George Chambers: Evaluation

 GC: Evaluation

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

Our film opening was very conventional in terms of genre, (it stuck to the psychological horror template), because we included numerous elements in our own film that we picked out whilst conducting our secondary research.

Mise-en-scene in our film was what really helped match our film to the horror

genre. The group tried to keep to very iconic values when considering this element of the film, so we chose two iconic horror locations for our filming: an abandoned house like we saw in lots of previous year groups and woodland which is commonly used in many horror films such as the Blair witch project (Sánchez, 1999). These locations were very conventional to our genre as we found out from audience research and our mood board. Also the costumes used in our production matched the horror convention, with the protagonist wearing casual clothing and the antagonist dressed in a dark leather overcoat and a mask. Scre4m (Craven, 2011) replicated the contrast of costumes we used for our production between the antagonist and protagonist. Another element of our media product
that made it a stereotypical horror film were the iconic horror props used; rusted tools and old, decrepit furniture was also seen in our secondary research in Se7en (Fincher, 1995). Finally for mise-en-scene, we replicated the dim lighting conditions we found in Suckerpunch (Snyder, 2011), by adding on colour filters and hue saturation to the clip once we had filmed. This helped to create a sinister mood that’s so closely linked with conventional horror films.

Camera techniques also helped greatly when replicating horror elements into our film. Our camera movement involved lots of handheld shots to give a slight shake to some shots. We felt this gave our production a creepier feel to it as if it were almost a POV shot which helped to engage the audience. As far as conventions go, we did not witness many films in our secondary research that mimicked this technique so I feel this maybe slightly unconventional to the horror genre. Camera angles and shot size were all rather conventional as we used lots of long shots to convey loneliness or isolation. We saw lots of long/extreme long shots of people when we searched horror related images on Google for our mood board. We used a good mix of close ups and long shots to shake things up and make the audience feel uncertain, which is what we saw in the opening scene t o The Ring (Verbinski, 2002). We used mainly close ups of the antagonist and longer shots of the victim to help convey the victim’s vulnerability and help build up his character profile contrasted with the antagonist. So in that sense our camera techniques were also conventional to horror.

Choosing the soundtrack is one of the biggest challenges when attempting to conform to horror. We chose lots of electric/white noise sound effects and we had the iconic screechy horror build up before the final jump scene. This made it very conventional to horror. On the other hand however, the actual music we had running through the whole clip was more suited to a crime/thriller film as it was fast paced and it wasn’t in a minor key (unlike traditional horror music). Although this worked well with the mix of horror/thriller sound fx/music to create a psychological horror feel, it wasn’t entirely conventional to horror. We didn’t have much diegetic sound which made it conventional to horror as most horror films rely on silence or music to create a tense atmosphere for the audience.

When editing the titles, we had to make sure the text was bulky enough to look good in 3D, but looked creepy enough to make our clip look like a horror film. The text we chose worked well but wasn’t very conventional due to its bulkiness and glowing white colour. Despite this we feel it added atmosphere to the clip.

Overall, our film intro was very conventional all round despite a few unconventional elements like the titles and the soundtrack. But in a way these unconventional elements develop psychological horror conventions further by using a mix of horror and thriller aspects to reinforce the psychological side of the film.

2. How does your media product present particular social groups

 
The three social groups present in our film are as follows: (no class applicable to any of them) White male teenager; Middle aged woman, mum; Older white male, mid-thirties (played by a teen but portrayed as an older man)

Both the mum and the teen are positively portrayed, contrasted to the older male who plays the antagonist and is therefore negatively portrayed. So far as age and gender roles go, the woman definitely fulfils the stereotypical housewife role because she is on the phone to her son (the teenager) at the start of the film, which conforms to the commonly portrayed image of a mum being protective of her children. The teen also fulfils gender and age roles as he is out of the house exploring and has headphones in, (both of which are so often conveyed in the media). Again, the older man fits the gender and age stereotype that traditional psycho-killers are older males. We saw this confirmed in our secondary research (Se7en, and Suckerpunch). None of these characters really challenged any social norms which made our production more believable.  

Camera work used on the teen made him look vulnerable and isolated. Long shots helped to get this across to the audience, as did his verbal language towards the end as he looked scared and even gasped in fright at one point. This interestingly challenged the conventional gender role of men being brave as the male this time played ‘helpless woman’ role as the one who gets killed/abducted or whatever else. Age ideologies were not broken though as the victim is still a young teen and we found that teens are often the victims in horror films. Also, his walking style suggested he wasn’t really bothered by anything going on around him which conforms to the teen stereotype. This was used on Suckerpunch to effectively make the character seem vulnerable which is why we chose to replicate the technique.

