Draft Evaluation- Becky Baker

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

• The first shot is of an example of our titling. When we researched titles from thrillers we decided that a simple white font and a black background would suit our opening and be effective as it doesn't distract the viewer from upcoming action compared to a busy screen with a complicated image taking the main focus away.

Establishing Shot from 'Shutter Island'

• The second shot I chose was an establishing shot of our opening. Many thrillers such as Shutter Island use this to set the scene of the film and put the action into context.

• The third shot is a medium close-up of the character using his phone. This is a common convention of thrillers to have close-ups and medium close-ups of the props. We chose to do this because it is the link between our cross cutting to the other character in the different setting.

An example of titling in 'Se7en'

• Fourthly, this shot is an example of placement of our titles. Like in 'Se7en' we chose to put it where there is an empty space.

• In the fifth image, it is an example of the setting. Whilst editing I noticed the creepy branches and how it makes the shot connote a sense of danger and eery-ness.

• The sixth shot is at a slight low angle, making the character look superior and have a high status. In many thrillers there binary oppositions. In this part of our extract I think we can clearly see that Alex is our antagonist and is the one in charge.

• The seventh shot is an example of how we used changed the gradient. We put a filter on top of our original piece. This is to make the opening darker and appear less colourful and bright so that it channels the action happening which is mysterious and tense.

• The eighth shot is a close-up of the 'mystery man's' fist. Throughout the opening we have had different shots of him, not revealing his face to create enigma and get the audience thinking. The use of enigma is common in thrillers and I think we did a good job of it!

  

  A Close Up from 'Black Swan'

• Finally, this is a use of a 2-shot.We get a good view of both characters and we can clearly see who the more powerful character is. We chose to use this so that the audience can see the relationship between them.   

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

A typical 'mob leader' from The Godfather. He is also wearing a gold ring!

We have three male characters in our opening and I feel as if we chose this gender subconsciously. It is very common to see males as the lead in a thriller and I think that we just followed this without considering that maybe a woman could be a 'mob leader' or a female someone would kidnap a male. However I do feel we made the right choice otherwise some viewers may not take a female a seriously as they would a male (which shouldn't be the case). Two of the men in our opening are traditional middle class white males that are on the wrong side of the law. None of them aren't poor as we can tell by their costume and hair. They aren't of a lower class however the 'mob leader' would be seen to be upper class because of his materialistic possessions which create status and power. I think Alex does play a good 'mob leader' with typical props and features such as the glass of whiskey, a gold sovereign ring and the deep voice. If we had a woman for this role I don't think it would have been as effective. Alex's character would ideally look around 50 or 60 years old, someone with a history that everyone is afraid of. The other two characters are supposed to be younger so that they can run faster and fight easier! They are around their 30's or 40's and as 'Stan' is younger than the 'mob leader' he has less power because his lack of knowledge and experience. He is easy to order around and should do exactly as he is told.

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

• I think that we would have a distribution company that would be British because our film is made in Britain and we would want to keep it like that. I would choose Granada International because they are in a partnership with ITV and as ITV is a big and popular channel in Britain I think we would get good advertisement on the channel itself. Programmes such as 'I'm a Celebrity' and 'The Only Way Is Essex' appeal to a similar age audience to our thriller.
• We would advertise our film on the T.V through ITV as well as a movie trailer on other channels. The trailer would be able to be watched on the internet on big popular websites such as 'YouTube'. I think that an official movie website would be made for the audience to be able to talk about the film and exchange ideas and opinions. With the new technologies of today such as the internet and smartphones etc. it is easy to get hold of new releases and find out what the next big film is so therefore a lot of publicity and advertising would benefit our thriller. 
• The certificate of our film would be a 15 because of bloody scenes and violence. Also as our target audience is 16+ this would be an appropriate branding.

