Sunday, 5 May 2013
Saturday, 4 May 2013
AA: EVALUATION
Media Q1 from Alex Atkinson
Media Q2 from Alex Atkinson
Media Q3 from Alex Atkinson
Questions Four and Five
'Who would be the for your film? How did you attract/address your audience?'
Here is the powerpoint for quesiton four and five PRE FINAL PIECE
Here is the powerpoint for question four and five POST FINAL PIECE
'Looking back at your preliminary tast, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?'
Here is the video for question seven:
Here is the link to our preliminary task:
http://twgsbmedia13asgroup2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/group-preliminary-task.html
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Group: EVALUATION - Question 7
'Looking back at your preliminary tast, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?'
Here is the video for question seven:
Here is the link to our preliminary task:
http://twgsbmedia13asgroup2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/group-preliminary-task.html
Here is the link back to "DW: Evaluation":
http://twgsbmedia13asgroup2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/dw-evaluation-question-one.html
Friday, 26 April 2013
Group: EVALUATION - Questions Four and Five
Questions Four and Five
'Who would be the for your film? How did you attract/address your audience?'
Here is the powerpoint for quesiton four and five PRE FINAL PIECE
Here is the powerpoint for question four and five POST FINAL PIECE
Here is the link back to 'DW: Evaluation':
http://twgsbmedia13asgroup2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/dw-evaluation-question-one.html
DW: Evaluation
Question One
'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?'
Plot
The narrative of our piece begins with a couple having an argument, the wife then storms off for a walk in the wood to clear her head. Whilst on this walk, she is kidnapped and then murdered by an unknown killer. Meanwhile, unaware of his wife's death, the husband sits down to work at his home desk; he is working on a current case, which is where the audience establish his detective occupation and assume that he is the protagonist. Midway through his work, he gets a phone call informing him of his wife's death, he drops the phone and it fades to black. The audience then sees the detective approaching the crime scene where his wife was found; during this, clips of the killer are integrated, where he directly addresses the camera and therefore the audience. The killer says "bye, bye!" and then the film cuts to the title, 'Taped'.
Audiences become especially positioned with the protagonist, also known as the husband or the detective, his loneliness yet dedication to his work is conventional of a protagonist in a crime thriller as is connotes a dedication to the case - a ruthlessness to solve a job that comes before family.
The lack of dialogue that the audience sees the characters physically say helps with their exposition; this is because it adds an element of mystery to the characters, allowing the audience to purely judge a character on their non verbal language and their appearance. This distances the audience from the characters and means that they form a stereotypical opinion of the them, establishing enigma and also a need to watch the rest of the film in order to establish who the characters really are.
Is our piece conventional?
Within the crime thriller genre, it is hard to create a piece which isn't conventional; as it is the aspects that make up a typical crime-thriller that make them so popular. We took inspiration from a number of films, but mainly from the director David Fincher who directed films such as 'Seven' (1995), 'Panic Room' (2002) and 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' (2011). Each of the films mentioned provided inspiration for different aspects of our opening, along with a number of other films.
TITLES
- The use of a minimalistic font and colour for our titles was something we took inspiration from Panic Room. We thought this simplicity would be applicable as it shows the necessary information without deviating attention from the visuals. Furthermore, the coldness of the white and the sharpness of the serif font anchors the thriller genre as it connotes crime and the style of writing in official detective documents.
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Despite being central in terms of framing, the titles do not distract the audience from the visuals yet they still add a chill to the shot.
This is replicated in our piece, however we adhered to the rule of thirds so that the audience's eyes' naturally found the titles, yet they do not remove attention from the action.
SOUND
- For sound, we used the idea of Se7en's repetitive, yet slowly building soundtrack. This meant we were able to build tension through non-diegetic sound in a predominantly minor key. This is conventional of a crime thriller as the lack of overpowering sound allows the audience to focus on the all-important diegetic sounds, whilst apprehension builds as the piece reaches crescendo. For diegetic sound and the overall sound-mix, we wanted it to sound as natural as possible, to anchor the urban settings in which the piece is set - but boosting some elements to add emphasis on the key points of the opening.
