Evaluation Question 1

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

In this question I will be discussing which conventions of a thriller I used or challenged within my film and comparing my thriller opening to that of some real media products and whether or not my opening displays that the genre is a thriller.

Evaluation Question 1:

Key frame of my film 'Shadowed'

Kill Bill vol.1 opening,

Key frame of 'Kill Bill' for comparison

1) In the 1st box of my film's key frame you can see that myself and my group put our Production company name first, before the film even started. This is a common convention of film openings because as you can see in the Kill Bill vol.1 key frame, they too have put the production/distribution names first. However; they have also put a quote in that is related to their film = giving the audience an insight as to what the film could be about: in this case it turns out to be revenge. 

2) In the 2nd box of my film's key frame, the image represents the very start of my film opening and it displays straight away from the fact the person is running that the storyline has some sort of chase in it, and that the story will include elements of thriller conventions. It also starts up a particular scene before the name of the film has even popped up. This links to the opening of Kill Bill vol.1 where the name of film doesn't show up till the end (box 7 of the Kill Bill key frame). 

    The short clip between the production company and title is sometimes a convention of thrillers because the scene helps to grip hold of the audience from the get go and sets the tone of the film. It also allows a sneak peak into what the film could possibly be about. My film follows and incorporates this convention through out the whole of the film opening - allowing the audience to build feelings towards the characters which would be then twisted had the film been complete.

An opening shot from 'Silence of the Lambs'

3) The setting/location of my film is shown only briefly in my film, which slightly challenges the convention of thrillers where the setting is often displayed through some sort of establishing shot or long shot = like the opening of 'Silence of the lambs' where there is an establishing shot of the forest the lady is running through: 

In the 3rd box I have taken the shot from a Point of View shot that I felt was the closest we had to properly showing the audience where the opening would be taking place.

In the Kill Bill key frame however, the image represents the frame work used in many types of thrillers. The frame work tends to be many close up shots that include the most important part of the scene; so in Kill Bill the important message is the fact the woman is severely beaten up and frightened. In my film we used used this convention to display the significant sections; such as the finding of the gun, the door being opened and the close ups at the very end of our film.

4) Box 4 on my film's key frame and the boxes 3-4 on the Kill Bill key frame represents the introduction of characters. In the key frame of my film you can clearly see both characters in the shot; one of them running and the other simply standing in the distance. The fact that the Protagonist in the forefront is running symbolises to the audience that this is the victim of the film while the dark figure in the background represents the idea that he is the Antagonist and so brings in the convention of a killer or stalker commonly found in thrillers or horrors. It also brings in the idea that in many films = such as Kill Bill , you see the villian but his identity/features are nearly always unknown until the end of either the opening or the film itself- which links in with boxes 3-4 of the Kill Bill key frame.

5) Box 5 represents the costume of my characters. The stereotypical black hoodie of the Antagonist is one of the many supposed conventions that could be included in a thriller. The hood links with the idea that the identity of the Antagonist remains hidden and also represents the whole 'sneaking-up-on-people' attitude that is found in many thrillers to bring about Dramatic Irony: such as The Strangers that makes the audience want to scream "watch out" at the screen: 

A scene taken from The Strangers.

6) The two images from the two key frames in boxes 6 are completely different; however between the boxes 5-6 on the Kill Bill key frame there is one scene that sets the genre of the film: 

An image taken from Kill Bill Vol.1

This image shows that Kill Bill is classed as a thriller due to the blood splatter from the lady's head and the gun shot that sounds when you actually watch the film. The gun and murder creates a kind of jumpscare because although the audience know something is about to happen - they don't actually know what, and they become more and more tense. This convention of jump scares is shared with that of my own film in box 6 where the shadow passing across the screen unexpectedly, creates a small but effective jump scare which indicates the thriller genre that myself and my group attempted in our film opening. 

7) The image of the gun in box 7 of my film's key frame is set in place to represent the props used in the film and to show the different types of camera work myself and my group decided upon. We chose to use the common thriller convention of guns in our film because we felt it would attract more of our target audience with one in it than without due to it drawing out more tension and sets the genre. The camera work in this shot is a close up; demonstrating my skills in camera useage through the fact I have used a wider range of shots instead of simply using a mid shot of him taking the gun out the box. This convention of using a close up to draw in suspense is used in most thriller films.

