Evaluation - Harry McHale

Evaluation
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Prezi Here

2)How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our thriller film 'Gone' represents many social groups in the same way as the conventions of most modern thriller films. In our research on social groups and thriller openings, we learned the conventions used to do this and applied them in our own thriller film.

As this film is set in the modern day, gender is portrayed more equally than of that of traditional thriller films. Our thriller film represents gender very similarly to most 21st century modern thriller films. There is more equality between males and females in thriller films, which goes against the conventions of traditional stereotypes. For example, in our thriller film we have a female as our main protagonist. By doing this we have created more equality in the representation of genders which is good as this targets a modern audience for a modern film.

In the 20th century, thriller films were more male oriented and dominated the advertisements of these thriller films, however the advertisements and actual thriller films are more equal and show female protagonist(s) for example in the film Lucy where we see a female face on the poster and the movie's lead character is 'Lucy'.

Thrillers, as well as other genres of film stereotyped females as these 'damsel in distress; characters. This cliché is less common as time has moved on and modern films represents females more realistically and use less sexism. In the production of 'Gone' we made sure we stayed away from this old cliché and use more modern conventions in order to appeal to a modern audience.

In 'Gone' we used a female protagonist in the opening of the film. We used various close-ups mixed with multiple low-angles. This creates a sense of power within our protagonist as the audience are positioned below her as they have to look up to her. Her dialogue shows a strong woman who isn't afraid to speak her opinion - the complete opposite of the 'damsel in distress' stereotype.


3)What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Prezi Here

4)Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our film 'Gone' is designed to attract females and males by using equal amount of gender in the cast. The film is also designed to attract an audience of 16 - 28. The film contains scenes which simulate murder and other forms of violence throughout which some viewers may find disturbing; this limits our audience to a certain age. The age group we are targeting tend to view movies through streaming services such as Netflix therefore if we were a bigger producer company. We could release our movie on Netflix as it targets the audience we produce the movie for.

5)How did you attract/address your audience?
From the very beginning, we decided that 'Gone' would aim to attract 16 - 28 year old males and females. The genre of the movie could be consider as a action-thriller; most action thriller films attract males therefore it was important to maximize the potential audience therefore our protagonist starts as a strong female character as we feel the audience would be able to connect more and empathise better with the character. Female protagonists not only attract females to watch the film, but they also attract males to watch the film for example, films such as Ex-Machina have a female protagonist but the audience is equally divided in terms of gender according to wikipedia.



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

• I have learnt more about technologies from the process of constructing this product. Although we learnt the basics on how to use a digital camera for the preliminary task, I felt I could have learnt much more on it considering my experience with filming wasn't a lot, therefore operating sound equipment and cameras was a new experience. Making the preliminary thriller has boosted my confidence with using theses tools.

• I have learnt that when using a digital camera to film, in order for the film to be successful and easier to edit; it was important to 'make a sandwich'. This means that you leave excess footage on the beginning and end of your recording in order to edit and trim them at the end. It is also important to take multiple takes as this gives you more footage to play around with: also making editing easier.

• I have also learnt to set the white balance before every shot. I learned this before the preliminary task however we only incorporated properly in our filming for the main thriller task. It's important to set the white balance otherwise the video gets a yellow orange like tint which can ruin continuity if other shots do have white balance set; it's also a undesired effect when filming any genre unless you're a fan of low budget home-made movies with low quality cameras.

• Due to some shots in our preliminary task being hand-held, resulting in the camera wobbling slightly, we used a tripod through-out the sequence which looked more professional, especially when filming a tracking shot, or attempting pan movement. With the drone shots, we used a stabiliser which does a similar job except it's operated by the drone.

• In the preliminary, some of the audio clips towards the end weren't separated. This made editing a nightmare as we had to trim 10 minute audio clips and match them with separate scenes whereas in the main thriller task, all sound was recorded separately and we also recorded the sandwich so we can match the audio with the clips more easily.

• In regards to editing, I expanded my knowledge and expertise in it by advancing from basic cut transitions to more ambitious transitions including using fades and dissolves with a graphic match which would of previously not have been attempted in our preliminary thriller. I found that editing was very time consuming as I didn't realise the full extent of the time that goes into it in order make sure it is better than satisfactory. What's more difficult is to get the film and sound to synchronise together but we did a much better job at this compared to the preliminary thriller. 

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
Our main task product, in comparison to the preliminary task product has had many minor improvements but more importantly a few major improvements which have helped the full product prosper in areas such as continuity.

Firstly, in terms of continuity; one of the more important changes to our full product is setting the white balance for every shot unlike our preliminary task where some of the scenes haven't had any white balance. It's important to set white balance otherwise the colours are tinted which makes it look grainy and poor quality. It also ruins continuity as two shots in the same setting would have different colours.

These two shots from our full product are both set in the same setting and they both sustain continuity.
The shots from the preliminary however break continuity.

The title helps foreshadow the plot

In our film for the main task, we incorporated titles and credits into our product, whilst it wasn't required for the preliminary, the option was still available to us. The titles for the main task help give our product a identity and the titles also give the film more meaning and help foreshadow the plot of the film. The preliminary without a real introduction makes it slightly confusing. Titles can also help create enigma which is very important when making a thriller film as it one the most used and effective conventions in thriller film production.

Fades out - Emphasise disappearance

The sound has improved from the preliminary to the main task in terms of use of sound, and in terms of ambiance. What we found in our preliminary is that recording ambient sound in the beginning scene was difficult to record as there were various background noises that disrupted the filming including a vacuum going off every so often. Despite editing the audio clips to remove the sound, you can still hear white noise from the trial of sound removal of the vacuum;  this has also distorted some of the dialogue slightly which also ruins continuity as some of the dialogue isn't distorted. In the main task, the dialogue is much more clearer and more developed than that of our preliminary. We used much more foleys in our main task than our preliminary, and the foleys we used in the main fitted more well in the main task and wasn't too overpowering when being play with the other sounds in our main such as the ambient sound and dialogue. On the preliminary, the foleys are quite generic and overused which could ruin immersion for the viewer.

Our preliminary compared to the main task, was lacking in editing techniques. The editing techniques used were much more basic than that of our main. In our main we used more advanced editing techniques such as cross-cutting, sound-bridges and we used green screens plus other advanced edits in programs such as Adobe After Effects. The use of these techniques aren't overpowering and make the main task incredibly better. The preliminary is much more basic in terms of editing include only using cuts whereas the main uses fading in + outs and graphic match we creates more variation, making the film stand out more. The preliminary does contain what was required for it to be satisfactory including continuity techniques such as match on action, shot/reverse shot, eye-line match etc.

Also, in our preliminary task the camera work was quite basic and in many scenes, the camera isn't steady as they were hand-held shots. This massively reduces the quality of the sequence as when you're watching, the camera shakes, resulting in the spectator losing concentration (and being slightly disorientated). However, in our main task the camera is very still (due to the majority of the scenes being filmed using a tripod or a stabiliser in the drone shots) therefore the shots flow together very well enticing the viewer. In the main task there is a lot more variety of shot sizes and angles to create a more successful and interesting thriller whereas in the preliminary task there were only a couple of close-ups, the other majority of shots were medium shots. Different angles were used but only once or twice, most angles were medium. As well as shot sizes, we expanded our use of camera movements such as panning shots and added more camera angles.  

Example of variety of camera angles in main task

   
 
 


   

Antagonist (Left)

Protagonist

When planning for the preliminary task, we were very prepared in terms of costume, location and lighting. When filming the preliminary, we were unorganised therefore we wore our normal, everyday clothes and didn't think about how other costumes would help construct the story line, or conventions of a thriller. However, in our main task we though more deeply about the characters role and purpose in each sequence, therefore we chose appropriate clothes which we thought would suit an antagonist/protagonist(s). For example, the antagonist was wearing dark clothing and a hoodie to disguise themselves, creating enigma (important for thrillers) and foreshadowing the plot. The protagonist's clothing also lets the audience make assumptions about the character's occupation, social class, etc.

In terms of location, we were very restricted as to where we could film on the preliminary task as it had to be on college grounds, therefore the main task was immediately better in the sense that we could venture out and choose a location to film our thriller sequence in as long as we had permission for the premises. This enabled us to be creative and experiment with locations, and in the end we chose a generic motorway for the car scenes (filmed on green screen) and a generic house setting with a snazzy hot-tub. When filming our preliminary task we were under pressure as the location we wanted to use was only available at a certain time therefore we had to do all our filming in one day which some aspects of the film would have been rushed. In our main task, we had much more time to do the filming and were able to take much more shots of various scenes in our film making the overall quality of our thriller film for the main task so much better.

With the lighting, in the preliminary task we mainly relied on the light from the ceiling in the room we filmed in, adding little additional light for effect. In our main task we experimented with lighting more and used more lighting techniques. Various examples in our main of lighting include creating shadows on the antagonist's face to make it difficult to identify him to create enigma, the lighting in the hot-tub and spotlighting the hot-tub to create more focus on hot-tub without ruining the night scene.