Evaluation - Helena Grundy

Evaluation  - Helena Grundy

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

Conventionsof a thriller are to thrill the spectator. To do this you must have a realisticstory, like ours we have the story of the shooting at the school. This hadrecently happened and was in the news and that is how we came up with the storylooking at news articles. You have to make the story exciting and engage theaudience. I think our story contains excitement, it has suspense when Oliviagoes into school, and also the ending of our opening is a cliff hanger as shereads the text and it makes you want to know what happens when she goes back toschool. I think this was a very good technique and it doesn’t seem to be acommon technique in thrillers its more for dramas and TV programs, or thoughsometimes you get them at the end of the movie which makes you want them tocreate a second film, this could be very good for publicity and also away ofmaking money.

Athriller has to explore ‘Dark’ themes and not science fiction as this wouldmake it a horror. Ours is defiantly a thriller and not a horror, it exploresthe dark theme of a shooting in a school, and a young girl starts to search andfigure out who this cooperate was who did such a horrific thing to change herlife. The only issue with this topic is that its quite a strong subject and itcould cause offense to people who have been involved or know someone who hasbeen involved in a similar thing. This is why we decided that for the shootingpart it would only be sound and the outside of the school as it would make itso gory and it would also be hard to pull of and hard to construct. We also hadthe issue with not being able tot o film in the school and so it would be hardto find a hall and a lot of people to use. This would also make our film an 18as it wouldn’t be appreciate of the younger generation,

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/02/01/school-officials-confirm-shooting-at-atlanta-middle-school/

Youmust keep the audience guessing using the enigma code.  The enigma code is where you hold backinformation from the viewer or characters.

Anotherthing that could help with this is iconography of suspense: props may add tothe characterization.

Enigmais also creating mystery to add to the atmosphere of the film.

Anotherthing that creates mystery and suspense is restricted narration omniscience.Omniscience – all knowing, all seeing. – relates to the knowledge conveyed bythe camera or voice-over.  

Thenarrative is always shown in chronological order of: Normality-Equiblium,Disruption – Des Equiblium and Bestore- Closure. This is known as TodursTheory. Causality (cause and effect) can also help make the story not inchrological order. Meaning one event leading to another.

Narrativein films is reffering to the order in which a story is told. And the overallstructure of a story being told. Narrative can be used as a way of controllingthe information released to the audience about what is going on in the story.For example, thriller and horror films will frequyently ‘hold back’ informationto create a puzzle and engage the intrest of the audience. This is the use of ‘restricted narration’ and it places audience in the same postion as a confusedcharacter. The restricted narration of a story is created in part by use ofsubjective camera work.

Onthe other hand unrestricted narration is where the audience knows orunderstands more than the character. In literature this is called ‘omniscience’and is created in film using objective camerawork. Many films will use bothtechniques.

Thereare 4 aspects of technical codes;

camera contains one very important element, Movement/Angles. This convention helps to give a film its thriller genre, as different camera angles create different senses of body language and emotions. for example when you do point of view you feel and see what the character is feeling through the motion of the camera.
of thrillera films also use Camera Angles such as facial close up shots and mid – range shots. An example of a close up was used in our film when Leah turns to Olivia to be quite.

These help to show facial emotions/expressions and also shows body language, which helps to show tension, and helps the audience to feel as if they are in the film and makes the ask questions. Camera Movements also helps make the audience feel this. the film. For example when the camera moves the camera about, they try to mimic the characters breathing, this makes the audience feel like they are the ones that are breathing. Another Camera Movement is tracking, this is a fast paced camera movement, which can also be known as a Dolly shot. when something fast happens in a film it creates the audience's heart beats to go faster and adds to the suspense and makes the audience ask questions on what's happening next.

