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

Looking back at our preliminary task, I feel that we

have developed in a number of ways:

1)Shot Composition: There was a lot more thought put into the shot composition in our final piece, and more of a regard for what could be seen within the shots. For example, in our preliminary task there were a lot of small aspects of the shots that made the film seem slightly unprofessional. (E.g. the fact that you could tell it was set in a school when it was meant to be an office) In our final piece, we made sure that there were no unwanted aspects in our shots.


2)Camera: Although I feel that she shots looked decent in the preliminary task, there wasn't much of a variety, particularly with camera movement. In our final opening, there are a lot more viewpoints of objects using a variety of shots, and a lot more movement so that the film is more kinetic and engaging. Also, the movement in our preliminary task wasn't as smooth and stable as it is in our final piece. In our final opening, we used tripods and tracks to ensure that all of the shots were steady.

3)Editing: The preliminary task was very helpful for drawing our attention to continuity. I think that our preliminary task actually had quite a nice flow and continuity to it, and we were able to build on this in our final piece.

4)Lighting: Although we tried to make the room as dark as possible, it was quite difficult to control the lighting. With this in mind, we made sure that the setting for our final video was in a naturally dark place.

As well as our development of the visual elements in our film, there was also a development within these areas:

Planning skills: In our preliminary task, there was a lot less regard for our storyboards, and although we did make a quick storyboard, we didn't follow it very strictly, and some of the shots we made up as we went along. In our final film, we did pay a lot more attention to the storyboard, as it meant that we knew exactly what shots to film. However, we did add a few unplanned shots in which still worked well.
Time management: Although we tried to improve our time management skills from the time between making the preliminary film and the final one, we did still find that we spent a lot of time planning the production rather than getting down to filming it. I think that because we had a shorter amount of time to complete our preliminary task, we completed it quicker and more efficiently, whereas in the final film as we had more time, we felt like there was more time for planning.
Communication and collaborative skills: I felt that the communication between our group in both the preliminary and final film was really good. Before we had even started the preliminary task we exchanged phone numbers, Facebooks, and email accounts so that we could remind each other to complete deadlines and send files to one another.

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

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

Jess Gell-Question 5-How did you attract/address your audience?

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  Certificate Rating '15' information from the BBFC

  Before we started deciding on what to include in our film, we had to check to BBFC Certificate Ratings to make sure that we didn't include anything that was 'inappropriate' for our audience, as we were including implicit references to violence, and alcohol use. The certificate rating didn't particularly restrict us, as we weren't intending on showing swearing, drugs or nudity in our film.
  We made sure that our film offered the audience pleasures conventionally offered by thrillers, such as giving audience a thrill from being scared, and giving them the opportunity to be 'detectives'. For example the burning of the photos of the policemen offers audience pleasure, as the psychological element of it might even scare them. Additionally, the fact that the main character is marking 'x's on maps and burning photos might make the audience try and guess at what he is going to do later on in the film.
  
  

  

  Title of film

  As our audience had varied preferences and tastes it was quite difficult to appeal to every one of them, however we still tried to appeal to some elements of these preferences. For example:
  ·         Genre: There was an interest in crime and gangster films, so we made our film a hybrid of this genre and thriller. The title 'Vice Vendetta' reflects this aspect, as 'Vice' refers to the 'Vice Squad' in the police force, and 'Vendetta' suggests that there is going to be some sort of revenge and violence/crime.

  

  Inclusion of Black/British and White/British characters

  ·         Ethnicity: The ethnicity of our audience was predominantly White/British and secondly Black/British, so within the pictures of the police force we used pictures of black and white people.
  ·         Soundtrack: Our soundtrack originally comprised of just piano and strings, as we thought it fitted the sinister element of the film well. However we later added atmospheric synthesisers. As well as adding an eerie atmosphere to the soundtrack, we also felt that it would appeal to our audience, as one of the modal preferences in music genres is hip/hop, where synthesisers are often used.
  
