Evaluation

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

In connection with the thriller genre our media product uses many generic thriller signifiers, for example, the chiaroscuro lighting in the staircase and the speaking scenes behind Tanwyn, this was influenced by the strobe lighting in 'Essex boys' when driving through the tunnel our has the same effect but as the characters are not moving they lighting stays still but still symbolizes bars of a prison or a trap. The sleazy and dingy mise-en-scene in an urban car park whilst raining which shows the leaks and cracks in the setting, this was inspired by 'Ronin' with its dark and dingy surroundings and the unused grey warehouse. The main protagonist being male like most generic thrillers (Vertigo, The Third Man etc), however we added a twist of our own to challenge the convention of real media products and to throw the audience off guard, we had Tanwyn's character do an internal monologue like in 'Layer Cake' but usually the main protagonist does the monologue however this character gets killed at the beginning and is not our main protagonist. By choosing an Asian actor as our lead character we are challenging the conventions of real media products and are appealing to a wider audience. By doing our peer assessments of each others thrillers our group were told that our thriller contained lots of thriller signifiers so they are obviously evident in our product.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

As with most thrillers ours is told from the point of view of the male protagonist. Using this narrative represents that in the world of crime; men are dominant especially since there are no women in the opening sequence.

The opening also glamorizes crime showing the criminals in plush suits and making the shots and narrative stylish gives the criminals and added flare. On top of this Lukman's character is really cool, calm, collected and extremely slick, showing this by the way he pulls the gun out and the manner in which he says nothing and has no qualms about killing the son of a big time gangster like Harvey Vanik. In contrast with this we have also managed to capture the unpredictability of the trade and the uncertain feelings that surround it as the audience do not know what character is the hero or the villain as there are no visible signs of good and evil, in so doing we keep the mystery and intrigue of the audience.

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

If our film was to be made in full it would be distributed by a Multi-plex cinema as it is a main stream thriller following most of the conventions whilst also challenging them a little. However if all of the people involved in its making are not well known by the public and there are no famous actors that appear so not so many people would be enticed to come and view it unlike the way they would do if it was like 'Ronin' and had a full star cast. So in this respect our film would probably be exhibited in an art house cinema. Due to this point and the fact that our film is an independent British film with little funding it is more likely to be exhibited in an art house cinema.

Who would be the audience for you media product?

Due to the rude language and occasional violence our thriller film is likely to be certificated as a 15. Most thrillers also have a high age certificate, such as 15 or 18 age ratings, which means that the thriller genre usually appeals and targets an audience of 15 – 30 year olds, as shown in the results of my questionnaires. This film will also predominantly appeal to males due to the main protagonist being male (as is usual in classic thriller films e.g. “Vertigo” – Alfred Hitchcock, “Chinatown” – Roman Polanski, “Layer Cake” – Matthew Vaughn) and they will be able to relate better to the main character and sometimes aspire to be like him as in James Bond movies. On top of this during the film there are very few female characters and many of these are not very strong characters or are portrayed as weaker than men, although some are mysterious, dangerous, treacherous characters (femme fatale). This marginalised female character, also predominant in the thriller genre, will not appeal to the female audience due to them being viewed as weak, sometimes pathetic and dependent on the male protagonist.

There is a very wide choice of social classes, because the thriller genre incorporates many aspects of different genres however, classic thrillers, like ours would appeal to B’s and C1’s due to the fact that thrillers have complex plots that cause the audience to think. They also have ambiguous endings with flaw heroes as the main protagonists which cause the audience to think. Our target audience are therefore probably university educated, like teachers, lawyers, and managers. Also these social classes are the ones who are most likely to go to the cinema often as they can afford it. Our thriller is aimed predominantly at a British audience and a English speaking audience like ‘This is England’, due to the fact that it is performed in the English language and all of the filming takes place in England. Our film also has the advantage of appealing to an Asian target audience as the main male protagonist is Asian.

The audience we are trying to appeal to would like other typical thriller films and the mysteries involved, so they will also like detective programmes on the T.V. like ‘C.S.I.’ or ‘Waking the Dead’, due to the fact that many thrillers revolve around crime and investigations just like ‘Chinatown’ by Roman Polanski. The audience would also enjoy other thrillers like ‘Layer Cake’ by Matthew Vaughn, ‘The Departed’ by Martin Scorsese and ‘Ronin’ by John Frankenheimer, as these were the stem of our inspiration for our thriller and the story lines and very closely linked.

How did you attract/address you audience?

