Evaluation- The main task

The task that was set was to produce the opening two minutes of a film, which in our case was based in the thriller genre. Our product portrays one character (a teenage boy) and gives the audience a feeling for what psychological trauma he is being put through by another character. Our character is not a teenager for no particular reason, my group and I decided that the character was going to be in their teens because we felt that a younger audience would become more engaged with them. This was an important choice as we are looking to engage an audience who is 15+.

Furthermore, if a teenager goes into a room and see's a phone on a desk or on the floor, or generally unloved in a empty room, then wouldn't they naturally want to have a look at the "accessories" contained within, or the "reputation" of the phone. Surely a teenager is more likely to approach a vibrating mobile phone and answer, than an elderly caretaker (the original idea for our main character). Mobile phones play a big part in teenagers social lives in the United Kingdom at the moment. I'm not intentionally stereotyping, it is a fact that the average teenager sends almost 10,000 text messages per year.

The main character is seventeen years old, and his costume depicts that of an everyday teenager. Due to this a viewer between the ages of 15 and 25 may feel more comfortable with the character, and may also feel something of a bond towards him. However both me and my group saw the plot hole created through having a character of this age. Basically, why was a teenager walking through a school, checking that doors are locked. What particular reason would he have to do such a thing, maybe to do a teacher a favour, possibly...to be quite honest we aren't to sure. Also after completing our filming we began to feel as if a character who is older then seventeen (more around the early twenties) would have been a better choice, considering the terrifying and sickening situation which the character is put in.

Our media product was produced to challenge the usual form of thriller, by emphasising the importance of the characters rather than the plot. By concentrating on the main character, rather than the overall plot of the film we were able to quickly make our target audience aware of who is going to be key later on, and the actual plot of the whole film. The plot is basically summed up as being slightly obscure, as it begins with a teenager walking down a dark school corridor alone, checking that all the doors are closed until he comes to a door which is open. As he enters the door the audience is still able to realise that he is completely by himself, with little noise coming from any other source. The audience would realise that this is happening, and would possibly even know that it is likely that this character is no longer going to be alone.

Media products such as Saw and Phone Booth are however different to this, as they tend to have a character who is not alone, or characters which are both in the same situation. However, the claustrophobic feeling in both Saw and Phone Booth is a convention carried into our film; as we are only in one room, later to be trapped. We developed one convention of darkness usually used in thrillers to add more suspense, as down the hall it is dark when he is walking, however when he enters the empty room the scene is framed by light coming from three windows at the side. We decided that the room he is confined should be lighter than the hall because it is not the usual visual convention which is used during the psychological stages of films.

A media institution which might distribute my media product could be Film4 Productions. I think this institution would be best suited for our media product because it is a frequent distributor of amateur films which are usually aimed towards a more niche market. Also, as the company is British owned they would be more likely to distribute our product effectively and also it would make for an easier partnership. Film4 Productions are also well renowned for employing lesser known directors and actors, and then furthering their career with success. Examples being Danny Boyle and Dev Patel.

As previously discussed in the research and planning section, the target audience for our media product would be people between the ages of 15-25, who enjoy thrillers with a psychological edge. This decision was made according to due to the implied violence and menace which is portrayed in the product, and also through the age of the main character. With our target audience ranging from early teens to early twenties, we believed that we had a good range of people who could potentially and also a group of people who are more likely to be interested in our media product; compared to someone who is younger, or someone who is older. Although, this is not ruling out that people older than 25 would not be interested in our thriller, this target audience was just created as the main guidelines of who we believed our 'general' viewer would be.

Now it comes to the most difficult part of the whole project; the editing, the sound and the dialogue. The editing was not at all flawless, firstly me and Adam attempted an edit which didn't run smoothly and was generally...bad. After our lack of success we shifted this responsibility over to Thom, who proved his talent for editing. Although even he admitted that our idea of the person calling over the phone's dialogue being over the loudspeaker as being a bad idea. Frankly the psychological torture he was putting the main character through couldn't actually be deciphered by the audience. We experimented with Thom standing behind the cameraman and talking, but this was unsuccessful. Therefore, this eventually meant that Thom had to re-record and re-dub what he had previously said over the loudspeaker into a microphone at home, and then edit that into the audio mix.

The choice of music, made by Thom, was in my opinion a good choice. However, if I had the track available to me I would have personally had "Hello Zepp" in the background, the tune used to bring a dramatic tone to the twist in the first Saw movie. Yes I know what your thinking, SAW...again!, but hear me out. This is a very, very good piece of music, and an influential decision on the behalf of the director of Saw to include it in the defining point of the film. As it adds suspense, it is dramatic, and with good editing alongside the beat then the most important part of the film is well emphasised. On the other hand, Fightstar's song, 'Tannhauser Gate' has a fast repetition of the main beat which does increase the suspense, and also adds further effect towards the end with heavy guitar riffs; as well as, leaving the audience wanting to know the conclusion.

