Max's Evaluation

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.

In this screen capture, the audience see’s the protagonist wearing handcuffs. You see the hands in cuffs before you see the rest of the individual, so the audience will instantly think that this is a ‘bad guy’ or could even be the antagonist. It is later revealed that this is in fact the protagonist, who is depicted as being quite an anti-hero.

In this shot you can clearly see both the antagonist and protagonist together, it is immediately established, through use of costume, that the person on the right is the antagonist (due to him wearing a leather jacket and generally looking intimidating) and that the person on the left is the protagonist. Also in this shot, the audience see’s the person on the left being very gruff with the flight attendant, which again makes him look intimidating.

In this part of the opening, the plane begins to crash, which is very sudden and unexpected. This makes the audience ask more questions like: Why is the plane crashing? Do the characters have anything to do with the crash? Due to the suddenness of the crash, this makes the transition from the setup narrative stage, to the conflict narrative stage in a matter of seconds.

This is the title of the film which appears half way through our opening, the film is called Hack. This makes the audience ask more questions like: What does Hack mean? Does it have anything to do with the characters? Is one of the characters a hacker of some sort? But as well as asking questions, it may also answer some, to the more experienced thriller enthusiast, by obviously showing that this film is about hacking of some sort, may give the audience an insight into some of the characters.

This is the first shot after the crash, where we see the protagonist open his eyes. The audience don’t yet know where he is. This confuses the audience, and along with the loud noises of beeping equipment and fast paced cuts, almost gives the audience an emphatic feel of what the protagonist is feeling, which is confusion and disorientation.

This shot features the briefcase again, but by now the audience can tell that the character is in a hospital. This again implies that the briefcase holds some sort of narrative importance, and we have used a P.O.V shot to show that the character also has some sort of connection to the briefcase. This creates enigma codes, and makes the audience ask questions as to why the briefcase is with him in the hospital? Who brought it there? Is it still fully intact after the crash?

This is a CU of the briefcase from the P.O.V of the protagonist, who is crawling on his belly towards the briefcase. The fact that he has disconnected all his medical equipment and painfully drags himself across the floor to reach this briefcase, implies that this briefcase is important and he cannot waste time nursing his injuries before checking the briefcase. This shows that the protagonist is linked to the briefcase indefinitely, answering some enigma codes. But then asking more questions of the audience, such as: Why does he need to check it right away? What is it that’s so important about it?

In one of the final shots of the opening, the audience see’s the protagonist at the briefcase. He’s obviously exhausted after having to drag himself across the floor, even though it’s only a few feet away from the hospital bed. This implies that the protagonist was seriously injured in the plane crash, which makes the audience ask the question: How long has he been in hospital for? In the opening the audience never see’s the inside of the briefcase, and not very many questions are answered. This is a common opening style for thrillers, in the sense that a lot of thrillers ask a lot of questions to the audience in the first few minutes, and then slowly, throughout the film, solve the questions one by one; to keep the audience hooked until the end.

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 usually hackers are depicted as being young, sometimes even as young as teenage; but we thought due to his criminal background, he should be older than a teen. His costume also represents his young age, as he is wearing typical clothing that a young person would wear (polo, hoodie and jeans). His hair also helps to represent his age, due to it being the sort of hairstyle that a young person would have, but because it seems quite well kept and clean, this could suggest that instead of him being stereotypically rebellious, as some young people are, he is instead quite mature and well mannered; despite his predicament.

The antagonist is represented as being older than the protagonist, which was difficult to do, as both actors are only 17, but through costume we represented his age well. His age is reflected in his jacket, which is quite old, and worn. But the antagonists hair is still quite bright, and is styled in a way that makes him look young, this is to imply that the escort still thinks of himself as being young, and isn’t ready to embrace getting older; this want to stay young is also reflected in his physical condition, which is that of being quite muscular and big, instead of withering and becoming old, this shows that he is trying to fight it.

·        Representation of gender

The protagonist is represented as being quite a smart male, who seems very nervous at first. This is shown through facial expression and body language (wringing his hands in the cuffs, and having a nervous twitch on his face) before becoming calm and witty when the escort attempts to intimidate him, which is shown through dialogue when the escort tells the criminal that he is “going to be in those for a long time” – referring to the handcuffs, to which the protagonist replies “that’s what you think”; this could suggest rebelliousness, or perhaps even that he has a plan of escape. Through using witty remarks, the protagonist is also implied that he thinks he is better than the escort.  

The antagonist is depicted as being an overly aggressive male, which is clearly shown when he is blunt with the flight attendant and tells him to go away. He is also a very dominant male, as he answers the flight attendant for the criminal, by saying that “he’s fine” when the protagonist is asked if he would like anything. The antagonist also seems to be very confident, and almost boastful, this could imply that he is very sure of himself, but this could also be seen as being cocky, this is shown when he says to the criminal “you’re going to be in them for a long time”, which is obviously a taunt at the criminal.

