Evaluation AS 6

http://prezi.com/_wdo2d0v1h7f/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Q6) What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the process of developing my group and I’s ideas to create a final product, I learned a various amounts of skills regarding constructing the product using different technologies. For example, in order to plan and evaluate our opening sequence as well as research what makes a successful thriller, I used blogger. Using blogger allowed me to document each of my processes on what I needed to do and give me a clear understanding of where I was up to, and how to go about certain key elements that are needed within a thriller. Having done so, I was able to document my progress with regards to the skills that I have learned and the skills of which I have now applied to my opening sequence. I researched into conventions of a thriller and what made thrillers successful so I would then be able to produce a successful final product. Blogger also allowed me to keep all of my work organised and clear for myself and others to read, this was important throughout because lack of organisation would delay the process of making the thriller as I wouldn’t have known how to carry out the planning of my opening sequence clearly. Another technology I used was the camera and tripod. The camera enabled me to do the filming and with the opportunity to film various scenes from different camera shots meant that we were able to, when editing, find it easier to piece it together smoothly and successfully. Alongside with the camera that I used came a tripod, the tripod helped my group and I to accomplish the necessary camera shots on an even and stable level so that our filming looks more professional such as high angle. Having handheld camera shots in thrillers is very successful, but by having it too much can make our final product look unprofessional and amateur which is something my group and I do not want to achieve, therefore using the tripod allowed us to experiment with how to handle our camera shots too. Moving onto the technology that helped my group and me to develop our final product further, is an editing programme called Final Cut Pro X. This programme allowed my group and I to view all of our recordings together and enabled us to see what pace our final product would be at, as well as viewing it with the ability to add in special effects so that when our audience finally views our final product, they will be more engaged with it. With regards to the sound and credits, that was also put together on Final Cut Pro X, but this part of our final product was under control with my group member; George Moore. He had the ability and understanding to present to Vasil and me certain sounds and style of opening credits that he felt would be successful within our opening sequence. He was able to pick the sounds that complimented our opening sequence very much and helped to develop our opening sequence even further so that it was finished. 

When editing my thriller I was able to edit sound into the opening sequence by using freesound.org which helped me to include sound in order to help create tensions and allow shock, surprise and suspense within my opening sequence.When it came to recording, my group and I worked well together in order to achieve the camera shots that required during the process of filming. For example, when we used a high angle during the filming in the bathroom, we found it difficult because we had to find the point at which would appeal to the audience and make the characters look vulnerable creating the necessary atmosphere. We over-came this difficulty by lifting the camera onto the tripod and tilting the camera slightly and holding the tripod firmly so the camera angle looks stable. Another difficulty that we came across was getting the camera from POV. This was first used through the killers eyes, it was challenging to film with because we had to make it seem that the audience is looking through the killers eyes and so if the camera is too far forward or out of sync with how the killer is walking, it would arouse suspicion and make the final product look amateur which isn’t something that my group and I want to accomplish. However, we were able to get over this obstacle by getting the killer to hold the camera as close to his eyes as possible whilst he walks so that there is a clear link between the camera angle and the killer so the audience are able to see this. 

During the process of editing, I noticed some of the strengths and weaknesses of mine that I feel helped towards making my opening sequence. A strength of mine was being able to look at the opening sequence and see if the timing of the frames were accurate in the sense of being able to create the wanted atmosphere that we wanted our audience to feel and notice. For example, at the beginning of the opening sequence I have the male character ‘Dave’ driving home from work, and if this shot was too long the audience would get bored of this very quickly, however if the frame was too short then it would be unclear to audience as to what’s going on. Therefore I felt that by finding the balance between the two would allow the audience to get an understanding of what’s going on, and also to keep a consistency of change throughout the opening sequence in order to make it more interesting and therefore our audience would engage more. I felt that another one of my strengths was my ability to help towards how smoothly our final product run. It was a joint group effort of which we all excelled at and so it was a group decision on how to run things, I feel that this was a lot of my strength because if my other group members missed something out, I would pick up on it and give them feedback so we would be able to progress our final product even further and more successful. Something that I felt was my weakness was my inability to decide on the correct sound used, and therefore my group and I decided upon George doing this role in picking the sound as he’s work and efforts with this section of our opening sequence meant that it would be successful. Though I am not bad at putting appropriate sound in within our opening sequence, I felt I couldn’t do this to its full potential so as a result of this I chose not to take control of sound.