The fact you couldn’t hear the mum over the phone helped to strengthen the typical image of a mum ‘helping behind the scenes’ so to speak.

The antagonist being portrayed as the older man had a few close ups and mid shots but no long shots. This makes him fill the frame which is used to convey a slightly scary air to him and contrast his framing to the teen to make the teen look even more isolated. The desk he was at had lots of props like hammers, screwdrivers, and chains on it to help portray his masculinity and dominance in the clip. Also, older men are more commonly associated with tools like these which helped the audience to understand he was older than the teen. Texas chainsaw massacre works in the same way of putting males with typically male objects like tools to reinforce their dominance.

Overall, I think our media product can be used to reinforce most ideologies about age and gender because of the roles we allocated to each character. Males are typically dominant as shown by the antagonist and females are typically shown to be worrying about their children, as was shown by the teen on the phone to his mum. However, the one place gender scripts do get challenged by our film is the fact that a male is the victim not a female. On the other hand, this still reinforces age scripts because the male victim is only a teen, and the antagonist is an older male. No other types of social groups were bought up in this production.

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

When a film is made, in order to secure a distribution deal, the production company need to offer a percentage of the box office takings or DVD sales etc. Once a distribution deal is secured, the distributors invest in different marketing techniques such as posters, billboards, TV spots and so on. In order to decide how much to spend on advertising, distribute it to art-house cinemas or big multiplexes, and whether to go for a wide or platform release, the distributor must clarify the target audience for the film. This tends to be easier when working with American production companies as they center their film around the chosen target audience, as opposed to British producers who just make the film with no regards to target audience. Once all this is done, the distributor will print copies of the film and send it to cinemas. The difficulty and expense of distributing the actual copy of the film can vary depending on whether it was a digital film or filmed on 35mm film stock. Another factor that has to be considered when distributing the film is where to send it. Art-house audiences are suited to low budget indie films, whereas the ultra-high budget films and tentpoles are sent out to multiplexes such as Odeon.

Our media production would most likely be sent out to an art-house because it uses a very low budget which is typical to an art-house audience. Also we incorporated a focus features title at the beginning which is a production and distribution company rolled into one, and is the art-house films division for universal pictures. This further reinforces the art-house route as focus features is not one of the big six, (20^th century fox, Columbia pictures, Universal, Paramount, Warner bros, or Walt Disney). Instead it is a subsidiary of universal specifically dedicated to the art-house side of cinema.

Our film would not target a niche audience as it is a popular horror/thriller genre which attracts a lot of people however, it would not attract a mass audience either, and due to the low budget and probable lack of advertising to compete with big Hollywood titles, our film would be a platform release because even though it is a digital production which makes it easier to send out to multiple cinemas at once, it lacks status due to no big names being involved (actors, directors, production company etc). This means it is not a mainstream film as it will most likely be shown in an art-house and would have a smaller target audience due to lack of status, but bigger than most art-house films because of the horror/thriller genre which attracts a wide demographic of people.

4&5. Who would be the audience for your film? How did you attract/adress your audience?  

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of making your film opening?

Using a blog to plan our film opening was really helpful as it allowed our group to work collaboratively. The comments section under each post allowed us to suggest improvements to each other’s work and let our teacher give feedback into how we were doing and what needed to be done. Also the blog allowed us to embed YouTube videos which meant we could easily access videos to watch for our secondary research, as well as the ability to post photos on there to show our storyboards and screenshots. The blog also helped us work together through embedding other media such as SlideRocket and Prezi. Embedding these meant that we could put our work together and present it as a group on the blog. Finally, Jamie’s administrative powers meant that he could edit or remove my posts in case they needed tweaking or if he felt he could add something to them, he could.

