Evaluation Question2: How does your media product represent particular social group?

Representation is shown through different factors, such as costume, make up, lighting and even camera shots, for example an angle which aims down at a character can symbolise how their character is weak, whilst making our psychological thriller opening we wanted to give the audience the impression that the actually murderer is the victim, therefor through the use of camera shots and mis en scene we done so.  'Victim' Opening title sequence challenges the conventional representation of a victim, and confuses the audience at the beginning. 

Victim:

The Mis en scene in this footage shows, a man laying in the middle of no where, looking rough with blood stains on his shirt and a confused facial expression. The Mis en scene suggest he is vulnerable, and has been hurt. The angel of the camera is looking down on him, which represents weakness, like someone has been looking down on him. Our representation of the murderer in the opening challenges the typical masculine murderer, which would be in control, organised, butch and possible in disguised, the fact the character doesn't represent the typical victim confuses the audience when his real identity is revealed and he is in fact the murderer.

Representation of a typical victim: Covered in blood, shown to be powerless usually is a women.

Here we use the typical representation of a victim, we choose to have a women as the victim character, as they tend to be more vulnerable, the audience can identify this character is the victim, as her body is limp, and she's also smothered in blood, the make up gives the impression she has been harmed.

Representation of murderers:

Clothes are dark.

The body is well covered

Face is hidden. 
Gloves.
Mis en scene, usually discrete shots, revealing little to keep audience in suspense, dark lighting, angles which make them dominate e.g. 
low angle shots looking up. 




        

In the flash backs, we made the characters role more obvious, we dressed the character in clothes which portray a murderer or someone with a hidden agenda. The face is covered with a balaclava, and he is head to toe in black. Props also add to how the character is represented, a shot with the character with a knife is show, therefore the character can identify the character is shady. The character wears gloves, this can be linked to other films wear gloves are used to protect identity.

In our opening we consider the importance of representation, as the audience identify and initially judge the character based on their costume and mis en scene. We used mis en scene and camera angles, to represent our murderer first of all as a victim, this is what makes our opening an psychological thriller, from the start, instantly our audience realise they have to be cunning throughout the rest of the film, once the actually victim is revealed.

Inspiration for our characters: The lead character in 'Momento' we used as our inspiration for our main character, as he looks like an average man, this makes the audience not suspect he has hidden secrets, we wanted to do this in our one, therefore we dressed him up like an average working man, yet made him look like a victim with blood. 


For the flashbacks we used our own sterotype of a villain to produce the costume for our character, yet we looked at some horrors like 'Jason' and saw he had his face covered therefore, we thought it be smart to keep our character fully covered in the flashbacks which creates more suspense.

Evaluation - Question 2: Representation (part 2)

Representation!

This part of representation is all about the lighting, editing, sound and camera. All of theses elements help represent a thriller title sequence. How you edit, use lighting, position the camera and create a sound track can distinguish between the sub-genres. The sub-genre of our thriller opening is Psychological, meaning that however we edit and the sounds that we use need to accurately represent that.

THE EDITING!

Our opening needed to represent that of a psychological thriller. So, for the editing of our footage, we focused on making the flashbacks more dramatic and used different effects to almost mess with the mind.

Here is footage of the final flashback in our opening. By including a 'blinking' effect, we get the impression that the character (victim) is scared and at the beginning is not really clear of her surroundings.

We used this effect for all the flashbacks because we felt that it would show that Ben's character was confused and that something was messing with his mind. It also represented psychological thriller because we focused on showing something 'messing' with the characters mind.

THE LIGHTING!


On the day that we filmed the main footage, it was quite bright and almost sunny, which went well with the idea of Ben's character waking up the morning after killing someone.  Before the flashbacks were turned black and white, the lighting was quite dark as it was meant to be a night. This is representing that murder is committed at night and the murderer remembers in the morning.

Evaluation - Question 3: Target Audience

Target Audience!

Contents of the bag of a member of our target audience.

These are some of the typical things you might find in the bag of a member if our target audience.

For example:

Danny, 24, graduated from university. Works for a Law firm. Intelligent. Generally spends nights and other free time working on cases. Goes to the cinema every other Saturday to take a break from work and catch up with friends.

Evaluation - Question 6: Audience Feedback (part 2)

Feedback from the audience after the video was uploaded to Facebook!

