Evaluation

Teacher's Evaluation on Preliminary
Today we handed in our film after completion to show both our media teachers so they could evaluate what we have done well, and what we needed to improve on. From what we gathered our best part in this film is our use of lighting along with some exposure effects, which makes our film appear gritty. The main error in our film is the 180 degree rule; all we had to do was to switch one shot within the specified 180 degrees where we were shooting a scene in our preliminary task. These are good to know, so that we can improve on any future projects, including our main task.

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

To fulfil the film’s expectations of our film’s category, we used the enlistment of the typical conventions of a thriller genre and ticked the ones we used for the film. The rest of the unpicked criteria will be dealt with in the editing or for a possible re-shoot. We classed the film as a thriller mixed in with some horror elements, although it isn’t even partially a horror. 

The first key feature is commonplace with the thriller/horror is the threat in the film whose main objective is to strike terror in to innocent characters. Most thriller films with this convention involve their form of terror with the title of the film. An example would be the illustrious Hitchcock film vertigo, a film promising  the fear of heights to be the contributor of terror. Our film features the ‘hooded figure’ that comes up unexpectantly to bring the main character to his knees. It links well with the movie title ‘Monitored’ explaining how the hooded figure watches over the protagonist, however, he doesn't know that he isn't receiving hallucinations at all.

A shocking story in a thriller film is an effective aspect in gripping audiences to a lot of social issues and true stories, the actors try to capture the unfortunate roles that ordinary people endure through. We believe the character we created fits well in our thriller; our target audience would be incredibly sympathetic of his mental illness. The key moments are the ones that make him convincing such as; when he is terrified of the ‘hooded figure’, when we see him awake at around midnight (this part takes place at the start to bring people into the genre).

The various lighting effects are crucial in a thriller. The reason for using concentrating on bright and dark scenes depends on the situation happening in the scene. We believe we managed to experiment with lighting to portray mostly on the mood of the main character and to preferably indicate the increase of tension. Films such as se7en where they all use lighting but for lots of reasons, although trying to create tone and atmosphere. Terminator 2 uses lighting with machinery as they’re indicating the differences of groups.

Screen shot from Se7en. 
Lighting underlines the character's feelings

Screen shot from Monitored
The lighting is influenced by thriller films like Se7en. 

One feature that we focused very well is the build up to tense moments, they shrewdly led the jump-scare to have farther emphasis, so that they’re apparent to the audience. This may involve including more of these types of scenes for addition relevance or we could add some tense music over scenes if we haven't got time.

In terms of shots, establishing shots and long shots displaying the setting is a key feature in introducing atmospheric tones to the audience to endeavour further on; the audience will think about what they can expect from the film's characters, how they act and communicate with others, and a starter for building the plot based on the details of the scenery. As an example, my film has a long shot of the location the main character is situated. The dark night around the light exemplifies how he is scared and so he looks out for danger   

A screen shot from 'Monitored'.
The setting of the dark night and lonely character

Screen shot from Sucker Punch. Darkness surrounded by pitch blackness.
Characters in both films are 'beacons of the light' to show their innocence is being corrupted, represented by the darkness.

In terms of the tweaks being used to construct the film, the titles we used is a simple silver font suggesting mystery and bizarreness, the silver fits well with the modern setting of the film. We didn't want to distract the audience from the story so we kept the text very light in shots of importance so that the elements presented in the film flowed better. The fade transitions effect we used are plotted in several moments to build up the calm feel before the drastic change of transpiring suspense. The titles in my opinion were added in a style to fit with the thriller genre. 

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main group that is portrayed in the main task is the males in their late-teen. Our main task shows a stereotypical teenager with a certain attitude from lines he delivers; it fits quite with the 'youth' image as suggested by the general media. We wanted him to be a outcast of society, someone who is alienated by society for his mental flaws, we contrasted his isolation from the world through the darkness surrounding him, the fact the intro music is the only sound played to express his loneliness.

The main task appeals directly to the same as character’s categorised group, we believe from the majority of  films classed as a thriller the film’s genre is popular amongst them. Our main task is particularly representing to the zeitgeist social group of fashionable trends who are also outgoing and like a mystery packed with doubt. It raises awareness and tries to represent this social group of challenging adolescence. The film highlights the character's challenge of overcoming great evil that corrupts his mind, as we witness in the entire film that his face is showing his internal suffering.

