Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Monday, 19 April 2010
Evaluation : The Good daughter
Thriller opening production evaluation
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product?
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Anna - The Third Man
costume
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How does you media product represent particular social groups?
The female character and femme fatale in our production Isabella is strong, deviant, cares for her appearance, she is dangerous, but allusive, her character challenges the forms and conventions of the perception of women in the thriller genre, Isabella murders her ex lover for the twisted pleasure and revenge. The victim of the murder is a man, being killed by a women, this again challenges the conformities of the genre and character perception. The connotation of the convention of the aggressive male, such as Jason in ‘Essex Boys’ and the hoods in ‘Lockstock’, is challenged as well as gender stereotype. Isabella is a powerful lead character, a woman who takes control. But the control is whoever ambiguous, the cliff hanger leaves the question does Isabella kill her boyfriend because he has betrayed her or is she doing her jealous Father’s bidding. A similar female character is Louise from ‘Thelma & Louise’ she too takes control and kills Harlem who rapes Thelma. The character of Isabella is very much inspired by Louise. ‘Ridley Scott challenges the pre-conceptions and conventions of the thriller genre with Thelma and Louise, committing shooting a man in self defense the both of them go on the run, mocking macho behavior. But their deviance eventually destroys them as they leap of the edge of The Grand Canyon’ - Taken from my research into femme fatales and the role of women in the thriller genre. Again the character Jackie Brown from ‘Jackie Brown’ was also very influential on the character of Isabella; ‘Tarantino twists the audience pre-conceptions of the genre, he plays with stereotypes of gender, ethnicity, sex and age, and with this very controversial (the thriller genre) leading character pushing the audiences out of their preconceptions and creates a strong, interesting, deviant lead and femme fatale.’ – taken from my research into femme fatales and the role of women.
The father as a voyeur is inspired by Norman Bates from ‘Psycho’ who watches Marion Crane through a spy hole in the wall.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our thriller opening would most probably be distributed on internet video hosting sites such a You tube, shared on social networking sites, Facebook, Myspace, there is also an opportunity for our production to be distributed on blogging sites such as Tumblr and Blogger. Our production could be uploaded to sites that host youth talent such as BBC Blast. Because of the nature of the plot matter, abusive family relationships, and the film could be part of a campaign arising awareness of abusive relationships and educating the impact of such relationships on young people. The film could also be entered into a short film competition such as You tube’s video contest, Indie short films, and BBC.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
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How did you attract/address the audience?
The relationship between Isabella and Christian is based around and formed upon Christian jealous and voyeuristic threatening behaviour, his controlling obsession with his daughter. The relationship between Isabella and her father is likely do attract audiences who are interested in psychological thrillers, the controversial and unusual nature of the character relationships in the film raise questions about abuse whilst also raising interest of high level cases of abusive family relations in the media. The film addresses the disturbing power Christian has over his daughter. We tried to incorporate as many C.U’s and E.C.U’s into the production as possible to engage the audience in the action and to raise pity and fear. The close ups of Christian (the Father) and Isabella’s eyes draws the audience into the mise-en-scene, and allows the audience to engage with the characters. Christian’s powerful and intimidating stare closes the audience into an uncomfortable claustrophobic space, the cross fades between the two characters heightens the disturbing intensity between the two characters.
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The presents of the bars in the mise en scene connotes danger and represent Joules entrapment. The bars from the previous shot have been cross faded over the present to heighten the presence of the bars, and the effect they carry. This is the establishing shot of Joules, the presence of the bars in this establishing shot show him to be a trapped character. Joules has been deceived by Isabella into thinking they have a strong and loving relationship; he is now trapped in her twisted game and will be killed as a result of it. Nearly all the shots with Joules there are bars present in the mise en scene, reinforcing entrapment and danger. The bars represent danger, the dangerous relationship and position Joules is in with Isabella. Joules is present in the left hand third of the screen which draws the audiences attention to him, his face and dress it dark, representing mortality and his lack of control over it.