8) Box 8 in my film's key frame shows both the special effects, framework, mise-en-scene and camera work that myself and my group used. The special effects we decided on was the greyscale filter that we placed over the top of the film to add that extra thriller/horror, scary atmosphere to the film; which was also used in Kill Bill. The screen capture also demonstrates the use of framework we used and gos along side with the close-up framework used in other thrillers, such as Dorian Gray, to show the hidden emotions that actions can't always portray. 

Taken from Dorian Gray to represent framework

9) As you can see, both my film and the example I am comparing it to (Kill Bill) have both got their film titles after the particular scene; a little later into the film. This is one of the accepted conventions of a film opening because as well as some thrillers starting with the film's name at the beginning - there are other that tend to hold back the title to keep the audience guessing or to get them gripped into the film before revealing it. 

My media product incorporates this convention to draw in our target audience and slowly reveal the plot across the opening until the title pops up. Furthermore, the effect of the writing and the shadow behind symbolises the whole plot of the film with the idea that the Protagonist is being shadowed/stalked closely by the Antagonist.

End title of my film 'Shadowed'

This is similar to Kill Bill where you get the sense that there is revenge involved due to two things:

1 - the opening quote talks of revenge

and 2- the handkerchief has the small imprint of 'Bill' on it = connecting to the title, meaning the film is dropping hints to the films plot before the main title is shown.  

Soundtrack:

  

Listen carefully to the soundtrack in the background of my film: ^^^

In my film, myself and my group used soundeffects and non-diegetic music to set the tone, genre and storyline for our thriller instead of using dialogue. The use of non-diegetic music throughout the film in the background is a significant thriller convention which is often used as sound bridging. This sets the atmosphere of our film which then allows our audience to have a good guess at the genre at the same time as having an asumption on the plot and about the characters. 

Furthermore, we also decided to allow certain quiet scenes where there is nothing but ambience music to break up the music and help add that same constant tension that thrillers are practically full of. 

Existing media products that influenced my work in all aspects:

Many existing media products influenced my work in different aspects, we didn't have just the one influence. For example one of the main existing media products that influenced the camera work used (point of view shots mostly), and the stalked aspect came from a TV programe called Tru Calling; episode 3: "Brother's Keeper". The image below inspired our mid shot of the Protagonist pointing the gun at the Antagonist.

Image taken from "Brother's Keepers"

It also inspired the close up of our Antagonist shortly before the screen goes black and the gun shot sounds because the close ups of the expression allows the audience to tell what the character is feeling. However, the smirk we added in was an extra side line to depict the cruelty and cocky side of our Antagonist.

Another two thriller films that influenced our own media product were Dorian Gray and Van Helsing:

Van Helsing was an influence mainly for the black & white opening. We thought the duller colour made parts of the screen appear more obscured from view which created a more old fashioned thriller film and helped create the tension even more.
Dorian Gray was an influence for the story line of our film opening being a flash-back due to him having flash-backs about his regrets; while it also give us the idea about our Protagonist actually being villionous due to the fact that originally Dorian appears nice but over the course of the film; he becomes twisted and ill-mannered.

Our Final Cut

JARLINC's Final Cut of our film 'Shadowed' 

After doing many of the improvements on our rough cut, my group and I have finally completed our film and are ready to put it onto our blogs:

           

Our Rough Cut and Rough Cut Feedback

Our Rough Cut - Shadowed

          

Rough Cut Feedback: target audience aged 15-17 feedback

Positives:

1) Soundtrack has a good effect on the film

2) Storyline is good and clear

3) The scene where the Antagonist steps out from the shadows had a good effect

4) Light switch noise adds a little something to him turning on the light and the shadow not being there anymore.

Improvements to be made:

1) 0.12: nobody behind door, then Alex appears guarding the door from other side in next shot

2) 0.15: Crew in shot

3) 0.20: Crew in shot

4) The actor in the window appears to fade away; this appeared strange

5) Crew in the window distracts attention/ can't really see the person in the window very well

6) Editing is too slow. If Alex has just run away from somebody, we need to have fast passed editing until the point where he locks the door, then he presumably thinks he is safe. At the moment it is too slow and flowing.

7) SFX needed for actor appearing in window to sign post for direction

8) 0.25: Alex looks directly at the camera (almost waiting for direction)

9) 0.42: POV is confusing and not needed

10) Use different box because the 'Location Recording Kit' is clearly visible. 

