1.) I n what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions or real media products?
Narrative - This is basically how the film plays out, and ultimately ends. Narratives can range from being very simple (simple plot, where nothing much happens) to being hugely complex (twists and turns throughout the narrative, making the audience constantly guess whats going to happen next). The narrative usually involves two main characters who will constantly battle throughout the film, ending in a huge climactic sequence where one of them will win; these battles are usually portrayed as good versus evil, but in some circumstances (in the case of the protagonist being an anti-hero) there may be other reasons for this conflict.
Characters - There are usually two main characters, who are the Protagonist (the character who is fighting for 'good', and then there is the Antagonist who is the character who fights for 'evil'. These two characters will have a constant conflict that spans through the whole film, and usually ends in a huge ending scene, where 'good' usually wins. Although in some thrillers, as a final twist in the narrative, the evil side will instead win; although this is usually very rare. In some films, instead of having inherently 'good' or 'evil' main characters, the film could feature an anti-hero or anti-villain, perhaps even both.
Iconography - This is when the film features settings that set the scene and mood for the film e.g. a setting that uses minimal lighting, would set a dark and ominous tone for the thriller.
As our film was only the opening and was very short, we had to try and get all of the conventions across as strongly and quickly as possible. We did this by using Mise en Scene to quickly establish the conventions.
We established the narrative by placing the briefcase in clear view and focusing on it right at the beginning; this indicated to the audience that this briefcase was of some importance, the reappearance of the briefcase later on in the opening reinforces the idea that this briefcase is important.
Costumes were used to quickly establish the characters. The ‘body guard’ who is the antagonist is wearing a leather jacket, with a Kevlar vest underneath; this makes him seem intimidating and positions the audience to fear him. The protagonist, although he is wearing handcuffs, he is wearing civilian clothing which makes him look harmless, positioning the audience to like him. The fact that the protagonist is wearing handcuffs sets him up to be a sort of anti-hero in this film, this challenges the usual convention of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ and replaces it with ‘neutral’ versus ‘evil’.
Iconography was not instantly established, due to the need for realism on the plane (we could not have used low key lighting on the plane, due to the plane scene being set in the day). Although this actually worked out rather well for us, because the audience wouldn’t feel threatened or scared by the light environment that the scene was shot in; this then made for a bigger shock when the plane began to crash, which then plunged the mood of the scene, into that of panic and fear.
Our film mostly coincides with the usual conventions of a thriller. It has a standard narrative: Everything seems to be going fine (the setup), there is then a plane crash and the protagonist wakes up in hospital (the conflict). As this is only an opening, obviously we don’t get the chance to show the ending of the film (the resolution), but the opening certainly follows standard narrative structure.
In this screen shot, the audience see’s the briefcase for the first time. It doesn’t hugely hint that this is important, but there is a subtle focus on the briefcase which does create some enigma codes, such as: Whose briefcase is it? What’s it doing there? What’s inside? This is in the first few seconds of the film and already has the audience asking questions.
2.) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our thriller featured two main characters: The criminal (protagonist) and the escort or bodyguard (antagonist). They each represented two different social groups, due to age difference, gender representation differences and social class differences.
The protagonist is a young man (20-24), he is not overly-manly, and is probably middle class. Whereas the antagonist is an older man (35-40) who is still in peak physical condition, and displays his manliness through his use of intimidation, he is also probably from a high class background.
· Representation of age:
The protagonist is represented as a young man in his early twenties, we thought this would be a good age to choose, as
· Representation of gender
· Representation of social class
The protagonist is depicted as being quite middle class, this is shown through costume as he is dressed pretty normally, and his clothes are clean. Also he speaks with quite a well mannered accent, and seems to have good grammar; this suggests that he got a decent education, and has been brought up in quite a middle class environment.
The antagonist is from a higher class background, which is shown through the way he speaks, which is all good grammar and with a middle class-upper class accent. It is also clear that he believes he is better than the protagonist, due to his background.
3.) What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?
There are many film distribution companies to choose from, ranging from the big budget institutions like 20th Century Fox (well known for distributing box office film franchises like Star Wars, Die Hard and X-Men) to the indie film distributors like Soda Pictures (their most recent film ‘The Gospel of Us’), although, there are many, many more.
Due to our film being quite an action packed thriller, I would class it along with films such as Die Hard; so for that reason I would say that, if our film was actually real, it would be a high budget film. Therefore I would say that we would use a well known blockbuster movie distributor like Lionsgate Films, Paramount Pictures etc.
I have looked closely at two film distributors: 20th Century Fox and Lionsgate Films, due to these both being big budget distributors.
· 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox is partners with some hugely successful production partners such as Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, Spyglass Entertainment and Regency Enterprises. It has also distributed some of the biggest movie franchises of all time, including the Star Wars franchise and the Die Hard franchise. Both of these franchises have been hugely successful, and have both grossed billions of dollars.