We then come onto the question of what i've learnt about technology whilst constructing the product. This could take a while.

Okay, on a serious note; our group was very successful when using the technology in filming, editing and recording dialogue. But when it came to importing the clips we had filmed, well that's a different story. First of all we had an HD camera which made our whole production look pretty, but when it came to importing those files onto the computer we became aware of the horrible realisation that no computers available to us were going to be able to edit these clips. A realisation which became true. So that preliminary, along with the beginning of the main task was thrown on the scrapheap. We then started again using a better suited camcorder, and found that someone had not returned the charger. We even resorted to using Thom's compact digital camera, but these files couldn't even be uploaded onto Windows Movie Maker.

When we finally had a camcorder, with a charger available to us, we immediately began filming our main task. The only technological fault which we had during filming was the quality of Thom's dialogue received via a loudspeaker on the phone. However, this dialogue was edited out and new dialogue produced by Thom on his microphone was used instead. Personally, I have learnt that uploading every piece of work onto a blog is much easier than printing work out and sticking it in a ring-binder, as well as being neater and easier to access by me and my media teachers.

Taking everything into account, the most important subject is whether there has been any progression from the preliminary task to the final product. Even though the final product is by no means brilliant, with a plot which is difficult to sum up, I still feel proud of my entire groups effort through the problems. As we have managed to make progress from the quickly filmed and edited preliminary task, to a final task which i'm proud to be in. However I do feel as if it could have had a lot more potential, had we organised ourselves better and if luck (and technology) had been on our side. In conclusion there was a significant amount of progress, both in our final product and the overall effort put in by the whole group.

Evaluation- The beginning

Evaluation

At the beginning of our project our group, which consisted of Me(Nathan), Adam, Thom and Josh discussed both what we intended the genre to be in our preliminary work and the genre of our main task. For both we decided that we focus around the genre of thriller, with a sub-genre to be decided nearer the time of filming. We managed to sort the location and script for our prelim, and through permission from Adam's parents we began filming at his house. We decided that the main storyline of the prelim was going to be a burglar, where the owner of the house walks into the house, see's the burglar and kills him. This was concluded with a fade-out and then a fade-in, which positioned the murderer infront of the house, throwing the murder weapon into the ground and running away. We were very happy with our prelim as it demonstrated match on action, shot/reverse shot and that we understood the 180-degree rule. As we already had a location we also decided to start filming our main task, which we decided as being a pyshcolical thriller, and by receiving offers from friends to become actors we managed to film a very impressive start.

Once we finished filming our prelim, and the beginning of our main task, we came back into school, used the media facilities and were suddenly put under the realisation that the facilities that we had weren't going to be able to handle the camera which we had used. That camera which we speak of was, HD, yes high definition. It made the entire film look beautiful, however we were unable to load any of clips to the computers. Oh dear!! Absolute devastation followed from this point. Our confidence wilted, and we were left feeling as if we had completely wasted our time. Both our entire prelim was lost, as well as the beginning of our main task.

After we had got over the initial shock of losing all of our hard work, we then were dealt another blow, as one of the integral parts of our group decided to leave the course and leave the sixth form. This once again meant that we had to redraft the entire project, with a new script and a new storyboard. After once again deciding what we were going to do in our prelim, this was filmed as quickly as possible as we wanted to concentrate more on the main task, and we then moved onto researching into other products and planning the whole main task.

AS Media Portfolio - Research and Planning

Research and Planning

AS Media Studies Portfolio

Research into similar products

After my group and I discussed what genre our film would be centred around, we decided that it could improve our filming if we improved our knowledge of the institutions of a thriller.

Through our research we were able to find out that a standard thriller, with no sub-genre, emphasises the plot of the film rather than the characters. However thrillers that are also psychological tend to emphasise the characters either equally to the plot, or more than the plot.

After significant research into the sub-genres of a thriller, we became more and more interested in the psychological thriller genre; as rather than sticking with the usual thriller conventions, the genre reverses emphasis on to the characters. By having extra emphasis on characters rather than the plot, we may be able to create suspense by filming a conversation between two characters, where one character is preying upon another characters mind. With this my group and I thought there would be further suspense added, as the “evil character” will be separated from the victim only via some type of barrier.

Through even further research, and with the props which we could potentially have available we decided that the barrier between the characters would be a mobile phone, something which is somewhat deemed as a popular within many thrillers.

By means of getting more information about psychological thrillers I researched films that were also in that genre; these being films such as Saw and Phone Booth.