One area in our film that reflects my editing skills is during the last four frames. This is because this part of the opening sequence shows the most eventful parts where successful editing is heavily required. I believe this to be my most successful editing throughout the whole opening sequence, as despite this being an equally shared group effort; I was able to make sophisticated decisions based upon how certain shots should happen and what pace. For example, in the twenty first frame there is a close up of our male character finding the now dead female victim. From this point onwards, there is a fast pace which I suggested as it represents panic and being unstable. This would make the audience feel unsteady and fearful of the ongoing events, Vasil and George agreed that this would be good to include in the opening sequence so therefore I felt that this was a very successful element to use. Reflecting on my efforts during the process of editing I feel this was my most successful piece of editing as without my direction as to how fast or slow the frames are, we may not have created the tension to the correct standard of creating tension and engaging the audience.

In order to create my evaluation I first used Microsoft Word but as I came to finish I converted each section into different parts onto blogger and prezi. Blogger allowed me to display my different sections and answers clearly and then allowed me to convert my work on to Prezi which is a modern power point and allows me to show an advance and smart way of displaying my work and show my understanding further.

Evaluation AS 5

Q5) How did you attract/address your audience?

As part of finding out what I could include in my opening sequence, I had to explore ways of which to attract the audience and how I would go about doing so. In order to help me, I looked at the work of successful thrillers of the same target audience as ours and took inspiration.  For example, I looked at thrillers with the audience of 15 such as Scream 4. There is a lot of gore used throughout the film however the concept and level of how barbaric it gets is minimal, therefore when it came to filming my opening sequence I was confident in knowing that if I wanted to, I could include swearing and a lot of violence. By looking at successful thrillers and taking inspiration from them, I was able to generate unique ideas and as a result of it I came up with ideas that I felt would attract the audience that I wanted. I was able to do so by adding youngish characters, therefore making them a big part of my thriller as the audience that I want to attract is young. I also took it amongst myself in order to help with my research towards getting a better understanding of thrillers.

I was also aiming to attract my target audience by carrying out various types of research that can be seen on my blog (danniellacrossmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013). I created a questionnaire which helped towards get the audiences opinion so I could adapt it into my opening sequence and therefore it would be more successful, as if the audience have their say in what goes into it, they will be more willing to want to watch it and then tell their friends about it. This means I would gain more views, which leads to more people talking about my final product so that we can achieve what a good reaction from our audience.  For example, in my questionnaire I asked questions such as 'what setting would you personally use in a thriller?’ where 32% answered that they would film a thriller in a house. This meant that I could take from this that using this would make the audience want to watch my opening sequence and therefore my opening sequence would gain a lot of popularity. Moving onto the rest of the research that can be seen on my blog, I looked at age certificates and the BBFC. Researching through the age certificates and the BBFC allowed me to get a clear understanding of the do’s and don’ts of which I could include into my opening sequence that my group and I were working on. This therefore determined whether the final product was successful or not. Furthermore, I worked to help attract the ideal target audience to our thriller, I studied a varied amount of clips from thrillers that I saw as very successful, such as: Sleeping with the Enemy, Halloween Town, Fatal Attraction, Scream 2, Saw, Black Swan, Shutter Island, The Strangers and many more. This allowed me to get a lot of ideas and inspirations, before developing these inspirations into my own work so that my opening sequence with my group is successful. Having done all of this research, I felt that I was able to go into filming confidently because I had learned different skills that other directors and producers have used, and applied it to my own work. Some inspirations that I took from a lot of these films can be seen in my opening sequence, for example, when the killer enters the vulnerable house, it goes to point of view for the camera shot. I wanted to include this because it made the audience unaware of what’s going to happen and in heightens the sense of enigma. I also included a knife as part of the iconography and I got this idea from scream 2, I used a knife as I felt this was a widely used weapon that was conventional to a thriller and would portray fear and tension the most to my audience. By gathering this primary and secondary it helped to assist my group and me with an outline as to what targets I need to meet in order to gather our audience and attract them into watching my final product so it is then successful.