'Se7en' (Fincher, 1995)
CAMERA WORK & FRAMING
- This was the most important aspect to get right; camera work and framing is integral to any piece whether it be crime thriller or not. For this, we took inspiration from Batman: The Dark Knight, where The Joker records a hand-held camera film; the audience here is directly addressed by the antagonist which, is rather chilling. The very amateur, shaky camera work at a CU framing at a high angle deepens the audience's understanding of the character, connoting a sense of craziness through a modern way of communication - also it allows the audience to see both the antagonist and protagonist's emotions without being in threat of each other.
Despite being on a television, here, the CU of The Joker as he breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses the audience connects with the audience vicariously, building apprehension and adding character to this antagonist.
Similarly, but this time in a more overt handy-cam style, the direct address to the audience focuses their attention on the twisted and disturbing dialogue, adding depth to their perception of his ill mental state.
MISE-EN-SCENE
- This was the area with most individual components, in that there was a lot to consider if we wanted to make the piece look convincing. For this, we looked at 'Goodfellas' (Scorsese, 1990) where the use of smart costumes and an urban location connoted, in their case, the gangster type persona - for us, the latter would be used to identify the protagonist as the detective. As the bottom right image shows, the suit and tie in combination with the urban setting with a crime scene established by crime tape and cones connotes a crime scene being investigated by a detective. Also, the use of bloody sheets / ruined clothing on the victim in Goodfellas was something we used on our victim to anchor the fact that she is dead, and also to allow the audience to think of ways in which she could have been killed - as shown by the top right image.
'Goodfellas' (Scorsese, 1990)
EDITING STYLE
- For editing, we took a lot of inspiration from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The contrast between light and dark, the fast cutting rate anchored to the non diegetic sound, the iconic dark colour wash, the motivated cuts and the use of expansion of time were all things we wanted to emulate in our final piece:
- The fast cutting rate of mostly motivated cuts in the office scene connotes a sense of the detective's desperation to solve the case in time. It also adds depth to the character as it shows dedication to his job, shows what line of work he is in, and disorientates the audience so that when the phone call arrives, the true emotion of the detective is shown - as despite the fact he was just in an argument with his wife, he still works obliviously.
- The contrast between light, for when the camera shows the protagonist, and dark, for when the camera shows the antagonist, clearly portrays the 'good vs evil' theme common in all crime thrillers. The dark means that the audience sees less of the antagonist, thus adding mystery to him and lessering the amount of trust the audience can put in to him. The light means that the audience are positioned with the protagonist, as he is shown in a 'positive light' of a brighter colour wash, therefore the audience are led to believe that they can trust him.
- Expansion of time is used in the crime-scene scene as the detective is walking up to his wife to see her lying dead on the floor. This technique was employed to decrease the pace of the opening, therefore giving the audience a chance to think and therefore empathise with the detective as the audience are vicariously 'with' the detective as he approaches his dead wife for the first time. This evokes emotion and further places the audience with the detective, whilst also establishing an enigma - who could have murdered his wife and why?
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Fincher, 2011)
Question Two
'How does your media product represent particular social groups?'
- Our piece unintentionally had an all white cast of males and females. Whilst other ethnicities would have fit in our opening, I believe our cast fit the characters we established in the creation of the piece.
- All our cast is young, below the age of 19, however the parts that they portray are at least 7 or 10 years older than they are.
- It could be argued that we have left out a broad range of ethnicities and possibly the older generations, therefore possibly narrowing the demographic at which our piece would attract.
- The audience is positioned with each of the three main characters in the opening, this is shown by the use of camera movement and framing:
- For the wife, the camera tracks her, becomes her POV, and is largely shot at a MCU, therefore placing the audience with her as she hears the reminiscence of the argument in her head - the fluctuating non diegetic sound in the forest scene.
