Media coursework: March 2009

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products ?
In our independent research into thriller films we found some good ideas to contribute to our thriller. Our main character Monica is very independent and powerful, the idea of this generic femme fatal was informed by the femme fatal in Fight Club Marla Singer. Marla was very cryptic and unknown to begin with as well as being powerful with what she wanted and vulnerable when it came to Tyler Durden. Monica is based highly on Marla Singer then any other femme fatal we researched. She also relates to Jackie Brown as she is confident and powerful and won't let anything stop in her path. We used these references form films to develop our own femme fatal. Monica's costume of red lip stick and high heels, suggests seduction and glamour whilst the cigarettes connate deviance and rebellion. Other characters developed by real media would be the 'Loser' character in our film. He is the unnamed and is the young man who gets killed in the opening . Tarentino is famous for his 'loser' characters like Melanie in Jackie Brown, these characters are shamed by others and just killed of because they are useless . Our 'Hench Men' were based on the asset like qualities of Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman 'Se7en' and the psychotic natures of John Travolta and Samuel Jackson duo in Pulp Fiction. We created a modernised toned down version of these rather than your average thugs because as it's a modern thriller we wanted a more realistic character type which is easy to relate to. When finding our location we wanted a typical desolate dangerous scene. We chose an untidy scene, with numerous building equipment on show, and small alley ways between storage crates to entice tension and fear within the audience, for example in Vienna's over threatening streets in 'The Third Man'. We found that the majority of thrillers locations were desolate and not crowded, with very few buildings where crime scenes took place and dingy dark spots and claustrophobic spaces, which made the best effect on the audience. We also chose this location because it was very un glamorous which is a generic thriller signifier. We introduced a track from Richard Straus’s 'Last Four Songs', which adds a melodic fear to the mise en scene whilst suggesting Monica's possible fatal ending. This music had a type of closure, a spooky denouement that helped to evoke emotion to the audience.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media product represents women as threatening and powerful in general. The young successful femme fatal represents women in general negatively. She is seen using drugs and provoking violence, by hiring people to complete her 'dirty work'. Her image is very seductive and almost toxic to men, we see her wearing high heels and smart attractive clothing. The image is the traditional misogynist representation of women viewed as treacherous and damned.. The victim is a good example of representing gender. Usually stereotypically young attractive females are seen as the victim in 'Se7en'. We decided to use the femme fatal feature and also the male victim, showing vulnerability in both genders. The nameless male victim is treated as a dog, his clothes torn and face beaten. We decided to not give him a name to show his power status and situation at the time, meaning nothing to the femme fatal or other characters. Though Monica is the schemer the thugs are the ones who measure up performing the crime and dominating the mise en scene with their power.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I believe that our media product would have to be quite mainstream, and not art house. This is because i believe it would feature well-known actors, and the thriller would plunge if it wasn't mainstream. It would be a British production and would stay very British, because the actors and location and story line would apply more to that culture and i believe would also succeed more. Our product wouldn't be suitable for a viral marketing campaign and would not succeed this way because i don't believe the audience would use it as pull media, and it wouldn't succeed as well, alike to 'Snakes On A Plane' which chose to target the viral marketing. They lost a majority of their audience which our film relies on and their profits. Our thriller is likely to be distributed to the cinema's and then to DVD, but if it was to be shown on TV i believe it would be shown on Channel four at about 10'oclock because of the violent nature of the film. I don't think it would be shown on a channel like E4 as it is more open to younger audiences although it is targeted for students as well. The cinemas our film would distribute to would be mainstream because of our student audiences who in research prefer mainstream cinemas with a larger choice of times and films. Our product wouldn't be shown at an Art house (like cinema city) cinema as a thriller type film like this has never been shown before here and it is not as suited at this Art house audience then the mainstream audiences.

Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for my thriller product would be quite a young audience according to our research. I wanted to make a new type of thriller for all thriller fans, where you can find action, thriller conventions, suspense and violence all in one storyline. Our film is appealing to audiences, because its doesn’t feature just one particular aspect, but a range. We found out through our questionnaires the different aspects of thrillers our audience prefers and worked on including them. Both genders weren’t fussed by a gender biased role. Males preferred more action whilst women preferred violence so I believe that the film would apply to both genders. But at the same time i think the audience would be young from about 16-25. This because the actors are quite young and the setting is contemporary. The target audience is probably the same as 'Bank Job', 'Kill Bill' and 'Fight Club' and would appeal to any type of social class. Fight club deals with the ambiguity and the same generation as our targeted audience. Fight Club is a complete different story to our film, but some of the characters and the constant action are similar and are both modern thrillers. I believe our audience would be interested in thriller TV dramas like CSI and Spooks as they feature some of the same aspects as ours.