We filmed our work using a Sony NX5E. The only extra equipment we used was a tripod, which was more practical than transporting the other pieces of equipment that were available to us to our filming location as it was a long walk and the crane and track could only be moved by car which we didn’t have access to. However, the tripod had a very big extendable range (roughly 2m high) which meant we did not really need the crane. When thinking about framing the shot, we thought back to our secondary research in Suckerpunch so we used the gridlines on the digital preview screen of the camera to help us with the rule of thirds. We wanted the film to look dark so we thought about changing the colour balance but decided to edit that in post-production. For the pull focus shots we twisted a manual focus ring on the camera which allowed us to have more control over the focus and create a bigger depth of field. Zoom was could be controlled by a ring or two buttons. This allowed us to overcome a problem we had – the ring was impractical to use whilst holding the camcorder so we used the two buttons as it was simply more practical to press the buttons whilst moving the camera which meant the shot came out more steady.  Another problem was that some of the handheld shots were a bit shaky so to solve this we kept the tripod attached to the camera for the steadicam shots so the shot would be smoother due to the extra weight and meant the character stayed in the frame. There was a shot that zoomed in to an eye through a keyhole (or in our case a crack in the wall) from Suckerpunch (Snyder, 2011) we planned to use in our own production so we filmed it from three different distances as zooming in proved to be too shaky. However, after reviewing the footage we were advised that editing this shot to the way we wanted was too complicated and would drain a lot of time, so we decided not to go ahead with it. One other problem was that the woods had a rough terrain which meant the tripod did not always sit level, so we ended up adjusting the legs a lot to get it right. Finally, we had to do a lot of takes of the shot where the protagonist dropped the iPod because our actor found it difficult to achieve the ‘stop and drop’ we wanted. Also it was hard to edit because we wanted a matched cut with then pen stab and the iPod drop. This meant we had to zoom in on the timeline and use the arrow keys to navigate frame-by-frame to find the right point to cut the clip at.

To edit the film opening, we used a mix of two programmes: Adobe Premiere Elements 9.0, and Adobe After Effects cs6. We used Premiere for the more basic editing techniques such as cutting down footage, sorting out what clips to use, and adding/editing soundtrack. First we imported all our footage from a memory stick using the ‘Get media’ option. Once this was done, we reviewed some of the shots by double clicking the shot frame to bring up a preview. The group then had to decide on what pieces of footage to use which was based on clips suitable to edit 3D titles on to, and key frames. On the whole we looked to include a variety of camera work, so once this was completed we dragged the shots onto the timeline and re-arranged them into order to form a rough outline for our film (animatic). We then cut the clips down to the right length using the ‘cut’ tool which simply split one clip up into two when we clicked the button. After doing this we realized the footage was somewhat shorter than we had anticipated so we put in some establishing shots to help fill the time, which was simple as the timeline let us drag and drop clips wherever we wanted because it automatically shuffled and rearranged clips for us when we added another or took one away. After that for the time being, we made basic titles and put them on the title shots to see how long we needed to make the clip before we edited on the real 3D titles. In order to do this we created a text box over one of the frames and typed in what we wanted it to say. Once we had all this, we drag and dropped some transition effects like earthquake on the clip.

For one of the title shots we planned we had to slow the clip down so we used the time stretch tool to lengthen the clip out in order for it to be on-screen long enough for the audience to read it. In the middle of the opening sequence we had planned to overlay two shots, so for this we used the cross dissolve feature and moved the slider to make sure that both clips were equally transparent. Next we needed to make the closing shot. We went for a similar shot to ‘The Ring’ which involved lots of fast cuts. To achieve this, we had the original clip on one layer of the timeline and then we cut clips down to about one or two frames and put them on the second video layer of the timeline. This meant a high cutting rate without having to cut gaps into the original footage.

We then imported the film to After Effects to put in the 3D titles. The title was typed in to a text box and then we set it to track a certain object in the shot to make it seem like part of the background. This was made easy through the use of anchor points and 3D camera tracker technology. Also, we had to add perspective to the titles to ensure they looked like they were in the background of the shot rather than overlayed. 

To achieve the Suckerpunch like colour, we used hue saturation and colour grade to darken the film and matched the white balance to a dark brownish shade. We used the mask tool to add a black layer which made the edges of the screen dark. We had to then cut out the middle to make itvisible with a mask tool.  For the mask shot, we feathered the edges of the shot to make it stand out. Once both the titles and the colour grading had been done, we rendered the clip and exported it back to Premiere to work on the sound.

For the audio, once we had imported the sound clips from Freesounds.org and Video Co-pilot scores CD, we dragged them onto the timeline. We had the main soundtrack that would be running throughout the film on the ‘Audio 1’ layer, and other sound fx we were going to use on ‘Audio 2’ which enabled the soundtrack to keep running and have sound effects overlaid at the same time. We used the cutting tool again to make sure the soundtrack was the right length. 

To export our final piece we simply clicked the export button and selected MPEG so that the video could be used for video sites such as YouTube  We had to make sure we matched the video specifications to the export specifications (1080px1920p with 25fps).

 

Compared to a real film production, our film was done on a very low budget which meant we spent a lot of time in post production trying to compensate for that and adding some 'glitz-factor'. However, many low budget films such as Monsters (Edwards, 2011), used the same technique of heavy editing to compensate for the low budget. Overall our film lacked both the complex editing software and expensive camera gear in contrast to a real production but we made up for that with mixing elements from our secondary research such as 3D titles from Zombieland (Fleischer, 2009) and colour grading from Suckerpunch (Snyder, 2011).

 

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

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