A2 Media.

In A2, we will looking at different music genres and media theories. We will be split into groups and then as a group we will decide what music genre we would like to create a music video for, sharing our initial ideas which we thought of over the summer holidays and using different elements from each so that eventually we will be able to create a music video. Along with the music video, we will be creating a digipack.

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

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

Evaluation Question 2.(How does your media product represent particular social groups?)

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

The social groups I will be talking about will be females and young people. 

There is only one character in our opening sequence who is a young female. 

We first see a close up of her waking up, spaced out and dazed. She begins to rub her eyes, we see that her nails are freshly pained Red, which could indicate love hate or passion. Despite the fact that she has just been beaten up and looks like she has been dragged through fields, we can still see that her hair has been perfectly curled.  This also tells us she likes to look nice and presentable and takes pride in her image, just like most girls do. This therefore adheres the stereotype That girls care about how they look and take pride in themselves, this is also massively reflected by the costume as she is wearing a white wedding dress. However, the lighting inside the coffin is very dark and this therefore subverts the stereotype of young people as they are seen as to be the future, bright and full of energy, where as inside the coffin, it seems very dull and dark. 

Next we see that she is wearing a wedding dress, whether she was dressed in it before, or someone has dressed her in it, we don’t know. The White signifies innocence and purity, but as we can see, her dress is covered in dirt and she has a cut/bruise on her face. This could indicate the fact that she had been fighting, standing up for herself or defending herself, which subverts the stereo type of females being weak and timid. 


This also subverts the stereotype of the younger generation, as they are not usually the ones who are getting married, this therefore creates a lot of questions to the audience. 

We see a close up angle of her looking around the coffin. This allows us to see her facial expressions and shows us she is confused. This is stereotypical as girls are normally portrayed to be dumb and confused most of the time. 

At the start of the sequence, it is so silent there isn’t any ambient sound, which reinforces the fact that she is alone in a coffin, this sets the tone and helps build tension. The noises we do hear in the coffin, is her banging around, trying to get out, because there is no other sounds, this sounds louder and more effective and gives the effect she is really trying to get out as she is stuck. The sounds begin to build and we t hear her voice, which is a Diegetic sound. She says ' HELLO?' 'IS ANYONE THERE?' and ' CAN YOU HELP ME PLEASE?' the word please indicates that she is polite and has manners. This subverts the stereotype of the younger generation as they are seen as rude and helpless. The sound continues to build and we hear her banging and screaming, this is the climax as the audience are really beginning to panic as they are watching her in pain and feel helpless. This also contrasts with her heavy breathing at the end, showing us she has gave in, which subverts the stereotype of women, highlighting the fact that they are weak. 

We also used editing within our opening sequence to help represent the character. The pace of the first few shots in the sequence are quite slow and long to show that she is confused and thinking, she also has know idea what is going on yet but this therefore allows the audience time to try and figure out what is going on. The more she begins to realize what is going on, the more the pace then picks up. She begins to panic as she has realized if she wants out, she is the only one who can get her out, she is on her own, this reflects her mental state. This adheres to the stereotypes of females as it is saying they cannot survive on their own. The pace then slows down again towards the end to show that she is showing logic and tells us she knows she has to be calm in order to get out the coffin, which is subverting the stereotype of a female. As I mentioned before women are seen to have no logic and be dumb. 

I think the representation of our character changes towards the end of the opening sequence. This is because we see she starts banging on the coffin to ask for help so she can get out. The stereotype has therefore been subverted as she is standing up for herself and being strong, which is usually the opposite to how girls are presented. A lot more energy is also introduced by this point, which is stereotypical and expected of a younger person.

 At the very end, we see a Birds Eye View shot looking down into the coffin, which makes the audience feel like they are looking down on her, making her once again look weak and small. Which adheres to the original stereotype.

   Therefore, the stereotypes constantly change throughout our opening sequence, showing that not everyone is the same. 

Evaluation Question 3.(What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?)

Question 3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
All though I would like to let a well known film institution such as Paramount Pictures or Warner Brothers produce our film, I would still pick Vertigo as I think they are more suited to our film. We have also made several changes to our original idea, but I still feel it would be a good idea for Vertigo to produce it. This is because, our film is a low budgeted film and Vertigo is a small independent British film company. Films produced by well known institutions often have much bigger budgets than films produced by smaller institutions such as Vertigo. They are usually also directed by well known directors and star may different famous actors and actresses, none of which our film has, that’s why I think we are more suited to Vertigo.

