In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The main film we looked at in comparison to ours was Derailed. One of the reasons we looked at this film was to unravel how mystery and suspense are created. It was also to see how the music played its role in building on the mystery genre of the film. We also based our train scene on Derailed. We came to the conclusion that contrasting a suspicious character in an everyday environment seemed like a good way to portray an enigma.
From 4.40 – 5.00 is a similar scene to ours. However, we included members of the general public to depict the normal working life of people.
Another film we looked at was Notting Hill. We liked the idea of creating verisimilitude in our film by including the general public. This is shown in Notting Hill by the first scene as the character walks through the streets. It’s an effective way of creating an atmosphere; in this case it was more of a light-hearted environment. We wanted to create a more sincere setting.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
We decided to dress the main character in a long black coat to try and represent an enigma of not knowing who he is. Furthermore, we decided to keep his face mainly hidden; only showing glimpses, again to reveal his identity and incorporate the mystery factor. We tried to contrast the main character’s actions to those of the public to make him stand out as this mystery, suspicious person. There was no dialogue from the main character in our film, which also contributes to the setting we were trying to create. On top of this, we tried to represent the main character as being an intellectual, middle to upper-class person. This was created through the use of clothing.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I feel that Working Title would be a good institution to distribute our film. This is because the film target audience is aimed at teenagers to adults. This means that they will associate more with bigger brands in terms of movie companies. Therefore, I feel that Working Title would give a solid backing to the movie. Working Title has also distributed thrillers and mystery movies such as (examples). Seeing as our movie is in the category of mystery, I think that Working Title would best suit the film for distribution.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Seeing as the film reflects the mystery genre, I think the target audience would be that of older teenagers through to adults. This is because concepts of the film may be hard to grasp as well as creating an eerie presence to fortify the unknown aspect of the film. The opening of the film could be watched by any age of audience, however, younger children may not understand the that the opening is trying to create an atmosphere for the latter part of the movie and hence, may find it boring. In addition to this, the overall plot of the movie contains scenes of violence and other themes which would be too mature for younger children. For these reasons, I would rate the film at 15.
Once this had been decided, it helped us to decide mise en scene factors. For example, we used the long black coat with hood up to reveal the face and contrasted the lighting to emphasise the character’s outline.
How did you attract/address your audience?
In order to discover who we would be targeting with our film, we constructed a questionnaire.
This is a copy:
We tried to be unbiased when approaching people to ask them the questions.
Most of the girls/women that we asked said that their favourite genre was rom-com. They also said that they would like to see more of these in the cinemas, mentioning movies such as Love Actually and Notting Hill.
The boys and men, as most would aspect, lingered favourably towards the action/thriller/mystery genres. When asking them which movies they would like to see more of in the cinemas, most said action, but with a bit more mystery and suspense.
After weighing up these results, we came to the conclusion that it would be more practical to make a mystery movie rather than attempting a cringe worthy rom-com.
So, when making our film opening, we tried to include aspects that would relate to males. Examples of this are: main character being male, close ups of males representing the public and sirens – which gives connotations of prison.
What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?
This was the first time that I was required to use an Apple Mac computer. This meant that I took time for new keys and shortcuts to embed into my memory. It also took a little bit of getting used to the different types of programmes etc.
I’ve learnt a lot on how to use final cut express and different tricks and perks that come with the editing tool. I think the main challenge of using it was: trying to make the music fit to the film whilst keeping everything in sync.
LiveType was a fairly straight forward program to use, however, I still learned much from it in that it can really add to the effect of a movie in the way that you play around with credits etc. In the end we decided on using an effect called frigid which adds a shudder motion to the text. This fitted well with the fact that we were trying to strike a little bit of fear and isolation into the audience.
Keeping a blog has been a good way to notice the progression of my own work. It also allows others to give feedback on work which gives another perspective on things.
Despite this, there were several problems along the way. The main problem was probably that final cut express decided that it did not want to work on our computer. After lots of chopping and changing with computers and file destinations, we managed to get it back up and running. Another dilemma which haunted our group for a while was that of music. After arduous hours of searching, we still couldn’t find suitable music. We managed to gain permission to use music from ‘Flamboyant Bella’ but found that it wasn’t what we were actually looking for. Luckily, a group member’s friend made a mix tape that we could integrate into our production. We chose our two favourite tracks and added them to our production. I think they add a great deal of effect to the movie.
I think we can reflect on the success of our final piece in the way that we persevered through all the issues and used the programs to our advantage to really strengthen our film.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I think that the preliminary task was a warm up to this two minute opening scene. There was so much more that was required from the group when making the latter task. The focus on detail of characters and shots had to be taken into account a lot more. We had to create the mise en scene and put it to effect, whereas in the first task, we simply had to show we could create a short scene showing different shots and basic editing skills. On top of this we had to think about lighting, whether to use natural lighting or to enhance it and put across a different message. I think I have a greater understanding of how light can be manipulated to suit the genre. Finally, I have learnt more about different camera angles and what they represent and also, where to place the character in a shot, does the character move off screen or remain in a certain place? Questions like this are now more important in the creation of a film.
