Evaluation

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

For our thriller research we did in class, one film that heavily influenced our final production was ‘Leon’. It firstly influenced our plot and story which is a conventional plot. A young girl becomes a heavy drug user and becomes addicted, this leads to her not being able to pay for the drugs but physically needing them putting her into debt with the drug dealer who pays off the debt by killing the girls family. This is much like ‘Leon’ how the girl played by Natalie Portman has her house broken into and searched for drugs that were hidden which leads to her whole family being killed. It influenced our location of using a house and a staircase in particular with the family being killed in a claustrophobic flat and the first action scene heavily uses a stair case. The staircase is also used by Alfred Hitchcock in ‘Vertigo’. The music that we wrote for the thriller was influenced by the dark string based music notably seen in TV Drama ‘Spooks’. The strings are a very good conventional instrument to use to create a somber and melancholy mood in the atmosphere. The montage like beach shots were influenced by the Cohen Brothers ‘No Country For Old Men’ that has a voice over and montage shots of a southern state landscape with a voice over. Our voiceover was by influence in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill 2 in which the open titles are shown and a voice over was used so that the audience would primarily focus on the dialogue that fades into a black and white close up shot of Uma Thurman’s character. The use of black and white in Kill Bill 2 influenced us using black and white for the present and colour for the past. This also shows how the present was a grey blur for our protagonist and the past was a vivid emotional memory.

Our thriller also challenges conventions thrillers. In ‘Don’t Look Now’ the child in red is portrayed as innocent and naïve playing in the garden. In our thriller we do not include any shots of the innocents of the child (brother of our main character). We partly did this to keep the pace of the opening and keep within a time span also we did not want to focus on the child but the girls emotions. Our gangster was going to originally going to be a more conventional suited Mafiosi like character partly due to casting problems but also as we did not think a Mafiosi like character is appropriate for a British gangster so we chose to use a younger character more like a character from ‘Kidulthood’. The use of a beach is unconventional as usually thriller locations are dark, claustrophobic and confined but the beach is very isolated.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

As our protagonist is a young teenager some of our target audience (18-28) may be able to relate to her or may have known someone in a similar situation, drug addict struggling to make ends meet through uncontrollable physical addiction. She also seems like a normal girl this is indicated by the mise en scene of both the house and the clothing. The house is a normal middle class terraced house. Throughout the scenes she is also wearing ‘normal’ teenagers’ clothes.






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

I think the product would be distributed in a main stream multi-plex cinema due to it being quite conventional. Other mainstream thrillers that are similar are ‘Leon’ and ‘Memento’. The lighting isn’t too dark and noir to be an art house product and I think the final product is of higher standard than a straight to DVD product. Also I think the storyline is not expandable enough to become a Television series or parts of a TV film.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Being a British thriller it will appeal to the British public rather than an American audience. Also being a psychological thriller it will appeal to an older audience (18-28). Our main character is a late teen girl who has become a drug addict this then may appeal to girls as she can be shown as an example of the pitfalls of drug addiction. But also may appeal to the male audience due to the characters and the morals of the gangsters and criminals within the film.

Leon
Votes Average
Males
113,824 8.6

Females
15,136 8.6

Aged under 18
2,136 8.8

Males under 18
1,683 8.9

Females under 18
450 7.8

Aged 18-29
85,553 8.8

Males Aged 18-29
75,593 8.8

Females Aged 18-29
9,636 8.9

Aged 30-44
33,774 8.5

Males Aged 30-44
29,829 8.5

Females Aged 30-44
3,590 8.4

Aged 45+
7,245 7.9

Males Aged 45+
5,841 8.0

Females Aged 45+
1,337 6.9


As you can see from the above chart, females aged 18-29 enjoyed Leon the most out of all audiences.

How did you attract/address your audience?

One way in which we attracted our audience was through the use of our music that is fitting to the emotions of the girl and fit well to the intriguing flashback. Our flashbacks are suspenseful drawing the audience into the film.



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

From the process I have learnt the importance of a varied amount of shot types and shot movements to create an interesting film. I have learnt how to use a digital and utilise its functions to our own needs. I have also learnt how to edit efficiently and with little inconvenience. This helped us construct the narrative structure to help the audience understand the opening. We used quite a few effects such as changing the saturation on the shot of the heroin being prepared, using a black and white effect on the present day shots and using ‘fade to black’ as a transitional effect. I also learnt how to edit very closely to try and create the best effect from the media product.

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

I feel I have learnt a great deal. One major factor was getting the storyboards more accurate so we could get the correct shots. Also taking these shots as many times as possible and shooting any other shots that may not be in the storyboard but may be used. It also showed us how editing is the key to getting the film better as our preliminary task was not as well edited as our final thriller opening. It also showed us that we should all have more individual influence in the opening were we are more talented. Such as I did quite a lot of editing and produced the music. But as a group we shot the opening and planned the opening but, for example, as I’m not a very good drawer Rosy and Katie did the storyboarding. I think I learnt that using a variety of shots is important in keeping the audience interested especially close ups and extreme close ups to keep the audience in touch with the actors/actresses. Also master shots and establishing shots are important so the mise en scene is recognised by the audience. From the preliminary task I have also learnt that it is important to use match on action and the 180 degree rule so the audience does not get confused.