Evaluation - Q7 - Ailsa

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

From the prelim I have learned how to make an opening much more professional. I have learnt how to frame much better and how to be more adventurous when changing the camera angle - this created much more effect when watching the opening in comparison to the prelim. 

The last image here is my favourite shot from our final opening; it is really unique and gives the sense of unease we were looking for. I am also pleased with the filming for the fact we used a wide range of shots - although we did for the prelim this always tended to only show the front of the actor's face, but instead we were bought closer to the character due to showing her from many different angles - especially as we used many CUs. 

The lighting in our prelim wasn't bad, but in some shots you can't see the character enough and in others there is too much exposure. We used it to make each scene more effective, but in our final opening sequence this time around our lighting was much better. In our shot reverse shot sequence there is more light on the therapist to highlight her mental well-being in comparison to Nikki's. We also used lighting at points to signify important elements such as the rucksack.

With the sound, I think the titling creates a good sense of fear for the film, and the lack of non-diegetic sound is more suitable for the genre. In the prelim we used diegetic sound that did not fit that well and was unnecessary. As well as working better for the genre, the dialogue of the opening was made to seem more important without non-diegetic sound. Our script was much better in the final opening as we focused much more on it, the use of repetition ("Nikki, Nikki, Nikki!") creates an effect of a lack of reality. The ambient sound used for the park is also effective for setting the scene and also shows life going on whereas Nikki is stuck in her past.

Apart from previous overly ambitious ideas for the setting, in the end I think the places we used were suitable. The house makes it much more personal and emphasises how Nikki's mental health is caused by something that is much more than a problem that is treated in a hospital, it is something that is caused by something personal. The park also gives hints to the audience about where the problem has rooted from, and makes the plot even more enigmatic as parks are usually positive and innocent. 

 The costume, hair and makeup is the main thing I am unhappy about for our opening. It did not improve much from the prelim to make the characters realistic. The therapist character, although the actual actor chosen was not very well suited, was suitably costumed. The character Nikki did not present a woman having a breakdown, her costume was too fashionable and she had too much makeup on, we should have made her look physically drained by focusing on the costume and makeup more. 

  
The acting in the final opening was much better; the facial expressions created the characters well and the body language also did. The therapist's body language was fairly relaxed and professional and Nikki's was closed in, anxious and presented her as someone unwell.

The props were also much more thought out, we focused on the characters and settings to determine what props we needed to make each scene effective. 

I am really pleased with how our editing went with our final opening, it was much more professional in comparison to our prelim as we thought thoroughly about which transition would create the desired effect. As a team we worked well to decide how we should edit the whole film - how we should structure each scene and Kayla and Claire were the ones to make sure this happened as effectively as possible. The editing continued well throughout and we stuck to the 180 degree rule to make sure the whole opening was smooth and easy to understand.

We very quickly realised that adding an extra minute to the opening is extremely time consuming and requires a lot more work, but with our teamwork and organisation skills I think we managed well in the end. As what will always happen when working in a group, we all had a few different opinions and it took a while to decide on a final storyline, the problems we faced with filming in Brighton and getting actors also contributed to the constant changes in our storyline. Having said that, I am really happy with our final decision and I think it could be the start of a successful thriller film!  

To improve next time, I would like our group to focus more on costume and makeup. We could have possibly also put more thought into our sound as this was done last minute. Overall, I think we did well working as a group - especially when allocating who focuses on what. Me and Luke did well with editing the blog and Kayla and Claire did well with editing, I am mainly proud of how we eventually came to decisions we could all agree on. I think with camera work, mise-en-scene, editing and sound we did fairly well compared to our prelim - we have managed to create an effective and professional looking thriller opening.

Evaluation - Q6 - Ailsa

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 

 From constructing our media product, I have realised how time consuming some of the technologies involved are. I think the main problems we had were because of the Macs, you always have to make sure that your footage is stored correctly or you could lose everything. 

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With the camera we used, because it's extremely high spec we didn't have to set the white balance as it did this automatically. For our prelim we had to keep doing this, and the result of forgetting this meant some footage wasn't that great quality. 

