Friday, 31 March 2017
Tuesday, 28 March 2017
Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
When making a film target audience is greatly considered, as it determines the genre (and subgenre), marketing techniques, distribution company and also age rating, and catering to the right audience helps with the success of the film. To determine the audience for our thriller film, we looked at other thrillers similar to ours such as The Disappearance of Alice Creed and Se7en, and the types of people who watched these films. Typically, thriller films have mostly a male audience, possibly because they involve dark and violent themes.
The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a gritty and violent thriller about a kidnapping, which is similar to our film, meaning that this film was our primary inspiration for our target audience. This film appealed much more to males than to females, probably due to its dark and violent themes. Which is also probably why people under the age of 18 have watched it, and the largest number of people in a particular age group are people aged 30 - 44 years and non-US users as it is a niche film set in a fairly unknown area of the UK, meaning more of its audience comes from the UK rather than the US.
Se7en is a mystery or crime thriller, it is similar to our film as it has horror elements in it. The film's audience mainly consists of males, but still has a large female audience. In terms of age, 30 - 44 year olds and 18 - 29 year olds dominate the audience, meaning that it has a much larger and more diverse audience than The Disappearance of Alice Creed. Also, more non-US users have seen it, not necessarily UK users, but the UK is probably a big audience as the film is in English. This film is more mainstream than The Disappearance of Alice Creed, which is reflected in its large audience from the number of votes on IMDb.Our audience
Our thriller film is similar to both Se7en and The Disappearance of Alice Creed, meaning it would have a similar audience of 30 - 44 or 18 - 29 year old males mostly from the UK. As our film is more similar to The Disappearance of Alice Creed, because of its niche subject and location, also because its low budget and independent and has similar themes, our audience would be more similar to this film.
A typical viewer of our film is Callum, a 30 year old man from England, who likes films with violent and mature subjects, which are dark in tone and fairly complex. He enjoys films set in the UK, as well as old UK based rock bands. These things also somewhat reflect his social background as he comes from a British lower/middle class family, so prefers gritty films, and unpolished and grungy sounding music, such as old rock. Callum listens to 6 Music which is an alternative radio station which focuses on playing a wide variety of music, including a lot of unheard and new music by upcoming artists in various genres, mainly focusing on indie guitar music, Callum likes medias which help develop and build new talent, including low budget indie films. He likes The Disappearance of Alice Creed, as it is based in the UK, and is violent and unlike many mainstream films he has watched, it also has a more serious tone than other films he has watched. He also likes the film Se7en because of its serious tone and dark themes, as well as the mystery and complex characters. Callum likes thriller films that play on fears such as abduction and death, he likes films which involve mystery and encourage the viewer to think about the film. He prefers to watch films on cheap streaming sites such as MUBI which also includes a lot of films he likes, rather than mainstream sites such as Netflix, where he can't find many films he likes, and also Cinemas as they don't often show films he's interested in.
Sunday, 26 March 2017
[updated] Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Gender
In our thriller opening, we used the convention and representation of women as the victim. Vulnerability is a theme often portrayed in thrillers, especially portraying women as vulnerable. We used this stereotype in our thriller as it would work better with a female, instead of a male victim, as people tend to sympathise with women more and feel sorry for them more than males, it also fits the genre as women are often represented as fragile and weak in other thriller films. Similar to our film, The Disappearance of Alice Creed portrays the character of Alice Creed as vulnerable and a victim, as she is kidnapped, put in danger and is hurt. In our film the female character is kidnapped and hurt, reinforcing the representation that women are victims. Women are often used in thrillers to emphasise the morality of the antagonists, as hurting or kidnapping a woman helps reinforce the antagonist's danger and inner darkness. In terms of camera, the camera often cuts out part of the character's face in the first and second parts of the opening, which could imply that she is powerless as part of her is cut our of the shot, and usually to imply power and dominance, the camera includes the whole face of the character in the centre or with the use of the rule of thirds. In our film the character is often off centre in the shot or central but part of their face or their entire face cut out. However, this character challenges usual conventions regarding women in thrillers, as she is given more time on screen than the other character who may or may not be male, as usually male characters are given more screen time, this could represent her as dominant, but other aspects of the film clearly show that she isn't.
However, in our film we challenged stereotypes of gender in a way, as our antagonist's gender isn't revealed, which takes away the identity of the character and makes them more mysterious as well as dangerous. Usually in thriller films, the antagonist is male, which reinforces stereotypes of men as being violent and dominant as well, and the female characters are used to reinforce this. For our film, the antagonist is used to portray the idea that anyone can be a villain and rough and violent, which challenges stereotypes of the thriller genre and creates a sense of danger and unease and creates tension in our thriller opening. The antagonist's costume helps create a genderless and mysterious character, as the hoodie, gloves and trousers are fairly gender neutral as they are black and help hide the character's figure, and the gloves and hood hide the character's face and hands. the colour of the antagonist's clothes also create a sense of danger and unease, which is reinforced by that the antagonist is placed at the far right side of the shot and half of their body is cut off by the edge of the shot, which also creates a sense of mystery as well as unease. The character is also not given very much time on screen to reinforce the mystery which adds more danger to the character and reinforces the idea that anyone can be a threat, as the character isn't given enough time on screen to have an identity.
Age
Our film reinforces stereotypes that young people are naïve, as our main character is a young adult or teen and gets kidnapped in the opening, which also helps portray young people as vulnerable. However, we have tried to challenge representations as young people are often represented as innocent, which we have challenged with our character's mysterious background reinforced by the location in the first half of the opening and her clean clothes in the location, as well as certain shots of her which hide the top part of the character's face, these help challenge stereotypes of young people as innocent. In addition, the character is also represented as a typical teenager, as she wears clothes typical of that age, as well as representing the naivety and vulnerability of teens and young adults. A few shots to represent this show her from behind, emphasising vulnerability. This shot shows our young female character from the back, unaware of a potential danger, representing her and young people as powerless as well as naïve This is also similar to films of this genre as the opening of Essex Boys represented the young driver as naïve as well as powerless and the film The Disappearance of Alice Creed uses a young character to be kidnapped and reinforce fears of young people getting kidnapped or harmed due to their vulnerability and possibly lack of awareness, similar to our thriller film opening. The editing also reinforces the lack of awareness of the young character, as it gets faster and faster, implying that something bad is going to happen to her but she is oblivious to the threat.
In our thriller opening, we used the convention and representation of women as the victim. Vulnerability is a theme often portrayed in thrillers, especially portraying women as vulnerable. We used this stereotype in our thriller as it would work better with a female, instead of a male victim, as people tend to sympathise with women more and feel sorry for them more than males, it also fits the genre as women are often represented as fragile and weak in other thriller films. Similar to our film, The Disappearance of Alice Creed portrays the character of Alice Creed as vulnerable and a victim, as she is kidnapped, put in danger and is hurt. In our film the female character is kidnapped and hurt, reinforcing the representation that women are victims. Women are often used in thrillers to emphasise the morality of the antagonists, as hurting or kidnapping a woman helps reinforce the antagonist's danger and inner darkness. In terms of camera, the camera often cuts out part of the character's face in the first and second parts of the opening, which could imply that she is powerless as part of her is cut our of the shot, and usually to imply power and dominance, the camera includes the whole face of the character in the centre or with the use of the rule of thirds. In our film the character is often off centre in the shot or central but part of their face or their entire face cut out. However, this character challenges usual conventions regarding women in thrillers, as she is given more time on screen than the other character who may or may not be male, as usually male characters are given more screen time, this could represent her as dominant, but other aspects of the film clearly show that she isn't.
Age
Our film reinforces stereotypes that young people are naïve, as our main character is a young adult or teen and gets kidnapped in the opening, which also helps portray young people as vulnerable. However, we have tried to challenge representations as young people are often represented as innocent, which we have challenged with our character's mysterious background reinforced by the location in the first half of the opening and her clean clothes in the location, as well as certain shots of her which hide the top part of the character's face, these help challenge stereotypes of young people as innocent. In addition, the character is also represented as a typical teenager, as she wears clothes typical of that age, as well as representing the naivety and vulnerability of teens and young adults. A few shots to represent this show her from behind, emphasising vulnerability. This shot shows our young female character from the back, unaware of a potential danger, representing her and young people as powerless as well as naïve This is also similar to films of this genre as the opening of Essex Boys represented the young driver as naïve as well as powerless and the film The Disappearance of Alice Creed uses a young character to be kidnapped and reinforce fears of young people getting kidnapped or harmed due to their vulnerability and possibly lack of awareness, similar to our thriller film opening. The editing also reinforces the lack of awareness of the young character, as it gets faster and faster, implying that something bad is going to happen to her but she is oblivious to the threat.Friday, 24 March 2017
Thursday, 16 March 2017
Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Pre-Production
Before we started filming, we planned our films using a range of media platforms to document and research different aspects of the film. We used blogs as they allow different medias to be displayed on them such as videos and PowerPoint presentations, so we could vary the presentation of our research. Blogs also allow us to edit past post and make improvements, which is easier than if we used paper to plan and research our film, and with the addition of comments we were able to get feedback on our posts and be able to edit them to improve them, making blogging interactive. In addition, because they are online, the internet is more accessible and quick to access for research.
Other sites such as Youtube were also used during the process of Pre-Production for the preliminary task and for research on different aspects of film making, this site is a rich content platform and many useful videos can be found on film making, as well as clips from other thriller films to aid our research and inspire aspects of our film. Another site used during pre-production was DaFont, which is a website which provides a very large range of fonts making it creatively empowering, as the fonts are also free to use and download, similar to Freesound which has a large range of sounds and soundtracks to use which are free to use. One drive allowed our group to collaborate on different parts of the research such as the mood board, where we could all communicate our ideas on one platform to each other. Dropbox allowed public sharing, it was where shots from different openings and scenes of films were shared, we could access them easily and use them in our research and analysis.
Production
During the filming we were able to use HD cameras which are useful for film making as they allow instant playback, meaning that we could watch the shots back and decide whether we wanted to keep them or re-shoot them, the cameras also allowed control over settings, zoom and framing which made it easier to film. The HD cameras also had SD cards which meant that a lot of footage could be filmed and transferred onto a computer easily for editing, and we could film lots of different versions of one shot and decide which one we wanted to use later, which may not have been available in old camera versions, which wouldn't have allowed such a high quality image as well. During production we used different lights to create different effects in the last part of our film, we used industrial lights at one point to contrast with the dark scene at the end, and a simple phone light to brighten the location a bit more and also add meaning.
Post-Production
During the editing stage of our film we were able to use a non-linear editing software, Premier Pro, which allowed us to edit our shots into any order and change the order of the shots, as well as refine the edit or the clips by tweaking the colour or cutting the length of the shot to fit the film better. A wide variety of tools were available, making it creatively empowering, as we were able to use transitions and effects on the program. On the editing software we were able to add and alter different sounds including music, we could change the length, volume and pitch on the program as well as layering sounds to create an uneasy atmosphere in the opening. Another thing we were able to do for our thriller was adding titles for credits and the title of the film, the program allowed us to change the fonts, colours and positions of each of the titles and also how long they could be seen for and when they would appear. This helped us to create a more professional looking project as we could consider the background and place the titles accordingly.
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