How did you attract/address your audience?
I attracted my audience by making the cast young as our target audience was students and male we wanted to have a lead femme fatal and other interesting characters. The ‘Hench Men’ Provided the Violence and action wanted form both genders and Monica brought the mysterious storyline alive. We wanted the storyline to be based on one character to give the audience a familiar face, and so the character could provoke certain feelings to the audience. I attracted them by producing a questionnaire which gave an insight to what the audiences wanted and how they wanted us, which gave us most ideas for the planning and storyline. We also attracted them by research we researched many modern thrillers audiences and their comments in wanting more action, ambiguity, camera techniques etc. and adapted their thoughts to our film. We manipulated our film to make it more interesting for our audience by using lots of editing techniques. We wanted the opening to seem mysterious to the audience so we used lots of cross-dissolves and fade-ins to make it seem like time has passed and to give the film a faster pace for them but at the same time fast enough for them to understand. We had to make sure our film was suitable and ready so we set up a day where our classmates watched and gave us feedback o the film. The majority was good feedback but some questions were raised as they didn't think the music gave a lot to the film and feelings made. They thought our camera angles were used effectively to the finished product and this gave us an insight to what our audience is going to think at first and if we did target them specifically well.

What have you learnt about technologies form the process of constructing this product?
I have learnt a lot about camera angles and how to vary them when filming your product. When filming we realised that simple camera angles (like mid shot, long shot etc, instead worms eye) would not work to entice the audience, and that in thrillers camera angles made the mise-en-scene that little bit more exciting. we tried to vary our angles, and we learnt that over the head shots were good for the use of another characters perspective and that birds eye and panning showed point of view. The most effective shot is the canted. This is because it gives the scene ambiguity and interest to the audience showing them that something is not right and is almost 'giddy'. There are many canted shots in thrillers, for example Holly Martins on the stairs in 'The Third Man', this gave more suspense to the audience and the vary in shots made it more appealing to watch. I also learnt that movement is very hard to capture, someone can't be bouncing into the shot as it would be too fast pace for the audience and when filming you have to put yourself in their perspective to see what the finished product would look like. When editing we tried to keep most of the diegetic sound in. However in some places the sound was unwanted and we could hear people mumbling in the background, so we either ripple deleted it, or put some non-diegetic sound in. In the end we brought the music in earlier to disguise the unwanted sounds which was a better outcome as we couldn't find diegetic sounds to add. When adding the track the importance was to synchronise the dramatic movements to keep it in pace with the suspense and timing of action. When researching thrillers we watched clips/opening scenes to see when and where the music came in the opening or the end and why. Most music to was provoke the feelings and to dramatise the moment and often were at the beginnings to set the. Mostly the music came in just after the action/crime and led to flash backs, and after the disruption that took place. I learnt that editing is much more intense than i thought because every single detail has to be perfected as the micro analysis would effect the macro. We tried to vary the use of editing effects used, we embedded mostly cross-dissolve because it gave a sense of illusion and time shift and also adding a ghostly quality when Monica is washing her hands in the sink

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression form it to the full product?
When planning our prelim task we didn’t plan as much as we prepared for our thriller. We booked a camera out for the day a shot for about 2 hours, but with our thriller it was very different. We had to book certain days for our thrillers when our group wasn’t busy and when the lighting was appropriate to shoot in. Our prelim gave us time to prepare how long something would take, how many shots we have needed for each take, and to make sure the battery was fully charged of the day. The shooting was the easiest part for our prelim and it gave us enough time to practice and get used to editing. We experimented with different fades and cutting techniques and it gave us more confidence when editing our thriller. The prelim gave us the chance to see what different shot types looked like on camera and how we could achieve them. For example standing on a table for a point of view shot, or below for a worms eye and it let us get used to the difference of what each on cam out like. The main and most important rule I learnt about working in a group was that everyone works together, not one person had one responsibility throughout the filming, but we swapped so that we all contributed equally. One minute I would be filming, whilst another group member would be directing, telling the actor where to go or telling us what angle worked best. We all turned up on time and none of us let someone be the leader and all our suggestions were discussed. My responsibilities included: Booking the camera, a share editing, finding appropriate costume, various filming and starring in the thriller. Most of our feedback was positive, but when someone has been negative we understood that it was for the benefit of the film, and that whatever they say made us improve the film. For instance for some of our shots, some people said that they dragged on for too long so we had to be more brutal in the edit making them shorter and snappy. The strengths of our production have been working in a team and being able to work with different peoples idea’s and making the work equal. I believe that our research is a big strength in our production as we’ve been able to study and find out so much from thrillers that we never knew. This was very beneficial as we could adapt certain ideas and progress them even more with our knowledge, knowing what particular audiences like and what works and what doesn’t. Time was the biggest problem during the shoot and edit but know this reflects the real world of filming as well. Another would be the story line, we found that our story line adapted as we went along (filming) and ideas were brought up very fast on set, making us not have enough time to think about what the outcome would be. The most important aspect of film making that I found out whilst producing my product would be research, with more planning and research our film would have been stronger. I didn’t know that films took years to write and research helped to progress ideas and make the movie succeed. If we hadn’t researched before we would have struggled with genre, target audience, costume, characters and even plot line.

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