low-key lighting was to create a feel for the audience and to build up to tension by the darkness. I felt that the low-key lighting created an eerie atmosphere for the audience and created a lot of tension especially when paired with the sound. The low-key lighting in my thriller really set the scene as the location was unknown and was mysterious to the audience so low-key lighting made it hard for the audience to see the full surroundings and made them wonder why this house (door 16) was chosen. 

Lastly, I think I used the generic convention - iconography, the phone. The phone again built up tension as you didn't know who was calling and you were wondering why they were calling with the caller ID saved as silent. This created mystery for the audience again and built up anticipation and anxiety to see what would follow. The phone was used as communication between the victim and villain. Even though the villain did not speak again it created that sense of mystery.

 In thriller films micro-elements are also used, Micro means film elements such as cinematography, sound, editing, narrative, genre, mise-en-scene. For cinematography we used generic conventions such as close up shots and mid shots. Close ups are used to show characters facial expressions and mid shots are used to show the importance of a character. I included these shots in my own thriller the reason being because a close up shot really shows the characters emotions. ions clearly. This creates sympathy for the audience to have towards her. Therefore, some close ups cause the audience to sympathize and have a connection with characters.Also the mid shot was used to create the connotation and secret message to the audience to focus on this character and this character will be of great importance in the narrative. Mid shots are used in many thriller films. And in our thriller that is what we aimed to achieve. You can see the actor(victim's) facial expressions and emotions.

I would also say that we developed the use of 'hidden identity' but we may have developed it too much as the identity isn't shown throughout the opening scene. We didn't reveal the antagonist just yet like other films. We felt that by doing that it released enigma to quickly. But the media products that are existing that we think displayed hidden identity the best was Halloween 1978. As it built up a lot of tension and mystery for the audience as we didn't know what to expect. And I feel our film developed the typical theme of hidden identity (mask, for e.g. Scream)

My media film displayed similar attributes of generic films such as, Halloween thriller film 1978. The film Halloween included long shots of houses to set the scene and surroundings for the audience.

  

Halloween long shot

(My thriller) Silent long shot

A long shot is the most difficult to categorize precisely, but is generally one which shows the image as approximately "life" size. It is called a long shot because the camera is placed far away to capture a large area of view.

The long shot was used to introduce the beginning of every scene. It sets in motion the audience's perception of time, place and logical action of the scene that is about to happen. This shot creates an eerie location and shows that the location is unknown and quiet.

Wipe/fade

(My thriller film) Silent 

Halloween film

A video fade is when a shot gradually fades to (or from) a single colour, usually black or white. Fade was used to create enigma and suspense for the audience as you don't know whats going to happen next. Suspense is done to make the audience feel excited, anticipated and distort perceptions.

To conclude, I feel that my media product defined the thriller genre through the use of generic conventions. But we also changed and developed those conventions to make them unique and intrigue our audience to want to watch our film or to continue watching.

AS Thriller Evaluation

For this project our brief was to produce a 2 minute thriller opening including certain micro elements to get a reaction from our target audience. We also had to carry out primary and secondary research to help us create this thriller. 

The group members were Ellie Holt and I. For this project to work we had to allocate roles to each member so every area of the film would be finished.

Some of the roles involved were:

Costume/Make up designer - The reason this role is there was to create the characters and make sure the scene is balanced with texture and color. Their job mainly included tasks such as planning outfits for each actor to create contrast and connotations(more meanings).
Continuity director - Making sure everything was in the right place so it linked and made sense.
Actors - To display emotion and form a connection with the audience. Making the story line come alive. 
Director of photography - Has management over the camera and films all the footage.
Producer - The producer has to  prepare and then supervise the making of a film before presenting the product to a financing entity or a film distributor. 
Editor - Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. The film editor works with the raw footage, choosing shots and linking them into sequences to create a finished motion picture.

Management of sound - They choose and select the sound that will be included in the production. 
Director - They work alongside the director of photography and are in control of the filming.
Script writer - They have to write a clear script for the actors and all other members to follow. They also have to include actions, props and stage directions. 

My role was the director of photography, director, producer and editor. For these allocated roles I was responsible for producing artistic and technical decisions. I also had to create an overall vision for the film and I was responsible for directing the shooting timetable and meeting deadlines. As the producer I had to prepare and supervise the making of the film. Finally for the editing I had to use Final Cut Pro and link chosen shots, add credits/titles and make sure the film was clean and finished. By doing this role I learnt that to create a successful thriller film you can't do everything on your own you have to work in a team no matter how well you think you can cope. As I'm quite an independent person it's hard for me to work in a group and accept everyone's ideas and plans. And I tend to  feel as if i can do it alone. These roles I took on were very long, time consuming and stressful for one person to do alone. And took focus off of my other alevel subjects. So I learnt that teamwork is key in film production.