By looking at such big budget films, that have gained high accord from many people within media and from their target audiences. They are both brilliant examples of thrillers, produced in a way which appeals to a certain target audience.

Both of these films acted as a type of stimulus text for my groups film, as by looking at them we felt that they both had a basis of suspense between two or more characters, where one character is victimising another. We felt that this was very similar to the extra emphasis that is so often used in psychological thriller, although the plot did play more of a key part.
What also interested my group and I was the use of a type of barrier between the two ‘main’ characters in the films, in saw there is the recorded messages intended for the victims and in phone booth there is the phone which contacts the main character and victimises him. In addition in both films there is also an ongoing message about the character having to show whether they have a conscience or not.

Saw (2004)

Although Saw is considered to be a horror rather than a thriller, it has so many conventions and concepts that many thrillers have that it can almost be considered as both of the genres. In the first saw film a majority of the film is based in one certain place, where the characters are imprisoned and caught in a game played by a villain who is ‘off-scene’( even though that is eventually proved not to be the case). The assumption of the character not being in the room is made because the only link to the character is through his voice, which had been prerecorded; ‘Jigsaws’ voice is an aspect which adds an extra dimension to the film, as he is always calm when he is talking; an odd characteristic for a serial killer. Also, the film is constantly filmed in dark conditions, which seem to reflect the overall mood of the film.

The Saw Franchise has made a worldwide gross revenue (as of November 7, 2008) of $618,701,461.

Since the Saw movies began in 2004 the films distributor (Lionsgate) have gone through four directors. Firstly there was James Wan, who has since produced the sequels Saw 2 and Saw 3, and served as an executive producer for Saw 4, then Darren Lynn Bousman directed Saw 2,3 and 4 and lastly David Hackl produced Saw 5. Each producer had different ideas for their particular film, and all changed many aspects of the film. Since the original Saw movie Lionsgate have gained a much larger budget, which has allowed them to film a a variety of areas with many new and brutal devices used by Jigsaw against his victims.

Wan and his friend Leigh Whannell were actually the people who came up with the idea for Saw, which was brought to producers attention when they made a short version of the film to showcase the script.

Phone Booth (2002)

Unlike Saw, Phone Booth is definitely a thriller, in fact it is actually defined as a morality thriller; as the main aim of the caller is to teach the main character a lesson. In this occasion the main characters ‘crime’ is that he cheated on his wife, and the caller wants him to tell his wife this or risk being shot.

The morality aspect does however relate with Saw, as both of the reason for the killers to trap these people, whether in a phone booth or in a locked room, is because they have done something illegal or deemed wrong in the eyes of the person that is threatening them.

Phone Booth is not filmed in a area that restricts other pedestrians to pass, and by having people passing by the plot is deepened. Emphasis is placed very highly on the main character, Stu, as he is the one that has been victimised by the caller. The plot is however also emphasised and opened up as the film comes to its conclusion, bringing together Stu’s wife and mistress outside the phone booth, and with the caller threatening to shoot one or the other Stu is forced to put his own life on the line, rather than these seemingly more innocent people.

By looking at the claustrophobic factor used in this film, my group and I immediately decided that we would try and reflect a similar feeling. Along with that we also decided that we would have one character who has his morals tested, as someone innocent is also threatened by the person on the other end of the phone.

Our research into Saw helped us decide that it would be impossible to use gore or any type of horror conventions, however the idea of a killer being away from the actual murder scene apart from through voice influenced us to put that to use in our film.

A potential target audience

Before we decided on the target audience it was essential that we discussed what our genre was going to be, and as explained earlier we decided that it would be a psychological thriller. Once we agreed on this genre we began planning for what our potential target audience would be, firstly we looked at the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) website and evaluated that the classification which would best suit our thriller would be the 15, due to the implied violence and menace which is portrayed. However, before any violence or any psychological terror is shown, the clip finishes.

By classifying the film before we started to film we were able to know the limits of what we could include in our film, as to not allow the film move into the 18 classification. Then, after we completed the filming we started to add further information onto what our target audience could be.

With the main character being put under considerable psychological trauma towards the end of the clip we are able to understand which audiences would most be interested by the plot. In the clip the main character is portrayed as being young, which may attract a younger audience of a similar to feel more involved, innocent and ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’. However, as the clip is only of the beginning of the film, the plot could further pan out and show a twist to the story; and give the audience a surprise they usually crave.

Considering that we were looking for an audience who is interested in mystery, able to understand the denotations and connotations of what is happening and being said, and also attempts to work out what is going to happen (with the hope of a twist) I think that the target audience of our film would be 15-25.