The main film we looked at in comparison to ours was Derailed. One of the reasons we looked at this film was to unravel how mystery and suspense are created. It was also to see how the music played its role in building on the mystery genre of the film. We also based our train scene on Derailed. We came to the conclusion that contrasting a suspicious character in an everyday environment seemed like a good way to portray an enigma.
From 4.40 – 5.00 is a similar scene to ours. However, we included members of the general public to depict the normal working life of people.
Another film we looked at was Notting Hill. We liked the idea of creating verisimilitude in our film by including the general public. This is shown in Notting Hill by the first scene as the character walks through the streets. It’s an effective way of creating an atmosphere; in this case it was more of a light-hearted environment. We wanted to create a more sincere setting.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
We decided to dress the main character in a long black coat to try and represent an enigma of not knowing who he is. Furthermore, we decided to keep his face mainly hidden; only showing glimpses, again to reveal his identity and incorporate the mystery factor. We tried to contrast the main character’s actions to those of the public to make him stand out as this mystery, suspicious person. There was no dialogue from the main character in our film, which also contributes to the setting we were trying to create. On top of this, we tried to represent the main character as being an intellectual, middle to upper-class person. This was created through the use of clothing.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I feel that Working Title would be a good institution to distribute our film. This is because the film target audience is aimed at teenagers to adults. This means that they will associate more with bigger brands in terms of movie companies. Therefore, I feel that Working Title would give a solid backing to the movie. Working Title has also distributed thrillers and mystery movies such as (examples). Seeing as our movie is in the category of mystery, I think that Working Title would best suit the film for distribution.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Seeing as the film reflects the mystery genre, I think the target audience would be that of older teenagers through to adults. This is because concepts of the film may be hard to grasp as well as creating an eerie presence to fortify the unknown aspect of the film. The opening of the film could be watched by any age of audience, however, younger children may not understand the that the opening is trying to create an atmosphere for the latter part of the movie and hence, may find it boring. In addition to this, the overall plot of the movie contains scenes of violence and other themes which would be too mature for younger children. For these reasons, I would rate the film at 15.
Once this had been decided, it helped us to decide mise en scene factors. For example, we used the long black coat with hood up to reveal the face and contrasted the lighting to emphasise the character’s outline.
How did you attract/address your audience?
In order to discover who we would be targeting with our film, we constructed a questionnaire.
This is a copy:
We tried to be unbiased when approaching people to ask them the questions.
Most of the girls/women that we asked said that their favourite genre was rom-com. They also said that they would like to see more of these in the cinemas, mentioning movies such as Love Actually and Notting Hill.
The boys and men, as most would aspect, lingered favourably towards the action/thriller/mystery genres. When asking them which movies they would like to see more of in the cinemas, most said action, but with a bit more mystery and suspense.
After weighing up these results, we came to the conclusion that it would be more practical to make a mystery movie rather than attempting a cringe worthy rom-com.
So, when making our film opening, we tried to include aspects that would relate to males. Examples of this are: main character being male, close ups of males representing the public and sirens – which gives connotations of prison.
What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?
This was the first time that I was required to use an Apple Mac computer. This meant that I took time for new keys and shortcuts to embed into my memory. It also took a little bit of getting used to the different types of programmes etc.
I’ve learnt a lot on how to use final cut express and different tricks and perks that come with the editing tool. I think the main challenge of using it was: trying to make the music fit to the film whilst keeping everything in sync.
LiveType was a fairly straight forward program to use, however, I still learned much from it in that it can really add to the effect of a movie in the way that you play around with credits etc. In the end we decided on using an effect called frigid which adds a shudder motion to the text. This fitted well with the fact that we were trying to strike a little bit of fear and isolation into the audience.
Keeping a blog has been a good way to notice the progression of my own work. It also allows others to give feedback on work which gives another perspective on things.
Despite this, there were several problems along the way. The main problem was probably that final cut express decided that it did not want to work on our computer. After lots of chopping and changing with computers and file destinations, we managed to get it back up and running. Another dilemma which haunted our group for a while was that of music. After arduous hours of searching, we still couldn’t find suitable music. We managed to gain permission to use music from ‘Flamboyant Bella’ but found that it wasn’t what we were actually looking for. Luckily, a group member’s friend made a mix tape that we could integrate into our production. We chose our two favourite tracks and added them to our production. I think they add a great deal of effect to the movie.
I think we can reflect on the success of our final piece in the way that we persevered through all the issues and used the programs to our advantage to really strengthen our film.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I think that the preliminary task was a warm up to this two minute opening scene. There was so much more that was required from the group when making the latter task. The focus on detail of characters and shots had to be taken into account a lot more. We had to create the mise en scene and put it to effect, whereas in the first task, we simply had to show we could create a short scene showing different shots and basic editing skills. On top of this we had to think about lighting, whether to use natural lighting or to enhance it and put across a different message. I think I have a greater understanding of how light can be manipulated to suit the genre. Finally, I have learnt more about different camera angles and what they represent and also, where to place the character in a shot, does the character move off screen or remain in a certain place? Questions like this are now more important in the creation of a film.