  
  We also wanted to make our film aesthetically appealing and engaging to the audience through sound and visuals, because an opening to any good film should intrigue the audience and make them want to watch the rest of it. To engage our audience we used the following techniques:
  ·         Visual effects: In post production we added visual effects such as reversing and changing the speed of shots, using the 'cutaway' technique to overlap shots, and finally using the 'grainy film' and 'x-ray' effects to change the appearance of shots.
  ·         Frequent cuts/ varied shot length: The length of the shots in our film were originally too long, and after getting some audience feedback on them, we realised that we needed to make the film cut more frequently between different shots so that the audience didn't get bored of looking at the same thing for too long. Although thrillers such as 'The Birds' use lengthly shots to create tension, I felt that the shorter length worked just as well, as it was more dramatic.
  ·         Variation of shots: Again, the variation of shots made sure that the audience had an array of different things to focus on in the film. Furthermore the constant movement of the shots made sure that the audience weren't stuck in once place.
  I think that our audience research should have featured more questions about what the audience would want to see in a thriller film, as it was more of a general questionnaire. If we had firmly established at the beginning of the questionnaire to our audience that we were definitely making a thriller film, I think it would have been easier to know what to include in our film that would appeal to them.

Jess Gell-Question 4-Who would be the audience for your media product?

1)Creating the questionnaire
To find out who our target audience were, we created a questionnaire. We wanted our questionnaire to give us a general view on our audience's demographics, psycho-graphics and lifestyle, and also about their consumption of media products and what their general interests were. Our questionnaire featured more closed questions than open ones, as we felt it would easier to collaborate the results onto Microsoft Excel after they had been answered. However it also asked questions about their favourite artists, directors and films so that we could decide whether we had to appeal to a mainstream or independent audience. We decided to include questions about things like their preferred mode of transport, or preferred method of communication just in case we were going to feature any of these things in our film. If we were going to include things like that, we wanted to make sure that our audience could relate to them.

2)Distribution of the questionnaires
We distributed our questionnaires to a variety of people in our school to get a range of answers, as we thought that the wider the variety was of the results, the more freedom we would have in our film to experiment. I think next time we create a questionnaire, it would be good to experiment with online survey programs, as it would enable us to easily store the results digitally, and send the questionnaires to our audience via Social Networking/ emails.


3)Results
Once we had collaborated the results we realised that a variety of answers in fact meant that we had to make our film appeal to a very wide audience, which was quite difficult, as we had to carefully consider each aspect of the film so that would appeal to our audience. To display our results, we used Microsoft Excel to create pie charts, which gave us a more visual way of viewing our audiences demographics and interests.
Our questionnaire results showed that we had quite a mainstream audience, as they were interested in mainstream films and music. We also found out that the main ethnicity was black/white British, and that our main audience was aged from 15-20.

Jess Gell- Question 3- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our questionnaires showed us that our target audience's preferences were quite mainstream. (such as their interest in pop music and dance films) Therefore we felt that Universal Studios were an appropriate distributor, as they are a mainstream company. We felt that our film was more appropriate for a mainstream audience, as it explored universal themes such as murder, crime, death and obsession. These aren't themes that could only be understood by a niche independent audience. We felt our film would be appropriate to distribute to a mainstream audience as the narrative and visual codes conformed to the straight forward conventions of the thriller genre. Although the narrative was quite complex, as (if we had made the whole film) it would have been non-chronological , we didn't feel that this necessarily meant that it would therefore appeal to an independent audience, as a great deal of thrillers distributed by mainstream companies have complex narratives, such as Inception.

I think that the distribution and production companies could perhaps have been thought about in more detail. As we focused a great deal on the narrative and how to portray it, focus was lost on the background elements of the film such as deciding on a logo for our company and deciding which distributers to use. However I do still think that the concentrated effort on the production of the film does show, and adds to the overall quality of the film.

Jess Gell-Question 2-How does your media product represent particular social groups?

