Evaluation

BY HAYLEY KINDREDEvaluationIn what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media productsOur film we produced was developed from initial ideas from Alfred Hitchcock and also challenges some ideas and theories from him, Hitchcock's Shutter Island is set on a secluded island and Psycho uses a creepy looking house which we have used in our opening scene. We did this by changing the lighting to make it seem more creepy but also challenged his theory by using a normal and average house which I believe creates a sense of realism. Changing the lighting helped us build tension as we could make it a lot darker in parts of our opening that are likely to go wrong which builds suspense.We used this in the kitchen part of the opening and the bedroom part as this is resembles the characters being alone and vulnerable.

The outfits of our characters were chosen carefully as you can see that the two blonde characters are wearingdark clothes and the dark haired girl is wearing light white clothing which creates a contrast between the purity of a blonde compared to a brunette.

Hitchcock's theory: Blondes make the best victims. Theyre like virgin snow that shows up bloody footprints. Our thriller opening meets this theory as two of the victims overall are blondes and there is a part in the opening where one of the blondes are in a venerable situation when she goes to see what a noise was. We also challenged this as at the end of the opening Nicole, the brunette, is the biggest victim as she ends up being watched and in the same room as the attacker.

We used another one of Hitchcocks theories; Music cannot stand apart from the movie. Its function is to set the mood and give continuity to separate strips of film by adding background sound/music to create tension when the victims are more venerable or if we want the audience to feel that something may be about to go wrong.

We used two different tracks that fade in and out of certain parts. This picture shows that the background music begins when Hayley is on her own therefore creating tension and suspense.

Another one of Alfred Hitchcocks ideas is Its better if we know who the perpetrator is and the characters dont. We challenged this idea in our opening because we thought that if the characters know who the girl is, they know what she is capable of and will be more scared and aware of their surroundings. Seeing the characters worrying will make the audience think that they are in a lot of danger and hopefully make them feel a partof the situation and draw them in.

Hitchcock was a fan of using spiral staircases. We challenged this and didnt use staircases as we recorded in a bungalow. The idea of using spiral staircases created mystery as the character would be going round a corner which no one would know what is round it. We used this idea when the character Hayley walks round a corner inthe hallway and when Nicole walks round the corner into the kitchen, which ended up being a very dark and mysterious room. Also when Nicole walks to the kitchen.

Comparisons With Other Thrillers The Ring: We compared The Ring to our thriller opening as it contains typical conventions of horror/thriller films of emphasising the vulnerability of teenage female protagonists. The characters in The Ring have American accents and only has two teenagers whereas ours has three. The film was also set in America whereas our opening is set in England. We used our normal accents as this would make it more of a British film which would most likely be aimed at the independent film industry, rather than a major company as we have no previous films and is a student project.

5Shutter IslandIn Shutter Island the film uses characters to show how psychological issues are portrayed. We used this idea to base our attacker on to show the change between normal and unusual. In our thriller the escaped girl was bullied by the three girls for many years previously, which resulted in her psychological issues and in her being taken to an asylum. In the film Shutter Island, Teddy discovered his wife had murdered their children which sets of a psychological trigger in his mind which changes his state of mentality from the trauma. This is the same with our film as the girl had been damaged longterm and has now escaped from the asylum to get revenge.

6Heroes and villainsA typical and stereotypical villain would be a frightening male character however we have used a female in our opening. We got the idea for this from the villain in The Ring as it is a young girl whose face you cannot see. Our female villain reflects this as in our opening we decided to put her hair slightly over her face and only show her for a few minutes to create mystery and a feeling of suspense. We also put a candle under her face creating more of a creepy and mysterious look.

Mise-en scene

The mise en scene in our film was similar to Hitchcock's Psycho mise-en scene as we wanted to make the three girls look isolated and vulnerable in their own home which is what Hitchcock does well with Norman Bates' house. Later on in the film it would show their isolation and vulnerability when all of the lights go out, their phones coincidentally have no service and the phone lines are cut. The location of the house the girls are in, is quite far away from the town and the only way to get there is down a very long dark lane. This is also similar to a Hitchcock idea as the isolation of the environment is a well used aspect to his films which makes it harder for the audience to know what will happen next. It brings uncertainty and mystery to the film.

8Camera Shots

We have used a variety of camera shots such as; close ups, medium shots, mid close-ups, high angle shots, long angle shots, medium shots, longs shots, panning shots, over the shouldershots and shots creating tension.Here we have used a long shot which shows where they are and can see their whole bodies. It also shows that nothing bad is going on around them. This is the beginning where the camera slowly angles down onto the characters. This is called a Pedestal Shot/Crane shot which opens the scene. This is a Mid shot which shows some part of the character in more detail, whilst still showing enough for the audience to feel as if they were looking at the whole subject.This is an over the shoulder shot. This shot helps to establish the position of each person, and get the feel of looking at one person from the other's point of view.

