Evaluation Daniel Fairhall

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

The genre of thriller is assigned to a film if it displays certain forms and specifications. The way a film is put into the genre of thriller is due to the characteristics that it displays those being suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements, however there is many other subgenres of thriller such as mystery, crime and psychological thriller. The most common type of thriller that we see are crime thrillers as these are usually most successful both at box office and with the audiences some examples include ‘Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008)’ and ‘The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008). Although these are the most main stream of thriller genre for which the main theme is crime when we are presented with a psychological thriller the facts are that they are not initially as popular at the box office but then are liked by the audiences usually after DVD release for which the films become what is known as a cult film, such as ‘Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001). Our aims for what type of subgenre we were aiming to show was a crime thriller and we took inspiration from two sources the first being ‘Taken’ and the second being the PlayStation video game ‘Heavy Rain’ and the theme we were trying to create from this was a twisting storyline which would trip up the audience when they think they know what is going to happen. The way that we displayed this method in our opening was by using no dialogue from the main character as we knew that this way it would be difficult for the audience to determine any response from this character to find out if he was a strong or weak character judging by his behaviour and mannerism in the beginning. We also wanted to make the character as realistic as possible by making the mise en scene completely accurate to our aims which were to create a character between the age of 18-21 who would have a younger brother in order for the storyline to work. The way that we successfully achieved this was firstly by highlighting the age of the character as we needed someone of that age group so we used myself as I fitted this criteria. When we were discussing the costume we looked at mainstream fashion in this age group and we finalised on a typical Superdry jacket and jeans. The props that we used took a lot of thought and effort to make realistic for example in the housing scene we knew that the character was going to be running to the school as we had shot that part of the sequence first, which became a problem when it came to filming the house scene as there is a big drive which fit three cars and two of the cars were there which meant we had to move the cars out of shot and make sure they would not come back into shot. The reason for making this decision not to have cars on the drive was because we thought that it would not be realistic to have a character running to a school to save his little brother from getting kidnapped and as he leaves his house he does not take the car which is sitting on his drive.

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

In our thriller opening we discussed a few types of social groups that we could choose and at first we thought of using a female character as the lead there by instead of having a typical mainstream male hero against male villain, however we were unable to find a suitable female lead so we stuck with the mainstream choice of characters. As the story continues after the opening we see the representation of age as the little boy who has been kidnapped does attempt to escape but then we see the elder more experienced character regain the control. Another idea that we had would be that the kidnapper would be revealed towards the end as a woman this would mean that the conflict between genders would be almost flipped as the female character would have a substantial amount of evil power against a male character struggling to save the day. One of my inspirations for having a female villain comes from comic books or super hero films which is emerging as a new sun genre of action, for example ‘Catwoman’ from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and ‘Mystique in ‘X-Men 1, 2 and 3’. The way that we aimed to represent the main character is an average male adult who is completely out of his depth in terms of Special Forces training like Liam Neeson in Taken, but instead we tried to make him look like a typical male character. The way we did this was by not having him driving a big car or carry a gun on him but the main factor was that he could not be old so that he would have some sort of experience at something and also that he was not a large person who could kill people with his bare hands.

3. What kind of media institution might describe your media.
The way that I would describe my media would be as an independent opening to a film which fits into the thriller genre. There are many ways in which the film could be distributed, if the film was more high concept and had a higher budget then the ways in which the product could be distributed would be to mainstream cinemas such as Cineworld or Odeon however the film is not high concept and also does not have a high budget there for the film would have to be distributed by independent cinemas such as the Duke of Yorks in Brighton. However I think that the film would be a lot popular if we were to experiment with the distribution of the film and what i mean by this is that the film could be distributed through online methods through film streaming websites such as LoveFilm or Netflix where independent films thrive. Although there are other ways in which the film could gain popularity for example through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, if we were to create a Facebook page about the film then it would be easy for the film to get noticed not just nationwide but in fact worldwide. The other ways that the film would be noticed is by releasing materials such as trailers or ever some back stage extras.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
For my media product I feel that the target audience would be between the age of 12-18 as the film does not contain any gore or blood therefore it does not qualify for a high rating so I have chosen to make the film a 12A. So to find films to compare with my own I initially looked at 'Taken 2' which is very relevant to my film as I took inspiration from the first 'Taken' film however this was rated as an 18 so it is irrelevant to our film however the second film was rated as a 12A and was still successful even though it was a drastic change from the first film. If I was to do a study on the types of films I think that my target audience would watch I would have to say that they would watch more mainstream films however because this fits the genre of thriller/action  this is why they are interested in the film, some examples of films I think would be films such as 'Taken', 'Black Hawk Down', 'The Hurt Locker' and 'Zero Dark Thirty' films which are centered around a strong character who is on a mission to either save someone or complete a mission, for example in 'Zero Dark Thirty' the story line is about the search for Osama Bin Laden and the back story of how a female character organises the mission.

5.How did you attract/Your audience/ What aspects of your film did you expect members of your audience to like/understand/empathise with etc?
The way that I attracted my audience was by creating a thriller opening which not only conforms to the thriller genre but also challenges the forms and conventions. I think that the audience will understand and empathise with the situation that the main character is in as most of the target audience will have younger siblings that they would not like to be in this situation. I also feel people would sympathise with this character because nobody would like to see their sibling taken away from them.  I feel that the audience would like the fact that the main character ends up going on an endless and also tireless search for his younger brother in ways emulating Liam Neeson in 'Taken'. I also think that the audience will like the amount of realistic methods that we put into the film for example the news report and the news broadcast in the way that we made it very authentic by initially using a green screen to emulate a news room and then secondly successfully  manipulating a news report on the BBC website.

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

What I have learnt from this project is firstly how to uses the camera effectively in order to create different techniques to create suspense for the audience in the scene. The way I have learnt this is by using restricted narration with the help of clever framing and blocking techniques not only to make sure that key elements that would compromise continuity but to create a suspenseful atmosphere for the audience.

What I have learnt from editing is firstly how to string footage together by simply cutting footage short or splitting footage in two in order to put footage in the middle. Some more of the advanced techniques that I have learnt include how to use some visual techniques for example what I liked the most about my editing was how I turn a standard very high angle shot in to a shot which looks like CCTV footage by adding a black and white filter and also slowing down the frame rate which made it look authentic and realistic. I have also learnt how to create a BBC news room by using a green screen, what I had to do was firstly shoot the footage with a completely green back ground and then I had to get an image from google which would make a news report realistic. After I had got all of the all of the things I needed I just had to delete the green background and add in my background after adjusting the sliders is order to adjust the balance levels.

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
From the progression from the start of the year I have applied all of the techniques that I learnt from the TV drama unit such by applying the four areas of filming and using all that is included in Camera, Editing, Sound and Mise en Scene. I feel that what went better in this task rather than the in the prelim was initially the framing as because in the preliminary task during the shot reverse shot there was a very large gap above the characters head which was just a waist of space. After showing the prelim to the rest of the class we received feedback and we took all comments on board and then applied it to the main task for which I feel went a lot better as we did in fact have a shot which was almost identical to the shot we got wrong in the prelim and we made sure that we would not make the same mistake twice.