Organisation

The two actors involved in our film were both from our actual group. The actors involved were me (Nathan Lawes) and Thom Muddle. I portrayed the main character being victimised over a mobile phone by the character who was never actually shown in the film. The voice of the man on the mobile phone was voiced by Thom. The camera-man varied from being the third person in out group, Adam Brown, and Thom, as well as someone from an extra group that came to help us (Mark White).

We decided that we needed Marks help as we only had one available mobile phone, which was Thom’s, but we needed two. This led to us getting Mark to lend us his phone, so that the conversation could be completed at the same time the filming was completed.

The set of our film was located within two areas inside of the school. The first location was chosen because it was dark, with a number of closed doors relevant to the plot. The darkness of this location intended to create an atmosphere for the audience, where they aren't completely sure what the shot is leading up to; especially when emphasis is put on the main characters hand on the door knobs. The second location was chosen because it moved from darkness to a more light atmosphere, even though the plot was going to become psychological for the character. We also needed there to be somewhere ‘obscure’ to put the mobile phone, and a cupboard as that played an important part in our plot.

The costume of our main character was put together to show the innocence of a 17 year old boy, who has walked into trouble that is not relevant to him. However, this may be what we wanted our audience to assume. He wore a blue t-shirt, blue jeans and white trainers; basically a stereotypical costume which the audience would think a teenager to wear, as it isn't a complicated costume the innocence of the character is portrayed. So when this innocent character walks into a room, see's a phone in the middle of, well no-where, you would really expect his to shrug and walk past...but that would end our film quite quickly.

Our Script

Nathan is to play our main character (Pete Johnson)

Thom is going to be the voice of the guy on the end of the phone (Dylan)

Adam is going to man the camera.

And here’s the script!

Pete Johnson walks down corridor, camera focuses on footsteps. Pete checks the doors along the dark corridor to check that each one is locked. At the end of the corridor, there is a door which is slightly ajar. Pete, suspicious, enters the room slowly, checks that nobody is in there. We hear the door click shut. As Pete approaches the desk, a phone lights up and starts to vibrate on the desk. Pete picks up the phone.

Pete: Hello?
(Silence)

Pete: Who is this?
(Silence)

Pete: Umm, bye then.

Dylan: Do not hang up. Stay where you are. Stay where I can see you.
Pete stands still, and pauses.

Pete: Wh..wh..who are you?

Dylan: It doesn’t matter who I am – we’re here to find out what kind of person you are.
Pete turns head and scans the room, checking the windows and the doors.

Pete: What? What do you mean?
Pete continues to look around the room, but does not move his feet.

Dylan: You and me are here to work out whether you have a conscience, or not.
Pete looks towards the door

Pete: What are you talking about? Who is this?!

Dylan: Go over to that bin. There’s a knife. Take it.
Pete begins to move towards the bin

Pete: Why?!

Dylan: Because I told you to.

Pete: Why, who are you, what are you doing?
The door slams shut

Dylan: Go over to that cupboard, knock on it three times, and tell me what you hear.
Pete knocks. He hears three knocks back.

Pete: Wh.. What is that, what’s in there?

Dylan: Inside that cupboard there’s a kid, and inside the kid is your way out of here.

Pete: What do you mean?

Dylan: I mean that there’s a key in that kid’s stomach, and if you don’t get it out then the fire that’s quickly burning through the school will burn you too. So if I was you, I’d make your choice pretty quickly. That’s what the knife’s for. I don’t have to explain all the gory details to you do I?

Pete: No

As the music gets louder, Pete walks over to the bin, takes out a knife, and approaches the cupboard door. He puts his hand on the handle. Blackout!

Shotlists

In this section i will list what shots we used in our final media product, and where these shots were used.

• First of all, a long shot of Pete across the corridor, slowly approaching the camera and checking that the doors are locked as he comes closer.
• A close up of Pete's trainers as he walks down the corridor.
• Another long shot as it is cut back to show Pete once again walking down the corridor, to check another door.
• Then another close up, however this time of Pete's hand as he checks that the door is locked.
• Once again cuts back to a long shot of Pete walking down the corridor.
• Shot/reverse shot of Pete walking down the corridor, once again to check a door.
• Which is then followed by a close up of Pete's feet as he enters the unlocked room at the end of the corridor.
• The camera then moves to a high-angle as Pete enters the room, and then approaching the phone.
• Close up of the phone vibrating and lighting up, and Pete's hand picking it up.
• Then the camera cuts back to a high-angle as Pete answers the phone.
• Over the shoulder shot as Pete continues to talk down the phone.
• High-angle of further dialogue.
• Close up / over the shoulder shot / tracking shot as the conversation develops.
• Mid shot / close up as Pete knocks on the door.
• Cuts to another mid shot as Pete takes knife from the bin.
• And the film concludes with an over the shoulder shot of Pete approaching the door and placing his hand on the handle.