After posting our film on Facebook, people started to like the opening.

Comments from friends after they watched my group's opening. The first person, a male, is 17 - nearly 18, the same age as me. The second comment is from a guy that is 2 or 3 years younger than me.

This is a comment from Eleni, another 17 year old. She was also creating a thriller opening.

This last comment is from a boy who is 3 or 4 years younger than myself. This proves that, as it has been put on Facebook, a wide age range can experience the opening.

Evaluation - Questions 4&5: What Media institutions might distribute your media? How will you address your target audience? (Part 2)

Addressing the Target Audience!

The target audience for any film can be addressed through many different ways:

• Cinema Screening (local independent cinema)
• Through Youtube
• Through Vimeo
• Through Blogger
• Through Facebook
• Through Mobile phone devices
• Through the 200 DvD releases

By using these forms to address a particular audience, people who wouldn't necessarily watch this type of film also get to experience it. By uploading to Facebook or Youtube, a wider audience will be able to see the film and possibly want to watch more. 

This is a screen shot from my Facebook. I uploaded it so all my friends on there could watch it. The people on my Facebook range in ages so this film can be watched by a very wide audience. Eventually, our film could find its way on to Youtube.

Evaluation - Questions 4&5: What Media institutions might distribute your media? How will you address your target audience? (part 1)

Media Institutions!

The media institutions that might distribute my media film is Candi Studios. Candi Studios is a small, independent studio with excellent equipment but low production budgets. As well as that, you might have created your own production company too:

In association with...

• G26 Productions
• Orange Media
• Candi Studios

This is a screen shot of 'Candi Studios', the company we chose to distribute our films.

Two of the five groups decided to use Candi Studios as their production company. The other three, my group included, chose to create our own production company. 

G26 Productions is our production company. Personally, I think that choosing to create our own production company is more effective because it gives a unique feel to it. Being produced by a new company that no one else has worked with will make the film new and exciting.

Evaluation - Question 1: Forms & Conventions of Real Media Products and Our Title Sequence (Part One)

There are a number of conventions followed by almost every single film opening released by major film studios. These include things like the order of the titles, idents for production/distribution companies, the music/score, and a number of intertextual references which show the audience the genre & sub-genre of the film.

There are quite a few similarities between our thriller title sequence and the opening of 'The Stepfather' (2009) 

The ident for our production company (CANDI Studios) uses the same colour scheme as the 'Screen Gems' ident which is the production company that created 'The Stepfather'. The colour red has connotations of blood and also danger, which is why it is ideal to be the first thing the audience see at the start of a thriller.


After the ident appears, the name of the main production company is usually shown again, in the same font as the rest of the titles (unlike the stylised ident), and also with the names of any other production/distribution companies. Both 'The Stepfather' and our opening follow this convention, with the titles appear over an establishing shot showing the setting. In 'The Stepfather', we see that the first scenes are set in a suburban street, probably somewhere in America. In our opening, the setting is shown to be a forest area, but the location is unknown.



Also, the font we used for our titles looks quite similar to that used in 'The Stepfather', although this was not intentional - we just decided to use that font because we thought it looked right for that kind of opening and fitted the tone/mood of the film.

Usually, after the name of the production company, the next titles shown are the names of the main stars of the film. Our thriller has two main characters, so we decided to show these one after another on the same screen, over another establishing shot, whereas in ‘The Stepfather’, the names of the stars are shown over shots of the main character, as shown below:

After the names of the main stars and co-stars, the name of the film is usually shown (see Part Two). After this comes the name of the casting director. In our opening we chose to show this over another establishing shot showing the setting, whereas in ‘The Stepfather’ it is shown while the main character continues his 
routine.

Other titles include the name of the director, editor, and the creator of the score or music.

Another thriller convention we used in our opening is the score (music). Nearly all film openings feature music of some kind, and in thrillers the music used is usually slow and ominous, setting the mood for the rest of the film. In our thriller the soundtrack was created from a combination of the ambient sounds of the forest and animals and simple orchestral music which sounded dark and mysterious.  

Here is the full opening of 'The Stepfather'. From 4:07 - 4:10 there is a flashback which is similar to the ones we created in our title sequence (recurring all the way through).  The flashback is shown with a change in camera angle, editing pace, and sound/music, which we also used in our thriller (shown below)

And here is an example of one of our flashbacks used in our opening sequence: