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.