Evaluation - Mark Williams

Media Evaluation


Introduction: For our project we produced a two-minute opening video sequence to a horror film.The sequence depicted the kidnapping and murder of a young girl, who was stalked by a malicious teenage male, who's face was not shown. I worked with Joe Cudden and Ryan Watson, who shared an equal number of tasks with me in order to create our project. My particular contributions to the project included storyboarding and assisting in the shooting of the film, and later on, editing the footage so as to ensure our film had consistency and flow.





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



Our opening sequence followed the conventions of a British horror film. We had a budget of next to nothing meaning that the number of props available to us was very limited. The most obvious sig of our lack of money was our use of natural light in our film. We obviously couldn't afford to use lighting rigs or spotlights and so, unlike a typical Hollywood film, our characters could only be seen under light that was already there such as streetlamps. Our product fulfils the requirements of an opening sequence in that it establishes the setting(we can see from the shots of the male walking down the street that the sequence is set in a built-up area at night),



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



The representation of our protagonist was that of a young and vulnerable girl. We portrayed her as scared, vulnerable and defenceless by her facial expression, and used props such as rope to bind her to her chair, and a scarf which we tied around her face. This was effective because although it looked like the girl was on the verge of suffocation, defenceless and unable to breathe, we found that actually she could breathe and so it wasn't a risk to use the prop in this way. We hoped that seeing her gagged and unable to move would support her representation as vulnerable and helpless and encourage the viewer to sympathise with her, being drawn deeper into the plot. With our second character, the male, we made his costume a much more prominent feature. We used the stereotypical character of the 'hoodie' or ‘chav’; a menacing looking male in his late teens, probably of a low social class, who's face is not revealed. He is represented as the 'villain' in our film sequence by his clothes; we dressed him in a dark sweatshirt with his hood up. We did this so as to stick to the convention that a younger person with a dark hood drawn over his face, would look much more malicious than a youth dressed in, for example, a shirt and jeans. The character does not speak at all in this video sequence, which I think is appropriate because if he doesn't speak, we don't wonder what the character is like inside; it's makes him seem heartless. Also, for much of the sequence he is shown only in dim light, and also with the use of a 'negative' effect later added to make the character seem darker and more detached from the audience.

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

One particular media institution that has backed projects similar to our own, for example the 1997 horror movie ‘Scream’ is New York-based Dimension Films. However, because this company is based is the US and not in the UK it is unlikely that they would be happy to fund a project such as ours. I think our project is much more likely to appeal to a UK-based production company because our project is not one that would require massive funding or high-profile actors, as opposed to films made in the Hollywood industry. For example Stealth Films, the makers of Kidulthood, would work on average with a budget of 2 or 3 million pounds as opposed to a US film which would often be funded with over 100 million dollars. Kidulthood is an excellent example of how the British film institution works so well because the film was shot on such a small budget on a dirty, grimy location and yet still managed to effectively portray and address the issues raised in everyday life in London. We see this in the first scene as shown here;




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



We can use the theory of GRASS to determine the potential audience to receive our product; we must establish the Gender, Race, Age, and Socio-Economic Status of our audience. We carried out quite a large amount of audience research in order to determine which factors were the most important to include in our film. We discovered that females aged 16-18 watched, on average, more horror films than males of a similar age. In addition, we found that the most popular sub-genres of horror film were psychological horror and 'teen slasher' movies. We think this is because many horror films carry a high level of emotion which appeals to many women more than men. Psychological horror is based around a character’s fears or guilt, by using emotional instability to build suspense and enhance the story, whereas ‘teen-slasher’ films typically involve a psychopathic killer stalking and killing their victims. We tried to incorporate many of these factors into our film in order to attract our audience. We think that our product should not be aimed towards anybody under the age of 16 because the themes we used could be considered disturbing and not suitable for somebody of a younger age. We did not aim our product at any particular ethnic group; our product should appeal to somebody of any ethnicity; however our product would be more likely to be distributed in Britain than anywhere else as it is a British film. We think that our product could appeal to a person of any socio-economic status although it’s possible that a person of a lower status (C2-E) would be able to relate to the setting more closely because it would be more familiar to them; the location we used was not an affluent area.



Qn 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

We have established already that our film would be aimed towards people aged 16-25 of a socio-economic status of . An audience of this type would expect from an opening sequence some action or horror to entertain them and to encourage them to keep watching. We set up the basic equilibrium in the first scene by showing the stalker composing a piece of hate mail. This showed our audience that the stalker leads a disturbed life and is clearly planning some malevolent act; already our audience have a grasp of this character’s nature. Also this creates our initial enigma; the audience wants to know who will receive the mail, and why he is making it. Our disruption comes to the protagonist’s life when she is kidnapped; the stalker takes her from the street and ties her to a chair before killing her. We did not use typical chronology in our film; there is a sense of disarray and confusion because the shots are not in chronological order. We addressed our audience by entertaining them with the enigma that the viewers did not know the fate of the protagonist until the very end of the sequence; therefore the audience would want to continue watching because they want to see if their protagonist will be safe. We used Levi-Strauss’ theory of binary opposition to create conflict between how the girl’s life should be and how her situation is actually unfolding; she should be in bed as it is late at night and yet she has been on the streets late at night and is now in the company of the stalker.

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

We have used lots of technology in order to research our product. For example, we used websites such as ‘imdb(internet movie database)’ in order to obtain information about similar products to ours. Also we used YouTube to find extracts of these products and analyse them to find out what worked and what didn’t, and what features we’d like to emulate in our own product, and we used our blog in order to record the findings of our research and also as a log of how much we’d done and what was left. In addition we used Microsoft Excel in order to create graphs so as to show the feedback of our audience research more clearly.

The one lesson learnt that sticks out clearly from using the technology available to us(digital video cameras etc.) was that it’s massively important to shoot your film at the exact right time of day because if natural light is not available (for example at night), it is incredibly difficult to depict the scene fully because it’s not possible to tell what is happening and therefore a lighting rig is necessary, which can be extremely expensive and therefore was not available to us. In addition, we realised that it was not possible with the equipment we had to include dialogue for someone that was distanced from the camera; if diegetic dialogue was needed it had to be included later in the editing stage. We worked around these limitations, however, in order to obtain footage that fulfilled our requirements.

The edit suite was where I felt we learnt the most. We learnt how to edit our footage using iMovie HD, which we found difficult to work with initially because it seems quite complex and confusing upon first use. However, we spent time using the program and became more confident at splicing the shots and at creating transitions between them, for example fading in and out. With this technology we were able to achieve elements such as the negative effect, which made our character seem much darker, and we were able to add a non-diegetic soundtrack which created tension and added suspense. There was little that needed to be altered or redone at the end of the editing apart from that we repeatedly changed the sequence of scenes; we couldn’t establish which order they should be in.



The only technology we used when obtaining audience feedback was the word processor we used to write our questionnaire; other than that we did everything by hand. We felt this was effective because it was the simplest, quickest and most reliable way of doing it.

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

There are many points about our full product which we feel have developed from the preliminary task. An important factor to consider was the story itself; the storyline of the full product is easier for the audience to relate to as it has a basis in real life and also provokes more thought from the audience. We have learnt that the basic storyline is one of the most important factors to consider when producing a film sequence so as to appeal to our audience. We also learnt that location is a critical factor when filming so as to set the desired mood/atmosphere; in our preliminary task we didn’t have a good range of locations to choose from and so it was difficult to establish the setting. Again importantly, upon comparison of our final project and our preliminary task it is clearly that we were much more familiar with the camera equipment as there is much more consistency in the quality of our shots, for example, in our preliminary task it was possible to see a member of our group who wasn’t cast in our film sat in the background; we didn’t repeat mistakes such as this in our final project. Also the flow between them is of a much higher quality because we learnt to effectively use transitions as I mentioned earlier. We found that dialogue does not have to be used excessively in order to establish a plot; we used much less dialogue in our final project than in our preliminary task, instead using graphic details such as the hate mail, and non-diegetic sound in the form of eerie music. In addition we learnt that mise en scene is massively important in the creation of a character; in our preliminary task we had no choice of costume as we had to dress our characters in whatever they happened to be wearing to college that day, but in our final project we were able to dress our characters appropriately in order to represent them in the way we wanted.