Here we have used a medium close up as it makes the shot seem more intense and serious. This fits in with the part of the scene as this is Here we have used a low angle shot where we placed the camera on the floor. This shot is helping to show how slow Hayley is walking which suggests that she is scared to walk round he upcoming corner.These two shots are close ups proving what the characters are doing. They show the whole process and make the actions they make seem more real. We also linked the sound to the remote so the TV matches the action.when Hayley hears a strange noise coming from another room. Thisshot is also a track-in shot/zoom.When Hayley goes into the bedroom to check where the strange noise is coming from we use a over the should shot to enable the audience to see the mirror and her reflection but we did this at an angle to prevent the camera being in the shot, similarly used in What Lies Beneath. This shot also creates tension as the audience doesn't know what may come out of the cupboard. To open the scene we use this crane shot to introduce the mood of the scene and ensure the audience are aware of the surroundings. We decided to have Rianna staring through the window like this part of scream to show the attacker is watching and waiting for the right moment to go inside.

11 Lighting We were inspired by insidious to edit the lighting and make the lighting in the house as similar as we could. we decided to do this as we thought it was very effective and creepy. This type of lighting creates a mysterious situation causing the audience to maybe become weary as they might think this is a sign that something may go wrong. I edited the whole scene to be in this type of dull lighting but more in the moments where characters are on their own to create tension and make them seem more vulnerable.

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Shots which create tension

These shots show the mental patient being there looking at Nicole then suddenly isn't there as it creates tension and proposes the question; where is she? The third shot shows Nicole having her back to the attacker which creates suspense as she could be in trouble as she is right next to the girl. We made sure that you could see the attacker by shining a torch light on her face to make her look more scary and present. We also made sure you could see Nicole walking away with her back to the girl making her venerable. Hitchcock's theory: Its better if we know who

the perpetrator is and the characters dont. apparent here as Nicole isn't aware that the attacker is there but the audience knows. The last shot is also slightly an over the shoulder shot. This is also used in The Strangers to create a lot of tension and we thought it would be a good idea to use this.13How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Main Characters The characters in our opening scene are from a particular girls friendship group from school which many teenage girls may be able to relate to, but they used to bully a girl in their year group who has now come back to get revenge, ideally on all the people that were horrible to her, but is starting with the three girls, Megan, Hayley and Nicole. The three girls represent a stereotypical group of friends having a girls night in watching TV and enjoying snacks.

Cast; Actresses

In our opening scene we have casted four girls all between the ages of 17-18 and a news reporter for who we chose to be a young woman dressed in typical news reporter clothes.

Sound/speechThere is dialogue throughout the film mostly when all of the girls are together as a typical group of girls would have a lot to talk about but when they are on their own they do not talk to each other which makes them seem vulnerable and even more alone for something to go wrong which builds tension. LocationThe scene is located in an average middle class home which gives the audience more of an idea of what sort of people the girls are and may seem to be living a wealthy happy life. LightingIn the parts of the opening where all of the girls are together the lighting is brighter and equal to show normality and that they are safe with each other, however when they are on their own it resembles the fact they are vulnerable and could be in trouble as the lighting becomes dull and dark.

BehaviourThe behaviour of the teenage girls is very stereotypical as we they are doing normal things like watching the TV, laughing and eating snacks. I one part of the scene Nicole and Megan are playing on their phones which also matches the stereotypes of teenagers constantly being on their phones with their new technology.The behaviour of the asylum escapee does not follow the usual stereotypical conventions of a teenage girl as she seems very unusual due to psychological issues. In later parts of the film there would be an explanation to this as she was horribly bullied and taunted.

16Clothing

The three girls are wearing casual clothes such as jumpers and jeans. We selectedthis clothing so they looked stereotypical to their age group. We chose casual clothingas it makes them look more relaxed and not expecting anything to happen, whilst also showing their friendship as they may be comfortable in front of each other. The outfits of our characters were chosen carefully as you can see that the two blonde characters are wearing dark clothes and the dark haired girl is wearing light white clothing which creates a contrast between the purity of a blonde compared to a brunette. Riannas clothes include a white/grey gown which makes it obvious to the audience that this is the girl that has escaped from the asylum. You don't really get to see much of her outfit in the opening scene and is very basic but effective.

17What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why? Film 4 http://www.film4.com/As film4 had a massive money loss situation in 2011 they decided to concentrate on trying to produce small-budget films. Film4 is a British independent film company which is owned by the Channel four television cooperation. This is why Channel 4 would be suitable for our film as it is a small student, film. On this channel, films are usually films suitably aimed at teenagers as it shows a wide range of genres. Thrillers are commonly shown which would help to promote our film Asylum. They aim to engage audiences, find innovative talent, and those that may try to explore the media, and possibly challenge the traditional media. Momentum Pictures http://www.momentumpictures.co.uk/Is a British Independent film company and is one of the leading independent motion picture distributors in the UK. They have distributed many thriller films which are aimed at an audience of 15 and above which fits our target audience is and makes it more likely for our film to be more successful. They have distributed thrillers like Insidious: chapter 2 which relates to our horror/thriller opening.

