Z1 Group 2 2011

How did you attract/ address your audience?

We’ve used specific techniques in our opening sequence to define the genre and address / attract the audience. The non-diegetic sound that we have applied to our opening sequence is dramatic and conveys the setting and atmosphere that we wanted to create. The opening show an establishing shot of the forest where the hostage takes place, the music compliments the shot as it is quite and slow which slowly builds up suspense and curiosity in the audience’s mind. Furthermore we have used visual effects in our project such as light rays and earthquake to show the victim’s fear and anxiety whilst trying to escape from the stalker. We also used negative effects in the stalker’s scenes to indicate danger and devilish acts, this was used in order to differentiate the two female characters as there is no dialogue in the film. This attracts the audience’s attention as it introduces another character and their role in the film.

There are many different camera angles throughout the opening scene, we have used close up shots on objects so that the audience focuses and absorbs the events occurring such as the notebook, we did this so that the audience would realise that it is a key-prop and in turn it should help them understand the storyline. In addition long shots were used to create feelings of isolation and loneliness of the victim; fast cuts were used throughout the film to give a disoriented feeling. This attracts the audience and gives the genre as thriller.

To address our audience, we kept the opening simple and did not give too much information away. You don't learn the main character's name, what her personality is like or how old she is. The only information you learn is that she is in the place that is stereotypically dangerous to go on your own and apparently has a stalker who think that she is “evil”. The lack of information makes the audience want to know more, and therefore want to watch the rest of the film, however we did not hide too much to confuse them, but after watching the 2 minute film, they would probably want to know the real story behind the hostage and what the protagonist did to deserve it and if the victim is really a victim.

This appeals to our target audience because the fear and anxiety that is projected in the film can be experienced by everyone no matter what situation they might have been, perhaps not as dramatic as the film. The fact that such act is carried out in the daylight is contradicting to those films in our genre such as Dead Set as they typically takes place in the night.

What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

As our media product was influenced by the series/ film Dead Set, we decided to look at production and distribution companies behind the success of the series which then led to the making of the film. The distribution company for Dead Set in the UK was E4 (Chanel4). We are mostly likely to trust it to distribute our film because it is a well-known and trusted company and has experience producing and distributing realist and low budget films like ours. Due to low budget we would use methods of promotion that are very effective, as we would not have a lot of money to spend on TV trailers, billboards and premiers. These methods of advertising our film would include posters in public places such as town centres and also as our main character is a young person, we would promote the film in Sixth Form Colleges, for example posters around the colleges and an announcement on the colleges radio stations. If we were to take our film abroad, in America for example we would approach Universal Pictures, however for a low budget film like ours we might contact Working Title to act as a link between as in the past it has worked with low budgeted films and led to success. In addition, it works in the UK as well as in America so it is convenient.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project?

During the making of this project we learnt many new skills from diverse media technologies. One in particular was the use of the new Mac Apple computers. Before starting this project, neither of us in our group had used a Mac Apple computer this way before and so it was a little difficult to start with as the layout was different from what we were used to. However after a while of searching through the computers and getting grips to everything, we found it easier to work with.
To edit our film and to create the mini animated videos for our storyboards and pictures, we used an editing program called “Final Cut Pro”. It wasn’t as complicated as it looked to navigate around, as there was a help bar at the top of the page if we needed to find a certain effect or dissolve, we could just type it in there and it would automatically find it for us. We used this final cut pro to log and capture all out clips and then rearrange them on the timeline and then used a tool called ‘mark in/out’ to crop the parts of the clips we did not need.

We also used the college canon digital camcorders and tripods, which were not very complicated to use as they had the basic record, pause, rewind, fast forward and play functions. The tripods were easy to set up as they just required us to open them up using the clips that were provided. When out filming the tripod was important as we learnt that without the tripod the camera footage is shaky and looks unprofessional.

We also used a selection of other media technologies which helped contribute to the completing of out project. We used a number of websites to help with the research in pre-production. We used YouTube to research other openings of films within the same genre of our project. These were Dead Set and The Silence of The Lamb. This helped us to gain a better understanding in the process and development of these films, such as the order of the opening credits. We also used Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) to search more into these films and find out their genre, soundtracks used distribution and production companies.