The other important convention that makes up a thriller is Editing, this gives films things like quick cuts. These quick cuts can also be seen in films such a psycho, when the women in the shower is getting stabbed there is a lot of fast cut, as it shows different angles of her being stabbed. This makes the film fast paced and makes it more tense. Another one is fade to black. This has been used in the  our film when we did our credits.

It makes the film more suspense, because you don’t know what is going to come up next, its almost like a pause in the film.

This also contains very important elements which make up a thriller. For example the different music themes produce create different  moods and feel for thriller films. For example jumpy and quite scary music which is played in different scenes, can be named as themes/stings as they produce different moods and settings for thriller films. Other sound elements which are used to give the films their thrilling genres are; diegetic/ non-diegetic sounds, synchronous/asynchronous sounds, ambient sounds etc…..

The one thing I haven't motioned yet was Mise en scene. Mise en Scene contains a few important elements which help add thrill to films and also help to add suspense. Lighting has to be dark to help give the film a gloomy mood and helps to make the audience feel more suspense towards the film. like in our film it was filmed on a rainy day which made a gloomy feel to our film, or though the inside part could of been made slightly darker as its quite light i think that if it was made darker i would be made creepy and more scary. we still had the old school to add to the creepiness of it.

Another thing which also makes the opening off a thriller stick to its thrilling genre is props, as in thriller films there is a lot of sharp objects and weapons like glass, knives, guns etc.. like in our film we used guns. This shows the audience that the objects are going to be used to kill someone or something. The set design/ location also helps the genre of the film stick to thriller, as the right set/location such as a gloomy warehouse or dark woods give a thrilling film as it shows mystery and suspense/tension towards the audience.


'I enjoyed the opening and was intreseted in what would happen next; I thiought that it could easily develop into a deeper story from what we were shown and fitted well as an opening'.Scott- TeamGimli 

'Your opening is good at setting up the scene and ideas of the film, and leaves the audience asking lots of questions about what is happening, which is good.' stella

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

Our media product represents the upper class children. Our film was set in a boarding school which means the surroundings and children were very posh. You can also see this from our characters outfits. They are both well presented. the posh school type also added good effect.- Dan Johnstone

The surroundings were nice and also shows that it's in a nice area and out of the roads.












This car also shows that it's an upper class family as this car is not and old car falling apart is an expensive well looked after car.

Except for the gun men they were so posh and were made to look like their were all in black how ever this didnt work as well as planned.
 'The costume fitted well with the school setting, however the Converse of the shooters seemed a bit out of place.' Scott- TeamGimli

The costumes should of been thought about a bit more and maybe more casual so they stood out more? This is something we would have to change.

 

 

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

Film distribution know as' Invisible art' is how films are brought to life and connect to an audience.
film distribution is the way you securing the placement of the film on an exhibition screening and for home viewing. A distributor is an individual or organisation who will represent your film at festivals and markets around the world and who will attempt to sell it to television (including terrestrial, cable and satellite), airlines and other companies that show short films.
an example of distributors we could use are;

-Dynamo
Dynamo is an online distrubuter wich Reach a global audience, publish programs on any site, and get paid for every purchase.
site.dynamoplayer.com

the only bad-side to this is we are only hitting one type of distributions (online or though online has become more popular.)

LIONSGATE

Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation (or Lionsgate) is a North American entertainment company. The company was formed in Vancouver, British Columbia, and its headquartered in Santa Monica, California. As of 2012, it is the most commercially successful independent film and television distribution company in North America and the seventh most profitable movie studio.
As lions gate is very popular and is used a lot in film this would cost a lot of money. This wouldn't be as particle as expect due to cost.

SODA PICTURES

Soda Pictures is a UK-based film distributor of art house, independent and world cinema. They have provided distribution for many award-winning films such as Frostbite (Winner "Best Film" Fantasporto 2006), Into Great Silence & Old Joy.
Soda pictures is a private distributor. This could be cheaper than a bigger company an it is Uk based.