I would like Vertigo Films to make our film because as I mentioned above, they produce low budgeted films, which is what our film is. We also would need to think of clever strategies to advertise and market the film as we would not be able to afford to do this. After researching the film Monsters, I learnt that Vertigo were very clever in the way that they did this and it didn’t cost them a lot.  They could also use social media websites to help market and raise awareness for the film as most people who our film is targeted at, have at least one social media account.

Vertigo produced a film called All Stars, that came out in May 2013, It was directed by Ben Gregor and it was the first film he has directed. The film was shown in well known cinemas such as vue and Odeon across the country and after just 3 weeks had already made over £1million. This is also the first film that my group have directed.

Vertigo films have also produced a lot of films with different genres. They produced WΔZ which is also a thriller film, like ours. It stars Tom Hardy, who has stared in other films such as The Dark Knight Rises and Star Trek: Nemesis. All though our thriller does not star any famous actors or actresses, I think by producing other thriller films, Vertigo obviously have experience and will have a good idea of what works well in terms of advertising, marketing and producing the films. A lot of the films that they have produced also had low budgets, like us.

As I mentioned earlier, Vertigo produce a range of different films, therefore they bring in different types of audiences for each film. This is a plus for us as we are targeting our film at anyone from the age of 16 or above. This therefore brings in a wider audience for us as Vertigo have a varied audience of different ages and genders and not a specific target audience.

If Vertigo were able to market and advertise the film, how they did monsters, and used a clever strategy.  I would hope that people would then talk about this on social media, raising more awareness of the film, which results in brining in a bigger audience.  

Evaluation Question 4.(Who would be the audience for your media product?)

QUESTION 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

I have created a Facebook profile to show someone from our target audience. All though this is a young male's profile, that is not to say other people will not enjoy our film, this is just an Example.

The target audience for our film would be Males around age 20. 

This is a graph of viewers of the film 127 hours, which I consider to be similar to our film. As you can see, the most votes are from Males under 18, however, I feel in our actual film, there would be more graphic things in it which could possibly make a boy at the age of 8, for example, scared. Therefore, I would say over 18 for our film. From this graph we can also see that Males had a higher vote than Females. 

Tom Smith is a 20 year old student, from London, who is studying business at Kingston University.

We can see his interests through pages that he has liked, they come in categories such as Sport, films, books and Music. He is a typical lad, he likes a lot of sport and different teams. 

 We can also see films that he has watched, In this case we can see he has watched a lot of different genres of film which is good as this shows that our film is not just targeted at people who like the thriller genre, most people over the age of 14 would like to watch it as it features lots of different things throughout such as romance, so those who like romantic comedies may also take an interest. 

 These are the films that he likes, as we can see above, he likes a lot of films with different genres, but are leaning more towards thriller and action films and thriller is the main Genre of our film.

As i mentioned above, this is just one example of someone from our target audience. Our film pretty much appeals to anyone over the age of 14. I think majority of the audience however, will be boys as a lot of boys like thriller films and the lead actress is also a pretty girl, which will make boys even more interested.

Evaluation Question 5.(How did you attract/address audiences?)

QUESTION 5: HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ ADDRESS AUDIENCES?

Pleasures our target audience can take from our opening Sequence:

 Girls can relate to the actress

Boys find actress attractive

 Builds tension as feel empathetic to character

 Want to see what’s going to happen to her

Our film is a psychological thriller, however, in the opening sequence, it is straight thriller.  Influential films include: The call and 127 hours.

Our opening sequence is set in a box, this makes the audience:

Feel claustrophobic 

 Realise their fears  

 Feel physically and emotionally with/close to her as is it so small and closed.

Narrative.

In the opening sequence, we never see the person who we think is outside the coffin in the opening sequence, there is a suggestion someone is there as the girl in the coffin can hear the dirt dropping on the top of the coffin, so someone must be shovelling it. She is also wearing a wedding dress which creates the question as to why is she wearing it. 

In the actual film, it focuses more on finding the killer and the audience want to find the killer- it involves a lot of cliffhangers, which help create and build suspense and tension.  This is something that males love to watch, as they don’t really get scared. 

Characters.

There is only one character that we actually see in the opening sequence of our thriller who is a girl. Males will like this as she is the only character and she is also very pretty so they will find her attractive. They may also feel sympathy and feel like they have to protect her in the coffin, as males are quite protective in general anyways. If they feel this, they will also be questioning who is the other character that is putting the dirt on her.
We also hear someone dropping the dirt on the coffin; this could represent anyone that has ever done anything evil to anyone, in anyone’s lives, as we never see their face. This makes the character feel empathy for the girl.

Social Groups.

Shows how women adhere to the stereotype of being weak and men dominating them, However, we hope for this stereotype to be subverted. 

Young, so is therefore venerable, adhering to the stereotype.

Men can be identified as anyone in anyones life that has ever done anything wrong as we cannot see his face. 

Sound.

The soundtrack sets the tone of the opening sequence but fades out as the image comes on screen, there is no dialogue in the opening sequence. This is so it makes it obvious that she is all alone in a coffin and then we hear the sound effects hitting the top of the coffin that we added. We recorded this ambient sound ourselves when filming the thriller to make it more realistic and make the audience feel as if they were there. We added this to reinforce and show how much danger she is actually in, it also sets the scene. Finally, we added the soundtrack which we played at the start of the opening sequence.

Titles.

We added titles at the start of our opening sequence to a black screen and you can hear the sound of dirt dropping onto the coffin. The black allows the audience to focus on the names of the people involved in acting, filming, editing, producing and directing the films. Our director, Hugo Claude, is an up and coming director so this will attract people to come and see the film. We couldn’t use a well-known director as the institution that produced the film are a low budget, independent company, so they wouldn’t not be able to afford this. Therefore, out actress is also up and coming, she is a strong female lead. However, if we did have the budget for a well-known actress, we would choose Angelina Jolie a she is also a strong female lead.

Editing/ Film Style.

We used fast cutting shots which creates tension, we also had a hand held camera shot which made it look very shaky, this makes the audience feel as if they are there in the coffin with her, it makes the feel close to her. The slow shot at the end also helps build suspense as it zooms out slowly as the music comes back on and then it cuts to black.

Conventions.

Cant see the killers face

We also can’t hear his voice but we have an indication he is there as the dirt is hitting the coffin lid.

Set in a coffin.

She is beat up and bruised. 

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

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

Using technology, we added annotations on our final product on youtube, by adding speech bubbles and writing what we had done, what technology we had used and why. 

Evaluation Question 7(Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?)

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

Editing our thriller.

The first thing we did was review our footage. After that, we reviewed all the rushes, this allowed us to see which clips were unusable, for example, if there were mistakes in any of the clips, such as the actress laughing and at one point we left the camera rolling and it was just filming black. Looking through the clips also highlighted the ones that we wanted to definitely use. Some of the shots that we thought were unusable were actually usable for some parts, so we therefore cut them into sections that we could use. We then kept these clips incase we had to use them later incase we couldn’t find a shot to match a certain action. We then created a new bin and of the rushes we were going to use and we then added the clips onto the timeline and put them in groups according to the camera angles. Next we re named them so we didn’t get confused as to what was what. We made sure that we kept saving our work after each step.

Editing the Clips

A lot of our shots had us talking to the actress and shouting ‘rolling’ and ‘action’ so we therefore had to cut these parts out, as we couldn’t use them. There were also some shots of our actress corpsing half way through a scene so we therefore had to cut them as well. We added all our clips to the timeline which helped us re arrange them and it made it a lot easier to see the shots and therefore made it easier picking which shot we wanted to use and where we wanted to put it. We cut the shots by using the razor tool. Once the shots were in the right order, we began to cut them even more to make them much shorter which overall, made the sequence a lot quicker, building more suspense and tension.

Sequence and order of the shots

To make sure we didn’t get confused or overlap our shots, we put them on different levels of the timeline, which made it easier. This also helped with continuity as we could closely edit the shots that we needed to match on action. By using the + and – buttons, we could zoom in and out which allowed us to get the exact moment we needed as we could zoom in and out as much as we wanted to. My group found it difficult when editing match on action and this is because there was a few continuity issues. All though I think we done a good job costume and make up wise, we needed to make sure the actress was doing the exact same actions and movements each time we filmed it and this is something we didn’t do, although it was roughly the same. However, it showed when editing and I think our match on action looks a little rough and jumpy.

Transitions and titles

We had an issue in the fact that our thriller wasn’t long enough so we decided that we would add titles at the start on a black screen and we would just hear the sound of the dirt hitting the top of the coffin. Originally, we wanted to layer the titles over the clips while it was slow paced and we were going to stop the titles become quicker, but it was way to short doing this, so we added it to a black screen and then thought of the idea of adding sound, which we liked. We then had another problem as we had a lot of titles, so it was a black screen for a long time before the opening sequence even started. This didn’t look good and it was also make the audience bored and they would lose concentration. We therefore decided to do half and half. We now have a few seconds of black where the titles come up then the opening sequence starts and the titles still come up. At the end of the opening sequence, we see her laying in the coffin and the camera zooms out and we can hear her breathing and then it cuts straight to black and the title ‘BENEATH’ appears. The music we heard at the start also fades in as the camera Is zooming out.