George Harding-Montogmery - Evaluation

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

The classic conventions of a Thriller film include:

- Enigma, an inexplicable occurrence or situation.
- Unrestricted Narration, the audience knows, sees and hears more than the characters.
- Iconography, identification and interpretation of symbols or themes.
- Protagonist and Antagonist, the ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ of the piece
- Binary Oppositions, when a situation is reducible to two possible outcomes or states.
- Use of Camera, Sound and Editing
- Mise en Scene 

·        In our Thriller opening we used many aspects of conventional Thriller films. Throughout the entirety of our Thriller opening, the face of the antagonist is never revealed. We used this enigma to create a sense of mystery and suspense and make the audience ask themselves questions; Who is he, why is his face never shown and what is this morning preparation leading to?

·        Although we don’t use unrestricted narration, at the beginning of the thriller opening the audience know less than the character does; he knows he’s a kidnapper but from the audiences point of view he’s an innocent man getting ready for the day.

·        Our main and most important use of iconography is the Koi fish tattoo on the back of the antagonist. As well the fish being the chosen symbol of the character, as a kind of trade mark, ‘Koi’ means good fortune and luck, which juxtaposes with the characters actual intent.

·        The camera angles and editing used in the Thriller opening are used to keep up the pace and keep the audience from seeing the antagonists face. I think the camera angles were very successful in doing this.

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

·        The antagonist shown in the Thriller introduction is a white man from the south of England, judging by his accent. The Mise en Scene, most notably set, costume and props, show that he is middle class.

·        The other character is a white female, but because she never speaks we cannot know where she is from; the other character’s accent suggests she is from the south of England too. The female character’s clothes are never shown, and she is not at home or work, so it is unclear as to what her social status is.

·        The female character is the stereotypical ‘damsel in distress’, but the antagonist is not a ‘typical’ villain. He’s neat and clean cut, everything in his house was tiday and he dressed well. This adds to the suspense at the beginning of the Thriller opening

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

An independent company would be more interested in this film than a larger company, however a larger company would be more beneficial for us as a team. An independent company I would like to distribute our film would be CoffeeFilms  or StudioCanal. These companies have done Thriller films in the past and have become quite successful as independent British companies.

LUCID: Thriller Trailer from Coffee Films

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

• As a thriller film, the target audience would have to be older, mid to late teens. Looking at the BBFC website, our film would be closer to a 15 than a 12. 
• I think the film would attract mostly teenage boys aged 16 – 40 because of its genre

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

•  The actors we used in our piece are in our target age range, so this would attract our audience.
• The genre is appealing to our target audience; Thrillers have always been popular with teenage boys 
• Two characters are male and female, so although it will attract a predominantly male audience, woman would be interested in seeing it too

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

• I have learnt how to properly use a camera and how to set up the camera to get good shots. I have also learnt how to position the LED lights to create the best effect on camera
• After filming I learnt how to use editing software like Final Cut Pro better, as before i only had a very basic knowledge

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

• I have learnt how to use Mise en Scene properly to create the best effect on camera. Before the preliminary task was set I knew next to nothing about arranging set and props to make the shots look better and to subtley suggest themes and symbols

Reece's Individual Evaluation

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

• We used a few conventions that are used regularly in films of the genre are trying to achieve. In the opening we wanted to reveal as little information about the character with the Koi tattoo so we kept the main antagonists face never appear in shot this can also be achieved with lighting and shadows but we used camera positioning to keep the entirety of the subjects face out we used this as it is a good way of keeping the antagonists identity a mystery to the viewer and making them wonder and try to think what the characters true identity is for the rest of the time until it actually is revealed  this keeps the viewer engaged and thinking so will keep their attention better.
• Our film doesn't actually reveal the antagonist to be the antagonist at first, the viewer may think that the character is the protagonist tension begins to build after he has finished eating breakfast with a quick cut in the sound and a drastic change of music to a more chilling and suspense building tone.
• By keeping the characters face out of shot and have him in a strange costume throughout the piece we are creating an enigma, the viewer questions "Why is he dressed up so much" or simply "what does his face look like"
• the later shot where the female is first shown is shot in a high angle and almost the POV of the antagonist also follows the convention of the victim as the camera is angle as high as we possibly could without losing the view of the victims facial features.