Evaluation AS 4

Q4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

A target audience is important as it allows me to recognise the scenes appropriate for my thriller so that during filming I am aware of what I can and can't include. My target audience is 15 which means that I am able to explore many techniques freely without having to limit what to include, however some scenes may be inappropriate for example if there are scenes of an extreme extent it wouldn't allow me to use the scenes.When my group and I were creating our opening sequence we took into consideration that the scenes used needed to be appropriate to our target audience. Having a target audience allows us to know what levels of features we can include in our opening sequence so that it’s not too extreme for our slightly younger audience. We needed to be careful of the amount of strong language, gore and violence used as too much of it wouldn’t be appropriate for our target audience and perhaps be too much, ending in the result of being too scary. We made our target audience the age of 15+ because we felt that it would welcome a large variety of age’s to watch our thriller, for example where we have included someone breaking into the house and a dead body of a young girl in or opening sequence, it would be insensitive to use for an audience for 12+ or under. Therefore we felt at 15, teenagers are able to handle a great deal more without being scared and would be able to cope with the more fearful scenes well.

The target audience should feel engaged with my opening sequence throughout because my group and I included strong elements to hold their attention and to gain their liking towards our work. For example, I have included two characters that are very likeable. This is because they represent a happy home and in love, they’re celebrating their anniversary so it makes the audience happy to know that these peaceful characters are happy, helping them to develop a relationship with our characters and so when something bad happens, it makes them want to help. I have also included some useful camera angles such as close ups to show the facial expressions of the vulnerable characters, this often shows the fear coming from them and as a result of this, the audience feel sympathetic towards our characters as they have therefore developed some sort of liking towards them. Another element that has helped to develop the relationship between the audience and the characters is the sound track. This can be heard when our male character, ‘Dave’ has returned home from work and discovers his dead wife... Whilst Dave is running to the bottom of the stairs trying to escape, the heavy beat of his heart can be heard. The use of this diegetic sound really emphasises the characters panic and fear, this makes the audience tense and feel sorry for our character and desperate to help. Due to these elements, I believe that our audience would find a connection and relationship with my characters and therefore our opening sequence would appeal to them.

Evaluation AS 3

http://prezi.com/_wdo2d0v1h7f/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Q3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

When taking into consideration what film company would distribute my film, I thought that Dimension Films would be best suited. Dimension Films has distributed the film 'Scream' which is the film of which I have likened to the most with my opening sequence, therefore due to it's success with this distribution company and gives me confidence that if I were to distribute my opening sequence with Dimension I would have a successful product. This is because it is a well-known company and would be able to bring my thriller a lot of success and customers, therefore allowing making profit on this so instead of breaking even, my group and I’s hard work pays off for the better. A media institution is important to consider when distributing my thriller because without it, there wouldn’t be such a strong opportunity to allow our thriller to be successful because it wouldn’t be known. A big part of a thrillers success is due to the company that distributed it because if it is a known company with good products, people are more willing to sit and watch it because they know that stereotypically that the films released by the distributor are at a high quality and excellent standard, where as if it is a less known, less successful company then not a lot of people would go to see it as there wouldn’t be such strong advertisement and promotion around it. Therefore, due to Dimension Film’s well-known, excellent reputation for thrillers, I would have chosen this company to distribute my thriller.  Dimension Films has distributed thrillers such as all of the Scream films, The Mist, Hole and many more. These are successful thrillers with a large audience and so by having Dimension Films distribute my thriller I would gain a large backing to because the audience that usually go to watch films distributed by Dimension Films would come to watch my final product.

Evaluation AS 2

Q2) How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

In my opening sequence my group and I wanted to do something unconventional and something to throw our audience of trail in order to shock them and as a result, engage our audience. For example, we didn’t use the typically seen character of just a female victim and a masked killer. We made sure that there were two victims, one female and the other one male. The reason for this is to create shock for our audience and as a result of this, end up with a range of surprises throughout the thriller which will make the tension in the atmosphere consistent. Despite the unconventional use of different characters, there is still a hidden stereotyped that we have used to begin with, which can confuse the audience. This is because we start the opening sequence with a male driving home from work, which shows the audience that the main character is a male. This is unusual to see a male victim in a thriller as men are seen to be strong, intelligent and brave and so by using this dominant, male character it confuses the audience by leading them into a false sense of security. However, as the opening sequence moves on, you see a blonde female victim who is seen as the weaker out of the two characters shown so far which indicates that the first character to be killed will be this character. Therefore, through this is would be accurate to say that there is a clear stereotype in gender that my group and I have used even though it may seem otherwise. Due to this it comes across as my opening sequence isn’t conventional, however other elements such as having the blonde young female being killed first takes inspiration from Hitchcock’s Psycho where the main character dies very quickly and therefore follows the conventions of a thriller. This appeals to a lot of social groups as it there is a young female which attracts all different types of audiences, and an older man which also appeals to the audience, my media product represents the younger generation to be more vulnerable and weaker whilst portraying the older generation to be wiser and therefore more capable of looking after themselves. This is because the younger character is killed first, and then the older is after having realised what events where taking place around him.