Finally, we used the website ‘Blogger’ as a way of showing our planning and preparation for the preliminary task and the main task. It shows everything we did from the very beginning to the very end (evaluating our main task and the final film opening video) and everything in between such as location shots, shot lists, animated story boards and key-props.

How does your media product represent a particular social group?

The particular social group we represented in out media product was the social group of females, teenagers and older. We attempted to show both ends of the spectrum as far as females were concerned. One of the characters shown in the film opening is a teenage female. She confirms some national stereotypes which are expected of a girl her age. She comes across as being naive, gullible, that she likes to ware make up and to some viewers she may come across as being oblivious to her surroundings. These stereotypes are represented visually in different ways. You can tell that she is just a regular teenager by the clothes she wears, you can see that she likes to wear make up but of course at the end its all down her face showing fear and innocence. She is shown as being naive as she is alone walking through a forest, with hardly a care in the world.

At the other end of the spectrum is the other character, she is the total opposite, but it is of course only suggested that this character is a female, this is shown through the medium shot of her legs crossing, which suggests this character is a female. She is a strong and powerful character in the story who wants something doing and she gets the job done. We don’t directly see that it is her doing it but it adds to the suspense factor.

Here we also contradicted and challenged other films of the same genre. In most thriller/horror/psychotic films the villain is a dominant male figure, but we decided to challenge the ‘norm’ and make both characters female. This also gives a sense of something different and fresh so it would be more intriguing.

Looking back at the prelim task, what do you think you have learnt from it to the progression of the full task?

The preliminary task helped us in our main task a lot. We learnt how to use the cameras using the tripod and using the camera hand held. The prelim let us experiment with a varity of different shots and angels, which helped us in the main task, and this can be seen in our media product. For example in the preliminary we filmed a hand held/point of view shot of Katie walking up the stairs and in this shot it shown her feet at the start, this is related in our main task where we filmed a hand held/point of view shot filming Catherine’s rushed feet at the start, representing the fear and suspense that the story line portrayes. We changed the shot to fit the genre, from a college day to a horror/thriller afternoon.

The preliminary opened with a high angle establishing shot. It initially shown the viewer the main character and also gives the viewer a sense of the surrounding and what may occur. We liked this fact so in our main production we filmed an establishing shot but to make it different and to fit with our genre of film we broke it up when editing into three different shots. The film opened with this, so right from the beginning the viewer has a sense of the genre and again it adds to the suspense factor of the film.

In the prelim we learnt that because there was a lot of walking involved in the actual production, we figured that we had to use several different angles and shots to make it more interesting to the viewer. We learnt that just looking at the same thing from the same angle was boring so we had to also include some point of view shots to show the viewer what that particular character was seeing. We filmed a shot of a ‘floor 1’ sign. This represented that the character was ‘flagging’ and she was only on the first floor, which also added some humuor to the plot. From this we realized that in the walking scenes in our main task, we had to intrigue the viewer by using different angles and shots to make the visual more interesting. Again like the prelim task we used a point of view shot when the character was walking. This gave the viewer a more physical understanding in the story as they could see what the character was seeing.

The music we used in the prelim related to the visual as it was an up-beat, cheery, everyday song that people could relate to. Whereas the music we used in the main task portrayed a very different story. We realized that the music used makes a whole lot of difference as it was another of the viewer’s senses being used and helped in the understanding of the film.

However, there were a few differences in the transition from the preliminary to the main. In the prelim we used a variety of shots that lasted over 10 seconds in some cases, because this shows that there was nothing bad or scary about to happen in the story but this also could of gave a false sense of security, in a sense that something might of happened as a almost surprise element but in our prelim it didn’t, however in our main we used a vareity of different shots which in some of them only lasted 1 second, it gave it the fast/almost action feel to the film, everything looked rushed and it shows that the character was suspicious and scared. All of these small shots came together to initially make the viewer almost confused and to keep them guessing throughout the opening sequence. These shots also give a sense of the unknown and some confusion, which add to the story.