The clothes he wears are fashionable within industry, his chinos and printed shirt are all trends set out to target young people. The reason for their want for being ‘in the now’ is that they are constantly pressured to conforming for acceptance in peer groups. We believe this relates to the zeitgeist of ‘fashionable teens’, by having our character wear stylish apparels assists with the intended stereotype creating a much more enthralling film. In addition, the opening shares a lot of evidence about the protagonist through the variation of shot types with long durations, these capture his ensemble of wears as we purposely wanted the opening to provide meanings for connecting the audience to the character.

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

The main task is among lots of low budget productions made by ambitious directors, This may be the case that our film has reasonable chance with these big studios want to acquire original ideas and they take on board many independent films that have a huge potential for a much wider audience. Paranormal Activity is an example of an Independent film acquired by Paramount Pictures, which eventually got a worldwide response. I believe the film will venture into a prominent position if it is released as a general Internet release on popular sharing-based websites such as YouTube and Facebook. I could go the extra mile and try to get into contact with media companies, and see if there is possible support for my film.

Paranormal Activity - An Independent Feature distributed by Paramount Pictures
, a major Hollywood Studio

Another low-priced method for distribution is exhibiting our work at Film festivals My film can be distributed by The Co-operative Film Festival, they aim at encouraging young people to co-operate, develop creativity and express themselves. This will immediately show large film industries the high quality from the small industries can produce.

Normally in the film world ruled by multinational dominant executives, a distributor persuades the exhibitors to use their film to be displayed on Cinema screams, DVDs and Blu-Rays etc. It is unlikely that a huge, distributor will take on my film and attempt to exhibit it. My main supplying tactic for the film is to contact companies that would be associated with my creation such as Empire, a huge magazine company; the content is everything to do with film. Empire’s goal as a company is to distribute and make money from advertising blockbusters in their content. I on the other hand, would look for the cheapest methods.

Empire Magazine - One of the biggest film magazine companies 
promoting blockbuster films

4. Who would be the audience for you media product?

We decided that the main task's target audience is directed towards older teenagers and young adults. They are the only audience who can identify with our main character's familiarity of their social groups since the opening contains the simplistic dialogue and adopted accent which is standard for this type of character, it’s between Victorian English and colloquial language consisting of slang phrases and words.

In order to obtain a greater understanding of any features from our film idea that may interest someone was to hand out a questionnaire determining our chosen viewers (which can be found on the research section of the blog). I handed copies to a variety of our estimated audience of young people and adults. The questionnaire revealed that the majority would be attracted by a thriller with the conventional features and they would love to see distinctiveness if the film was a hybrid (we went on to turning our film in to a hybrid of Horror & Thriller).  

Presently in Hollywood films, most Thrillers are targeted towards young people such as Hitchcock's Psycho, a 15 certificate, this is predominate because they are now targeted by the media as a source of income as many children receive one either from their parents or who work. Young as a whole are a type of audience who has a lack of responsibility such as paying the bills and keeping up with the rent; subsequently, they are more likely to be spending their money on luxurious items and events such as the cinema. It is inevitable, in our opinion, that the narrative aspect of the opening contains enigma codes that will eventually leave audiences left with unanswered questions.

Scenes such as the famed shower scene from Psycho is what gave the film a 15 certificate.

I believe that our film does not have an audience too limited of its Hybrid elements of Horror and Thriller. The reason for this has a potential success alongside all the other films that succeeded in the same field as me. Popular films like ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, ‘Psycho’ are among the most popular horror/thriller films.

The idea behind gathering an audience who love these particular films is to have them brought into the dramatic storyline no matter how frightening or sympathetic the characters are, audiences have an interest in these films and gives them a ‘thrill’ from being put on ‘the edge of their seat’.

The situation we presented in our film is portraying story-lines similar to other thrillers that contain meanings behind the film of controversial topics, this reflects the age certificate these Thrillers are rated and they reflect our possible target audience.  A reasonable proposed audience for our film would be the general British public who are just interested in current affairs or cases that concern current social issues.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I believe there are a number of entertaining aspects from the film that are capable of attracting the viewers. The character’s actions presented at the start such as; when he is wide awake at midnight, looking out his window and looking at his clock; it encourages viewers the possibilities of what’s going to occur for the main character, and what the meaning is of his actions.