We had an extra team member but he dropped the subject. Mainly due to the lack of communication our group had. Which caused us to produce a less qualitative film than our peers. Our group didn't work very well together at the beginning but towards the end we all came together as a team and put in the most we could. Due to us not acting like a team in the beginning, we always fell behind and failed to meet deadlines and work. 

No, I don't think we made a successful film. I think we made an okay film but it could of been a lot better. 

As seen from our feedback, the camera was too shaky, the narrative had potential but the motion pictures didn't tell a story. This made it confusing for the audience. A confusing film means a bad film. So I feel that we over did some conventions to create effect (jerky handheld camera to display umsteadyness and by using no speech we were trying to create a mysterious impact) but the overuse of these conventions caused confusion. Therefore, I do not feel like we made a successful thriller.

Target audience feedback on final thriller - Miss Georgiou

In this post I will be discussing the need for audience feedback and analyzing how receiving audience feedback had an impact on the production of the film.

Audience feedback is important as it allows you to see your project/work from another perspective and focus on areas your audience think you need to work on to adjust it and make improvements.
 We received audience feedback through questionnaires.

(Questionnaires)

I also received feedback from family and friends that I let watch the rough cut to give me opinions on it. This feedback would benefit my production by allowing me to make improvements in specific areas, reducing the amount of criticism and increasing audience enjoyment. It also helped our production to know what type of narrative our audience like and learn more about our target audience for future purposes. But the benefit it had for us was that we knew specifically what to change to produce a better opening scene to satisfy our audience.

Three positive comments

• Interesting Narrative
• Low-key lighting
• Use of sound effects

    Sound effects used. Click here.

            Low key lighting

The positive comments were some of the aims we wanted to produce from our thriller. A unique narrative that intrigues the audience whilst maintaining suspense through the use of low-key lighting. We focused a lot on sound as sound can impact the other micro-elements of the film. So we got the sound from freesound.com and got sound that reflected our scenes best and made the frames scary/tense. 

Three negative comments

• Camera was too unsteady
• More cinematography needed for a variety of distance
• Very confusing/no clarity of story line

The negative comments were very eye opening. As when you produce a film and your team all focus on the positive you start to lose site on the negative of the film. As we the team understand the story line and understand the story we are trying to show our audience. But this feedback gave me another perspective which was annoying as we worked quite hard and thought we produced a clear rough cut. However, we ended up just confusing our audience which is never good. So this allowed me to see another view point to know what to include in our opening scene so it will make more sense to our audience and have 'clarity'.

Also, I may have got carried away with the jerky handheld movement as I was trying to create a theme and impact making the killer seem somewhat 'unsteady'. But the jerky handheld just made the motion pictures unclear for the audience as well. This is was not good. So re-filming was the best solution for this feedback.

I feel like we used a lot of different distances, but we could include some more.

To conclude, I feel that I have followed the aims of the brief by creating the 2 minute thriller film. As I  made the titles/credits and opening two minutes of a thriller movie. All was produced by us with the exception of copyright free music, I carried out research and advertising for our movie by using blogs. However, I didn't film audience focus groups to find out there wants and needs for a movie. But I think I followed the brief.

Thriller Comparison - Miss Georgiou

I think I haven't completed a successful thriller but I think it is a decent thriller sequence. I think it wasn't successful because my sequence lacked consistency. Even though the sequence included the appropriate conventions in a opening thriller scene, it lacked clarity due to a less thought out narrative; very improvised.

I think that the main micro-element that expressed our creativity and understanding of thriller conventions the most was the sound. On our audience feedback we were told that our sound was one of our strong points as it created the sense of a eerie and tense atmosphere.

Young girl screaming sound included in our thriller. Click here.
Eerie sound included in our thriller. Click here.

Comparing my opening sequence to the successful thriller 'Halloween' 1978. We see that our thriller is conventional to this thriller due to inspiration, I feel that we carried out the correct conventions.

Firstly, In the narrative of Halloween the killer in the opening scene's identity is hidden, hidden identity is one of the themes displayed in the narrative.

Also in the narrative young people are used in a mysterious narrative similar to my own thriller opening. Representation of characters in Halloween displays that anyone can be the antagonist and it tries to drive away from the conventional murderer we tend to think of (middle aged white male) and instead uses a cute little boy, brother even, to display the character. This impacts one of the three S's shock/surprise. In my own thriller I used a family member as well for the antagonist, this creates confusion for the audience on why the killer would murder a 'loved one'.

 My sounds were very much inspired by a lot of things I watched/read in the thriller genre. However, Halloween used sounds such as children's sounds, natural noises (dog barking), dialogue and eerie high pitched sounds. That is also what I included, I included eerie high pitched sound, wind sounds, girl screaming sounds, police siren sounds, dialogue to make my thriller more realistic. My sounds were both a mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic sound.


Halloween used three main editing techniques wipe, jump cut and fast cutting. In my own thriller I used fade, jump cut and fast cutting. The reason I used these editing techniques are because they created more of an impact on the scene making it more conventional to the audience. For example, I used a jump cut to display an abrupt jump in time, this jump in time was connected to the scene the audience want revealed most. As it increased pace and was good to reveal a mystery scene. Making it conventional to the thriller genre.