· Lionsgate Films
Lionsgate Film was founded in 1997 by Frank Giustra. It is a North American entertainment company that has now risen to the top, and has become the most commercially successful independent movie and television distribution company in North America.
Lionsgate Films, has produced and distributed famous films such as American Psycho, Dogma, Saw and the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11; which until the release of The Hunger Games, was the highest grossing film released by Lionsgate.
As our film would be a big budget action/thriller, it would be the sort of film to be released countrywide, and then possibly worldwide (depending on how the initial release went). Therefore, we would need to advertise this film as much as possible, through cross media convergence advertising (Online, Games Consoles, Televison etc) to give us a large enough audience to successfully launch our film, before distribution across other medias takes place.
4.) Who would be the audience for your media product?
As our film is a mainstream action/thriller, I would personally target it at males from ages 15-25; meaning that our audience is fairly young. Although this is stereotyping young males, this is also relatively close to the same target audience for most console games; this would give us a huge distribution advantage, due to us being able to distribute and advertise our film through the gaming media, which would then attract the huge audience from that specific media.
Due to the age range of our audience, we can also assume that most of the audience would be fairly tech savvy and would have some sort of smart phone or other device. This again would allow us to distribute and advertise our film directly to our target audience, by allowing our film to be watched on smart phones; we could also, in the month leading up to release, create a casual game for smart phones, that is linked to the film, therefore extending advertisement.
I have also looked at some popular thriller films, and have noted down their age rating certificate (this information can be found at http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ ) in the form of a table:
Name Of Film | Certificate Age Rating |
Taken | 15 |
Die Hard 4.0 | 15 |
Salt (directors cut) | 15 |
Casino Royale | 12 |
Here is the trailer for Salt, an action/thriller about a woman who is accused of being a Russian sleeper agent; who then has to go on the run to clear her name. Our film is about a hacker, who must help the police force to return the hacking software that he created, so that he can clear his name. Due to the large similarity, I have looked closely at the movie Salt and can see some clear relations. This has helped me hugely in the decision for what age certificate to give our thriller.
Here is the trailer for the movie Die Hard 4.0; this also has similarities with our film, in the sense that they both include a young hacker and an older, tougher escort. Because of this, I have also gone into more detail looking into this film, which has again helped me to make a final decision about the certificate rating for our thriller.
5.) How did you attract/address your audience?
We tried to hook the audience as quickly as possible, by creating an enigma code at the beginning, through the use of the handcuffs as a prop. This instantly told the audience a little bit about the character, as well as being told a little bit about the storyline.
I asked three different people what they thought of the thriller, and out of the three I have chosen one whose feedback was the most helpful. The questions asked were: Did you find the main characters interesting and relatable? Out of the two, who would you say you could relate to more, the man in the hoodie, or the man in the leather jacket? How old are you? And finally, would you go and see the finished product in cinema, if it was real?
Out of the three I have only chosen one, due to his feedback being the most helpful and clear. Here is the conversation between me and Joel:
As you can see in the conversation, Joel states that he could relate to the protagonist due to him having more of a character and personality, this is because we tried to make the escort seem intimidating by making his character quite cold, and solemn. Joel also states that he is seventeen, which fits very nicely into our targeted age group; and he also says that he liked the film, which indicates that we have made the right decision about the age we are targeting, as people of that age seem to like our film.
This conversation with Joel has proven that we managed to engage the audience; that he felt a lot of tension and suspense, which kept him immersed in the film and finally that he found the characters relatable.
6.) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7.) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
Our preliminary task was hugely beneficial for our group, as we had a lot of difficulty filming due to our film being wiped; this taught us to store our clips in a safer place, and to try and be more organised and keep track of things.
The preliminary task also gave us a taste of what filming and editing is like; this made us see how long it took to make a short 1 minute clip, so then we could realistically plan how long it would take us to do our 2 minute thriller opening. With this knowledge we could then use our time more effectively and efficiently. By learning what the process of filming and editing a film was like, we also gathered some basic filming and editing techniques, which we could then use and build off from throughout our thriller piece, making the whole process a lot easier; in comparison to if we had to learn all the techniques from scratch during the thriller opening task.
We struggled as a group a little bit during the preliminary task, but because of this we could then see that one of the group members wanted to leave our group, due to conflicting ideas etc; if this problem had occurred during our thriller piece, we would have surely struggled much more. So therefore, by identifying problems during the preliminary, we could make sure that those problems didn’t happen during the thriller.
Here is the Preliminary film:I believe we have made a huge amount of progress since our preliminary task. As you can see in the preliminary film, the camera is very shaky, which gives the whole film a very unprofessional look. This is due to the fact that we were running out of time to film, so we dispensed with the tripod as changing the angles and shot distance became too much effort and slowed the filming down too much.
Since then we have learnt from our mistakes and made sure to always have a steady shot, unless it was necessary for the shot to be shaky e.g. when the plane was crashing.