18Cinemas

There are different types of cinema; a multiplex, which is amovie theatrecomplex with multiple screens, an independent cinema which is known for smaller, independent films and only a small number of screens, usually 2-3 screens. Examples of multiplex cinemas: Odeon, Vue, and Cineworld.Examples of an independent cinema is Cinema city.Even Though Independent cinemas only contain a few screens, they are usually known for showing more independent films so that it gives them an opportunity that they may not have with a multiplex cinema where popular and well-funded movies will be screening, we decided we would distribute our film in a multiplex cinema such as Vue or Odeon as it may be better for film distribution resulting in a gain of a larger and wider audience than what am independent cinema would.

19AdvertisingAdvertising is used to persuade an audience towards buying a product or to goand view it. In the film industry there are a number of techniques and methodsthat companies use. Marketing methods from major film companies will includethings such as using TV interviews with actors that star in the film, radiobroadcasts, trailers on TV, posters, billboards, and social networking sites suchas Twitter and Facebook to attract audiences of all ages. But as we are likely tohave a low budget which doesn't mean that we will suffer as it is free marketingto post our trailers and maybe some spoilers on social media like Twitter,Facebook and Youtube.

One film that effectively used a small budget for marketing was ParanormalActivity, which had a budget of $15,000. The marketers produced clips on socialmedia before the film came out and Twitter was used to encourage users to'Tweet their Screams' which meant writing reviews of the released trailer.

20Who would be the audience for your media product?Our film has a wide range target audience due to the fact it tackles a number ofissues which could effect a number of people. However, generally I feel it istargeted towards a young (15-35) British audience due to the fact our two centralcharacters are within this age range. When doing our questionnaire, we focusedon people of that age range. At 15 there can be strong threat and horror as long as there is no sustained focus on sadistic or sexualised threat.'

There is strong threat in the opening to empathise and bring to lifethe danger that the three girl characters are going to be in. But throughout the film there is not any focus on sadistic or sexualised threat.

'At 15 violence may be strong. It should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury, however, and the strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable.'There is a little physical violence in the sense of threat as the audience will realise the girls are in danger that will probably end up physical. We do plan to use physical violence later on in the film but the opening scene is more about introducing the film and creating tension.

21There may be frequent use of strong language (for example,fuck) if justified by the context. Aggressive or repeated use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable. There is no dialect in the opening of film, only screams, however I feel that there could be more use of strong language as the film progressed and as the situation grows worse and the characters become more scared and angry.

Behaviour

'dangerous behaviour such as hanging, suicide and self-harming should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Whether the depiction of easily accessible weapons is acceptable will depend on factors such as realism, context and setting.'

Our thriller opening as well as the rest of the film doesnt contain any theme relating to hanging, suicide or self harming so it doesnt give vulnerable audiences to be able to copy any dangerous behaviour.

22How did you attract/address your audience?

Questionnaire

We created a questionnaire on Survey Monkey to help us find out what type of audience we should be looking at when deciding on what sub genre we wanted our thriller to be. Our results showed that teens enjoyed to thrill and excitement you get from watching horror/thriller films as they keep you on the edge of your seat. We asked how old they were and their gender so that we could see what different age groups and genders typically like in thrillers. We also asked which subgenres people preferred so that we could get some inspiration of which sub genre to choose.

This is one of the charts to the result of a question. It shows that 60% of our audience didn't mind if the antagonist was male or female, and those that did prefer a certain gender, the results also balanced out,which allowed us to freely chose ourselves.23 The people that we asked voted that the horror/thriller sub genre best as it received roughly 65% of the votes and psychological and mystery thrillers coming second. This helped us to decide what to use; horror/thriller which includes some psychological elements to it.

24How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract and intrigue and audience to our thriller opening we used a variety of shots and sound files. One good shot is a high angle shot when Nicole walks into the kitchen, as even though Hayley has called out that it is safe, it seems like someone is watching her as in other shots in the kitchen also, some of them are very slightly shaking. Unlike the slow music in this part of the scene, when Hayley looks in the wardrobe the music becomes slightly quicker and more high pitched so that it puts the audience on edge more and makes them expect something to go wrong. This makes nicole being in trouble more unexpected and a shock creating a variety of tension building a surprise. We also overlapped some of the music as one overtakes another in a changing situation like when Hayley fully enters the room. however as soon as the escaped girl is revealed at the window the music once again becomes quicker and more high pitched.

