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Evaluation – Living Nightmare

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

To use the different forms of horror and psychological conventions, we did different techniques to implement the genre and terrify the target audience. We did different parts of horror conventions such as the torturing of a young boy and the psychological conventions of a dream revealing terrifying consequences to a family that will cause effect on the audience mentally. So our 2 minute trailer sequence was made of a psychological/horror thriller. It appealed to our target audience which was of the age of 15 years old and over. Our thriller sequence followed many of the typical horror conventions seen in movies. There had been different camera shots used in the thriller such as 360 degree shot and constant close-ups of the character’s faces to reveal their terrified expressions. Other typical conventions we followed had been the main character being tortured by a certain crazed being, which was evidently the main part of the storyline in the sequence. We also followed a more action thriller convention which was a dream; this idea had been constructed from the movie Inception which is based on dreams and the subconscious.

In order to develop the conventions seen in the thriller film we did different techniques to make the characters cause an effect on the audience. We made the boy the centre of the film as he is being more tortured and the fact he is a child and these things had been happening to him is what made the thriller look more exciting and also aimed to make an impact on the audience. The detailed parts in the thriller such as his state of mind and his expression shown in the sequence just make the storyline look more attractive to watch. Such as the way he reacted to the dream and his expressions after such as the nervous getting up and heavy breathing. The credits we used faded in the letters which added to the spookiness of the thriller because it just appears quietly and fast to make the thriller speed up more and grab the audience’s attention/

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The trailer sequence contains 4 people. They are made up of 3 male characters and one female character. The male characters consist of a 12 year old boy and 2 men one aged 38 and the other 28. The boy has a family relationship with the 38 year old man and a female character, with the boy being the son and the man/woman being the mother and father. This is the family within the thriller that are focused on with the boy being the main character in the family. The younger man is the games master, who is the character that tortures the boy in his dream. The male characters are dominant in this trailer sequence, because the games master is the person who is hurting the boy physically and mentally and making him see his parents lie unconscious, including the woman. It is the female that is presented as weak and passive while the male force is more dominant and strong.

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The boy and his family are from Manchester and are brown skinned, whilst the game master is white and from Australia but grew up in Wales. This can be seen from the characters different accents as it shows what part of the countries they are from. The family characters are middle classed and this can be seen from the size of the house and the room shown in the trailer. The boy does not work and is very close with his mum which is seen at the beginning of the sequence when she tried to comfort him. He sees his father as his role model and the closeness of the relationship with his parents is seen when he keeps calling them out in the dream, and when he shouts at his dad to “Save the day” this shows that he sees his dad as a hero.

The games master is working class which challenges the conventions of status because it’s usually the high class/rich people that are dominant in films as money is a powerful tool for them to cause destruction. But the middle class family in this sequence are the victims and this follows the typical conventions of movies where the people with money are the victims of blackmail and torture. A movie such as Transporter 2 is a prime example of lower class criminals kidnapping a young boy from a rich family in order to get money out of the kidnapping.

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

I think our thriller sequence could interest a huge American distributor because it has a very unique storyline and could attract a wide range of audiences. Movies regarding dreams haven’t been made a lot, with Inception being the only huge blockbuster known. To include a dream and mix it in with action/horror would create a massive effect on the audience and hopefully become more recommended by critics and viewers. Horror has been a widely attracted form of genre in films and it just pleases people by the limit of fear it gives out to them. I don’t think a TV show would be appropriate for this sort of thriller because it just doesn’t look right to set it in episodes and it may not even interest the TV companies such as the BBC etc as they would also think it won’t go well as a TV series.

Movies like this wouldn’t really suit being released in the UK only. This movie with the right budget can become a huge blockbuster and make masses of profit if the acting/storyline/editing is all correct and good. Inception and Paranormal Activity is most likely the most similar theme to our movie. In a way it could be similar if the two movies mix together, as it can turn out to be psychological/action thriller and this combination can attract the distributors so they can make the profit as well as the studio. The poster designs and trailers can become more eye-catching if the movie will be edited to a high standard to grab the audience’s attention.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

When we started the project, we decided to aim the movie sequence to an age group of 15 year olds and above. We decided that the content would not be suitable for people below that age so we went and aimed it at 15 year olds. This movie was aimed more at the male audience because we had conducted research in the beginning of our project and the males had preferred the horror/psychological thriller which we later used as a genre for our own trailer sequence. Action

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thriller had been mostly liked as well but it was not really used in our sequence as we were concentrating more on making it horror/psychological. Inception and Paranormal Activity had been the most liked films from the research so we made the thriller sequence more related to these films in terms of dreams and mental torture.

I would like the BBFC to rate our film at least a 15 because it challenges many of the horror/psychological conventions seen in 15 rated thrillers. Even though not a lot of blood is seen in our sequence, that does not mean it should be rated less. The main focus of the film is the torture of a child and his family, and that is why it should be

rated 15 because of the effects it will cause on the audience and the characters playing the role. The Saw franchise is relatively similar to ours because again it’s about characters being tortured horribly and this is the case with the boy in our sequence. Saw had been a massive hit and made a lot of profit from its 6 movies and that is why the audience would be

attracted because if they liked something similar to Saw then they would watch it as it is also unique to the movie because it’s about a dream and torture.