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Soundtrack
Hyperion's Fate - Sunny Days Are Over
Hyperion's Fate - Sunny Days Are Over
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During the production and process of our thriller opening I have learnt the importance of camera angles and camera movement in media productions. We tried to incorporate as many CU’s in the opening as possible, we realised that CU’s are important as they bring the audience into the mise en scene and helps them to engage in the action as well as characters and understanding them. The process of constructing storyboards also helped with the understanding of different camera angles, and by doing practise shots of different angles I could understand further the different camera angles, shot types and movements. The digital cameras where fairly easy to use, there was little difficultly with the cameras on shoot, and having had previous experience with using the digital cameras in the preliminary task I had no problem using them. I found it easy and very practical using the blogs, using the blog for my work meant that I could easily type up notes from lessons as well of having the advantage of embedding pictures and video's to enhance my work. I had no problems using or understanding how to use a blog, and have used the tool to my great advantage to boost the quality and detail of my work. With regards to embedding video's from YouTube into my blog this was again straight forward, when adding soundtracks ideas to my blog, I had considered uploading them as MP3's, but this proved difficult and by using YouTube I made a simple 'music video' on 'Windows movie maker' for the tracks and uploaded them myself and then embedded them into my work. When editing the production my previous experience using the programme in the 'Preliminary task' meant that I had some good knowledge of how to use the programme. Combining the knowledge and affects of the group the editing of the production was a long task, but with few problems, the most arduous task was cutting down the large amount of footage we had, and decided where to add cross fades etc.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Having already gained experience with using the editing software ‘Premier Elements’ in the preliminary task I was benefited by this previous experience when editing the thriller film. My skills with using the software where greatly improved from when I edited my preliminary task, I could use the software more efficiently, and with a greater ability to use the tools and functions of the software. I feel that I worked well with the other members of my production group, when planning, shooting and editing our film we work constructively as a group and got on with the tasks we needed to do to our full ability. When planning our production we shared ideas and listened to one another, considering each others ideas and developing them to work towards an idea for our production. Previous experience from the preliminary task meant that we had good planning techniques such as creating shooting maps and shot lists, skills which we used and developed further when planning our production. The preliminary task also helped me you understand and use the 180° continuity editing, gaining understanding and experience with both of these helped with producing our production.
When shooting our production we where almost all at each shoot, we feel having all the members of the group at the shoots meant that we could contribute ideas and opinions about the shoot collectively whilst on the shoot, this meant that anything filmed could be fully approved or disapproved by all members of the group, resulting In highly throughout and developed footage that all members of the group where happy with. All members of the group arrived on time to the shoots as to did are actors; this meant we could film efficiently and have time for any re-shooting, variation of camera angles and improvements, which was highly beneficial. When choosing the soundtrack for our production we all have a similar idea to the kind of music we wanted to use. We started first by simply looking though music on a member of the group’s ipod, looking at genre, tempo and style. By looking into these aspects of music and finding what genre etc that we felt would best suit our production we could look to finding something similar by an unsigned artist/band on the internet. This also meant that when looking for a soundtrack online we could save some time as we had some idea collectively of what we where looking for and had in mind to use. We had narrowed are search down to three tracks that we felt where best fitted to what we had in mind, from the site www.unsignedbandwebs.com the final track was then collectively chosen by the group with some guidance from our teacher also. We chose Hyperion’s Fate - Sunny days are over, we felt the track was dramatic and tense, creating and heightening the drama and suspense of our opening.
Our initial narrative idea involved the exchange of two briefcases between two notorious gangsters, Christian and Joules, for money in return for incriminating evidence, with Christian's deceitful daughter, Isabella, intercepting the money via the murder of Joules with the intention of taking the money to run off to start a new life; eventually getting caught by her father. Reflecting on our original plot idea we felt the narrative was too confusing, the numerous briefcases, exchanges and betrayals that occurred in our plot would have been far too confusing/overwhelming for any audience to take in and fully understand what is going on in such the short space of time we had to work with (2 minutes). Having realised this, we reconsidered our narrative and came up with one that we feel to be far less confusing, and fits much more neatly into the two minute gap. The narrative needed to be more interesting and engage the audience, a controversial or challenging narrative would be very effective at engaging and interesting an audience in the 2 minute time space. We learnt that focusing on family relationships and jealousy are more realistic and make for a stronger and compelling film, our film having turned originally from a crime thriller to a psychological thriller.
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