Evaluation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Originally the daughter was going to be fifteen years of age however our actress was in fact 17 years old. We were going to use a school girl as the sartorial codes of her uniform would portray her as innocence . However we did not use the uniform in the end, instead we portrayed the school girl in ordinary teenage wear to convey her social group and age. We used a long shot of her walking and standing alone at the school gates to suggest her vulnerability. As the character has blonde/brown hair, this type of characteristic is usually associated with the stereotypical characters of the “blonde women” victims portrayed in thrillers.

The antagonist identity is not revealed until the kidnapping scene in the opening. The ‘villain’ or ‘psycho’ in thrillers often their identity is concealed such as in ‘Urban Legends’ to further enhance suspense and mystery about the character. We chose to use close up shots of the black gloves, his eyes and mid-shots of his waist down to keep his identity a secret. The sartorial codes of the gloves presents him to be more menacing and his dark casual clothing appeals to the audiences primal fears as his appearance is average which makes the kidnapping seem more distressing and out of the ordinary.

Evaluation

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

Our media products conveys many conventions typical of an opening to a psychological thrillers. After researching different ways of approaching how to film openings of psychological thrillers, such as creating a sense of the unknown using extreme close ups or mid-action openings. We decided to use the convention of captures the audiences interest by portraying something ordinary and mundane, that is interrupted by danger or drama. One of the films that I researched that uses this method was Blue Velvet. We began our opening with a character making tea which builds a false sense of security as the character is in the safety of his home. This was disturbed by the arrival of a kidnapping note and the actual kidnapping of the daughter. The beginning of our production is meant to create confusion for the viewer using the convention of suspense and tension. The music typically creates a tense atmosphere which adheres to the conventions of a thriller. There is a non-linear narrative which supports the conventions of an independent thriller as creates confusion, which enhances the suspense and tension. Thrillers often contain motifs which when researching auteur, Alfred Hitchcock we saw he used many motifs such as in the Psycho and The Birds. We used close-ups of black biker gloves so the audience can associate them with danger and distress. However we did not use the convention of extreme closes-ups to create suspense as in our audience research we asked “What do you expects to be in an opening of a Thriller” the answers were establishment of characters, dramatic scenes and the ending. To appeal to our audience we conveyed the convention of drama.

Anam Nasir's Evaluation

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

Our media product does go against the conventions of an archetypal thriller film. This is done by not making the daughter character too typical of what she is meant to be like in the title of the film, “Daddy’s Little Girl”. The daughter is dressed like a normal college girl, but not too girly. The reason for this title is to make the film sound like it is a pleasant film, the title conflicts this. We conveyed the rules and conventions of thriller film by making the film confusing and suspenseful throughout so the audience could be surprised later. To create atmosphere we did not show the kidnappers face throughout till the end of the scene. Using edgy music built up tension to make it more appealing to the audience. We tried to use different types of shots like close-ups and long-shots. When filming the kitchen scene we gradually zoomed into the steam of the tea, this was to create the feel of a fresh morning and new beginning, which contrasts with what, happens later, an end of an era, when the surgeon receives the ransom note.

Question Two:

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We presented different social groups to appeal to our audience; we have the main character that they could relate to. On of the main characters, the daughter, Heidi, is represented as a typical young student in college, this is represented by her non-uniform clothes and a bag she carries to keep her books in. the reason for this was so our audience could relate with Heidi and her outfit. The use of black intimidating gloves, on Mr Pratt was an idea of hiding true identity. Mr Tamworth, the surgeon, is represented as a loving and caring typical dad, who works as a surgeon and keeps his family happy. 

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

Personally I think that 20th Century Fox would be suitable for distributing our product as it has distributed many successful thriller films like Mirrors, Blindness and Max Payne.

This is 20th Century Fox's website where I did my further research. http://www.fox.co.uk/

Question Four:Who would be the audience for your media product?
To find our audience and to fulfil their needs we handed out a questionnaire that would be helpful to us. We handed out 20 questionnaires to teenagers over 15 as our certificate of our product is a 15.

We chose to have a sub genre, medical thriller, as most people from our questionnaire preferred this. The use of a medical thriller genre makes our product appeal to two different audiences which helped make our product more mainstream.
We were inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s work, which we studied in school. We looked at how the opening scenes were in his films like Vertigo, The Birds and all time legend Psycho. Although we had to look at something more modern so I was motivated by the film ‘Awake’ directed by Joby Harold which helped consider the storyline for our product. ‘Awake’ was also a medical thriller.

Question Five:
How did you attract/address your audience?