To attract our target audience we used popular thriller conventions that heighten the film's interest and appeal. We also included some swearing and violence that will make this film a 15 certificate, so the target audience will be able to relate to him and perhaps aspire to be like him. In addition to this the main character Lukman Hussin, is British Asian which will appeal to people of the same background as they will further relate to him.

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

Before this project I had only used a video camera once or twice and never for anything as sophisticated as this so I learnt quite a bit about to technology. The video camera was very simple to use all you had to do was set up the shot to how you wanted it to look and press record to video the action you have practised. However you had to make sure to switch off during shots as the battery only lasted about an hour. The camera was not of a very high quality and the focus often faded when the light changed due to movement, as it was automatic we could not control this. As it was a hand-held camera to obtain fluent steady shots we had to constantly use a tripod which was hard to move for a panning shot and the spindle was stiff so the shot became jerky, and it only extended to a limited height. On the other hand the tripod was an advantage as we managed to obtain some great steady shots with it and the legs could be made different lengths to stand on steps easily or to get a variety of shots.
The sound quality on the camera was not very good and it picked up so much noise that during editing we could not remove it, so on the video there is a continuous buzz/hiss during the speech due to the fact that we could not sort it out.

The other piece of technology we had to use was the editing software called Adobe Premier Elements 1.0, this was completely new to me so it was lucky we got to practise with it when editing our preliminary task, otherwise i would have been lost on how to use it, but once you got used to it and its limitations it was quite simple and easy to upload different content and effects to. Even so it has limited supplies of effects, and fonts this is why we had to download all of the ones we wanted off copyright free websites.

We were told in our peer assessment that the speech was quite hard to hear because at the top of the car park in the middle of a city picked up lots backgroud noise. After hearing this we turned down the music slightly and turned up the voice however there was no way with the technology we had to cut out the sound so by turning up the speech we also had to turn up the background noise. However by asking our peer assessors to re-see our thriller we ascertained that we had fixed the problem to the best of our abilities given the limitations in technology.

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

Looking back at the preliminary task and comparing it with our thriller opening it looks very simple and quite boring with no variety in the shots. So since the preliminary task I have definitely learnt a lot.

I have learnt that planning is a major part of film making and you cannot plough straight into filming with out detailed plans, even if you do later change them, like our Script, without planning that the things said would have been waffle, although some directors like Shane Meadows work without a script they still have an indication of where the dialogue should go. Shooting takes a lot longer than I expected as well, I knew that you have to film several takes and that not all the material you film goes into the end product but we were filming for 3-4 hours just to obtain about 40-50 minutes of material which we then turned into a 2 minute film opening, admittedly we did film some things that were nice but had no place in the film and sometimes we recorded a lot more of a shot than was needed, but then it is better to have too much than to have too little and go out and film it all again. With this theory we only had to film once and we had all the footage we needed. The preliminary task got our group familiar with the editing program which helped a lot as me and Tanwyn had never done editing before, whereas Tom had but had used a different program so we all needed that bit of extra practise.

I have always been quite good as working as part of a team because I work in a shop with a large workforce and so have to be part of the team, however the group that I was placed in for this task was completely new to me; Tom and Tanwyn knew each other from high school but i had to get to know them before we could start working constructively within the group. So we had several initial planning sessions and got to know each other when we started planning. Once we had the main idea of what we wanted from the film we all picked tasks we had to do with regards to planning, and once complete we had decided that once we found and agreed on the location that Tanwyn could be an actor as he has aspirations to be one when he is older and we also wanted to keep the participants to a minimum so that there was no interference and we did not have to rely on many people but ourselves. Basically we shared the workload evenly.

The audience feedback was really useful from this we found problems that we had not foreseen for example the dialogue was not very easy to hear due to all the noise but by dimming the music and turning the volume up on the speech we soon made amends. I was expecting the feedback to be average as I thought because I had watched the film during editing over and over again that it did not have a hook, but once we had received feedback it was better than expected and it turned out I was wrong and our thriller did have a hook. The audience enjoyed it and they understood what we were trying to achieve and were able to read and follow the narrative of our film well.

Our thriller has followed the conventions of a thriller well but has challenged them also which is brilliant as having a straight forward normal thriller was not what we wanted. Overall I think our project is pretty good but if I could go back and change things I would try and correct the sound as the noise on the dialogue is annoying and noticeable also having some better, more dramatic lighting would be good so we would not have to rely on natural light or the lights in the car park.

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All in all I am very happy with what we have achieved and I really enjoyed making it with my group, and for a first attempt at a stylish thriller I think we have produced an extremely good opening.