The Evaluation - Arran Smith

The Evaluation

By Arran Smith


1). In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real products?

Our media product uses many of the technical conventions that a thriller requires. Enigma codes are used throughout the sequence. The first couple of shots prove this because the zoom-in-shot to the picture to the picture on the wall raises awareness and confuses the audience. No one knows anything about her, who she is or what role she plays as of yet. More questions are raised later on in the sequence, we find out that it is her funeral, but the audience has no knowledge of why she is dead or for what reason. Restricted narration is used in the scene where the girl’s boyfriend begins to feel uneasy in this situation and gets up to leave to setting. This adds more confusion to the thriller as his unpredictable actions lead the viewer to carry on watching. From what is show so far there is no clear protagonist or antagonist, because it is unnecessary, but the binary opposition occurs when the boyfriend leaves the church presumably to do something about the death of his girlfriend. The three stages of narration are: Firstly, the setting of the scene involving the church funeral;
The second stage is when the man begins having flashbacks of his girlfriend’s death, which disturbs him. This leads to the final stage where he gets up and leaves. The mise on scene helps create the right atmosphere and also creates reality. Low-key lighting is used, so it is appropriate, which also creates a sad atmosphere. The costume used also adds affect and creates reality, with everyone wearing black it tells the audience that it is a funeral, therefore they can get into the right mood.



2). How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our media production, social groups such as: gender, emotions and relationships are being represents. The main characters in our thriller production, so far, are a young couple in there 20’s, but unfortunately the girlfriend has been murdered. They are represented as an average couple that love each other this is shown in the flashbacks. We can see that in the first two flashbacks the couple is presented as a medium long shot, they are holding hands; this gives us the implication that they are in love. As the flashbacks happen to the man, of him and his girlfriend in happiness, we begin to see him feel stressed and uneasy. We can see his personal emotions clearly from the close ups, and rid close ups of his reactions. We showed the man becoming stressed with close ups so the audience can feel emotion due to the use of sad non-diegetic music, which creates a sense of empathy for the audience. The close ups of also show the mans anger. I think if he was shown becoming stressed and angry in a longer shot such as a mid shot, the audience wouldn’t get to see all the emotions he is feeling, especially the anger, which is important.



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

I have done some research on film distribution; the majority of thriller films I looked at have been distributed by Paramount, Columbia, Touchstone and Warner Brothers. Film distribution is referred to as the ‘invisible art’ because film distribution is the most important factor for bringing to film to screens and making the money. The possible places where a film can be viewed is in the cinema, or at home either on television or DVD or even downloaded, or even film festivals where certain places get licenses to show their film privately to selected members of the public before that film gets shown in the cinema. Most top rated films generally come out on Christmas and summer holidays because then there is no reason for holding people back to go see the film. There is also a downfall though to this because other films will be released during this time increasing rivalries between filmmakers. Advertising is also an important part in distribution many prints need to be made of the film so they can be sold world wide. Also advertisements are made so everyone knows when the film is coming out and whether they want to see it or not.

Using top company distributors is not always the best choice, I also looked at other amateur thriller productions such as “The Blair witch project” which was distributed by Pathe. Since our thriller production uses amateur footage and a small budget we have decided to go for Pathe as they aren’t always interested in expensive films, where as Columbia, Paramount etc. are. Another idea is that we could use ‘Youtube’ to distribute our thriller as it free and as anyone around the world can access it easily, this would be a great chance to get ourselves known if our production became successful. People have been known to become famous off of ‘Youtube’, and been globally known due to their videos.

4). Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our thriller production is targeted at an older audience aging from 15+ both male and female. It requires an older audience because it includes restricted narration that will lead the audience into confusion, it will be solved during the resolution. The from will get the audience thinking and will conclude with a psychological twist.


5). How did you attract you attract/ address your audience?

Our audience will be attracted to our thriller production because the will want enjoy watching thriller films with a twist such as “The Machinist” starring Christian Bale, and “Secret Window” starring Johnny Depp. Both of those films involve men that see imaginary people, which turn out to be themselves in the resolution of the film. Our thriller opening is slow paced so it will be easier to follow and also allows tension to build up quicker in certain scenes, such as when the man becomes stressed. This will lead on to a disruption event, which will cause the audience to carry on watching.




6). What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product.

I used many devices and technologies during the making of the thriller production, such as: Imovie and garage band. These technologies allowed me to cut, edit and create music for the thriller production. Our group didn’t use garage band as we got permission from a band to use one of their songs, which was suitable for our type of thriller. At the beginning of the term I didn’t have any idea how to edit footage, but now I know how to edit footage, connect scenes, successfully upload footage and save it. I have also used tools that help to create steadier filming when tracking or dollying in a shot. I used a hand held device that allowed filming Point-of- view shots easier. Also in the shot where we can see the mans legs and feet walking to the location of the funeral, we used a dolly where the tri-pod can be placed and wheeled along whilst filming smooth steady filming


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

I have improved in many ways since the preliminary task. Firstly, I made more effort to blog after every session, due to the lack of blogging during the preliminary task, I felt as if not as much was blogged as there could have been. I also took the characters details into more depth, meaning I thought about their characteristics and decided what type of clothing they should wear, therefore giving the audience the right impressions of them. I also made sure we added more shot types and introduced more varieties e.g. the dolly shot outside the church and inside using the dolly, which we did not use in the preliminary. One major fault in the preliminary task was that the camera wasn’t always white balanced, so in the main task I made sure that the camera was always white balanced before we started filming. I also wanted to make sure that our group was up-to-date on work, so we could meet every deadline. I think overall the main task thriller is much better than the preliminary and many improvements have been made. From the marking criteria of other students that watched our production and evaluated it, the majorities of the products main faults were the choice of music. I don’t see a problem with the music as it creates a sad atmosphere for the funeral, which is what we wanted to achieve. We didn’t want to build up tension using a fast pace beat, but to create tension and make the audience feel saddened, which I think we did using this choice of music, and it works as an opening.

Arran