Evaluation- Ghislaine

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
   Within our thriller opening we incorporated many of the general conventions of real media productions such as;

• Enigma Codes - Part of the film that creates and raises questions within the audiences head. For example like in Transformers 2.
• Restricted narration - The characters and audience learn information about the story within the film at the same time. For example The Sixth Sense.
• Some of the elements of Mise en scene - setting (Location), props (objects used), lighting (low or high key lighting), colour design (Filters to create atmosphere and meaning) and positioning within the frame (Where the characters and objects are within the frame). For example The Matrix Reloaded these aspects are used to create tension.
• The use of a protagonist (the hero/heroine) and antagonist (the vilian).
• Binary opposition - Two opposites meet continuously, for example protagonist Vs antagonist.
• General camerawork, like in most films including our own Deception.
• General Sound, (foleys, soundtrack and ambience) like in most films including I Am Legend.

We created enigma in our opening through the elements within mise en scene;
Setting - We chose a normal, everyday setting of a house. However, because it is so normal and looks like a pleasant location. We created this by choosing an ordinary house and making sure it had the general qualities that a house would need so it seemed homely and welcoming, which helped to raise questions in the audiences mind as to what is going to happen in such a lovely location.

Props - The main prop used that would possibly add to the enigma in our thriller opening is that of a knife. This is because it appears in the shot within daily activity, and then the blade is raised just before the cake is cut. This would give the audience something to question as the knife is raised quite dramatically and there is a slight pause,  its importance as a main prop is also dramatised through the use of music as this gains in tension as the knife appears in the frame.
Lighting - The lighting within our mini film is generally high key and this creates the effect of an everyday scenario which will keep the audience guessing what will happening next, or what is going to happen. At one point low key lighting  is used to create a silhouette on a wall to build tension.
Colour design - All of our shots use a natural colour design but within the house, which is the main location of all the action everything is mainly blacks, whites and browns which represent a normal, pleasant house.

Positioning within the frame - At the end of our opening the antagonist is positioned to the right hand side of the frame with only a tiny bit of her showing this is used to create the questions of "Who's that?" and "What is going to happen?" within the audiences minds.


Binary Opposition - Throughout our thriller opening the use of binary opposition is mainly present, especially at the end where it shows the protagonist (the house wife) coming up against the antagonist (the psycho).

Camerawork - There are a few main elements that create camerawork these are; camera shots (extreme close up, big close up, close up, mid close up, medium shot, medium long shot, long shot, extreme long shot, 2 shot, point of view shot and over the shoulder shot.), camera angles (bird's eye view, very high angle shot, high angle shot, eye level shot, low angle shot, very low angle shot, worms eye view and tilted camera shot.), movement (panning, tracking, tilt, stedicam) and Depth of field (shallow and deep).

In our thriller opening we used a lot of slow panning shots to capture and dramatise the action that was taking place, these shots were mainly medium shots at a low angle. For the rest of the opening the main angle shot used was eye level and there were a lot of close ups to emphasise the strange things that were happening for example, the oven going off, the car alarm being set off, the gate being left ajar, the television breaking and the phone.

Sound - The main sound types are diegetic (music/sound that the character would be able to hear) and non-diegetic (sound/music that wouldn't be able to be heard by the character). All the sound, apart from the foleys, is non-diegetic this is because it is a soundtrack to increase the suspense within the opening. For example in the beginning the only music that is heard is that of strings and slowly as events start to unfold bass is added on top of this (shown at 1:00 in our film Deception). We decided to add our own foleys over the film because the ones that were heard on the original recording were particularly quiet, however in some of our feedback it was said to sound "fake" and that it "didn't fit", the main problems were that the "footsteps didn't fit with the walking as it was too loud" and the "key sound in the door didn't match the action".

The three-act structure

The set up ('Equilibrium) - This is at the beginning of a film when we (the audience) are first introduced to the story and are shown characters that have found themselves in an initial situation. This begins the story and is only used to get acquainted to the characters and their main traits. However, it could also contain some suggestions that something is going to go wrong, or that something isn't right with the situation.

The confrontation (Disruption) - This shows the audience something happening that disturbs the normal, initial situation of the characters. Normally this is an action of something or someone else that has affected the characters in some way, this may create the main characters to find a solution to the disruption. At this point in the film the binary opposition may come in to place.