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

Our Thriller opening only shows 2 characters one a Teenage white female who is the victim and one white male whose age and other attributes are not established.

• The social class of the antagonist is middle-class which is obvious due to the style of house and his surroundings but he tries to come off more upper class by dressing up more than the average middle class person to an unnecessary degree in fact. The house is just the average suburb house with modest decorations and not too extravagant.
• Both genders are shown in a negative light in our film as the young female is shown to be weak and powerless at the hands of her kidnapper, this follows the classic stereotype of that men are strong and dominant and the females are the weak victims or are in need of protection, the male is the kidnapper so is obviously the powerful one in the scene and can command dominance over the subject such as when he speaks to her at the end of the opening he is speaking a command rather than a request this shows his power and control of the situation.
• AGE: age in this is not a particularly prominent part of the piece but the female does fit into that stereotype that you generally only see the young damsel in distress (commonly teenage girls in modern pieces) being captured by an older man generally middle aged and perhaps a sexual predator or just a bit more overbearing than the average person or with an obsession for power. 

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

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

There is no specific age group that our film may appeal to it would just appeal to any fan of any age who enjoys thrillers and any kind of film with suspense

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Using a prominent image like the koi to make it more memorable it was also the thumbnail for the video on Youtube and the tattoo would make an appealing and memorable poster and advertisement

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

Lighting is a lot more important than I had first realised and is a lot more difficult than anticipated especially when we were trying to replicate morning sunlight and low key lighting is a lot more difficult to do well seeing as we didn’t want it to be too strong we wanted a softer form of low key lighting to seem like a softer relaxed morning.

We also learnt that the more waste footage you have the better as you have more to work with and you have more flexibility while editing this just improves the quality of the film and makes it less frustrating as if one shot doesn't work you have more options and do not have to go back on set and re-film.

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

Same as the previous section lighting was surprisingly important and also difficult to get it how we wanted it but i feel as a group we made amazing progress in learning the importance of lighting and also how much waste footage is important when coming to the editing stage, speaking of editing the pace was difficult to get how we wanted with the time constraint of 2 minutes on the film as we had so much footage and we wanted to keep the majority of it to maintain a slow pace and build susspence but we managed to cut out a lot of unneeded footage and still maintain the pace we wanted so we learnt the importance of pace and to not be attached to footage so much and not feel bad about cutting footage out to make it look better

Daisy Hook - Evaluation.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
   For our work we had to create a thriller opening, and to do this we had to include the general conventions of a thriller: 

 - The Enigma
 - Suspense 
 - The Protagonist 

 - The Antagonist
 - Unrestricted/Restricted Narration
 - (and general camera work, editing, sound and mise en scene ) 

We certainly used these conventions some more than others , but considering we were creating an opening to a thriller we wanted to make it as clear as possible what genre it was. 

From the beginning it was clear that we pretty much all had the same idea of what we wanted to put across in our opening, we didn't want the audience to start presuming things so we tried to keep the plot to a fairly everyday morning routine.

we wanted it to come across as normal, until he goes to the shed. And that's where things start to get weird  We decided to put this at the very end of the opening because up until now you could have suspected that he was the antagonist. 

from what we can see here he is just going about his daily business.

But Whats this? 

Why is he putting gloves on?

Why is he going in the shed?

Yes thats right the seemingly nice man you would want to have a leisurely stroll  with has a woman tied up in his shed.

this is the reaction we wanted the audience to have. and i believe we have accomplished this.

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

In our product we only see two characters - both are unnamed and we know very little about both. We know more about the male character (M) so we shall focus on him.

Social Class - i would say M's character is in the middle verging on higher class. i say this because of the house he has. From what we can see in the film work we can see one bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen and a big garden, from this we can guess that he is fairly wealthy. also we can see that his clothes look rather expensive so from this we get the impression that he is upper middle class. another giveaway that he is from the upper middle class is how he speaks  even though he only says one line the way he speaks is often a clue of what social background they have.

