Media Film Coursework Evaluation

By Anna Constantinou

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

Thrillers have been a successful film genre since film began. They are made to create suspense and fear which have always appealed to their audience.

Our media product is a short sequence of an opening to a thriller film. We made it an opening to a psychological thriller with a horror twist, and we were inspired by a number of existing real media products;

Together, we worked to make an unconventional thriller, so I do not think that it is similar to any existing thriller films, although we were inspired by other existing thriller films for parts of our film, such as flashback memories from the past of our antagonist- Anna, for which I got the inspiration from ‘Memento’ and ‘The Butterfly Effect’.

The overall urban, local and realistic feel of Shane meadows’ ‘A Room for Romeo Brass’ was something that we strived for in our product although we wanted to mix in some abstract unconventional ideas which would move away from conventions of a psychological thriller.

I feel our main inspirations for our film were ‘28 Days later’ and ‘Mum & Dad’, although I feel that others were also involved in helping us to make decisions with our film; for instance the use of classical music in ‘Silence of the Lambs’ which adds serenity and is quite morbid.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We wanted to present a character who had been alienated from society because of being abused and neglected as a child, so portraying the complete contrast of personality of Anna from the playground scene to when she is an adult and running to her ‘sanctuary' portrays to the audience a broken character where single parents, divorce and child abuse are on the increase, I feel our audience could definitely relate to it whether they have experienced these kind of things or not.

The younger version of Anna would convey innocence to the audience, and they would then sympathize with Anna and her depression. ‘The audience of ‘Mum and Dad’ sympathized with the victim and her situation which was crucial because they had to see it that way in order to be horrified.

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

Small Microwave companies could distribute our product, as our small budget in this case would work to our advantage as microwave companies would be able to work with that small amount of money and distribute our film successfully.

‘28 Weeks Later’ was distributed on the internet which helped to gather am larger audience to watch the film at the cinemas, as people saw the advertisements and thus more people went to see the film on release. Using a method like this would help our profit to be larger than it would have been without the wider choice of ways to distribute our film.

Who would be the audience for you media product?

I do not think that our film would have an audience too narrow, although I feel that it would be quite popular just as ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, ‘Psycho’ and ‘Mum and Dad’ were. The idea is that Britain loves to be taken into a dramatic storyline no matter how gruesome or cruel it is, audiences have always had a ‘thrill’ from being put on ‘the edge of their seat’. Clouds is not massively horrific, but neither is it mild. It simply portrays the thrillers that are slightly similar to ours have specific age certificates. Our audience for our media product would be the general British public who are just interested in current affairs and cases such as ‘Baby P’.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Our combination of the audio, soundtrack and visuals, keeps our opening busy. It engages our audience immediately in the storyline, however, the mixture of so much going on in the short amount of film, it is possible that our audience could be overwhelmed by the amount of information being communicated. However, I think that this would not be a problem because as our voice over is the only complex thing, the visuals would be pretty easy to watch and understand. Our audience would hopefully not be too narrowed due to our precise choice of unique conventions for our film which would ideally be anyone over the age of fifteen. But most psychological and horror thrillers have an age certificate of at least 15 anyway, so I do not think that having a similar age certificate would disadvantage us. If anything, our certificate might even be a 12 as the contents of our film is not that violent or sexual in anyway.I think our audience would be drawn into the story and want to watch more, so they would be asking themselves questions like: “What is going to happen in the rest of the film?” And “Does Anna find a way of overcoming her drug addiction?”

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

I think, as a group, we have all learnt a lot more about technologies throughout constructing our product. When filming the slow pan shots for the beginning of our opening, the camera had to be laid on the floor on the monopod so that Matthew and Zoe had to hold it and slowly turn the monopod so the camera turned upwards to get the shot of the bridge and the sky with its clouds in the night time.

I used the camera when I was sitting on top of the bridge and I had to film my feet swinging which we would blend in to the shot of Emma’s feet running through the park. So I learnt how to switch the camera on and off as well as film.

I learnt how to record a voice and adapt it to the film. Although Zoe did the main recording of the voice, Matthew and I added in our voices to record the echoing of the word ‘clouds’, which we feel had an impressive effect on our voice over.

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

Looking back at the preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt so much in the progression of the whole product. We filmed our preliminary task in one day, so the process of making up the script and the basic story outline, followed by filming was quite swift and as a group, we worked together really well. Everyone had their roles, and it would have been significantly harder for everyone if just one member was not present. I was acting throughout and co-operated with Zoe and Matthew and their camera work in order for us to get the filming done in as little time as possible. With the editing, I contributed to what I thought and how I thought the sequence should be edited, and I knew how anyway, because I had helped to make up the script, and I had been acting throughout the whole thing, in both scenes, so I had a clear picture in my head of how the end result should look. We called our preliminary task ‘coffee’ because of the emphasise on the coffee shots which we filmed because we wanted to show the wife making the coffee for her husband before giving it to him and he would not like it and abuse her for it. However we did not get to finish filming, and did not get to the dialogue shots.It is a shame some of our teamwork fell apart when it came to doing our thriller opening. I think, as a group, we have all learnt that the most important thing when making a film is the communication within the group. It is crucial, so if we was to do this again, we would communicate better.