25What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Camera ShotsWe also learnt about how important it is to include a variety of shots and what it is about these specific shots which create effect. I also learned what a pedestal shot is. Long shots and medium shots help the audience see both characters together and show the setting. We found that using a combination of over the shoulder shots to show interaction of characters and reactions.Lighting One thing I learnt during our filming process was the importance of lighting. A lot ofour shots were meant to appear darkly lit. However we found that changing this fromlight to dark when situations went from safe to dangerous was very effective. Tocreate the scary look of the attacker with light we found out using a candle/torch shining upwards from underneath their face is very successful.To give the effect of tension we lowered the brightness with the lightening tool andthe gamma correction tool when the scenes were especially dark like in the kitchenwith Nicole.

26TripodThe tripod was useful when trying outpanning shots in the preliminary task and for our thriller opening because it created a flow in the shot and looked a lot smoother than using free hand. Although this was helpful, for the panning shot that we used in our thriller opening, it turned out to be quite steady by using free hand so we used this method instead. When the camera followed nicole out of the room we decided to try out free hand which went well which is an example of this.

Tripod Problems

Tripods are very big and restrict your movement, also in the way that its hard when using it to make pans of more than 130 degrees.They also arent very portable and are hard to carry around.There are also different types of tripod which we would have to get used to setting up every time we used it resulting in slowing us down. There were a limited number of tripods available to us so other groups may have needed to use the same tripod so we would have to wait till they were done with it. We realised not using the tripod could make the shot shaky, but we tried this out to make it seem more like someone is following and watching the characters which worked quite well.27Filming with the use of a mirrorIn the part of our opening when Hayley is looking into the wardrobe as she has heard a noise coming from the bedroom, we had to make sure no one else was seen in the mirror like the person holding the camera. We held the camera from a high angle to enable the audience to see more of the room which may suggest they have to look out for something else.

We also made sure that you could see Hayleys facial expression in the mirror so the audience could see how scared she was. We also did some filming of Hayleys face from inside the mirror as if the camera was coming out of the mirror but this clip was faulty and we couldn't put it into ourfilm. We learnt from this to manage our time betteras we could have avoided this by finding it outearlier and reshooting that part of the scene.

28EditingAfter filming we uploaded the footage we needed onto a programme calledAdobe Premier Elements. We used this programme to put all of the footage inthe correct order and to edit parts whilst using all different tools andadjustments.Adobe Premier ElementsThis programme enabled our group to edit our film by cutting parts out, re-using footage, adding credits, muting sound or addingsound. We also adjusted the lighting to help bring tension and to set the scene and time lapsing to help us stick to our 2-3 minute availability.

29 This section here clearly shows the use of colour adjustments. We had a problem with making the lighting the same on the second day we recorded. As you can see on the bottom, the original clip is very bright and slightly tinted red. We edited the clip by changing the lightness and vibrance and it worked well to fit in with the same lighting as the rest of the film.

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Editing in soundHere we have background music playing to set the scene then it comes to a sudden stop and and bang from another room has been put it. We suddenly stopped the background sound to make the bang more effective and stand out.Here we took a part of the audio off of the news report by using the programme Audacity to finish playing the news report to make it look like they are actually watching it on the TV whilst being able to see the girls. This made the situation look more realistic and effective. As soon as megan pressed the television button the sound is automatically cut off.

31Cropping, pan and zoomHere we have cropped the torch light out from when we were shining it underRiannas face to make it look more distorted and creepy. We used the Pan andZoom option on the tool selection to do this. We also made it slightly zoom intoRianna to highlight/focus on her. This tool was also helpful with our preliminarytask as we needed to focus on things.

32We went onto expert editing and found the adjustment Gamma Correction which helped us a lot. As we filmed at night and had to have dim lights on to create tension, we needed some way of making these clips lighter as the lightness tool didn't work. As you can see from these two screenshot of the before and after, this tool has helped us a lot. We selected this tool for every clip in this part of the scene but slightly darker the close the film gets to Rianna entering the room.

33Audio Gain

We also used audio gain throughout the film as some shots were recorded further away. This made the quality of the sounds better and more equal to the rest of the shots. It also made all of the sound seem the exact same volume. For example, in this long shot we increased the gain to make the sound more apparent and closer.

34Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

We learn many things like how and where to used a tripod to this help us keep shots looking steady and as professional as we could. We also learnt the basic of editing skills like cutting and brightness adjusting, then further realising how to smooth out scenes to create continuity. However, the one problem we did find was breaking the 180 degree rule. Seeing as our preliminary task after our thriller opening made me realise that we learnt many different skills we could now apply to anything we edit. We also now know which shots work best for certain situations and what they are used for. I think that the difference shows massive progression in both editing and filming. I think that the preliminary task, although wasn't great, massively helped us film our thriller as we got to play around with the camera and learn a few basic skills like how to work the camera for a start.

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