For the lighting, the only problem we had was when filming outside because it was difficult to change the lighting, so we had to make sure the camera angle gave a good effect for this. 

When filming, we realised how important framing was and therefore it took a while to get this right. 

Overall, I think because we had the prelim to practice I don't think we faced many problems with technology for this product. As a group we have all managed to learn how to be more efficient with all the technology we have to use. 

Evaluation - Q5 - Ailsa

How did you attract/ address your audience?

 Our thriller opening would appeal to our target audience in many ways. 
For starters, we used many thriller conventions to appeal to people who enjoy watching them. Our storyline has elements such as Nikki's mental state to appeal to women who stereotypically like a film that is emotional, but on the other hand has the psychological thriller elements to mainly appeal to men. Also, the age group of 14-25 usually have more of an interest in psychological issues and thrillers appeal to them more.
The opening also leads to the audience questioning why the character is talking to a therapist, why she is alone in the park and therefore attracts them to want to watch on.The whole of the opening creates a lot of enigma, there aren't many questions that are answered.

Thrillers with narratives similar to ours usually appeal to audiences well: for example Before I go to Sleep is similar and was very popular.This is also a psychological thriller, and the main character is also a female, both are perceived as being vulnerable.

The canted angles we used also would help to entice an audience as it creates enigma and therefore makes the audience want to carry on watching to find out what's not quite right. 
The lighting and colour is fairly dark throughout to create a sense of unease and represents the thriller genre well, this will also make the audience more interested as it shows all the signs that it's a thriller. 

The setting and props also create enigma and therefore anticipation for the audience - which then attracts and addresses the audience as that's what they're looking for in a thriller. An example of this is the child's bag, the audience will wonder who's it is and why Nikki is taking it to the park with her, without a child with her. The setting also creates the same sort of mystery - why is she there alone, sitting on park equipment that is used by children? 

Overall, I think our mise - en - scene, editing, sound and camera work have all been carefully planned to appeal to our audience as much as possible, in a way that makes it a film of the thriller genre. We have also thought carefully about how we can attract our target audience more by the characters we used and our narrative.

Evaluation - Q4 - Ailsa

Who would be the audience for your media product?

 

Our target audience is 15 – 25 year olds, mainly female.  We got audience feedback for our plan and this was the results:

Because it's a psychological thriller, we thought the storyline of Nikki would appeal more to women, but of course with thrillers the target audience will always include males. Females stereotypically can relate to emotional problems, and therefore relate to media products that address issues such as Nikki's in our film, we thought that by focusing on woman mainly, with men a little we would get more viewers than just focusing on one audience. 14-25 year olds are also ideal to choose for a target audience because this is the target audience for most films, and as this is a young audience usually psychological films are better understood and have more interest from this age group.
From our response this result was backed up. We also discussed with our peers what their favourite thrillers were and these were the results:

A lot of our film was inspired by Cabin in the Woods as we and our audience thought it was the most effective title opening sequence.

Evaluation - Q3 - Ailsa

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

 The type of media institution that may distribute our thriller opening title would be a small independent film company. Our film is a low budget thriller, it may be easier to access due to more need to promote it - seen as it isn't a massive company it would be harder to get people interested unless we do this. 

The small distribution companies that would be options are Icon, Focus Features, Pathe and Momentum.

In this day of age, we have seen a change in how films are distributed. More and more independent companies are putting there films out on YouTube, and due to the increase of film viewers on game consoles we have films just being released on Xbox, a film called Pulp was released to only Xbox 360 Live subscribers in 2012. This was a safe investment to make as they knew the games industry was growing and knew they would get the audience as the target audience is the same.

To a film distribution company like we are using, this is a huge advantage as it is now getting much more cheaper and easier to release films to the public. 

 

If we used a distribution company, it would still cost money and would mean we would not get the full profit. Ways in which they could promote our film is posters around the area we are mainly targeting (possibly the place where it was filmed, or somewhere with a high population), we could mainly rely on social media to spread the word, release a small amount of merchandise, get newspapers, online blogs or magazines to write reviews or interview the actors, get it into a film festival or promote it on local radio stations. 