Conclusion

In conclusion I think our product deserves credit on the basis that it fulfills the requirements of an opening sequence; it establishes a setting, establishes the protagonist and secondary characters and also entertains it’s audience. It’s strengths are that it represents the two characters effectively, helping the audience to understand their personalities and showing how they are. Also I think we did well when it came to editing the film; the transitions are of a good quality and the shots are the correct lengths with good effects added. I think a weakness of our film is, primarily, it’s title; we found it difficult to give our project an appropriate name that hadn’t already been used; however the title of the film is not as important a factor as the quality of it. In addition, there are a few shots that we haven’t included which I would’ve liked to include, however the majority of the group agreed that the project could do without them. On the whole, however, I am satisfied that we have produced a worthy project and I’m pleased that we managed well with the time, budget and equipment we had, especially with extraneous factors such as snow and illness, for which I think we all deserve credit.


Mark Williams

Evaluation: Joe Cudden

Introduction

My project is the opening three minutes of a hostage thriller film. During the production, filming and editing of this film I worked with the other 2 members of my group Ryan and Mark. In the planning stage of the product it was Mark who contributed most to the blog but me and Ryan also contributed in an important way to the blog added regular posts to update the status of our film. When it came to filming we all contributed equally all of us  filming different shots  from different angles while other people helped with the props and the lighting. Editing is where I mostly contributed to the film putting in hours after lessons to come back and edit the film to make sure that the effects worked properly and that all the shots linked together correctly

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

     QN1)  the genre of our film is hostage thriller, in the shooting of the film we have not used that many conventions of the hostage thriller in the shooting of our film. One convention that we did use was where the kidnapper made the ransom note out of new paper clippings and magazines although it is quite cliché  the group decided that it would add a nice and different effect that would make our group stand out from others and make it more individual than the other groups projects .Another of the convention we used was that we treid to keep the kidnappers face hidden in all of the shots of the film because when you cannot see the kidnappers face I think adds the tension, suspense and fear. We tried an idea that has not really been done before in the hostage thriller genre  we used a lot of cuts to flash back and forth from when the girl was kidnapped to when the girl was being tortured by the kidnapper to build tension and drama in the film. I think this will get us marks from the examiner because it is different and the cutting from scene to scene was edited well and I think each shot flows into the next one really well and I think it works really well. When we showed the project to out some students at our college they thought although it could be a little clearer they thought  the effect was really good  and greatly added to the tension and mood of the film. Another idea  that we decided to try was when the victim is first seen she is not just seen in an ordinary light but the light flashing on and off giving brief glimpses of the girl while she is tied to the chair  adding to the suspense and making the audience have to watch closely to see what is happening and add to the tension and fear created by the scene and I think it works very well because it uses the effects of lighting to help give the audience the sense of dread that they are meant to be feeling while watching our product.

How does my media product represent particular social groups?

QN2)   although there are not many characters seen in the film there is one social group that is seen in the film and that is the social group of the young teenage girl and in the film she does fall into the role of typical stereotype of this social group which is the young girl as the victim. we constructed this image by using her costume and the way she acts in the film giving off a helpless and endangered look.

What kind of media institution might distribute my media product and why?