·        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 20^th 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: 20^th Century Fox and Lionsgate Films, due to these both being big budget distributors.

·        20^th Century Fox

20^th 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.

Star Wars – Star wars is an epic space opera film series, directed by George Lucas (Lucasfilms) and was distributed by 20^th Century Fox. It is the third highest grossing film franchise of all time, totalling up to $4.49 billion, only beaten by Harry Potter and James Bond. It was first released in 1977, and instantly became a pop culture hit; this is hugely impressive, due to the fact that its release was at a time where distribution methods were limited; in comparison to today’s distribution methods (online, games consoles, etc). This was due to the film being released in many popular cinema chains, which meant that the film was easy to go and see, as it was being shown almost everywhere!

Leading up to the release of the film, advertisements of the film had begun to be put into newspapers, all over America. Nowadays you would think that advertisements in newspapers wouldn’t spread the word very quickly, but back in that time everyone read the newspaper, therefore, everyone knew about Star Wars!

·        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.

The Hunger Games – The Hunger Games is a Sci-Fi action drama, based on the novel (of the same name) by Suzanne Collins. The film was released very recently in 2012 into conventional movie theatres and IMAX theatres. The film has set the record for the third best opening weekend box office sales of any movie ($152.5 million). This is partly due to its already huge fanbase, because it was an adaptation of a novel, there was already a huge number of fans of the books, who then instantly took to the cinemas to watch their favourite novel come to life on the big screen. There was also a huge amount of advertising: There were advertisements on Facebook, advertisements on TV, in newspapers. There were advertisements everywhere! This meant that people, no matter where they were, heard about the film; and because the film was released in all conventional movie theatres and IMAX cinemas, it was easily accessible to a wide audience.

After looking at both of these hugely successful distribution institutions, I have decided to use Lionsgate Films to distribute my thriller. This is because Lionsgate have recently begun using all sorts of different media’s to advertise and distribute their films. Their most recent film The Hunger Games has been distributed, via many different medias such as Netflix, Lovefilm and YouTube (online distribution) as well as distributed via multiplex cinemas. This shows that Lionsgate use convergence distribution to make their product widely available to a much larger audience; in comparison to if it was only released via conventional cinemas.

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.

We came to find our target audience through a Facebook survey that me and my group did, we asked 50 males and 50 females whether they enjoyed watching films of the thriller genre. We then recorded our findings in a Pie Chart, so that we could easily see the results of our survey, and as we expected, the male audience is more inclined to watch and enjoy thriller films; we do not want to completely rule out the female audience, but stereotypically males are more likely to enjoy our film.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ40WlshNwU

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EUJYh32KVw

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.

After looking at these films, I have decided that our film should be a 15, this is because all of these films are similar to our thriller, and therefore we think it would be possible that our film would be given the same age certificate. Our target audience is also met by this age certificate. Also our film would most likely include violence, and a fair amount of criminal acts, therefore I think it may be age inappropriate for anyone younger than fifteen to view the film.

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.

We also tried to make the two main characters easily relatable, so that the audience could perhaps feel empathy and sympathy for the characters, which would then immerse them more in the film. To make them relatable we had to find some attributes about their personality, or the way they dressed etc, that the audience could relate to. In the protagonists case this was very simple, as he was dressed as a civilian and was a pretty average person, but is perhaps slightly smarter than average and he is middle class (which I’m sure a lot of the audience are also). However finding attributes that are easily relatable with the escort was much harder; as he is quite a lot older than our target audience, and also is quite different personality wise, to the sort of person you would expect to play games and watch thriller films. As the antagonist was upper class, this would make it hard for people to relate to him social class wise, and he was obviously meant to be older than our target audience. So we had to try and make the way his gender was represented relatable, his physical prowess and his need to stay fit and his belief that out of the two of them he is the ‘alpha male’, is a relatable attribute to people in the audience who care about their body etc; so we tried to make this part of his character clear. Although we didn’t want him to be too relatable, as we still want the audience to fear him.

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?

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnaxx_hfFew

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeYnTrclUlU&feature=player_embedded 

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.

We have also made a note of improving the quality of acting, to again make the thriller look more professional. The acting in our thriller greatly improved in comparison to the preliminary where you can clearly tell that both of the actors are on the edge of corpsing the entire way through, to being very serious due to the seriousness of the thriller genre.

Our editing (due to us having a limited knowledge of final cut and limited time) was quite poor, and the problems we had showed through in how odd the cuts were, in comparison to the smoothness of our cuts in the thriller.

As far as costumes and props were concerned in our preliminary, we put no thought into the costumes, and the props were made with no thought put into them either; they were simply made so that we would have props. But in our thriller piece, we had obviously put a lot of thought into costume and props to make our settings and characters convincing and lifelike.