Film and Research evaluation- Lizzie Werboweckjy

Final Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vfAAIrsXtg&feature=youtu.be

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

I would say that our film has stuck to the generic conventions held about psychological thriller films as the audience can immediately tell the genre of our film from the first few seconds as we see that a smartly dressed man (shirt and tie) enters his home after having done a full day of work and enters a dark, bare garage. He closes the door immediately upon entering the room and takes out a hidden key. Throughout the first scene of the film we only see one character which suggests loneliness which is how most thriller films generally start.

It is obvious from the typography of the font in which the credits are written in that there is mystery within our film and it gives you a clue that the film is based on the journal which is when they first appear. Also suggesting this is the fact that the font has words written inside it shows that everything is hidden inside it. Which is also a reason why we used an over the shoulder shot of Daryl to look into the journal, suggesting it is private.

We also challenge some of the common conventions for psychological thriller however by using the iconography because when we first see Daryl you expect him to be an ordinary man due to the way he is dressed however, this changes as when he takes his tie off in the hall of his house it is as if he is changing roles or personality to become a killer like he has a dual personality whereas in other similar films such as The Orphan it is clear that ‘Esther’ has a hidden secret as when we first see her she is painting like a normal child might do. However her paintings have another side to them as when you put a UV light on them they have a different meaning.

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

At the beginning of our film, we do use the typical stereotype of genders. Our protagonist, Daryl, is a very powerful male whereas both of our female characters seem to be weaker and more vulnerable. To make Daryl look more powerful over the two females, Willow and Evie, the first shot we see of him is a low angled shot which immediately shows the audience that he has power and importance.

However, we also break the stereotypical male villain with Daryl’s character as his day job is a school teacher which is generally someone who loves to be around other people. We used mise en scene to show the change of personality when he takes off his tie it is a symbol of him changing from a teacher to a killer.

He goes into his garage where he begins planning murders. We use an over the shoulder shot as Daryl is looking through a journal to suggest that it is private and he doesn’t want anyone to see what is inside it which matches the stereotypical male who is generally secretive and he prefers to be alone. Also suggesting this is when Daryl walks through the corridor the walks away from the camera with his back facing the camera which goes from a medium shot to a medium long shot. He then walks into the garage and closes the door as if he is shutting the audience out.






In the first two minutes of the film it looks as if we follow the stereotypical female character because they are both perceived as the victims of the story. For instance, Daryl kills Evie and Willow runs away as she is scared. Here, Daryl has all the power, however, in the full film the roles change and Willow has the power and Daryl is the victim. Therefore, we challenge the stereotypical gender role as we use a role reversal.

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

I think that New Line Cinema would be a media institution that would distribute our film because our theme is psychological thriller and this genre of film is regularly released for a national audience. The genre psychological thriller have previously done extremely well because every story line is different and you cannot predict the endings like you can with most films because they can twist and turn at any point in the film.

New Line Cinema is a very well known distribution company and have previously distributed many films similar to ours. For example, New Line Cinema produced and distributed the film Se7en which is extremely similar to our film so they would be an appropriate distribution company for us because they are able to advertise our film in a way that will attract an audience.

New Line Cinema would be the most beneficial distributors because they have distributed a large amount of horror thriller films that are similar to ours and so they have had plenty of experience when designing eye-catching posters and trailers. Furthermore, because they are well known distributor’s people are more likely to watch our film if they are familiar with the work of the distributors because they will know the types of that they have distributed and so they have a fan base already.

If we were to release our film to a niche audience, we would need an independent distributor who was able to distribute our genre of film very well because we would need a big budget to make the film and without an experienced distributor we wouldn’t be able to make enough money for a profit. Therefore, I think that Optimum would be appropriate for us as they distribute over 200 British films a year.  

Finally, I think that the most effective way to distribute our film would be by using blanket marketing because this is a technique usually used by larger companys and it aims to market your film for a national audience. We cannot exactly control what age group sees the marketing but it will be a widely known product if we used this method. It can be used in magazines, posters on buses and bus stops, or on billboards and so the majority of people will see our film. However, this would be extremely expensive so we will need to make sure that we have plenty of funds available which might be a problem.

An example of blanket marketing would be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, they had a set of posters released which a different character on each. They advertised in cinemas, on the television, buses, bus stops and billboards.

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

We carried out a lot of research to find out our target audience but because I believe that our film would be for a national audience it wasn’t as difficult as it may have been if it was to be aimed at a niche audience. If our film was to be for a niche audience it would mean that it was aimed for a specific group of people. Films aimed at a niche audience don't normally do as well as films for a national audience because they have a smaller audience making it harder to make a profit. However, the questionnaire that we made and sent out really helped to give us an exact idea of who our target audience will be and what they want to see.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDh6RHA3eWhWRTV3X1Q3NWx1akt3REE6MQ

However, a lot of people who took part in the questionnaire thought that our film would have a film certificate of 18 mainly because there would be a lot of blood and horror. Also, because our main character Willow, suffers from having schizophrenia it deals with adult themes which may be why they think this.

However, we decided that our target audience may be from the age of 15+ aimed at males and females. This is another reason why we gave the film a 15 age certificate rather than an 18. Even though people who took part in our questionnaire said they would give our film an 18 age certificate, after researching into similar films which have the same genre to ours have also been rated as a 15 such as The Orphan and Se7en and they deal with either strong violence and blood or adult themes such as mental illness’s .