Too keep our audience engaged with our product we kept continuity editing which made the product look better and professional.
We also kept suspense in the beginning of our product to make sure our audiences attention wasn’t lost and were interested in who the mystery man was in the gloves and what he was trying to do. I think our suspense technique worked very well as we didn’t show the kidnappers full face till end of scene, which kept the film more tense.

Another way to keep our audience engaged we used music that would build up as the film got tense, which made it more appealing to our audience.

Question 6:
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Importing: We had to import the recorded video files from our camera, to a MAC computer using a USB that was connected to the camera and the computer. Importing the files to the MAC computer allowed us to use the 'iMovie' software to edit our media product.
We had saved the music files on a USB which had to be imported on to our MAC computer which was then saved on to iTunes. iMovie allowed us to drag the wanted music files from iTunes which was in the audio list to add to our media product.

Editing:iMovies allowed us to move around separate shots where desired.
Also if we liked a shot but wanted to cut a part of it, we could by clicking on Edit and Split Video at Playhead. We could split the video by using the arrow to split the video at individual shots; this made things much easier to get rid of unwanted scenes.
We decided to keep all the unwanted shots we took just in case we needed them in the future. This was helpful as most shots that we didn’t need at the beginning we needed them later. We were able to keep our shots safe in the clips section of iMovie.
The iMovie software allowed us to add transitions which made our production work look better. We used fades to intercut in between the shots.
iMovie also allowed is to get rid of diegetic sound, as this was unnecessary, this was easily done as we only had to click on one button.

With the help of iMovie our product was coming more to life and looked more professional like an actual film.
Filming: When filming in the kitchen we pulled up the blinds on the window, however this let in too much light. This made the picture quality on the camera less visible, so we adjusted the camera so it was clearer to see.

Question 7:
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Sound: The diegetic sound, when recorded didn’t come out clear. When characters talked it was unclear to understand what they were saying. Also the objects in the background could also be heard, footsteps of camera user walking, sound from classes in other rooms which was quite disturbing. So we decided to use no dialogue in our production piece as this would result in unclear dialogues. However there was another way we could have clear speech, which was to have a voiceover recorded over the video which would have taken up a lot of time. So overall we decide not to do this, and set with not using any diegetic sound except to use non-diegetic.

Characters: As a group we also learnt that not having professional actors would make our production values look low budget and tacky.

Filming: After filming and moving on to editing we realise that we needed to leave a few seconds before the actual acting taking place because if we added a transition it would cut the beginning off of the shot. We also understood that using long shots for our production, made things slow-moving and dreary.

Music and Sound

As music is one of the most important conventions of a film, I began looking for non- diegetic sound that would give a suspense or tense feeling and fit perfectly into the opening of our thriller.



To do this I started searching royalty free music on the internet. One of the websites I went to is http://www.freeplaymusic.com/. This site gives you a list of the type of music you would like to use, which you can also preview and download.

Another site I went on to was www.soundsnap.com . Apparently with this site you need to register/sign up, to get free downloads a month.
Instead, to get the sounds I used the sound recorder on my computer and recorded them off, making sure the quality came out good, which it did.

Another piece of non - diegetic sound that we possibly wanted to use was the heart monitor to flatline sound, since one of the main characters in the opening is a surgeon.
To do this I downloaded various heart monitor and flatline sounds from youtube and recorded some from sites like www.freesound.org and edited them so they would be as long.

Editing

Today me and Anam did some editing. We worked on where would be best to put the titles and credits, where they would come inbetween the shots. Also we edited the music to fit in time better with the atmosphere and pace of the scenes.

Final Days

We only have one shot left to shoot which is a shot inside the car with Mr Pratt. We realised during an editing session that we need to add a linking shot between a shot of Mr Pratt adjusting his mirror and another of him kidnapping Heidi create better continuity shots.

Motifs

A motif is a typical conventions of a thriller, auteur such as Alfred Hitchcock is recognised for his detail and symbolisms. Such as he uses round objects in Psycho like the extreme close up of the eye, the toilet, the shower head, the protagonist’s mouth and the drain. These were to represent and reflect the idea of eyes and being watched. In our Thriller we decide to use a motif of Mr Pratt’s gloves. The gloves are large biker gloves and the audience will recognise them as a symbol of threat and danger as they appear menacing and quite distressing. There are close ups of the gloves such as in the car on the steering wheel, also when he posts the letter. The gloves represent something out of the ordinary, they look surreal and odd as he posts the letter or waits in the car, it appeals to the audience primal fears.