Resolution - This is a closure or resolution to the disruption that occurred before hand. Generally this part of a film shows the characters resolving the problem that they had encountered, so that everything goes, relatively, back to normal. In some films life may not go back to normal as things may be left disrupted, for example at the end of The Day After Tomorrow where the world ends iced over and not like it was originally.

As our product 'Deception' is part of a full length film and is only the opening sequence at the moment is does not contain the conventional three act structure. However, if it was made in to a film the opening that we have done would be a part of the set up and a part of the disruption, the set up is shown as things start to go wrong which hints that something is up, for example the gate being unexpectedly left open. The disruption comes into our opening when the various alarms go off and there are technical problems, like the television going wrong. If 'Deception' was made in to a full length film it would use the typical issues of a thriller as there is a protagonist that is confronted by an antagonist. The rest of our film would be about the progression to this final event between these two characters.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
 This is the types of groups that the main characters belong to; male/female, age, social class, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
In our opening the main character is that of the protagonist, we have gone with the traditional approach that many thriller films go for and that is that the victim is a female, however, we have also opposed the traditional by having a woman killer as well. Neither woman is shown as being better than the other, the use of the point of view shot when they are both interacting shows that they are on the same level and are still very much involved with their femininity. There is nothing in particular about the use of props that represent their femininity, but it is clear (through costume) that the victim is fussing over her appearance as she is dressed up to lounge around the house. The use of women as both the antagonist and protagonist represent that they can be strong willed if they wish but it does reinforce the fact that they are emotional.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
We decided that our film is a low budget thriller as we didn't have the same equipment and time of that in the Hollywood business, so if it was to be made it would be featured on Focus Features. It would also be possibly shown at Duke of Yorke (Art house cinema).

Who would be the audience for your media product?
We decided that our audience for this thriller, if it were made in to a full length film, would be a 12a, this means it is aimed at female teenagers and young adults. The main audience it attracts may be males and females between 12-18. This is because it is quite a gritty and complicated film to understand and would interest females because the main characters are female.

How did you attract/address your audience?
Click to read about audiences

Our film will attract the normal audience that are attracted to many films of the thriller genre. People that enjoy films with quite a strange storyline like One Hour Photo may enjoy our film as the storyline is slightly strange and a little twisted. For example, a friendship is ruined for a certain reason and so one of the ex-friends decides to stalk and possibly harm the other for what happened. Also teenage females would be attracted by this film because it's based on friendships being broken and the things that may lead people in to doing. We showed our opening to a group of teenagers that were within our certificate range and they seemed to enjoy it and thought it made a good thriller idea, and matched the conventional idea of a thriller.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Whilst filming and editing this opening we found new skills within new programmes and equipment.
The equipment we used was;

• DV camera
• Tripod
• Red head (artificial lighting)

The programmes we used to edit with and create our final product were;

• imovie - we used to edit together our final piece
• Final Cut Pro and LiveType - we used to add titles and credits
• Garageband - we used to add foleys and a soundtrack.
• idvd - we used this to place it on to a disc and add a dvd menu to it.

Through making this thriller opening i believe all of us have gained better skills at working with the equipment that was given to us, for example, even though our tripod was broken we managed to persevere and was able to use it to create smooth movement (for instance when we panned when the victim was running to the kitchen), and hold the camera steady proper to get shots that were relatively still. We also learnt how to use continuity editing properly this was so we could get smooth cuts between each shot that was taken. The use of Garageband was quite easy and fun, it was a very good piece of software to be able to get hold of as we could create any sound effects that were missing and add a soundtrack. Although i found this quite easy to use according to the feedback we got from an audience of 16-19 year old's some of the sound effects were a bit too loud which caused them to sound fake, this kind of spoilt some of the tension within our thriller. Also because of the dodgy tripod i believe a few of our shots aren't particularly straight and makes the film seem unprofessional.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Since the preliminary task 'The Detention' i think as a group we have all become better at the actual filming process and especially the editing. In the preliminary task our camera work wasn't the greatest because a lot of the shots weren't level or had a slight problem with the white balance. However, in 'Deception' i think it is much better, this is the same with the sound effects as in our thriller opening they sound realistic and match with the shots. I think that the story we constructed for this opening is far more exciting and interesting than the one we came up with for the preliminary task. Overall i think i have learnt how to create a convincing opening to a thriller and would have loved to have been able to create the whole film.