QUESTIONS - EVALUATION

INNOCENCE

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


We began the stages of preparing our film by researching other films of the same genre and seeing if our target audience had seen and enjoyed these films too. We watched various clips from films such as ‘scream’ and ‘the village’ which gave us a sense of what were trying to achieve, for example the genre of thriller, suspense and tension.

Due to our target audience being 12a and above, we tried to include various tense moments such as when ‘Eleanor’ is being followed to the moment she is taken.

We studied clips from other films analysing the textual representations and decoding the messages as well as focusing on mise-en-scene, camera shots, sound and editing which I feel all follow the conventional process of a media product.

Again we have followed the convention of the villain as he is wearing stereotypical colours such as black and wearing a hood which again connotes he is in fact the villain. This disguise is party taken from both ‘Scream’ and ‘The village’ as both villains as in disguise whether it is a mask or a costume. These representations from other films give a sense of security to the audience as they are familiar with the convention and have a faint idea of what will happen. I think this could have been changed for example making the villain less obvious for example in ‘The lovely Bones’ the villain is a ‘friendly un suspecting neighbour’, thus giving the audience an added level of surprise and terror when watching the film and eradication predictability.



How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our initial brainstorm ideas developed in revealing our used of two main characters in the opening scene, which keeps the audiences attention to the clip in hand as there is less confusion with multiple characters.

It was important to convey to our audience particular social groups and we achieved this through both the characters and the setting. By using the derelict and ancient tower, the film connotes mystery to the audience which anchors the genre. The characters also emphasise the divide within social groups for example the house which we have used to be ‘Eleanor’s’, from what the clip reveals to the audience, it is nice and clean. Where as in comparison, the villains hiding place is cold, which rubble and ruins.
The character ‘Eleanor’ is on a jog which connotes to the audience she has some spare time throughout her day to take for herself and recollect her thoughts. This leaves a gap for a typical convention of many thrillers that there is a possible ‘stalking’ moment.

What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

The type of media institution we would use to distribute our film would be Working Title a British film production company based in London and founded in 1984 and has produced both film and television since then. I think that they would be the perfect company to distribute our film ' due to there knowledge and success. They have released various successful action/thriller films including 'Gone', 'Hidden Agenda', 'The Interpreter' and 'State of play'. Another media institution which would benefit our product would be Universal Studios founded in 1912 and is
one of the oldest American film studios, they have released films such as 'Green Zone', 'Hannibal' and the 'Bourne' series, which we have heavily based our film meaning that Universal Studios would be the perfect distributer of our film ‘innocence ’.


Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience for our film would be between the ages of 12-20 as the films that we have studied such as ‘the village’ and 'scream' have been rated at around 12 so we feel that our film doesn't include any strong scenes of blood and violence but is around the same level of such as ‘scream’ for example the opening scene where the girl is stabbed murdered and hung on a tree in her garden, making it suitable for a younger audience.

It is hard to say the maximum age of which someone will not enjoy our film as Hitchcock’s films are so unusual a quirky and therefore have remained popular, we have tried to incorporate this within our films with the effects such as the slowed down motion when the villain picks up the keys.

The gender of which will prefer our film is also hard to say as both males and females may enjoy it.

Within our film there is no distinct divide with which gender would prefer the film ‘innocence’ as it covers both action for the males and scenarios such an s the kidnapping which is relevant and easily related to many women as the issues such as rape and kidnapping are constantly highlighted within the media.

How did you attract/address your audience?

When we first started looking at ideas for our film we took a while deciding on what genre we would chose and one that we would all enjoy. After choosing the theme thriller we all decided we wanted to create tension that would build up and climax at the end of the two minutes of filming.

I enjoyed working on this genre as you create the tension yourself. However, I did think this was hard to encapsulate as the initial establishing scenes could look boring, monotonous and unoriginal as there is a traditional formula which is constantly re presented in thriller movies. As a team I think we came up with a good solution that is to have the character ‘Eleanor’ oblivious to someone following her which is fairly unoriginal, however then to have her drop her keys and the villain who picks them up. This speeds up the suspense and tension process as you don’t know his motives for picking them up yet.

What have you learn about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When we started this task I had had no experience with using a Mac and have now learnt very useful techniques which I can also incorporate within my photography course.
We found that the story boards should be more detailed to help the filming process by filming quicker and in professional circumstances, cheaper. I also found that filming took a considerable amount of time as each slight change of film as to be recorded and each shot has to be filmed to gain a lot of recoding to work from when editing.

After we had recorded our footage we used programs such as garage band to create our theme tune and Final cut to perform the editing and cutting of our film. We found it very hard to get the right theme tune to our film and this took various tries using a variety of instruments and settings but in the end we finally found one that we all agreed fitted to the film.

As our preliminary film was our first experience with using final cut express we hadn’t yet discovered the different sounds and techniques such as fades which we used in our final film ‘innocence’.

I personally found it hard working with an Apple Mac as I have been brought up with a PC, and still by the end of editing found it tricky, I have learnt however many new techniques and cant wait for our next project to get more involved with the editing process.




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

I feel that the preliminary task was a great preparation for our real product, it allowed us to experiment using the cameras and also to practise and see which camera angles worked and which didn't look as good. Also we realised that you need precision when you are filming as we filmed our preliminary task on two different days we forgot about some of the things that had been different on our first day of filming such as my hair and the details such as walking around the chair the right way round.

I found that Andrew Gilbert and I worked well together and were efficient enough to get the filming completed within the double lesson. This gave us maximum time to edit the shots by using final cut express on the apple Mac computers. Additionally the preliminary task gave us an insight of how to use this product (final cut express) and helped us gain a steady foundation for when we start our final films.