- For the detective, the camera remains at CU throughout the office scene, reaction shots and emphasized diegetic sound, i.e sighing, position the audience with him, and focus on his emotion as he too deals with the stresses of his marriage and work.
- For the killer, the handheld camera effect on a tripod as he breaks the fourth wall and looks dead in to the camera. Here, the audience is positioned with him despite him being the antagonist, as his psychopathic emotions are directly addressed to the audience as they see more of his disturbed character revealed.
- When studying the macro issues of our piece, it is important to consider dominant ideologies in society in the real world, and the dominant ideologies in the genre. Within the latter, there is an element of a patriarchal ideological discourse, in that the males are represented to be the centre point of society: earning the money, playing the protagonist / antagonist, being morally and physically stronger. The females however fill in the domestic and ‘lesser important’ tasks in between - often being the damsel in distress character in a crime thriller. The ideas just discussed are portrayed in our opening in a number of shots:
- As the wife/victim storms out of the house it is suggested that she is morally weaker as she is the one seen leaving rather than the male who stays put. This then puts her in to an element of danger as she ventures in to the woods alone; considering she is also angry, the audience begin to guess that inevitably something bad is about to happen to her, conforming to that damsel in distress character.
- As the detective sits down to work he sighs, but then continues on with his work as if it is more important. This connotes an element of emotional disregard within the character as he is more focused on earning the money and playing the dominant role than he is on maintaining a successful marriage. This could suggest a moral upper-ground to his wife as he is able to think past the argument.
- As the antagonist is threatening to kill the second female victim it is portrayed to the audience that he has no morals at all, not being able to distinguish what is socially right and wrong when he is adamant that what he is doing is correct for his own benefit. Furthermore the ability to capture another victim suggests a degree of intelligence as thus far he has not been caught, but also furthers the idea that the female characters are weaker as once again, a female has been taken hostage.
- Whilst these values are regressive to the dominant ideologies in society in the real world, a place where equality between genders is seen to be the way towards a healthy and evenly functioning culture, for the crime thriller genre, all of the above is common. Without this sexism and the perhaps negative portrayal of females in particular, it would be harder to distinguish character types and their personalities; because everyone would be the same and would be able to do exactly as their male/female counterpart can do - therefore eliminating drama, suspense and ultimately excitement.
Question Three
'What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?'
- Considering the nature of the film, and the low costs, our piece would most likely be distributed through a UK Independent Film Company.
- The popularity of the genre would make it appeal to a mass audience if correctly marketed to the core audience of 12 to 29 year olds.
- The high production value for low costs would result in a digital distribution, possibly combined with a small distribution to smaller indie/art-house cinemas.
- For the nature of the film as mentioned above, the film company most likely to be appropriate for our film would be Vertigo Films. Their ethic to films and the distribution of films, combined with their knowledge of the core audience and how to correctly market to them whilst minimizing costs would be ideal in attracting audiences to the film. In addition, their ‘put a film to screen’ mentality, their ability to ‘make films of commercial and international appeal for a fraction of the price’ and also make British films ‘culturally important but entertaining’ (all stated by Vertigo Films) makes the possibility of the success of our film ever-greater.
In terms of marketing, the most successful way to attract attention of the core audience is to exploit web 2.0, the growing number of positive technological determinists and technological convergence. This would mean mobile apps, online blogs, online trailers and teasers, exclusive downloadable content, interactive websites and so on. Combined with the traditional posters at bus stops for example, a large majority of the core audience will be attracted to our film, as it is advertised right there in front of them, on their mobile or computer.
Questions Four and Five
Here is the link to our questions four and five:
Question Six
'What have you learnt about technologies from the process of making your film opening?'
Aside from adapting to incorporating multiple ideas in to one piece, new-to-me technologies have become very apparent.
- The multimedia blogs, through Blogger, where I have uploaded text, video, pictures and slideshows. Also the blog has been used to share ideas, share inspirations, develop genre ideas, increase knowledge of the genre and share location ideas.
