AS MEDIA STUDIES

THE EVALUATION

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

Throughout the whole 2 minutes and 30 seconds there is hardly any narrative structure during the footage. But at the time of the phone call it hints that someone down theend of the line is speaking, despite the audience not being able to hear them.

Despite being near to none on narrative structure, our production uses the technique of several flashbacks to hint towards the audience that the man they are watching isn't who he appears. The flashbacks flash up instantly, revealing death scenes linking towards movements made by the man walking around.

As you can see both images aresimilar, even though one is showing death. The dark imagess the flashback.

Our film opening gets the audience involved with the film by getting themselves Asking questions about the film and what's going on (enigma codes). Throughoutthe whole sequence enigma codes can appear;

Who or what is the puppeteer? Why is he dressed smartly?

Who is killing? Why would they be killing?

Who is being killed and why? Why does he sit in such a dark room?

Who is on the phone? Why does he run?

From the beginning of the titles the film hints at its genre characteristics. The slowmovement of blood and music show that its going to be a horror or thriller, alongwith the use of the death scenes during the clip. But the use of showing fear fromthe main character, despite knowing he’s a killer allows you to play with the audiencesMind making it physiological thriller.

The use of our mise en scene added to the effect of our opening as it suited the film line well, it wasn’t in an unsuitable location. The costume used was a fairly smart look to present a more older character than the actor was, and to show that the character seen is smart. The lighting changes throughout the clip. It starts off light in the bathroom, but then turn s the light off and a death scene appears, as he makes his waythrough the house it gets darker until he end up in the darkest room and the phone rings, resulting in him running back towards the light. Only a few props were used in the making of the opening; the weapon, glass from the cupboard and the phone. Only one setting is clear to the audience which is the home of the man walking around, the location of the deaths is unclear.

How does your media product represent certain social groups?The only character in our film opening is male. Throughout the clip he seems to

bepowerful as he is seen to be killing many people, bringing fear against him. But at the end he seems to be showing the fear, completely flipping things, making him appearingTo be weak.

Despite the actor being only a 17 year old, where are planned character was a little older,We managed to boost the aged look by using much more formal clothing to show theaudience he’s not as young as he appears.

Distribution Company

• We decided to use Twisted Pictures as a suitable distribution company as we thought it would fit our type of film well. As we were planning on making this film quite a disturbing and vivid, in terms of imagery, we wanted a company that people will recognise it and know what to expect in the film they have come to see or may want to go and see. We also thought that as it is still quite a high budgeted company we can still get more funding and able to use the effects we wanted to use.

• This film is more likely to be screened in art house cinemas, than large Multiplex’s as this film has a very specific audience so it won’t grab as much attention as a big summer blockbuster but still enough to get it through a long run in some small cinemas

Target Auidence

• Age Group: Mainly adults from 18 to 30 as our production is very much based on the disturbing side of a persons life and so we wanted to be able to show something that isn’t usually seen in most horror film. Also we wanted to make this film engaging and require the audience to think and stay focused, this could also be another factor for the age group we have used.

• Gender: We have aimed this at the adult market and so would probably be a film that couples would either go out and see or stay in to watch together so both men and women are likely to see the film, but based on the content we mainly targeted male interest in the film.

• Social Group: A group that enjoys films, as it isn’t a film that a group would go out to see for a night out. This means its going to be small groups of people going to see this film.

• Other films that people would have seen to be interested in our production would be firstly the ‘Saw’ franchise as we are using the same distribution company, it gives a hint as to what to expect to see. Also maybe such films as ‘Donnie Darko’ due to the psychological nature of our film.

As this film opening has been made for an audience who enjoy thrillers, crime and drama, we have used several different techniques to attract the audience. Firstly, the music we have chosen to play throughout this piece is an instrumental song by the band Nine Inch Nails called “Corona Radiata”. This was off the bands free album so therefore is free of copyright. We chose this song as it adds a lot of tension to the opening and creates a lot of eerie feelings for the audience watching. This is because the song is very atmospheric and adds to the whole mystery and suspense feeling we wanted to create.

Addressing the Audience

The camera style we used was very unique and not the standard way of filming a movie. We used shots such as a sort of “camera on the wall” type of shot where the camera pans around to follow the main character. This pan carries on as he walks out of the room giving the effect that the camera has actually gone through the wall.

The editing style we used was fairly slow transitions between shots until the main character does something to make him flash back to the murders he has committed in the past. When this happens, we have made it so the murders flash up very quickly and in an unsettling way. We also used white fades on this to give it the flashback look. Also when these flashbacks occur, we have edited in a loud bang noise (made by recording one of us banging on a file cabinet) to have an even more unsettling effect on the audience. This sort of editing would again appeal to fans of thrillers.

During this project, we have learnt many technical skills from creating our film opening. The first of which is how to plan. For this we made a schedule to manage how much time we spent on each task carried out during the creation of our opening. We also used story boards to plan out our actual footage.

Other skills we have learnt are how to perform professional camera work and editing. The sort of camera techniques we have learnt are what sort of shots to use to create different feelings for the audience and how to make sure not to confuse the audience using the wrong type of positioning or angles. The sort of editing techniques we have learnt are how to add extra sound effects after finishing filming and how to make them fit in smoothly without it being obvious that they were filmed separately. Also we have developed skill in how to make transitions between shots smooth and un noticeable.

In terms of mise en scene, we have learnt how to create dark and mysterious settings purposefully and made sure that the character can still be seen on the footage. Not a lot had to be done on mise en scene other than the lighting as the setting just needed to be an ordinary house.

I think through this project we have all gained a great understanding as to how films are made professionally.

Technical Skills

James Jonathan AshleyLooking back at our

preliminary task, i feel we have come a long way in terms of our editing and filming

techniques. As we tried filming all footage and

sound at the same time during our

preliminary task there was no real dynamics in the way we could

edit it, but using foley sounds and finding our own sounds in our film opening it meant we could get a different

and more vibrant feel. When it came to

editing, I felt more comfortable in my

ability to effectively

edit the footage.

Since the preliminary task, I have learnt many techniques in filming and

editing. In the preliminary task, we did not record or add in any

extra sound, this was mainly because we did

not have time to try this out and add it in. In this project we had enough

time to record extra sounds, try them out and add them in. the use of

sound effect really worked well and added to the eerie tension of

the film opening. I think because of the time we

had, I learnt many different ways of editing footage and generally using Premiere Pro.

I feel looking back at my preliminary tasks that the whole are of my practical skills have increased, both camerawork and editing. Since then I have been

able to learn more about editing on the computer, making the production

flow much more, giving it that smoother look.

Compared to my preliminary task my film

opening uses a much more range of varied shots, also including

sounds which weren't even recorded in the task, this was down to the fact we were unaware of the types and how to get the

sounds.