How did you attract/address your particular audience?

From the questionnaires we concocted together as a group, we looked at the main elements preferred by the audience in thrillers and tried to blend them together to create a successful thriller sequence that would be liked by the viewers. By asking the audience what villain they liked and what they wanted in a villain we created the games master. The audience wanted the villain to be psychotic and evil which we tried as hard as possible to create. We think that this had achieved the expectations from the audience because the villain is torturing an innocent family and making a young boy suffer. This creates the conventions of evil and horror. We created the conventions of horror and evil by including blood coming from a young person and a mad character torturing a family with a close relationship and messing their

mind. The huge effect that we tried to attract the audience was the close torture of the family. We used different camera shots that reveal the torture in great detail such as the 180 degree shot of the child’s state of mind after he wakes up from the dream and the canted angle during the dream which made the scene look more interesting and weird as the camera lifted up as the boy kept screaming. The lighting as well was good in revealing

expressions of the boy and the games master such as the thunder lightning revealing the games master.

The audience had been made to sympathise for the young boy because of what he is been put through and how it is affecting his mind mentally and also the chains that are causing him pain physically and making him bleed.

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We added music into the background of certain parts of the trailer to make it look more appealing and to create suspense. The music when the boy wakes up is the most important because it makes us sympathise with the boy. The shots of his mum and dad tied up and unconscious is made so the audience feel even sorrier for the boy to suffer this punishment at such a young age. The music contained an orchestra playing different instruments and drums had been included to add that bit of tension as the boy is coming to terms with what had happened. The voiceover of the games master is also to show the extent of evil he had done on the boy and his parents. The evil laughter and the speech is enough to make the audience despise him.

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

Wikipedia and Google were helpful websites because it helped me with the research on camera work. Blogger introduced me to a whole new world of blogging and it helped me set my work out in a professional way. It has many functions to help me present my work as nice as possible and it also had different functions to view all our posts together and tag each other in so we can see who done what work.

I found the camera equipment hard to work with at first due to many of the functions it came with. The tripod was the hardest to work with because we had to constantly balance it and make sure the camera rested on it comfortably so it did not show the shots in a canted angle.

One of the main problems I had with the camera itself was the focus of it. When we were shooting the trailer we had to make sure the camera did not keep auto focusing so the shots didn’t come out blurry. Other problems I had with the camera had been trying to find the rewind/forward buttons so I can look through the trailer on the tape. The biggest problem which I and my group faced was overwriting the shots with irrelevant stuff. This caused a huge problem because it had happened during the last reshoots and the project was nearing to an end which meant we had to start all over again. In a way, it helped a bit because we improved some of the shots. The sound had not been a problem because the microphone picked up all dialogue on set and the ambient sounds had been very clear too.

Lighting had not been a huge problem for us because the set contained lots of lights that showed the required parts of the trailer such as the props, the expressions of the characters and most importantly the location which the sequence was set in. The program which we used to edit the sequence in had been called final cut pro. I really liked this program because it had been very

easy to use regarding the capturing shots and placing them in the timeline. The guides we had been given by the college were very useful in helping us understand the program better and enhance it more. We learned of many different functions that can help us such as transitions, darkening the

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picture and voice recording to add in the timeline. We found the sound file mix very useful because it helped us combine very good music files to create the result of a theme music that we thought would go well with certain scenes in the trailer. I also learned a wide range of different shots that can be used to make an effect on the audience while watching through the thriller.

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

The preliminary had taught me a lot of things to be careful about when shooting the real trailer. The main problem I had in the preliminary was getting the shot reverse shot right because I had messed it up a bit by keeping the camera on the person that had not been talking so we could not see their expression. But as I moved on from the preliminary to the real thing I felt a huge change occur.

I learned a lot of shots to use that would create an effect on the audience and to also show them the different scenes in more detail. I learned the importance of teamwork and the effect it can have on the group if it is interrupted. The overwriting of the main shots had helped me learn to be more careful when camera shooting and to always check the tape is on blank so it does not overwrite important work that will waste time and maybe lose us marks.

We had also realised that the set must always be the same during reshoots as anything out of place from different camera shots would make the film look tacky and unprofessional. When I was filming using my hand I started to improve from the preliminary because I was rather shaky the first time due to nerves but as we kept reshooting my confidence grew and my steady hand skills had been a success.

Continuity had been the biggest problem for us and a lesson was taught to us that to never change the set when filming or else it will look very out of place if something in the scene suddenly moved in the next shot without any of the characters touching it. Every time we reshot we looked back at the first scenes we filmed so we can make the set look as familiar as possible so it does not look weird to the audience as these things can be spotted very easily. We had to ensure the characters wore the same clothes as the first time as well.