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Evaluation

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

‘’Voices‘’ is a horror thriller following the main codes and conventions. Our thriller is based on a little girl who becomes possessed and attempts to kill her parents and others around her. This is similar to the movie The Omen, (2006) as the little boy is possessed as well. In The Omen (2006) although Damien causes the deaths he does not physically harm anyone whereas in our thriller Bethany attempts to kill people with household objects. Our thriller starts off with a pre title sequence where the audience is introduced to the main character at her worst state. This automatically gives the audience many questions to think about e.g. How did she get that way? This technique is very common in thrillers e.g. Oldboy,( 2003). We used the element of mystery to add suspense to our thriller as we had a knock at the door at the end of the film. This leaves a cliff-hanger as the audience do not know who is there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wfEziDWLj0 (the Omen Trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLn1y9v6yno (Oldboy Trailer)

The main characters in our thriller is a dysfunctional family, the daughter is adopted, the husband is always away at ‘’work’’ and the wife is very irritated and fed up with her life. We used an ordinary house and casual 21st century clothing to make the

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thriller scarier. This technique makes the audience relate more to them as it is an average family. The story line is such that the audience think that the situation could happen to them. Most thrillers are set in modern times now e.g. Scream (1996) and Paranormal Activity (2007).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTWf9QGdJCQ (Scream Trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UxLEqd074 (Paranormal activity Trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iaYLCiq5RM (Shutter Island)

One of our last shots was a canted angle shot of Bethany walking toward her mum with a knife. In this shot we faded out the music from the last shot and added a heartbeat sound faintly in the background to allow the concentration to be on the characters words. This subverts from usual thrillers as they have the music at its peak .For our flashbacks we had a dissolve with a whooshing sound. Also we added a frame effect to show that it wasn’t in the present. Like Shutter Island (2010) we used low key lighting only using natural light in the day scenes and minimal artificial lights in the night scenes to create a spooky effect.

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For our film credits we used a cracked red bold font. The cracked writing represented our characters as they were not normal they were damaged in some way. The red writing is a quintessential convention to a horror genre as it connotes danger and blood. I have not seen the red writing in another thriller yet. They usually use white.

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

Our video represents ‘’the working class family’’. The mother and father both have jobs. The father works mostly as the mum stays at home cooks and cleans and looks after Bethany. The mother is not a stereotypical woman as she is tough and pushy also very dominating as she has to look after the house. She is wearing a shirt and some jeans which show’s that she also wears the pants in the relationship. The father is never at home as he goes to the pub after work with his friends this is very stereotypical of a man. The father is also very dominant as he is the only man of the house. He has more control over Bethany as she listens to him rather than her mum. Bethany is a stereotypical girl. She has her hair in pigtails showing that she is young and vulnerable. She does not play football and likes to be in her room drawing.

Age is represented as the parents have authority over the child as they tell her what to do. The mother is young and pretty and the father is an older man which could draw suspicions that the mother wants him for his money which is represented by the fancy car.

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The parents are working class, white and British from London but the daughter is adopted Arabic child from Saudi Arabia. The daughter is the antagonist. This is very stereotypical as the daughter is a foreigner attacking the Caucasian. She is seen as the ‘other’ someone to be feared of.

Dad going to work. Mum cooking in the kitchen. Bethany drawing.

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

Big Hollywood studios such as Paramount and 20th Century Fox would be unlikely distribute our product as it is an independent British film with unknown British actors in a British location. Our movie is a low budget film. The UK Film Council would be one of the institutes that would be likely to fund ‘’Voices’’ as our product is an original independent British film. Our film had a very low budget as we do not have well known stars, fancy costumes and a well known location or special effects. I would like our film to be distributed by Pathe as many successful films have come from them e.g. 127 Hours (2010)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlhLOWTnVoQ (127 Hours Trailer)

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We would also launch a viral campaign to attract more audiences; a good example of this is The Blair Witch Project (1999).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D51QgOHrCj0 (The Blair Witch Project Trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIzbwV7on6Q (Slumdog Millionaire Trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAm7gRXFiRo (The Kings Speech)

I would like to distribute our media product like one of the most successful British films Slumdog Millionaire (2008). It won four golden globes, seven BAFTA awards and eight Oscars including Best Film and Best Director. Slumdog Millionaire (2008) started off as a film that was a disregarded DVD. It was not shown even in cinemas but after a showing of clips of the movie in Telluride Film Festival, the movie became surprisingly popular hitting the cinemas worldwide and being distributed by Warner Brothers, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Celador Films and also Film 4. This is what I would hope our film would turn out like.

Our film is not like The Kings Speech (2010) because it has an American actress in it to appeal to the American audiences.

4. Who would be your target audience for your media product?

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Our initial target audience was mainly teenagers from 15+. This was because from our research we found that most thriller watchers were teenagers as they like the thrill and the intensity of the film. Younger audiences would get scared easily and older audiences (40+) said the thriller films are much too gory and shocking.

Our thriller would be appropriate to both male and females as they both would be able to relate to the characters and the story line in different ways. The social group we particularly aimed at is mainly working and lower class as the characters in our thriller are of working class backgrounds which the audience could identify with. We felt that all ethnicities would enjoy our thriller but mainly people from Britain as it is set in Britain with British actors.