'Dixon of Dock Green'

The main groups represented in our thriller opening were policemen and mentally ill/disturbed people. As we were trying to appeal to a mixture of mainstream and independent audiences, we made our characters both challenge and conform to their stereotypes. For example:

Policemen:

The weapon-clad Simon
Pegg in 'Hot Fuzz'

The traditional, perhaps more old fashioned stereotypes of policemen are that they are smart, reliable, trustworthy and law-enforcing, such as in the 1950s police drama 'Dixon of Dock Green'. However in later years some fictional policemen have had more active, daring roles, such as in 'Hot Fuzz' and the 70s police drama 'The Sweeny'.  However, although these policemen are slightly more daring, they aren't really corrupt. We wanted our policeman to be more corrupt such as in 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Bad Lieutenant', as there was more room for the psychologically damaged element of the character, which conforms more to the thriller genre. Although our main character didn't conform to the conventional stereotypes of a 'regular' policeman, he did still conform to the stereotype of the corrupt and mentally disturbed policeman. For this reason we felt our film was still a mainstream film as pose to an independent one as the main character was still a stereotype and not the kind of rounded and developed character that would appeal to an independent audience.

Mentally Ill People:

Daniel Craig in 'Dream House'

Admittedly, our representation of the mentally ill is not a very positive one, as it features someone who is psychologically ill plotting to kill his colleagues and burning their portraits, however, this negative stereotype of the mentally ill is typical to mainstream thriller films such as 'Dream House' and 'The Orphan', where the mentally ill characters cause the deaths of others.

'The Orphan'- Isabelle Fuhrman is
responsible for the deaths of many people

Jess Gell- Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The lighter suit of the innocent man contrasts with the
darker suit of the villain

1)The title of the film- We chose to have the white title against a black background as it reflects the contrasting themes within our film: injustice/justice, good/evil, and sanity/insanity. After conducting some product research, we discovered that contrasting colours are frequently used in thrillers to reflect some of these themes. For example in 'Strangers on a Train', the lighter suit of the innocent man contrasts with the darker suit of the villain. Black and white are also colours that are often used in thriller titles such as 'The Ghost Writer'and 'The Manchurian Candidate'. The contrasting colours suggest a sense of inner conflict, which is something that we wanted to convey in our film. We chose black as the dominant create a sense of darkness, fear and suspense.

The dark lighting in 'Brighton Rock' reflects the element
of mystery

2)Setting/location- The entire opening sequence was shot at a table under the stairs. This enabled us to have control over the lighting, as it provided shelter from the light outside which enabled us to create the conventional dark lighting that the thrillers we researched featured, such as Goodfellas and Brighton Rock. The dark lighting reflects the element of mystery and suspense in the plot. However, although we tried to block out the majority of light using black cloth, we still didn't manage to obtain the exact level of darkness we required, so we had to change the lighting in post-production on iMovie11 to make sure that our film still conformed to the conventional dark lighting of most thrillers.

3)Props

We collected a variety of props from different sources. Rather than explicitly using actors to show this violence, we wanted to create a symbolic opening, (similar to Seven or Dexter) so therefore the props were our biggest priority in production. One of the formal conventions of any opening sequence is that it hints at the narrative to follow, and so we were careful to make sure that every prop we used foreshadowed an event that would happen later on in the film.

A few of the props collected
from the Art department

For example:

 Photos of policemen: at the beginning is burnt, and later on one of them is covered with drops of red wine., This foreshadows that later on one of the policemen will be murdered through burning, and the wine represents blood, suggesting he will be shot/stabbed. We developed the idea of the violent symbolism in Dexter by featuring pictures of the victims.

Wine and cigarettes: in our opening reflects the protagonists' troubled mental state, as he has to resort to these things as a temporary escape. In many psychological thrillers, alcohol/mind altering substances are used to portray themes of obsession, insanity and depression.