4. Who would be the audience for your media production?

Our audience we aimed for with our thriller was 13-17, and females and males. We certificates our thriller at 15 as our film doesn't show a lot of violence or blood. It also doesn't contain any swearing or rude words. We aimed it at 13-17 as its set in a school which the characters would be ages between 12-16 and so would the viewers.
Or though Harry potter wasn't a thriller, it's was still set in a school and had a similar age rating even though most age groups watch it. Harry potter just goes to show that aiming your film at the right audience and also aiming at a similar age group to the characters can help, as the viewers will be able to relate in someway. "According to Warner Bros., 54 percent of deathly hallows part 2's viewers were female, compared to 57 percent for the last movie, and 45 percent were under 25 years old, compared to 56 for the last movie." - Box office Mojo.

This shows that we've aimed a the right age group or though as it say for age their was still around 50% that were above the age of 25. Also it's about 50/50 for gender which backs up why we decided on both genders.
'The film would appeal to teenagers.'- Stella.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We start with the Equiblium when Olivia is late for school. Wechose this as its something our audience can relate to. I would say everyoneteenaged/child has been late to school at least once and even adults are latesometimes.

It’s also a normal situation so nothing to abnormal about it.

Then the Des Equiblium - The shooting at the school.

People can relate to this via the news as it has been recently inthe news. 

The use of sound will attract the audience and audience will feelemotion and sensitivity towards this.

It’s then followed by the Des Equilium when Olivia receives a textfrom a close friend telling her school is re-opening.

This is also another shocking piece of news and this will alsoattract the audience and will can suspense and emotion for the audience. Almostlike their there.

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

Sorry if this video is bad quality due to blogger only taking certain files. I have had to compress this file by a lot.
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7. Looking back at your preliminary task , what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

So we started with ‘Only way is sussex’ based onthe popular tv shows ‘Only way is Essex’ and ‘Made in Chelsea’.

When we stared our planning as a group it wasn’thard for us to come up with something. We need a story line which was quick a punchy.Kate and I came up with the dialogue that would relate to an audience and wassimilar to what we had heard on the other TV series. We didn’t go into a lot ofdetail in this which was quite disappointing due to Kate unfortunate illnessKate was in hospital and was unviable to attend our filming day. So it was downto max and I do our best. I think that we did really well between us. Wesometimes had to leave the camera running and leave it whilst we acted but wedid get a lot of shots and angles which I think we lacked in our thrilleropening as we came across continuity problems. I also think that I have learnta lot. I did a lot of filming when we did commemorate due to Max being at aschool trip on the only day we could film which was very unfortunate, it wasdown to kate and to do our best which we worked very well together to make suremax would also be happy with our choice we had to make on the day. I think Ihave learnt a lot on the camera side as I’ve been their through all of ourfilming.

I think that as a group we have come really far,our editing skills got much better and smoother. Our camera skills were muchbetter. We thought more about the filming and shot sizes. We explored more withsetting and we defiantly learnt more on sound and using garage band which canchange a whole film. I think we worked really well as a group. We came up withsome amazing ideas and this really shows.

 Our blogstarted of boring and not much interaction. We eventually made that much betterand more interesting and personal which we are all very proud of. We used a lotof collages, photos videos. One of the things that was very beneficial was thepulling scene experiment. We did a lot of theses and it really helped a lot. Westarted of filming one shoot and we just kept adding shoots which made it morenatural and exciting to watch, I think that our actual version wasn’t as goodas our practice due to the pace the actors acted in the scene but we stillmanage to make it work and It is a very suspenseful part of our movie.

Another thing we have kept to is the style of titling, both times we went for a standard font and on top of a picture image. I think it worked well both tes and it's almost our signature style of titling. Or though I think we might of been able to try something more adventurous for our commemorate film I still feel that we work to our best and came up with something original and unique. As far as I'm swear there aren't many films that have shootings at schools and that turns into an investigation from the child who witnessed the men and noise.