We could exhibit our film at (as mentioned above) film festivals, and possibly at cinemas where they show independent films. We could also put it onto a website such as Vimeo or Youtube or put it onto a games console network. 

Another option is to go alone and distribute our film ourselves. This would cost less. We would then release it on YouTube or Vimeo, and would promote it the same way ourselves. This could mean it's more difficult to get interest, we would have to work harder at distributing our film. One option that we have is to hand out a few free copies, or business cards to hand out. We could also do the same as a distribution company would do.

i think the best thing to do for our film is to get a small independent film company to distribute our film. This is the best idea as because they are smaller and this is a low budget film, it will be cheaper. It will also help the film become more easy to access and find out about.

Evaluation - Q2 - Ailsa

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller opening, we mainly focus on the social groups of gender and ability/ disability. The character of Nikki is British, her sexuality is not shown, she is around 20 and she is mentally disabled, her class is not very apparent but from the therapist's room we can see it isn't high class, so therefore it's probably one she got free from the NHS. We chose to use two female characters, this is stereotypical when wanting to convey quite emotional characters. Women are usually seen to be much more vulnerable, a lot more effected by past events and therefore it was the obvious choice to use female characters. Also for the therapist, women are perceived as more understanding so we decided on a female for this character as well.
The main character, Nikki, is portrayed as being mentally disabled because of her childhood, we presented this through her sloppy costume and messy hair. 

We also used her jittery and anxious body language and facial expressions to show her lack of power due to her disability. In the park she is seen looking dazed and lost, there is no one around her which also emphasises her loneliness. We presented her like this to create a more effective character, and it is usually easier to understand when they are stereotypical. The way we made the character presents the mentally ill character we wanted to, without this it wouldn't be as effective as a thriller. It also makes it more exciting for the audience as they wonder how she got this way, and how far this illness goes. 
We see no hint that Nikki is happy in any way; her facial expressions are always dazed and depressed, and the setting we put her in (and how she is positioned in them) makes her seem extremely lonely because of her mental disability.

In comparison to Nikki, we made the therapist much more powerful. She had neat, pinned up hair and her costume was very modest and also neat. Her posture was also more upright, this is to show how those with a disability are usually shown to be the ones that lack power. We made this character the complete opposite of Nikki to emphasise both their characters so they can be compared more. Her facial expressions, although serious, seemed content.

The dialogue we used also helped us to present our characters ability/ disability: Nikki only spoke at the end - which shows her lack of power, and the therapist spoke the whole way through, questioning Nikki. 
The camera angles used also contrasts between ability/ disability for Nikki and the therapist - for Nikki we used slight high angles and for the therapist slight low angles. There is a pan of the park, and many fade transitions are used to make the effect of Nikki not in the right mindset even better. To her, the world is lonely and everyday just merges into one, she hasn't got any sense of reality. 

Overall, I think our thriller opening shows that those with a mental illness lack power, and stereotypically women are vulnerable and understanding, and those with a job such as a therapist hold more power. 

This is our company logo for our film

We chose this design because we think it looks sophisticated, the film strip is a clique design but it works well. We think the colours used look presentable and look professional - it doesn't convey any meaning.

Hulk - Ailsa

The colours used for the title represents darkness and possibly monsters with the green. The text looks like blocks which represents the boldness of the film, the name used sounds like a monster and is quite masculine. The text is faded slightly into the black background which emphasises the fact it is a thriller film. The font is fairly widely framed to highlight its importance.

The whole of the opening is various clips of genetic modification and this gives the audience hints of the rest of the storyline, it also includes quite explicit clips of GM which is considered gruesome and therefore part of the thriller genre.

These are all the institutional information that's shown in the opening.
The font colour used is green to link to the title and also has connotations of monsters.

Non diegetic sound is used, with no diegetic sound. It it fairly dramatic and high pitched to create tension, it creates anticipation for the audience as they know if this music is used, something bad will happen.