When editing the preliminary we used simple editing techniques, getting to terms with the match cuts and using a few effects which we developed throughout our main task. Throughout the main production we continued to learn and figure out by our self’s how to work our way around the editing software. We experimented and chose the right effects and the right editing techniques to fit with our film, and how we wanted it to look and what we wanted to show the viewer.

When we was researching different films in the same genre, we figured that in the first 2 minutes of the film there was no initial story portrayed to the character, but there was a confused factor to the opening. The viewer is always kept guessing, then after the opening the story would start to make sense. We figured that in the start of our film that there shouldn’t be an initial story, but clues of what might happen or what had of happened, to further make sense in the rest of the film, if it carried on.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We aimed to direct our film to 15-24 year olds. We felt that as the characters were young teenagers that older people might not take an interest in it, but some may still be intrigued by the realism of the story. Younger views might not be able to understand or handle that the story isn’t true and also may be scared by the blood and make-up used on the character, also their parents may not approve of their children watching a film like ours because of their age. We could imagine people like ourselves going to watch this movie, college and university students.

In terms of ethnic and social groups we didn’t aim for the more urban and modern groups, more the niche audience and less main stream. We felt that people who enjoy classic thriller movies would enjoy ours. Our film is more controversial than more modern and classic films as we challenged the ‘norm’ in terms of male and female social groups concerned in the film.

We felt that the film would interest a both male and female audience because males would like the fast action feel to the story and females would like the suspense factor. It would work for both genders and because of this it could appeal to a mass audience even though it’s aimed at a niche audience.

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

The genre of film we made was a thriller/horror/psychotic film which was influenced by several films of the same genre. Some of the films we looked at included humor as well but we chose not to include that as for a 2 minute opening it would be too much to put across to a viewer, for us. Other films we looked at mostly concentrated on just one of the genres that our film portrayed, more horror or thriller but we felt by combining them together it would make something new and not to obvious.

When we analyzed some films of the same genre, we realized that in our 2 minutes we have, we didn’t want to fit a whole story in to it, as in the films we looked at didn’t. When looking at past opening of films that students had done we saw that a few of them had almost fitted a whole film into 2 minutes, which totally took away any detail that the film could of withheld. So we learnt from that and figured that we would give a fast action almost confusing opening and try not to make much of a story line, leaving it almost confusing for the viewer which added deeply to the suspense factor which our film opening withheld.

A lot of our inspiration for the camera work came from The Blair Witch Project. The ‘home movie’ style to it intrigued us as it was something new and original. It had that armature feel to it, which we tried to portray in our film. The constant had held camera shots we felt shown a more personal view for the viewer as they could see most of the things that the character can see but this also gives a more confusing feel for the person watching as they have to ask them self’s ‘what are they doing’ as you cannot see directly what that character is doing or looks like at a particular moment as you can only see what they see. We use a lot of hand held camera shots in our opening and this gave our film a ‘home movie’ feel to it, and this is what we wanted. All of these aspects we tried to include in our opening sequence. The camera work alone can initially show and tell the viewer what genre the film is.

The mise en scene in our film was influenced by both Dead Set and The Blair Witch Project. The make-up and costume idea was from Dead Set. The casual clothing gave realism to the plot and let the viewer relate more to the character throughout the film. The clothing also shows what kind of person this character is, just an average teenager who is quite oblivious to what is around the corner. In Dead Set we saw that there was a build up to the real horror bit and this is what we tried to recreate in our film. At the begging all seams fine and quite normal but as it progresses you can see that the character get more suspicious, scared and more aware of her surroundings. Then the shot of her tied up, make up down her face, blood on her hands shows vulnerability which was also shown in the Dead Set story, as when the characters in the house realize what’s happening outside they become more vulnerable and scared. The make-up and blood shown on main characters in Dead Set was reflected on ‘Catherine’. The forest scenery was inspired by The Blair Witch Project and The Silence Of The Lambs, it gave that eerie feel to it but as in The Blare Witch Project it is in the dark, we thought to give the film more realism we’d film it in the day, this could also let the viewer relate more with the character.

The music in The Silence Of The Lambs gave the film an eerie feeling which also sets the mood and the genre for the film. We felt that to link all of our small shots together we should also use eerie music not only for this reason but again to add fear and suspense to the story.