From our research we found that most teenagers enjoy gore and being scared immensely. We asked what scared teenagers the most. Ghosts and little children were the most common e.g. Damien Omen (2006)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EexpNs4cVtk (13 Ghosts Trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG9AGf66tXM (The Sixth Sense Trailer)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1YbOMDI59k (Insidious Trailer)

Popular movies e.g. Paranormal Activity 2007, 13 Ghosts 2001 have all used ghosts whereas there are only a few made about children such as The Sixth Sense 1999 and Insidious 2010. We decided to base our thriller on a little child, as there have not been many movies made about them.

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The people we interviewed specified that they hate predictable endings as they ruin the whole film, so we decided to leave a cliff-hanger at the end of the opening title sequence to engage the audience. We would like our BBFC rating to be a 15 as it would fit into our target audience age range. Our movie is not too scary and has no sexual scenes for it to be an 18, but it still has an element of gore which would be frightening to the younger audiences, so it could not be a 13.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SulpWn6Glk (Nightmare on Elm Street Trailer)

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

To attract our audience we had to make sure that our thriller would be easy for them to relate to therefore we decided to portray the working class family. Firstly we had to choose a likable character for the audience to empathise with. For this we chose a young over worked frustrated mother. We then had to make sure that the location was familiar to our target audience so we chose a typical house in central London.

We do not have a convention hero in our thriller as we leave it on a cliff-hanger with a knock on the door.

In the beginning the audience is positioned to empathise with the parents as Bethany is shown as the evil one. As the movie progresses the audience learns more about Bethany and why she is the way she is, which then makes the audience sympathise with Bethany more. This is a good technique to attract the audience.

During our script development we had to think of elements like the mise-en-scene, camera work and soundtracks. We thought

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adding a nursery rhyme as the score would be effective as the audience are familiar with the song. When placed in a scary thriller it is chilling. This worked well in the film Nightmare on Elm Street 1984.

We tried to make our thriller look as realistic as possible using real houses and everyday items as props as this technique works well. We also had to make sure the actors outfit fit their character role and still be relatable to the audience e.g. Skinny jeans. This made our thriller look realistic and create suspense attracting our target audience.

We posted our video on an internet site and the responses were good.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product?

The internet was a big help in our research as it allowed us to watch thrillers online and to give us detailed information on thrillers. A downside to the internet is that not everything they write is true so we had to be careful as to what information we used. Blogging was a useful way of presenting our work, I learnt how to blog and how to present your work effectively on

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blogger. I also learnt how to embed video’s from YouTube onto blogger which made our work easier to understand as the example would be right there.

Using the camera was difficult at first as there were so many different things to learn. After the preliminary task going wrong and having to redo it we learnt more about the how to use the camera. Our group had the unfortunate chance of having a faulty tripod whilst filming which meant that all our filming had to be hand held. This was difficult as we had a number of tracking shots, pans, and tilt up and down also still shots meaning that our camera person had to hold the camera very still. This was made easier being as the cameras were very light.

We also had a faulty gun mike .As a result all the sound from our video was taken from the on board camera mic. From this we learnt to always bring extra batteries in case of emergencies. We decided to use natural lighting for our thriller as most of it was shot in the day. We planned on using low key lighting which succeeded as the skies were dark that day. Although we struggled when it came to the scene in the dark as the shots became grainy, from this we learnt that for shots in darker areas use artificial lightings such as redheads and Lilliput’s.

Fortunately, we had enough steady hand held shots that were not shaky to use in our thriller. From this we learnt how to shoot more than one take. Our crew talked too much during the shoot causing another problem however we fixed this issue

Filming with no tripod

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during using final cut pro (FCP) by carefully editing out unnecessary background dialogue.

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

For our preliminary task we did not research as much as the full product. We only had group meetings as to what would our task be about. During the preliminary task my group struggled to cooperate on the job at hand. Thus resulting in our concentration not being on the task. By doing this we missed a vital part of the task which was shot reverse shot (SRS) in our sequence. We also forgot to use the 180 degree rule resulting in our video being a shamble therefore we had to reshoot.

This time we made sure we stuck to the 180 degree rule and to include SRS. This taught us that whilst shooting our real product we could not argue and to give full concentration on the task at hand.

Shooting our preliminary gave us a basic idea as to what shots worked well and which didn’t. We found that the canted angle for the antagonist worked really well as it was creepy and made them look more menacing. Whilst the pan left and right did not work as the scenery in the room that were not meant to be in the shot were there. A mistake we made whilst doing both shoots was talking whilst filming. Although this was easy to cover up with final cut pro we learnt to be completely quiet whilst filming.

Whilst editing we found we did not have all the right shots that we needed so we had to reshoot again. We learnt how to find the right places to cut, fitting the music to the shots and making sure there was perfect continuity. Overall we did not struggle with editing. As they were family members and friends, the actors were not difficult to work with. Also the location was easy to access. We learnt from our mistakes as

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the next time we filmed we made sure we had all the right shots.

We were rushed in our preliminary as people needed to use the room, as a result we learnt to plan ahead a location and actors we could rely on and use until we got it right. This did not go to plan because one of the main actors was not available again. As a result, we had to add a new character to make the story line make sense. From this we learnt to do things on our feet.

Overall I feel like our thriller has turned out a success as the feedback we have received was all positive. I feel like our organisation as a group could have been much better, this would have made things easier and less argumentative.

As it takes a lot of work to make a thriller I am glad I worked in a group, but generally as my group argued a lot, struggled to hand in work on time and were not sticking to our assigned jobs I would have preferred to work alone. I have learnt many new skills such as using the camera, editing and also blogging. If I have to do something like this again I will have mastered everything making it an easier task.

Our final product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKpJPgohgQk