By Ladan Mursal

OUT OF DEPTH EVALUATION

Mise-en-scène Lighting is especially important as the audience can assume what genre the movie is by the way the lighting is displayed. In a normal thriller different levels of low-key lighting is used. This will create a mysterious secretive like impression. The normal convention for lighting in a thriller would be very dark and gloomy lighting. Low key lighting is very conventional of any thriller film as it builds up suspense. By the use of colour we can depict a mood or atmosphere. The normal conventions for a thriller would be the colour black grey and red. As each of these colours symbolizes darkness and mysteriousness.

In contrast Out Of Depth does not follow these low-key lighting conventions as the film was made using naturalistic lighting to maintain the realistic atmosphere. This can also reflect the time in which the action takes place in. therefore we challenged this low-key feature to make our product seem different and unique.

A typical crime thriller would involve two characters which come into conflict with one another. The protagonist is seen as vulnerable and weak is set against a problem or mystery or an escape, that seems impossible. The protagonist is mainly shown as a: hostage, victim, weak and vulnerable. They are mainly played by women or girls as they are seen as more naive and weaker then men. The antagonist is mainly shown as a criminal, stalker, kidnapper, assassin, and being evil usually with a vendetta or plot to take revenge. They seem to always look strange with a sense of madness about them.. This is someone who represents the evil in the film someone whose intensions are corrupt and dangerous. For example in Law Abiding Citizen Clyde witnesses his family getting killed in front of him and is set out to seek revenge for what they did to his family.

Similarly in Out Of Depth our main protagonist witnesses a crime that she cannot forget about and the antagonist is set after her as she witnessed a murder that she wasn’t supposed to see and is afraid that she might tell someone.

1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR

CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA

PRODUCTS?

In a thriller having a lot of different camera angle shots is important. I noticed that in great thriller films that there are many different angles in which one action is shot in, this is done to create suspense and maintain the audience's attention keeping them ‘on the edge of their seats’. The use of point of view shots would make the audience feel like they are in the characters shoes, and allows them have a better understanding of what is actually happening.

We see this often in Out Of Depth as the camera moves back and forth from Robyn’s point of view to close-ups of actions taking place. This variety of camera shots helps build up the action and creates suspense and intrigue.

Also in many thrillers there is always an action that takes place in-between or before the titles which are usually what the film would be based on. This is sometimes an action based scene that causes a problem that has to be solved throughout the film. For example in The Dark Knight Rises the film opens with the joker robbing from the bank. Or in Inception Dom has a business meeting with the Chinese and things go wrong.

Therefore we developed this idea into Out Of Depth by opening with a murder scene that would be the baseline problem of the film that is to be solved throughout the film. Robyn would be the character who is set out to deal with the crime and find out who killed an innocent girl and is stalking her.

1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR

CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA

PRODUCTS?

2. HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR

SOCIAL GROUPS?

In Out Of Depth our protagonist is a teenage girl who plays a role of an innocent and vulnerable

girl who is in a situation that she cannot escape. Similarly in Taken the protagonist Kim is a

young teenage girl, who is also naïve as she gets herself into trouble with the wrong people.

Therefore both characters need a hero to save them, Kim has her father to save her but in

Robyn in Out Of Depth cannot confront someone about her problems as it would put her in

danger therefore she is left alone to try and resolve her problem, How will she do this is the real

question.

2. HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR

SOCIAL GROUPS?

In Out Of Depth the antagonist is a character which is unknown from the beginning and it is

down to Robyn to find out who this murder and stalker may be. This antagonist seems to be

omniscient as he/she knows a lot more about Robyn than she thinks. This creates suspense

and intrigue as the audience would be ‘on the edge of their seats’ to find out who this murder

may be. If we were to follow typical thriller conventions, this unknown murder can be a middle

aged man who is foreign, for example in Taken the kidnappers who kidnap Kim are Eastern

European men. However we could have a plot twist where the unknown character might be a

teenage boy or girl attending the same school as Robyn.

Artificial Eye is a British film distributor,

specialising in foreign-language and art

house films for cinema and home

entertainment. An art film is a serious,

independent film aimed at a niche market

rather than a mass market audience. Artificial

Eye has been committed to distributing the

best in European and world cinema since its

foundation in 1976 by Andi Engel. Artificial

Eye releases about 20 new theatrical films,

and another 30 new DVD and Blu-ray titles,

every year. It is also committed to a strong

programme of digital releases via Curzon

Home Cinema, Sky Box Office and Sky

Player, iTunes, Virgin Filmflex, LOVEFiLM

and other platforms. Its library includes more

than 300 titles.

Artificial eye is a good distributor that might

distribute ‘Out Of Depth’ as it is an

independent movie targeted at a niche

market. This would therefore make it a

possible chance that Artificial eye would

distribute our media product. Our product can

be a part of the companies “20 new theatrical

films” this year and be a part of the

distributers best sellers like Winters Bone

(2010) or Wuthering Heights (2011).

3. WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR

MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

4. WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

Similar to Out Of Depth, Pretty Little Liars- an American teen drama mystery-thriller television series that is also suitable for 12+ viewers. In this series there are stabbings, fighting, hit -and-runs, bashings and murder. There is also many acts of murder. Many of the recurring characters on the show are killed. Words like bitch, and crap are regularly said. Teens occasionally are shown drinking at parties. also there are references to people being high.

In comparison Out Of Depth is a psychological thriller which deals with less violent and inappropriate actions which makes it permissible to be classified as a 12 age rating. Further in the film there maybe some scenes of teenage parties and recurring use of bad language. The BBFC's Guidelines state that strong language (e.g. 'f***') may be passed at 12 or 12A, depending on the manner in which it is used, who is using the language, its frequency and any special contextual justification. This rating allows young teenagers to watch and understand the storyline. The opening scene contains violent actions which is not too disturbing therefore makes it permissible to be classified as a 12.

The British Board of Film Classification states that “moderate violence is allowed but it should not dwell on detail. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood, but occasional gory moments may be permitted if they can be justified by their context (for example brief sight of bloody injury in a medical drama).”

The film is targeted at both male and female audiences but can be liked more by female audiences as they seem to prefer psychological thrillers more than men.

• Our main protagonist is in the same age bracket as target audience so that they are able to understand more of what our protagonist is going through. It may be likely that some of the audience have experienced the same thing as our protagonist which makes it easier for them to relate to it.

• The setting is set in a familiar school atmosphere which again allows target audience to reflect on the action taking place.

• The unknown murder intrigues the audience as they wish to find out who drowned the girl.

• Suspense created through different camera angle shots and sound effects both diegetic and non-diegetic.

• We could promote our product through

social media sites like Twitter,

Facebook or Instagram as our target

audience spend most of their time

online so our film would catch their eye

quicker.

• We could also attract our young target

audience of teenagers with the use of

viral features, including elements of

phone wallpapers, film soundtrack,

free goodies or entertaining games.

5. HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

Throughout the process of producing our film, I was in charge of constructing the titles and making them suitable for our opening scene. In our rough cut I wasn’t sure of how to make the titles look original or suit out theme, therefore I decided to include the basic titles on iMovie which was really simple and didn’t look great. After that I decided to learn how to use aftereffects from YouTube videos and help from my class teacher. Learning how to use the programme was slightly easy because the functions of the programme was similar to the ones on Photoshop which I already knew how to use. This therefore made it easier for me to try and test different fronts and effects for our titles. I knew that our scene was based in the water so I wanted to create a ripple or drizzle effect that flowed with the water. This would make our titles look better and the similar effect was recurrent in all the titles.

6. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM

THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?