Evidence of fade in my thriller opening

Wipe used in Halloween film opening

To conclude, by doing this analysis I realized that my thriller is very similar based on conventions and the use of micro-elements.

Rough cut - Miss Miller

A rough cut is the first stage in which the film begins to resemble it's final product. Rough cuts do not flow well and still undergo many changes before the release of the film. - Wikipedia. It is a form of offline editing.

The purpose of us creating a rough cut was to allow us to gain feedback from our peers on aspects of our thriller that were weak; so we could improve on those areas. It also allowed us to realise and notice if our work had clarity especially with the editing. As we made some mistakes in the editing production. 

The feedback we recieved to help us improve was to make the acting better, clearer narrative and less use of jerky handheld camera. But we were told that we created the element of suspense and the sound was effective.

However to improve on these weak areas we willl firstly improve the script. Meaning actors will speak, more dialogue. As there wasn't much in the rough cut. So this will improve acting and allow the narrative to be more understandable.

   Also to make the narrative clearer, I will include the killer in it. As the identity was hidden throughout, this is a good convention in a thriller. However, the audience will get confused if they don't see the killer. So we decided to add that in. 

  We also re-filmed the jerky handhelds parts to make the frame more still and clearer for the audience to watch. We did the handle camera by purpose. However, again the convention went to far and should of been kept to a minimum. To let the audience understand the narrative better.

All this feedback has allowed us to know what we need to improve on. And change our perspective to what the audience see. As they don't understand our vision they only know what they see.

List of all feedback

+ve

-good eerie sound

-good location

-created tension and suspense

-created mystery

-ve

-better acting needed

-quite confusing

-didn't understand narrative 

-camera too jerky

Group storyboard - Miss Miller

Group storyboard

In this post I will be discussing the storyboard our group came up with and the elements/micro-elements involved in my opening thriller scene. It consisted of different ideas and frames which came from our individual storyboard ideas; which were then incorporated into one group storyboard.

Doing this group storyboard has really developed our opening thriller scene. In our individual storyboards, our narratives were not as good as they could of been. Therefore, by doing this group storyboard we were able to organize our frame/shot timings better.

In this first page, the first frame included the use of micro-elements, such as cinematography. We displayed a long shot in the first frame to show the audience the setting of where the narrative is taking place. We also put down what sound this frame would have, we decided on eerie sound to create a mysterious and suspense atmosphere. In this frame we decided that for editing we would use a straight cut. We chose this shot because it is basic and the scene was also basic and simple.

     

This first frame idea was taken from my storyboard, we done this because we felt it opened the scene well and we were all inspired by the thriller film 'Halloween' opening, which is similar to our opening frame.

The next frame used cinematography, for movements, such as panning. Panning allows us to see more of a setting in a frame. The camera movement is like the natural movement of how our head moves. (Side to side, up and down) The panning will show the surroundings and to make the location look unknown and isolated/derelict.

 

  This frame was include from Ellie's storyboard. Ellie decided on a panning movement because it created the effect that someone was out there. And that someone else was looking at the house.

The next frame on the page was the scene where the jerky handheld camera was used (cinematography). Jerky handheld movement is when the camera is held in hand or given the appearance of being hand-held. It suggests unprepared, unrehearsed filming of reality, and can provide a sense of dynamics, immersion, instability or nervousness. - Wikipedia. This will be accompanied with on-screen sound of leaves ruffling and footsteps. It will also use abrupt jump cuts (editing) to show the passing of time.

 This was from James'initial individual storyboard. 

The next page showed more frames. The first frame uses cinematography, a mid shot of the character. This mid shot showed the importance of this character. This came from all of our individual storyboards. The frame will also include dialogue/speech to inform the audience of whats going on. 

 

The next frame uses cinematography, such as panning movement again. This allows us to see the character jogging out the house and to show that the character has left the scene. 

 This idea came from Ellie's storyboard.

The next frame showed the front of the house again and used panning to show the window which is open which allows the antagonist to get in.

The next frame then shows the antagonist inside the house and then closing the window.

This is the use of a jump cut to show the passing of time to make the thriller easier to understand. Also it allowed the codes/connotation of windows to be shown from freedom to trapped. 

This idea came from my storyboard.

 

 

 

The next frame shown located the inside of the house switching to a new location. Showing the girl in the house. The cinematography used was high angles to show a different view of the character and to make the victim look inferior. Also close-ups of items were used to show how every day actions were going on just before the victims killed. Close ups in following frames were used to show the victims facial expressions. Mise-en-scene, such as low-key lighting was used to create suspense and tension. Also a female victim was used to produce vulnerability and innocence so the audience can connect with the protagonist. These were themes/conventions we learnt in class. Therefore, it was all of our ideas to do this as we all included this in our individual storyboards.