- it is unclear what social class the female captive is as we cannot see her clothes, see where shes from hear her voice or have a background story, its hard to guess what class she is from she could be from a lower class, she could be from an equal class, or possibly even a higher class at this point we have no idea.

Gender - in our piece we have gone for the typical female stereotype for our  thriller (capture) situation, with a female being caught for some strange reason. but M is not a big brute of a man, hes not wearing the Bruce Willis vest and trousers with a leather jacket carrying a gangster magnum Bfr. 

rather he has a spoon and some muesli. we didn't want to have M being the main threat to begin with we wanted to put him across as this every day man getting ready in the morning.




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

 If i were to choose a company to distribute our film, i would pick studiocanal UK (also known as optimum), i feel this would be an ideal company for us, they have released quite a few major films


  - Tinker tailor, soldier spy

  - The evil dead trilogy

                                                          



- Seeking a friend for the end of the world  

- Casa de mi Padre

But they have also been responsible for getting many independent films off the ground!

- Bunny and the bull 

- Tyrannosaur 

- Submarine 
                

- Four lions 

- Brighton Rock 

I just think this institution would be perfect because they are a accredited name and well known for distributing incredible independent films.  

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

The audience for our product depends highly on the age restrictions and what certificate would be given. 

- From the feedback we've gotten on our opening, a couple have said they think the age restriction should be a 15, and seeing as most psychological thrillers are indeed a 15 i believe thats the certificate it deserves.

- i also think that it should be a 15 because if we were to create the rest of this film it would not warrant an 18 certificate because the content does not exceed the regulations of a 15 and the content exceeds the nature of a 12A.

One film that is also 15 is the psychological thriller is the film by Christopher Nolan - Unknown.

From research i've conducted i feel like we would be more targeting males aged 18-45. 

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I expect our audience will appreciate lots of aspects of our film.

- Seeing as this is a thriller we will attract our audience with correct marketing. 
- the protagonist is an everyday guy so will attract viewers because even though we don't admit it we all relate to the protagonist in films maybe not identically but maybe just a little thing like self preservation  a little bit of madness or in this case just an ordinary man wanting to create a little disturbance in the world. 
- the antagonist is a female, which will attract a young male audience, every man wants to be the hero, and in having a female in danger the younger of the audience will want to relate with the hero to save said male audience. 
- the opening will intrigue our audience and hopefully have them asking questions and wanting to watch the rest of the film to have the questions answered. 

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

this product?

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

At the start of this project i knew the very basics of filming, lighting and editing, but now i know much much more.

- Filming. When we started our filming day i decided to take charge in the filming aspect. until then i didn't really have much practice with a camera other than a couple of shots for our previous project and so i didn't know what to expect of my ability. it took a few tries to get the shot correct but in the end i got the hang of it. 
-My favorite shot shot i took was of the second sequence of the Reece walking towards the shed

I love this shot mainly because of the lens flare, but also because of the composition of the shot, how it slightly moves to follow him, how the shot is placed and how it is blocked by the panel of shed. 






Building of Character- When we were first constructing our opening, it was clear that most of us were on the same page about what we wanted the main character to be. but looking back at the preliminary work its clear we have come a long way, from dinosaur to a psychopath. we worked quite hard on making sure everything was right for this character, which sometimes resulted in changing things in our story board, or in most cases an argument which we managed to solve by taking a group vote on how we all wanted the character to come across as in the film.

Editing- with the editing we've all come a long way and i think you can see that in our film. for me personally i think i've progressed more working with the sound and music, creating a sound file, placing it in final cut and adjusting the levels to make it sound correct.

Ben Carnet - Evaluation

Completed Foundation Production - "KOI"

Target Audience Feedback

Target Audience Feedback

Shed Locations

The location we originally wanted, but we couldn't get permission to film here

We found a new location and made it dark so you couldn't see the  setting and it looked like a darkened shed. 

                                     

We put Daisy in the far corner and set up the camera so we could get a good close up shot of her face

                                     

So the shots wouldn't be in total darkness, we set up an LED light with diffuser.

We then got Daisy and Reece to record themselves breathing and speaking to put into the  shots later.