After looking on the BBFC website we came to the conclusion that our film would be classed as a 15 because it contains strong horror and violence and mild swearing.  It does contain adult themes however the audience who will be watching the film will understand why we chose this theme and will not be offended by the way characters are portrayed and the content of schizophrenia.  Here is a link to show the differences between age 15 classification and age 18 classification.

http://www.bbfc.co.uk

5.   How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract our audience we first came up with a basic storyline. Once we had completed that we put our storyline on websites such as Facebook and Twitter for people to give their opinion on how it could be improved. Our original plan (which we posted online) was much less interesting and most of the comments said that Willow, our actual killer needed to have a motive. And so, we decided that she suffered from a very bad case of schizophrenia. This meant that we knew that people would be interested in watching our film because we took their advice on board.

We also used some unique shots to involve our audience and make them feel as if they are involved the film as well. To do this, we used an over the shoulder shot of him looking through the journal which suggests that you are spying on him. It also makes you feel the tension as you know it is private. Then, we used an establishing shot in the ally scene where Willow walks past the camera and Evie and Daryl are directly in front of it. Making you feel as if you’re in the scene with them. It also puts the audience in the position of the killer.

Even though we have broken the stereotypical shots to attract an audience for a psychological thriller, we have followed the typical use of iconography of psychological thriller because in both of the main scenes we have used dark and scary situations for example, the dark ally and garage.

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

The camera that we used was a DV camera which gave us a high quality picture and was easy to use. We came to a conclusion that it would be better if we didn’t add any effects on the camera because if we decided that we didn’t like it whilst we are editing we cannot delete the effect. So any effects we wanted were added in editing.

The software that we used in post-production to edit our film was Final Cut Express. This allowed us to create a sound bridge in order to carry the sound over to another shot to make the shots look and sound more believable. In the ally scene, we changed the settings to multiply and changed the opacity to 78 which darkened the whole the scene making it look as if it was night time.

This software also allowed us to import files such as the music that we used as our background music. Photoshop is good for image editing and it has allowed us to create professional looking screenshots that you would see in a film such as this.We found it difficult agreeing on an appropriate title sequence that we thought would match with the theme of the film. So, in our own time we separately researched or created different fonts that we could use and put them on a mind map and came to a decision on what font to use. In the end we decided on a font which I had found from a website. I thought that this would be appropriate because inside the font it has text which suggests that the film is going to be based around the journal that we see at the beginning of the film and so therefore, it would link in well with our storyline.

http://bcasmedia2012group7.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/font-ideas.html

www.fontspace.com  

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

When we were given the task to create the titles and opening of a new fiction film we first decided as a group what genre of film we wanted to make. Once we had decided to make a horror film we began researching into other similar films while coming up with a basic storyline. We then changed our storyline and genre to psychological thriller and researched into things such as iconography and conventions of psychological thriller films.

We then organised a shot list for the day we were shooting because then we could begin filming straight away because we were prepared and organized. We didn’t use all the shots in our final cut because we made sure that on the day of filming we used more shots that would be needed because it meant that when editing we had a wider variety of shots to use.

I also composed a list of tricky shots so we were able to practice them before filming so we wouldn't have any difficulties.

http://bcasmedia2012group7.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/tricky-shots-and-camera-angles.html

Looking back at the preliminary task I feel that I have improved a lot when filming as I was the camera operator in both tasks and I now know what shots work to create a certain mood and because I had become more confident it gave me chance to experiment with different shots to make our film stand out. When filming for the preliminary task, we used match on actions and followed the 180 degree rule which helped us when filming for our 2 minute film because we had already practiced filming them so it allowed us to make them look smoother and more realistic by making sure that there wouldn’t be any continuity issues such as stepping in on the wrong foot.

As you can see here we have adapted our skills from the preliminary task and applied them to our film.

In our preliminary task we used a match on action and follwed the 180 degree rule and we also used this in our two minute film. However in our film, we had to deal with space issues because we were filming in a tight space which made it difficult to film as we needed the tripod to be quite high so you could clearly see our antagonist, Daryl taking off his tie as a symbol of role reversal. However, he had to walk past the camera to make it look as effective as we wanted and we struggled for space. But from doing the preliminary task we knew ways of working around issues like this and so we used two of the tripod legs to stand the camera up and held it so it wouldn't fall or wobble.

 After filming the preliminary task we were then able to expand on our use of shots and be more creative with them. We used shots such as crab shots, low angled shots and shots where a character walks past the camera or away from the camera. We could do this because we had become confident with using the basic rules and shots such as match on action, long shot, medium shot and close ups ect we felt that we could try and use more complicated shots to create a certain mood or effect.

However, i understand that our film is not perfect and there are things that if we were to refilm, as camera operator i would change. I think that we should have had a close up of the pictures that Daryl pins to the wall as it would give a clear picture of the girl he is hunting. I would have also had a close up of Daryl dropping the murder weapon as he has killed his victim, Evie. This would have given us a wider range of shots and it would have pointed out certain key elemets in the film.

At the end of our preliminary task we used cross fade dissolve to end our film. We adapted this in our two minute film and used on several occasions. We used the cross dissolve to show a passage of time when the antagnoist is turning the pages of his journal. We used this to imply that he has a lot of murders and attacks hidden in the journal.

We also learnt how to use shot reverse shot which is generally used when two people are having a conversation. This is where you use over the shoulder shots to see the person speaking which is what we did in the preliminary task. However, in our film we used shot reverse shot but we didn't use it when our characters are having a conversation we used it to show tension between Daryl and Willow. We used this because after the stand off that the two characters have Willow runs away, this seems as if she has lost the stand off and Daryl is more powerful.