11) Instead of paper, people normally wrap guns in cloth or towel

12) 0.59: Cut first shot earlier; it takes too long to find the item

13) 1.10: The noise sounds like Alex has fired the gun, maybe make the SFX a crash of glass or something more obvious

14) 1.37: Shot too long, camera passes the coat; maybe cut it out into separate cuts.

15) 1.47: Pan cuts too early; don't see the corridor to see that there isn't anything there

16) Gun SFX needs to be changed to something realistic

17) Titles IDEA = title appears then the shadow slowly fades in behind it. (Link to story line)

18) Continuity Error with Alex's arm

19) Linger on the smirk to create tension

20) The ghost sound sounds like a whale/Jurassic park dinosaur.

Target audience aged 17-25 feedback

 Positives:

5) The film is pretty cool

6) Loved the soundtrack; adds good effect.

Improvements to be made:

21) At the hedge scene in the POV you can't see the Protagonist go into the science block and then in the next scene he is already in the corridor with door shut.

Rough Cut Feedback Analysis

1) We are going to reshoot this scene and film Alex go through the door so you can clearly see how the protagonist goes through.  - HOWEVER if you look closely you can see Alex's arm before the shot cuts to inside the corridor: 

Before

After

2, 3 + 5) We were aware of the reflection problem straight from the start and plan to reshoot the scene with either posters on the door to hide the reflection OR start filming when its lighter outside to lesson the chance of a reflection. Also to minimise the chance of a HUGE reflection should there still be a slight faint one; myself and Dan will not be standing right next to the camera.

Before

After

4) Originally the idea of the Antagonist fading away in the window was to add to the idea that he isn't actually real or there. With the idea in mind that if the film had been carried on it would have been a dream, we decided to make the effects are strange or as unusual as we could as long as they added into the whole idea of the film title "Shadowed'. We are thinking about addressing this but fear it may take off from the effect that the Antagonist isn't a real human and the idea that because you never see the actor enter the building, the fading process makes the audience think he can disappear and 

reappear wherever in the Protagonist's dream.

6) We are planning on doing some more shooting for the beginning of our film where we have just the protagonist's feet in the shot running. This will allow us to cut and trim it to make the editing process quicker than it is currently. We are also planning on completely changing the start of our film to make the film even better.

Before

After

7) We are taking this piece of feedback into consideration and are looking for some sort of SFX that isn't that dramatic but will draw the audience's attention to the actor in the window. 

8) We will address this and reshoot or cut out if possible the section where Alex looks at the screen. We are going to replaced the scene with a different camera shot from the floor to avoid both the reflection and the fact Alex looks at the camera. 

Before

After

9) We are going to get rid of this POV shot or shift it somewhere else to make more sense. However looking at it, the POV is needed as it shows the Protagonist actually seeing the box through his eyes. We feel it gives a better effect that just seeing him walk towards the box.

10) We are not sure about this change because the idea of the box was to hide the fact the gun is in the box; so basically a disguise. HOWEVER we are taking it into consideration and we may change the box to something scientific.

12) We have deleted a cut of Alex trying to find the gun. Luckily the hands match up and look like the scene was never there - it looks much better now.

13) We are currently in the middle of changing this sound to most likely the sound of a door slamming instead of glass; mainly because we were worried that in most films they tend to show the audience what has been smashed - and in the location we have there isn't anything glass. BUT we may put it in for effect along with a door slam to perhaps give the impression the glass was broke outside the door that was slammed.

14) Here we have attempted to delete bits of the cut to make the improvements, however it didn't seem to work so instead we have decided to speed that section up so that the camera is not behind the coat for too long.

16) We are going to search online for a better gun shot SFX

17) We really like the sound of this idea, we are going to have an attempt at improving out titles.

18, 19, 20) The continuity of Alex's arm we had noticed and are going to reshoot, we have slowed down the scene of the Antagonist smirking and the sound we have only used in a little part of the clip now to add a bit of depth and spookiness to the film and got rid of the sound being on a long section of our film. 