Despite this, I have made sure that my audience can build a relationship with the characters. I was able to make sure of this through various different ways, such as the characters appearance and personality. I made the female a young, vulnerable girl which I felt would be suitable as young girls from the ages of 15+ would be able to look up to, and the characters approachable way allows the audience to feel sympathetic towards her and feel sad if something bad was to happen. A lot of teenage girls need inspiration and if I have an attractive, natural beauty it may encourage girls to want to base their appearance on themselves, rather than these other women with unrealistic figures and flawless skin. This builds a relationship with the audience because it inspires the younger audience to want to be like my character as it shows a realistic character and therefore a realistic wish for my audience to want to be natural and be happy with whom they are, rather than base their appearance on society’s views on how females should look. The male audience may also be gripped by this as having an attractive female within the production may hold their attention. Having a strong, sophisticated male character appeals a lot to the male audience as it shows a man with a realistic job, and successful which could inspire our male audience to want to aspire to great things like what our male character is. In a way, this is a stereotypical representation of gender as society views women as the weaker gender who are used solely to gain male attention and to inspire young girls to be like them, and males to be the stronger gender who are able to work and provide for the family, making them independent and automatically a role model without working towards it. I done this so that instead of creating a confusing and incorrect of each role within a family, there is already a set idea on how society thinks that things should be within the family and what roles each gender have. This therefore makes my opening sequence easier to follow from the audience’s perspective.

Evaluation AS 1

Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Looking at the generic conventions of a thriller, I was able to pick up on the blonde female victim. I noticed that blonde female victims are religiously used within thrillers down from the 1960’s to this present day and I believe this is because blondes are stereotyped to be this vulnerable, unintelligent and easy target type. Psycho, Scream 2, Human Centipede and Jaws are some examples of the films in which I have witnessed a female blonde victim being used, these are successful thrillers. Also by including the vulnerable blonde victim, it shows my clear understanding of how thrillers work in order to create and set the scene, therefore my group and I felt it would be a good decision to make our victim a blonde female.

Another feature that my group and I took inspiration from is in Shutter Island where the main character is wondering around what appears to be an abandoned underground place, there is the sound of a heartbeat which had been to be over exaggerated as it emphasises the fear and emotion that the character is feeling. Therefore we felt this would be good to include in our opening sequence because it shows that our character is feeling scared and as a result of this, engages our audience as they feel sympathetic towards the character. By placing this use of non-diegetic sound in this particular part of our opening sequence, it heightens the theme of fear and helps towards creating shock, surprise and suspense. 

Looking at iconography, I was able to see that typically, knives are a used throughout a lot of thrillers. I have seen them being used in Psycho, Scream 2 and various other well-known films. This use of iconography helps us to establish the theme of it being a thriller and enforces to the audience that there is something wrong going to happen and once again created shock, surprise and suspense. For example in my opening sequence we have used a knife, this can be seen when the killer first enters the vulnerable house and goes to the draw to pick up the knife. The impact of this on the audience creates a sense of tension and danger in the atmosphere so the audience become more cautious with what events could happen within the opening sequence.

Another generic convention of a thriller is the location used within thrillers that I noticed is a house. For example, in films such as Paranormal Activity, Halloween Town, Scream 2 and The Strangers and many more there is the element of reality to the films as it makes the audience feel vulnerable. This is because the 'home' is scene as a safety net, and so by showing a scary scenario makes the audience feel anxious towards the film and their safety in their homes, showing that this element is used successfully. Therefore, I felt that if my group and I was to use this idea in our opening sequence, it would help my group and I to create a successful thriller because our characters are everyday people who own homes which relates to the audience because they are the same, as a result of this our audience will be more likely to get the three elements of shock, surprise and suspense. 

