Evaluation Questions 1-7 (Tom Peacock)

Evaluation

Questions 1-7

Question 1) - In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? 

In the second scene, the chase, we used a variety of different camera angles to create drama, which is a convention of a real thriller film. During the chase scene, we used low angle camera shots, high angle camera shots and also setting, which is important in a thriller film to create the atmosphere and also set the tone of the opening. You can see below the comparison between our film and the thriller film called 'The woods', which also uses woods to set the atmosphere.

In these two screenshots you can also see, we took into consideration and used shots, which helped display the mood and setting, in which the chase scene was happening. We positioned the camera in front of the characters as they ran towards the camera, in order for the viewer to get a picture of the whole scenario, which the characters are in. 

Question 2) - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How are the main characters represented in your thriller opening?

• Firstly, if we look at the interviewer who is seen in the opening and ending scenes, he is represented as a person in an authoritative role.

• This is communicated through things like low angle camera shots. Having a low camera angle shot, looking up at a character in the perspective we used, which was first person, suggests that they are in a higher position of authority than the other character, as they are being looked up at.

• We can also see from Mise en Scene, that the interviewer is dressed in smart wear, a smart shirt, work trousers and black shoes.

• This sort of wear would be worn by someone who’s in a position of power and if we look at the contrast between the interviewer and the interviewee particularly in the last few scenes, we can see that they are dressed to suit their class types.

• The interviewer being the upper class stereotype and the interviewee in casual wear, being the middle or lower class.

Are the stereotypes you used in your thriller opening positive or negative?

• The representations of these class types shown in our thriller opening can be seen as negative.

• This is because we’ve displayed the top of the scale in terms of representation when it comes to the upper class and middle class, not all people who come from the upper class in society dress in smart wear and in comparison, not everyone from the middle class dresses in casual wear.

• Therefore we can say that our representation of class representations is negative.

Why did you represent your characters in this way?

• We represented the interviewer in this way to create the effect of authority.

• This effect as mentioned above is created through the use of low angle camera shots, close ups of the face and also the mise en scene used.

• We wanted this effect to be apparent because of the nature of the scene it’s set in, the interview room.

• In an interview room you need to have a character in control, which is the interviewer, so therefore we made him to be this type of stereotype to convey this effect of authority.

Question 3) - What Kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

When choosing to distribute your film through either your own means or by using a media institution, there are certain ways you can go about it. 

For example if you were to choose to distribute your own film you might consider the following. 

Social Media

• Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have huge audiences, making your film view able worldwide and by alot of people. 

• Most social media sites allow interaction between the people who view your film and yourself, making it easy for you to receive feedback from your intended audience. 

Screenings & Press releases

• Screenings will help you spread your film to the general public, which is a great way to distribute your film because it will ensure the hype factor is brought to your film, without needing to spend money.

• Press releases allow you to interact with the press, through a variety of ways. By holding a press conference you can allow your film to be featured in newspapers, online blogs and film review sites, meaning it will be beneficial to your films hype factor too. 

• Most methods of distributing your own film by yourself, will most likely cost you money and not allow any profit to be made, therefore the better option to take would be to go down the route of using an institution. 

Media institutions 

Using media institutions will benefit you more because they know exactly how to promote your film and distribute it in the right way in order to make it more successful than you could be able to do on your own. They also have plans in place to ensure you film doesn't loose the hype factor and continues to make lots of profit. 

• The first week where the film is released in cinema is crucial, to ensure the hype factor is met. 
• After 4-6 months, the film will be released onto DVD format and also BlueRay.
• 6-8 months after initial release the film will then be released onto media platforms, like Netflix and Lovefilm. 
• Once the film has generated all the profit possible, it will be released onto TV for public viewing. 

The main advantage of going down a media institution route, is the fact you get the backing of big companies and also will have a steady flow of money coming in from the profit. 

ElevenDimensionsMedia

FremantleMedia

Question 4) - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Audience age: 18-35

Audience gender: Male

Other thriller films enjoyed by same audience. (Age & Gender)

• Seven (1995) - http://goo.gl/XCPMVH

• North by North West (1959) - http://goo.gl/GcOKOa

• Dead man down (2013) - http://goo.gl/kZKnrI

Question 5) - How did you attract/address your audience?

•  Throughout our film, we tried to address our target audience as much as we could, mainly through the use of the Mise en scene, editing, sound and also camerawork.

• The main theme to our film is that of a murder and violence, which is appealing to the age and gender groups, which we chose due to the fact that other films in the same genre, which include the same theme's are also generally very successful. 

• When filming our interview scenes, we thought particularly hard about how we could turn a normal mundane interview into something, which would appeal to our target audience.  