- Despite having a fairly detailed knowledge of photography, I found filming to be a completely different experience - predominantly focusing on continuity so that our piece flowed and made sense. Also combining camera movements on tracks and through pans and tilts with moving actors made the task of framing somewhat harder.
- Also with regard to filming, was the ability to be able to look at my work with a more critical eye, something that prompted the almost entire re-shoot of our piece. The first shoots were not as well framed as we hoped and, whilst there was plenty of creative and clever ideas, the reality of employing them in to our piece was minimal. The narrative was changed to primarily create a greater enigma, both Alex Young and I shared the responsibility of the reshoot, when she wasn’t acting, as Alex Atkinson was acting throughout. This time I employed my theatre/drama knowledge to make the movements and framing far more accurate, which involved creative tripod and track shots with the camcorder. Luckily, for both shoots, the natural lighting was perfect for our scenes, cloudy but sunny at the the same time, adding a cold yet bright wash to the entire piece.
- The 180 rule was completely new to me, the idea of keeping audience perspective throughout was something that since the preliminary task I have constantly thought about when filming, it also assisted us in making decisions about shot types and positioning.
- The main learning point was how to effectively use Adobe Premiere for the editing of our piece. This largely involved:
- Continuity editing
- Cutting clips
- Expansion and contraction of time
- Transitions, such as fades
- Anchoring image to sound
- Fading sound
- Channeling sound
- Motivated cuts
- Separating soundtrack and video
- Managing multiple tracks
- Incorporating photos
- Colour washes on photos
- Frame by frame matches
- Re-framing
- Corner pining
- Titles
- Motivated cuts
- Cutting on action
There are four main shots which involved the most consideration when editing:
OFFICE SCENE (CU of hands typing and half the computer screen)
- Carelessly, whilst filming we failed to notice that the computer screen wasn’t actually on when Alex was meant to be typing on it. To solve this, we created a 'white title screen' and scaled it down so it roughly fit over the computer screen, but because the screen was slightly at an angle, we had to make the title more three dimensional. Here, we used the 'corner pin tool' which allowed us to free-form the title so it looked correct in perspective and also fit on the computer screen. Then we added a glowing effect to the title, by feathering the edges to make it look less sharp and more realistic.
ARGUMENT SCENE
- The main issue with this was that the diegetic sound didn’t sound as if it was contained within the room in which the characters were arguing in, also there was quite a lot of background sound such as birds and wind. So we placed a 'high and low pass' on the soundtrack to eliminate the highest and lowest frequencies of sound which eradicated the background noise and flattened the dialogue. To finish off the sound, we also altered the reverb to reduce any echo and effectively choke the sound. The result of this was very effective, and when combined with the fades, done manually through the creation of a no visibility point and a full visibility point spread over the time of around two seconds on the visual map under ‘Edit Effects’, alluded to the effect of an outsider (the audience) listening in to the tail-end of an argument.
PSYCHOPATH SCENES
- We wanted to make these mini-scenes appear to be recorded on a handheld camera as if looking down the view-finder, therefore having the flashing ‘Rec’ symbol and the four framing pieces on the screen. To do this we used titles and text; for the ‘Rec’ we used the text tool, found an appropriate font and coloured it red; then we created a circle shape for the accompanying flashing dot and also coloured that red. Next, we used the same process as we did for the fading of the clips throughout the piece, through the creation of multiple no visibility points and a full visibility points straight after each other, repeated a few times for the mini-scenes so that the ‘Rec’ sign roughly flashes up and down every second.
CRIME SCENE
- In this scene we wanted to create a sense of high emotions; initially we used jump cuts to somewhat augment the scene and reflect the detectives swamped mind. To do this we cut up the scenes and layered it on numerous layers so it jumped back and forth. However, this ended up looking like a mistake in editing/filming so we decided to expand time instead; the effect of this is the audience have more time to appreciate what the detective is experiencing. To do this we right-clicked on the clips and then ‘time-stretch’ and decreased the speed to 80%. Then we altered the reverb once again on the sound to make each footstep echo to add to the suspense of the sequence.
Question Seven
Here is the link to our question seven:
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