4)Camerawork and editing

We wanted to make sure that there was constant movement in our opening sequence, so we used pans, tilts and tracking shots to ensure that this would happen. Using storyboards, we planned to shoot a variety of shots including medium-long shots, mid shots and close-ups. Inspired by Seven, we chose not to use too many long shots, as we wanted the viewers to be able to see the detail of the shots. Furthermore, the closeness of the shots also makes the viewer feel more involved, and even trapped.

'Cutaway' Technique on iMovie11

In post-production, once the shots had been sequenced, we found that the movement in the shots actually made the film quite tedious to watch. As it is an opening sequence, we needed it to be engaging so that audience would (if it was a full-length film) continue to watch the rest of it. To overcome this problem, we used the 'cutaway' technique on iMovie to overlap shots, giving it more depth and therefore it became more interesting to watch. We also used fades to make the transition between some of the shots smoother.

'Mom's Typewriter' font

5)Title font and style

After researching a few different titles, we decided on an eroded typewriter font called 'Mom's Typewriter', similar to The King's Speech title font, which we downloaded from Dafont. I think that although we did a lot of research on titles before production, when it came to production they were left till last.

Title for 'The King's Speech'

Originally, we wanted our titles to be diegetic (similarly to our pre-preliminary task), and feature within the film rather than being added later in post-production. However, we ended up adding the titles in post-production, as during production we realised that including the titles diegetically required a lot more planning than we originally thought. Ideally, I would have liked to have created our own titles using an animation software on the Macs. I think that we should have allocated more time to the presentation of the titles so that they reflected the themes of insanity and conflict (for example if they were flickering/more eroded).

However, I do feel that our titles did reflect the generic conventions of thrillers, as the fade effect on the text reflected the element of self decay  and lack of control of the protagonist in the film.

6)Story and how the opening sets it up

As mentioned in Costumes and Props, we made sure that each element of our opening sequence foreshadowed later events in the film, to make sure that we conformed to the formal elements of opening sequences. For example the photos at the beginning show the policemen he is going to murder in order to avenge his brother. Also, the close ups of the protagonist marking Xs on the maps show that he is finding out where they live so he can hunt them down. The slow movement of the camera also suggests a gradual build up of suspense later on in the narrative, and the 'cutaway' effect suggests that there will be lots of overlapping of different stories and events.

7)Genre and how the opening suggests it.

Using our knowledge from the Prezis we created illustrating the generic conventions of the Thriller genre, we were able to make our film use conform to them. 

Wine used to reflect the sense of alcoholism/self destruction

We used many aspects of the Thriller Genre in our opening sequence for example

·         Wine /cigarettes: Reflect the element of self destruction and lack of the character.

·         Dark lighting to create a mysterious, grave atmosphere, and to suggest that there will be conflict later on in the plot

·         Contrasting colours (such as black and white) to reflect themes of  injustice/justice, good/evil and sanity/insanity within the film

·         Similarly to 'Transsiberian', we used atmospheric synthesisers and strings in the soundtrack to create suspense, and a crescendo of cymbals to create tension and a sense of conflict.

8)How characters are introduced

Iconic shot of Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining'

At the beginning, a tracking shot is used to show the victims of the killer, showing that he is psychologically disturbed and has an obsessive nature. This sort of character is similar to the main characters in 'Dream House' and 'The Shining'. The repetition of wine in the shots suggests that he is an alcoholic, and also implies that he has problems he must escape from using alcohol. If we had had more time, I would have liked to have developed the narrative behind each of the victims further by using more techniques that foreshadow their death, which would develop the idea of obsession and violence in our film.

9)Special effects

To add show that our main character was psychologically disturbed, we used certain effects in post-production to demonstrate this. We were inspired by the flickering effects used in 'Seven' when adding these effects.

Jump cuts: These suggest that parts of his mind are missing, and furthermore disorientates the viewer

Overlap effect in 'Se7en'

Overlapping clips: This suggests the different layers of thoughts that the main character is having

Flashes of x-ray/'aged film' effect: These flashes also disorientate the viewer and give a sense of flashbacks

Reverse effect combined with fast motion: Again adds to the effect of flashbacks and memories.