Evaluation Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film represents the social group of teenagers. This is because of their appearance, such as the way they look young, and dress casually in fairly plain clothing. This is also shown in what they're doing, such as the way they're gathered around a fire on a beach; eating, drinking, laughing and in general just messing around like the stereotypical teenager.

To analyse this more closely, we can look at our main character Amber:

We tried to make Amber representative of the stereotypical teenager in the media; she appears drunk, looks easily bored and impatient of her friend and looks fairly alternative in terms of her appearance. This makes her stand out slightly from the rest of the group, who are dressed fairly plainly and laughing and joking around. This shows that although she's different to the rest of the group, she's still a typical teenager, which makes her more relatable of people of that age group - which is also our target audience.

One character from another film that you can compare in ways to Amber is Wendy from Final Destination 3.

Although fairly different in appearance, a few similarities can be made; such as they're both female, dark haired and dress casually and in a modern way, although Amber does stand out more because she appears to be more alternative than Wendy.

Both Wendy and Amber appear to be control freaks, focusing more on themselves rather than other people. They are both shown to be typical teenagers in the events they both do; Wendy going to an amusement park with her friends and Amber going to the beach with hers. However both of these events end up badly, with both of the female characters getting away from their groups, and both escaping a gruesome death. 

Both are the main characters in their films, with the story and camera focussing mainly on them throughout. Another similarity is that the are both considered to be the last one standing (although in Final Destination this is left fairly ambiguous), as in our original plot we have all of the teenagers on the beach killed one by one until there is only one left - which would be Amber. 

By being typical teenagers both of the characters are relatable to the audience, however in the case of Amber this is slightly less in the beginning because of her moody attitude and the way she pushes away her friend who is just trying to help her. 

Evaluation Question One

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

Looking back at our research into the conventions of a thriller film, many comparisons and similarities can be made between what things are in a typical thriller film, and the things and ideas we included in our own opening sequence.
A link can be made between our opening sequence and the opening sequences of other films such as Silence of the Lambs. Although these are quite different in terms of their storyline, they both give an introduction to their character, show titles in a similar way and share some of the typical conventions of their shared genre.

As you can see both sequences take place in one of the most iconic settings for a thriller film; the woods. Both of the main characters appear at first to be isolated in the woods, both of which seem dark and eerie, which helps to create tension.
Both sequence involve the camera following behind the main characters through the woods, which helps to create the feeling that they're being watched. Both also include close ups of the main characters face, showing their emotion but also emphasising their isolation, creating a sense of paranoia about what might be there with them.
However in both situations it turns out just to be someone they know. The sequences start to differ here, as this is where in our film we create tension by making the audience believe that our main character Amber is about to be attacked, when it turns out to be her friend Evelyn. They then have an argument (although both show over the shoulder shots in both sequences of the conversation) and Amber walks off back to her friends, which is similar to the main character in Silence of the Lambs walking away from the setting of the woods back to her normal life.
Both of the main characters are dressed in modern seeming clothes, suggesting that both films are of similar times, although in Silence of the Lambs the female character is dressed more plainly and shows more independence, where as both of the female characters in ours seem more like the typical female characters you find in a thriller film - helpless and in need of rescue.
The titles in both are of a simple style, both of which roll over the top of the sequence and both show a similar sort of order (e.g. main actor first and director last).
By following both of these characters you can tell the story is following them, and by the use of the setting, light and feelings of being watched it helps the audience to identify the film as a thriller.

Some additional things we included in our film that don't appear in the opening of Silence of the Lambs was the murder of one of our characters straight away, flicking between beach shots of the group and the our character being killed to give make it appear as though no one can hear to help, and so all of the violence is implied, which helps to create a sense of mystery.
Being upfront about the killing in the first few minutes allows us to follow the story of what happens next, and who is next and why the character was killed in the first place. By going straight into the plot line it helps our film to be more exciting and engaging for the audience watching, rather than giving a slow build up of the initial death.
In our opening sequence we didn't really use special effects, as this isn't really typical of the thriller genre. Most thrillers tend to be more realistic which was an effect we tried to get in our film because the idea that this could be real and could happen to anyone makes it more scary - another classic convention of a thriller.
The only effects we added was to darken each clip using a 'day into night' effect so it appeared darker and more eerie (as though it took place at night) and a record effect which was essential to our plot line.