One other generic convention of a thriller that my group and I have used is low key lighting. Low key lighting can be seen in films such as Saw 2, A Time To Kill, Scream 2, Paranormal Activity, Shutter Island and many more. These films are successful thrillers that explore the effects of low key lighting and therefore I was eager to include this within my opening sequence as I felt it would be a hit and create the audience to feel shock, surprise and suspense as well as becoming expectant of something bad to happen as a low key lighting creates an eerie atmosphere and a sense of foreboding.

Lastly, I was able to see that another generic convention of a thriller is the editing. It can be seen in films such as Paranormal Activity and Saw 4 which use handheld camera. This makes the scene seem unstable and out of control which can be seen as a metaphor for how the characters are feeling in this type and the state of their mind at this point in the film. Therefore, my group and I was very enthusiastic towards including hand held camera within my opening sequence as it allows the audience feel that there is an unstable atmosphere creating the audience to feel uneasy and panicked. This helps contribute towards the shock, surprise and suspense of my opening sequence.

Out of all of the above listed thrillers, as a group we decided upon likening our thriller to Scream 2. We felt that our opening sequence tied into Scream 2 the most because it contains many different and unique inspirations, so therefore we wanted to include them into our own opening sequence and be able to show our understanding of the effective techniques by using them and changing them in our opening sequence in order to show what skills we have learnt and how our research has helped us to produce a fantastic final product.

Evaluation AS

My thriller was based on the inspirations of many different thrillers put together with my own unique twist on it, it was based on a male and female victims being stalked by a criminal who is on trial at court with the husband being the defendant for the previous victim. The stalker wants revenge and will stop at nothing to get this, including the murder of the two victims.  I felt that we worked particularly well within my group in order to have a strong final product with our two minute opening sequence. My group consists of Vasil Nikolov, George Moore and myself. Throughout the process of creating my opening sequence we were able to take into consideration each other’s ideas and adapt them into the unique group opening sequence.

Each of us shared the responsibilities of different production roles, and we shared these roles by picking out each other’s strengths and allocating the roles accordingly. When allocating each other with these roles we looked at the qualities that one would need in order to do them:

Producer -Prepare and then supervise the making of a film before presenting the product to a financing entity or a film distributor. They might be employed by a film studio or be independent, yet either way they helm the creative people as well as the accounting personnel.
Directors- the Director is the driving creative force in a film's production, and acts as the crucial link between the production, technical and creative teams. Directors are responsible for creatively translating the film's written script into actual images and sounds on the screen

Actors- Persons who perform in a film, programme or on stage.

Director of photography - The person who is responsible for all operations concerning camera work and lighting during the production of a film.

Sound Technicians-alter and balance the levels of different sounds that are recorded

Screenplay Writer-A screenwriter or scriptwriter or scenarist is a writer who practises the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media such as films, television programs, comics or video games are based.

Editors-the activity of selecting the scenes to be shown and putting them together to create a film

By doing so, we were able to see that I would be best suited to the role of Mise-en-scene coordinator. I put myself forward for this role because I'm a creative person and therefore I believed that I would achieve the best for the group in this section of production. My group trusted me to look after things and keep the group organized with bringing different props and taking control of hair and makeup. Hair and makeup is crucial in our thriller as without the ideal appearance, the genre of our opening sequence may be unclear. This way I was able to dress our characters according to the atmosphere that my group and I have created and being able to look at make up for the characters meant that it would allow our targeted audience to warm towards our victims which is important because it helps our opening sequence to be successful because the audience would have created a relationship with the characters. I wasn't allocated the role of director, editor or producer because my leadership skills are strong, but not as strong as the boys so we felt that therefore the boys would produce the better role.

I believe as a group, we worked together and bounced off each other’s idea's to create a successful opening sequence. As a group we were able to apply different skills that we have all learned and were able to make improvements to each other’s work with constructive criticism and therefore ended up with a successful end result. However, despite how our group functioned and worked well together, there were a few hiccups and if done again I would suggest more people in the production roles as it was stressful to share the roles equally without certain members being under more stress than the others. Also, I believe we would re arrange the role for Vasil as we know it was difficult for him to supply the group with his usual standard work and therefore his role with George fell more onto George as he then had double the work to do, so this was unfair. I'd also liked to have been allocated more roles in our production as despite my role of MES coordinator being a big role, I’d like to have contributed more. But I am happy with our group and it was pleasant to work with them, and I am happy with our end result.