1B Leam Evaluation: AS Media: Foundation Portfolio

Introduction

For my AS Media project I decided to produce a two minute long opening sequence with my partner Daniel Collinson. Rather than cast individual roles we decided to each do a bit of every role and equally contribute half to the project. I drew a storyboard, came up with the final synopsis, filmed part of the sequence, featured in part of it (in the abandoned shooting cabin), edited half of it and picked music which fitted the mood.

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

As a horror opening sequence the main aim of the piece is to successfully hold the attention of an audience of horror fans and make them want to watch the rest of the film to discover the narrative resolution. I think the sequence is effective to this end as it establishes the genre as horror by incorporating the conventions of the horror, and creates enigmas to keep the audience wanting to watch.
The conventions used were the eerie non diegetic soundtrack, isolated and derelict settings such as the forest and the shack on the moor, low key lighting, restrictive close-ups, a general gloomy undertone, a victim and a killer who’s face is not revealed.

To create an immediate enigma and to challenge the general horror opening conventions which establish the isolated location we decided to open straight into the chaos and disequilibrium of the flashback. This is intriguing and immediately grabs the audiences attention. I think this works well as it creates immediate enigmas and is a change from the classical narrative version of horror which some fans may have become slightly bored with.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In terms of our representation we chose to keep them simple and quite stereotypical so that we could give our full attention to creating a mood with our film piece, and so audiences could easily relate to the characters we have portrayed.
The killer is represented as the stereotypical “criminal”. We dressed him in dark clothing with his hood up concealing his face, an average height Caucasian male who preys on females in secluded locations.
The victim is also represented in the classic way, a young blonde woman. The mise en scene shows that’s she is a teenager as she is dressed in converse, skinny jeans and eyeliner, the typical attire of today’s youth.

Also like a classical victim her only use in the narrative is to die and thus give the male protagonist a quest to partake in. She adheres to the common horror convention of the female victim and we kept her simple as to not confuse the audience about her role, they should pity her and nothing more.

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

As this film is a category A British film it will only sell well in Britain, therefore a British Production and distribution company would be required. The British Film Council may help fund the film with their New Cinema Fund and could help with distributions through their Prints and Advertising Fund. Another distribution company is Blue Dolphin who are a small British distributor/financer who would fit nicely with the style of our film. I think they would consider making our production as it is an innovative category A film which provides realism and an accurate representation of Britain whilst being entertaining and having a chance to draw a wide audience due to the hybridity and artistic flair used.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Are target audience for the production are people between the age of 16 - 35 years old, because this is the most frequent cinema going group and also the group with the most disposable income to spend on cinema tickets, DVD’s and merchandise. As for socio-economic status I would say A-C1 as again they have the most disposable income, they also have the knowledge required to fully appreciate the complex enigmas and artistic style used in our film. People from lower socio-economic groups are less prepared to sit and watch an independent art film as they are more attracted to the escapism Hollywood provides. The must also be fans of the horror genre, but as our film is a hybrid fans of the thriller and drama genres may also get something out of our film.

How did you attract/address your audience?

In order to attract our target audience we made our film visually interesting by playing with colour and black and white plus the use of lighting to help improve visual impact. The soundtrack was carefully mixed and timed in order to create maximum visceral effect and horror undertone. In order to give an experienced horror audience something new we decided to start with disrupted equilibrium with quick pace and editing, and have the odd slow paced colour shot to add intrigue and create an interesting sequence whilst maintaining the horror conventions.

What this does achieve is creating many enigmas which make the audience want to keep watching so they can find out what is truly going on. The film “Memento (2000)” also uses non chronological editing to create enigmas, in that film the viewer must watch the entire film to find out how it begins. To make sure our film wasn’t too confusing though we used a narrative voiceover to roughly clarify what is happening in the sequence. As the film is a category A film stars were not used as we thought a star would detract from the gritty realism we were going for. By opening with a chase scene a binary opposition is immediately established which creates interest in the audience. Why is he chasing her?

The most simple of enigmas but it can also be the most effective.

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

product?

Technology has been an invaluable part of making this project a reality for the zero budget and time scale we had. The editing programme “imovie” allowed us to use otherwise expensive editing effects easily and for free. Carrying portable hard drives allowed us to transport data, images and sound from computer to computer with ease. Using digital video was the greatest point as we could easily import, edit, export and burn our film with no cost of having film reels made, or cutting by hand. We also used dynamic microphones and a mixing board to allow us to record the voice over, this again worked well as we could split up the digital voice file in editing and make sure the timings were right, also it allowed us to do multiple takes without incurring any extra costs. Video sites such as Youtube have proven useful in the planning stage for looking at opening sequences from other horror films we didn’t have access to and seeing what worked well in their productions, such as “Dog Soldiers” for example. The use of video to document our audience feedback was also very useful as you can see peoples real reactions to the product.

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

I think our final product is far superior to our preliminary task. My film making skills have vastly improved during the course of making the opening sequence and this becomes evident when comparing the two pieces. One of the biggest let downs in our preliminary task was the badly done match on action. But the match on action when the victim falls over in our final piece is smooth and does not draw attention to itself. We also developed a far greater knowledge of the use of sound to create a mood. I think the soundtrack in the final piece fit’s the action perfectly and lends to a much more visceral feeling than the sound used in the preliminary task. Our composition and use of cinematography in general is probably the most noted change. In the preliminary task it didn’t go far beyond just pointing the camera at the subject and capturing them on film. In our final piece however we used every type of shot from extreme close up to extreme long shot. We also incorporated the rule of thirds to make the film visually appealing, as well as using cants and high and low angles to give hints about characters personalities. In our final piece we also played with lighting more to make our film look more visually interesting, in the preliminary task we hadn’t even given a thought to lighting. The same applies with the use of colour, our main piece contrasting black and white against colour to make the colours seem more vivid and the black and white more cold and sombre.

Conclusion

The project went rather smoothly and I managed to work well with my partner and produce a visually interesting opening sequence which sets up enigmas and establishes genre. I think a strong point of the project is that it is very effective in the way it creates a dark sinister almost disturbing visceral tone. An audience of horror veterans would enjoy this feeling and would expect good things of the rest of the production. My only criticism is that we did not include any close ups of the killers sister in the future to display her distraught expression. But I don’t think the absence of this shot distracts from the overall feel so it is not a big loss. I very much enjoyed working on the project and my only wish is that we had had a bigger production budget and the chance to make the full feature film as I would have very much enjoyed the challenge.

Leam Burfield