QN3)  I personally think that out of all the british film studios there are I personally think our product would have the most appeal with hammer film production. Although they have a history of mainly making horror films they have also made a few thriller movies. Also although our film is not a horror film it has some of the same conventions and characteristics of a horror film. By making the audience afraid of the kidnapper and making them afraid of what will happen for the little girl  help to make the audience more interested in the film and the project. I think they would back us because although the idea is not the most original of ideas but it has a lot of potential and if shot and produced correctly could become a great film

Who would be the audience for my media product?

QN4) The ideal audience for our media product would in terms of age be 16-21 year olds due to the fact that the violence and themes seen in the movie should not be viewed by an audience younger than 16. Also at this age people tend to have the most money to spend on things like going to watch a film and buying merchandize. When it comes to gender I think this type of film is more suited to the male gender because it is more of a dark film but it could also appeal to the female gender due to the more emotional elements of the film. When it comes to ethnicities I don’t think it will make a difference in how much they enjoy the film although when it comes down to nationality I think that it could effect the audience of the product I think it would be more people from English and American nationality would enjoy the film more since that it where it would be more widely circulated. With the socio economic class I think that it would appeal to all of the different classes because it doesn’t matter what social class you are from when it comes to enjoying a film. This is based on  GRASS which stands for gender, race age and socio economic class.

How did i attract/address my audience?

QN5) We attracted our audience by instead of opening with a classic introduction of the characters  we instead started of with more of an introduction to situation of the start of the film. Which I think is a refreshing change against the typical kind of conventions used for the intro of films from this type of genre.  We make a great use of enigmas in the opening sequence of our media project there are enigmas straight from the start of the piece the audience is presented by enigmas like “where is she”  “who is she”   “what has happened” and these enigmas help to move the story from point to point and keep the audience interested . In the media product we made good use of the lighting by not only shooting it at night but by also adding a dark tint to all the other scenes to make the atmosphere a darker one and to show that what is happening is evil which is one of the connotations of the darkness. We also used light in a quite an inventive way when the victim is shown for the first time instead of just seeing her in plain light we showed the audience her in flashes of light.

What have i learned about technology and the skills I have learned?

QN6) during the production of our media product we used and learnt lots about the different kinds of technology used in media. the first and most simple use of technology was using the internet to research the genre of film we would be making and media in general the internet its self was a  great resource and very helpful when it came to the research. After the initial research and planning stage of the project we moved onto the  filming of our products at this stage we where taught how to use digital cameras in an effective way so we could film our products. After we had filmed we then moved on to the editing of out film and again learnt how to use a new type of software ______ we then used this to edit our films and add all of the special effect that are used in the film.

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

QN7)although there is only a few weeks in between the preliminary task and our finished product. When we first shot our prelim task we where still coming to terms with how to use the camera and the techniques needed for filming. I think that the  final product is better in every single way than the prêliminary task since the preliminary wasn’t as serious as the real thing and we didn’t put anywhere near as much effort into the preliminary task. Also the final product is a dark and gritty story which has some very serious aspects and is very tense and suspenseful with a serious story and also was shot in a more professional way. As well as the fact that for the prelim task we didn’t do any editing while with the final product our entire group spent many hours during lessons and after them trying to edit the final product and make it perfect .

Conclusion-  Overall I think that the product will go over well and also get us a good mark because we all put a lot of effort and time into the project. In my personal opinion the main strengths of the product are the originality and a lot of the effects are a original and will help separate us from the rest of the projects done by the other students. Although no project can be without a flaw or two and I think that a flaw about our project is that the way that we shot it could make it a bit hard to follow the plot at the beginning but I think after a bit that it is very clear what is happening in the film. Another flaw but not such a big one is the name of the film we spent a lot of effort on filming and editing but when it came down to picking a name we couldn’t think of one that would do the film proud although in the end we came up with stolen I still think that it is possible that a better one could be found. Although I think that our product is good and has a lot of potential I know that compared to the real thing it is nowhere near in the same league but with a lot of hard work and a bigger budget I think I would really be comparable the real thing

                                                                                                           

Joe Cudden