4. Who would be the audience for your media project?
I'm hoping that our thriller will attract anyone over the age of 15. I think it is important that we appeal to a wide audience and not just one specific gender or age. Many people like thrillers and it's not just a stereotypical middle aged man that likes a good thriller! I much prefer thrillers to a cheesy American rom-com and many of my friends do to! I don't want to aim it at (for example) specifically males ages 16-29 because we wouldn't get such a big feedback if it were. However, I do realise that there are more males out there that prefer thrillers but it is all changing so hopefully ours won't just appeal to males!
5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Camera Work

Our example of a long shot in order to see
the character relationship to one another

• We used a variety of shots such as close ups then switching to a long shot. This is to keep the viewer interested instead of just using the same shot throughout. Each shot has a different meaning and point to it. For e.g. a close up is used to show purely the facial expression and emotions of the character. However a long shot is used to put the character in context and see their relationship with the setting. You would be able to see their body language with other characters.

Mise-En-Scene

• I think the setting would appeal to our audience because it appears to be a fairly risky place to go and I think that our audience would find this intriguing and perhaps they have been somewhere similar.
• The hair and make-up is obviously supposed to be realistic and the audience would be able to relate to this.

Editing

• We used cross cutting which then speeds up until the climax of the scene. The cuts do get quicker towards this and the audience would think that it is a good opening because it makes you sit on the edge of your seat!

Feedback

17 year old girl

17 year old male

26 year old male

The feedback was generally really good and I was pleased that people enjoyed it. I'm glad it had the desired effect of making the audience tense and sit on the edge of their seat.


6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
When film our opening we had to use a lot of technology. I have to admit that I found editing harder than the actual filming. I was fairly confident before filming on how to use a video camera but I think my skills have improved for e.g. how to set the white balance confidently. We made sure we took a few takes of each shot and when it came to editing we had a lot of shots to sort out. And we made sure our framing was a lot better than our prelim! We decided to use Final Cut Pro for editing and Garageband for adding and editing sound. I found Garageband easier to use as we did it last after we had edited our movie so all we had to do was put the sound on top. However it took longer than I thought it would! We attempted to do some cross cutting in the scene where our mystery man was approaching 'Stan'. I think we did do it well and in the final product I feel that we did build suspense and make the audience sit on the edge of their seats.

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

•  This is our first shot from our preliminary and I think that we had a good idea of not revealing the main characters face at first and to have a sense of mystery. However, as you can clearly see our framing is not good. We have irrelevant plants in the shot which may confuse the audience as they would think that it may have something to do with the scene. 

• However, our first shot from our final piece is good because we set the scene in a relevant environment and the character is there for a reason not just because it looks nice. We considered the framing and our establishing shot is a good idea of what a thriller would look like.

• Here in our preliminary we used an editing technique that wouldn't have been appropriate for our final piece. We were trying out different ways of cutting from shot to shot but this does look poorly done because it looks unrealistic.   

•  In our final piece here, I tried to get an example of our editing but it was too fast to capture! To make the scene more realistic we just used 'the cut' which makes the action more believable. I think we did this well compared to our prelim as it wasn't as rushed.

• In this shot our white balance is completely off! In some of the other shots the white balance was good then the next shot it looked like this! This isn't good continuity editing as the audience would clearly see the difference. I think we have definitely learned more about the technology we use, especially the camera.

•   Our white balance was continuous throughout our final piece and even though we added a filter on the top of it, you can see clearly that the whites don't have a slight blue tone to them and that the green is is bright and true to colour.  

•  Like in our first shot from our prelim, we wanted to keep the sense of enigma as it is a common convention of a thriller. This time we made the character seen in action instead of making it too obvious by the character just standing still and panning up. I think this is one of our most effective shots and the movement of the camera when following him makes it look all the more mysterious!

•  In this shot from our prelim you can barely even see the character! It is much too dark and you would have to watch it when the room is dark. We could have got some portable lights so that we could see him which would have easily been done. 

•  Even though most of our prelim was learning curve, I think our match on action was as good as we could make it. In our final piece we used match on action when 'Stan' was on the phone which I also think we did well. 

Overall our final piece looks a lot more professional and more thought out. We thought about each detail and did a lot of planning which definitely worked in our favour.