• We did this through the various camera angles we used, such as a low angle POV shot and also OTS shots. By including these, we were trying to add more action into our opening and try to put the viewer in the position that the interviewee was in, during the scenes. Having a high array of different shots that cut quickly to each other indicate action and violence, which again is what we intended to do. 

• Not only this, but we also paid close attention to sound too. Having a good variety of diegetic and non diegetic sounds would only help target our audience. We included diegetic sounds such as the interviewer saying "I will kill you where you sit" and "You'd better start talking". Both these two lines suggest the theme of violence and therefore they target our intended audience. 

• The final scene, the murder, is also aimed at our target audience. We used a variety of different camera shots, angles and techniques to ensure it felt like a real life chase scene. For example we used a free hand tracking shot to make the action feel more real and lifelike, which again promotes the theme's of murder and violence, linking back to our target audience. 

Question 6) - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Before doing this task and course, I had previously taken Video production, where we had to do a similar task, so most of the skills I already know and learnt last year. 

Camera

From this task, I've learned alot more about camera work for example. Framing was a big issue on our preliminary task and so after getting some advice from our teacher, we made sure that this issue was addressed and fixed. 

Sound

Sound was also something, which I didn't previously pay much attention to in last years course. There was a much bigger focus on sound this year and therefore I had to re-learn my skills using garageband to edit my sound. 

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

To start things off for this question I would say I have developed skills in many different area's of media progressing from the preliminary task to the main task. 

Firstly, I think my ability to frame a shot has improved the most. Before we started the main task, the framing we had shot on the preliminary, wasn't as good as it could've been and this was one of the main things, which needed to be improved as pointed out by our teachers. 

Before starting the main task, we had made sure to think about the framing before we started to film on location, which proved to be very useful as we found a majority of the framing on our first day of filming was really good and could be used. 

An example of how our framing improved post preliminary

The next thing, which I think progressed from the preliminary was the sound editing. Before having dedicated lessons in the classroom about sound editing mine and my groups skills using garageband, were limited, therefore limiting how we could create affect using sound, which is a big part of any film.

On the preliminary, we used extremely basic sound editing, maybe using two layers of sound at the maximum on a few clips throughout the preliminary. By the end of editing our main task, we were using sound editing throughout our finished film, not only placing sound but creating layers of sound to create the dramatic effect we wanted to make, throughout the entirety of our finished film. 

Not only this but we started to experiment, creating soundtracks to put over the opening title sequence, using fades to tone down the sound effects in certain places or increasing the volume of that specific sound to make it have more of an impact on the audience. We also used things, such as parallel sound editing and also creating sound bridges, which was way above what we were capable of doing on our preliminary task.

Example of a complex sound edit similar to the one we created

The final thing, which we improved from the preliminary to the main task, was the construction of character and story. Before the preliminary task, we didn't have any planning into what character's we would have, how they would dress, what sort of role they would take on and how that would impact the other characters we used. 

From the preliminary we realized we would have to take a lot more time thinking about the construction of the characters we used. We did this by writing out a plot for the whole story, rather than just the opening. This way we could look at events, which impacted on the character and see how they would react to this, which improved our character construction. 

We also looked into character costume as well and made sure we have at-least one member of our group in costume, which is something we didn't do in the preliminary.

Post Filming | Editing decisions

Editing

Tom Peacock

Much like any film certain decisions will have to be made in terms of how we decide to edit our thriller opening. Certain decisions we have to make could be, which clips we will use, increasing/decreasing the brightness to create affect and how we will edit, e.g transitions and how quick the cuts will be.

In this document you will firstly see some of the tools we used to edit on final cut and then also how we edited and the decisions we had to make while editing. 

Below you can see myself naming the clips we imported into final cut. By doing this we found it much easier to find the clips we needed and to also work out, which clips we had already used and also which clips we had yet to use.

Clip list on Final Cut Pro

Tools

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As well as this, below you can see us using different editing tools to help cut our film. The main tool you use on this software is the cut tool, which is shown highlighted here. You also use the tool at the top, which is used to drag and move clips around the editing timeline. These are the main tools we used throughout the editing to help us make sure our thriller was good.

 

 The timeline, as shown below is also a standard feature on Final cut pro. This timeline was useful to us because we could drag our clips onto it and then preview them on a separate box on final cut without having to transfer them to the media player on the macs. You can also use the menu on the left to mute audio or change the audio level.

 

Editing Decisions

 

The first editing decision we had to make was to alter the colour contrast on one of our clips as it was a bit too dark to use. We could've either left it as it was, making the quality suffer or we could've altered it and improved it, meaning quality would improve. To do this we used the colour correction tool, which is inbuilt into final cut to help alter the balance of colour on the clip. This was a decision made as a group and therefore is an editing decision.

 

Another decision we had to make in terms of editing as a group was