Evidence of Ident Construction

    I used a software programme called After Effects to create my production team's ident. You may remember from a previous post under the name "My Production Team name" where we mentioned the ideas that we had about how we wanted our ident to look.
    We hoped to have some type of dragon going across the screen to symbolise all of our interests in mythological beasts and some sort of flame with either a jar or chains with the name JARLINC burned into it.
    What we resulted in seems SO much better:

We used a preset behaviour (template) for the base of our ident, and added in our Production Team name:

the creation process of my ident 

Evidence of Editing

The editing process took FOREVER to complete to a good standard. We spent every day for 2 weeks till 6:00-6:30pm cutting, speeding up, altering our clips to create good match-on-actions and effects and adding in soundtracks and SFX to create more atmosphere for our film.     

Screen Shots of editing:

    

    One MAJOR thing we changed in our film was the lighting. We altered it from being in colour to greyscale. We decided to do this because it seemed to fit in much better with the type of film we had created. It also solved much of our lighting problems where we couldn't see our Antagonist in the dark scenes like shots 38+ where he is standing half hidden in the shadows.

Before                                        After

 We used the effect video filter called Destaturate to make our film have the greyscale effect throughout our film.

    We chose to speed up and slow down certain aspects of our film to create tension or to make bits of scenes have more of an effect: such as the smirk in scene 42 when the Antagonist smirks just before he fires the gun. This we slowed down so that the audience has the chance to see it before the screen goes black; bringing out the Antagonist's personality as cruel, malicious and evil.

This was the how we altered the speed of our shots

Screen Shots of sound editing:

    The sound editing process was tackled by all of us, with me at the mouse. We watched our completed edited film through twice before picking a suitable soundtrack for it called: _Dark Tension_ (FreeSFX.com).

Once we found this we went on to find any other SFX sounds or parts of other soundtracks to add even more tension and atmosphere to our film due to the fact our film has no dialogue in it to explain what is going on.

    We picked _The Dark Underground Ticket_ sound (a ghost wailing sort of noise - from FreeSFX.com) to add the eerie, ghost effect of the Antagonist being a shadow type figure created by the Protagonist's mind. We thought this would be effective over the _Dark Tension_ soundtrack because it seemed like it gave depth to the horror/Thriller effect we wanted.

    The sound we used at the scene where the Protagonist turns on the light was used to add tension when the light comes back on and the Shadow has disappeared. The deep BUMVVV sort of noise creates the atmosphere.

    

Fifth Day of Filming on Location

    Day 5: Thursday 13th February 2014: 4:30pm-6:30pm

For this session we filmed the beginning of our film; scene 1-17. We used the following equipment:

- Camera 3

- Tripod 3

- External Sound Recorder 1

- Large Reflector

The location of this filming time was the outside of the science block and its corridor.

What went well:
    Certain shots that we filmed had great effects; some happened by pure chance, like the shot 2 when Cameron hesitated with the camera before peeking around the bush; which created a great effect for the point of view shot and the character of the Antagonist because it added to the fact the Antagonist is hiding and secretly watching the Protagonist.
    We came in with good moods, BOTH our actors seemed willing to listen and act so we achieved some good footage for our film.
   
What could of been improved:
    There is a big mess up in a couple of our shots where continuity errors have occurred. You can see us in the reflection on the window caused by the lights being on in the corridor and it being dark outside. We only noticed when we imported our footage onto the Mac, so we are going to address it shortly.
    The lighting problem was a huge pain because obviously it gets darker and with us talking and discussing what to do, between each shot it was ever so slightly, but mega noticeable, became even darker. In shots 1-3 the sky is incredibly bright while once inside i's incredibly dark. We may need to address this if it looks terrible in our film; hopefully it will look natural been as we started filming in dusk through to night.

Fourth Day of Filming on Location

    Day 4: Wednesday 12th February 2014: 5:00pm-6:30pm

For this session we filmed scene 33 up till scene 42 (the end of our film). We used the following equipment:

- Camera 3
- Tripod 3
- Tracking Dolly
- External Sound Recorder 1

We filmed inside the new science block corridor.

Today we did pretty amazingly.  We got our heads down, assigned each member of our filming crew with a job: Cameron took control of the camera, Daniel took control of the sound  while myself took control of making sure everything was in order before filming, deciding what films to film and the lightning.
We were still unable to film the external section of our film due to stormy weather outside - seriously doors were opening all by themselves 0_0

What went well:
    Team worked well this session, hardly any disagreements or tantrums thrown this time.

What could of been improved:
    Some time's Alex appears too stiff and unnatural when he's acting, occasionally looking at the camera or hesitating before acting. Perhaps we could of practised even more before we did final take; although we did do like 5 practises and 7 takes because of errors occurring.