In short, we kept with a lot of the conventions of a thriller - such as the darkness, the mystery of the killer, close-ups, tension and eerie music to help the audience identify our film as a thriller. However we didn't use all of the conventions, such as shadows and ghosts, because this would have been a sort of overkill of the film, making the audience feel overwhelmed and confused at the plot. We used enough conventions to make the genre clear, but not too many to make it overwhelming.

Construction - Final Cut

Preliminary Task - Continuity Exercise

This is the preliminary exercise that was created as a group and edited by myself in order to practice camera, filming and editing techniques, but most importantly continuity.

Final Cut Feedback

After finishing our Final Cut and uploading it to Youtube, we wanted to get feedback on what our target audience thought. The picture above shows the reaction of the A2 Media class at our college.
We're really happy with this feedback as it shows that they liked the film overall, giving it a rating of 8/10. We're especially happy that they picked up on the continuity of the clips and sound, as well as the location because these were things we tried really hard to get perfect. We also tried hard to add more exposition into our film opening by adding in additional sound (see previous post about adding in voice recording of characters) as this was one criticising of our rough cut feedback. Luckily our audience picked up on this in our final cut and so our effort paid off.

The Music

As mentioned before, music and sound is one of the main ways tension is built in a thriller, and so it was really important for our group to find the right piece of music to go over our opening sequence. We looked into trying to make our own but decided it would be easier to find a high quality piece on Youtube.
We searched for key words like 'tension' and 'thriller' and one of the first pieces we came across was the one we used.

We decided to use this music instead of our original choice because it built tension a lot better, but was a lot more dramatic towards the end. In the middle of the piece there's a load bang which we managed to match up perfectly to when the killers hand touches the shoulder. It also sounds really creepy and chilling, which fits our genre really well.

Because it's Royalty Free we can use this in our sequence, because it won't break any of the copyright or licence laws, and we won't have to pay for it.

Production Diary Entry - 13/03/13

Today in class we were finishing our opening sequence ready for the deadline. Luckily for us we only had a few things left to do before we had completely finished and were ready to export.
To start with I finished editing the titles, changing the font to match throughout and adjusting the length of the titles to match each other, as well as adjusting where they were in the sequence, so they looked okay in the clip but were roughly the same length apart.
We then looked at changing the music to make it more dramatic at the end. While we were editing Faye looked on YouTube and found some royalty free music that we could use. We then matched this up to the sequence so that it would fade in where the character 'Evelyn' is left alone and attacked to the end of the sequence where the title of the film appears.
We then asked Michelle to look through our sequence and suggest anything we could improve on. She suggested a few things (post to follow) such as cutting a few of the clips in and making the noise build up in certain places.
Using this advice we cut down some of the action scenes so they appear for a lot less time, which adds to the drama of the sequence. We also added a forest noise track over the first part where 'Amber' walks into the woods and faded the sound out in the clip before to make it flow. We also added some sound effects over the top of the clips where someone sneaks up on 'Amber' and fading it out to trick the audience into thinking something bad is going to happen when it doesn't.

We then recorded us saying things to give it more exposition, explaining why they were there and why she walks off annoyed then added this over the top of the sequence and adjusted the sound levels so it sounded natural.
Our last step was adding in Shani's ident into the beginning of the sequence, which we then added a fade in between the end of the ident and the beginning of the opening so it doesn't jump to suddenly.
After finishing this we played it through, and adjusted the sound slightly in places so it fit and then we had finally finished, ready to upload.