Also, the film goes straight to captivating audiences with the background enigmatic music enables to reflect on the perplexity of the shots happening at the start. The most important feature for a film to have is variety for the target audience to indulge themselves in satisfaction, to attract them; I have included an influx of different shot types to have variety. Variety is what keeps people interested, having the same shot type distracts attention and it’s unprofessional. Another aspect in attracting the audience is to have stand-out text in shots where they can be seen, luckily, the opening was very dark for the text to show itself off.  Having the film set at night-time attracts my audience experience the distressing situation arising in the film, the ‘Thriller ‘content  is what the audience prefer. They like fear factor, a by-product of the narrative and the threat in the film.

Like most Thrillers, they a protagonist and a antagonist. The antagonist is symbolic character that makes the audience interested. The best way as to why it interests our target audience of mostly teens is that the representations in the film embraces communicating and understanding the disapproval they receive in reality. 

I feel the attraction of our film draws people closer because of the messages behind the story, it raises awareness presenting a reality check on the current situation intervening with the viewer's mind on how the real the film is, this way of attraction is what makes the film more memorable. The scenes shown in this film plays a role in presenting how our personal freedoms are violated by the government, highlighting the facts such as; the increase of CCTV cameras and privacy online. The Hooded Figure represents how society looks down upon the youth who is represented by the protagonist. The youth are considered deviant and trouble-making and up to know good, whereas, the antagonist represents all that is invading the person(s) privacy and well-being.   

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

My most useful lesson in using technology was mainly using the Internet as a source for producing efficiently in various areas of the film-making process. I was able to learn about a different type of website called 'Royalty-free music', sites like Soundcloud allowed you to download sounds that the exam board were advising us to use, this was because using copyrighted material was not prohibited for the making of our film. It was the large amount of resources on the Internet that reduced the time for decision making on specific music/sounds. The fact that the complexity of the Internet showed us the essentials we needed for our film to become what we anticipated.

During production, I was sceptical about knowing what shot types were required from the initial ideas I had, however, I was wrong completely; I got the hang of becoming a decent cinematographer using the camera and transferring the storyboard to the real thing. I naturally started to find the right shots that I believed to be enticing. Although, the entire film was shot but I wasn't impressed after Liam's finished editing the clips together, we decided there wasn't much variety of camera angles or any meaning behind them. In general, time and patience was key to perfecting the film visually. I also gained experience with experimenting with exposure for shots, my most proud shot was the silhouette shot of the protagonist leaving his room. Putting lighting equipment in different positions and seeing what the camera sees enabled me to find quality in shots. I believe as a downside, I should of used this lighting technique often for all the shots collectively.

I learnt about making blogs, and using the website Blogger and all of its features. The pages and posts options were a bit baffling to start with as it was hard to structure and order my work accordingly so everyone can access information easily, I then realised all the posts were shown on the homepage and use the other pages would not allow posts so I uploaded everything with sub-headings to make it clear. It was amazingly easy to use Blogger, but saving work can be frustrating when sometimes it glitches up writing to look different, or even position images or videos in weird ways that I don't want them to be, there are odd occasions when it's 'not responding' and you have no choice but to get off the page and lose all unsaved changes. On the whole, I've learnt that I am able to share my work to inform viewers, in a sense, the site is a very innovative idea in receiving feedback from people, getting criticism from other people helped improve my blog better. 

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

The biggest lesson in the time we are set must be used appropiately and not to be wasted, to focuss on film-making is what keeps minds occupied in creating new ideas. Having to buckle down and filming the main task was helpful in devopling ideas to replace the flaws we made in the preliminary. I have also learnt that we could bring redemption to shots made in the preliminary, as the the main task has the same plot. An example would be how fear should be presented, in the preliminary, the lead up to the villain was too quick and needed development in order to question the appearance of the threat. We redeemed this by having a cameo (in the opening) for the hooded figure and let him mould in to the mysterious character for the audience to feel the strain of discovering.

Previously, communication was not planned out accordingly; it included not using the time to find out whether our actor and my partner were free on the days we could film. It was difficult as we were caught up with doing coursework and homework on different days, plus we didn't stay in regular contact much. Now, the importance of completing the main task changed our opinion on being lethargic, we were destined to get top marks this time and restoring what we considered 'an attempt' at film-making at A-Level standard.

In general, I learnt valuable lessons I would say I have learnt a lot about a lot of things throughout this course. I have really enjoyed it and it has really opening my eyes to the world of film making. As I want to be an editor or a director of photography when I am older, this year has really helped me realise what I could expect. To be honest, I am looking forward to it. I have also learnt to appreciate film makers. I thought it would be a lot easier than it actually is. It is really hard but you at the end of the whole process you realise that it was all worth it.


It can be really hard to make a film. Especially If you dont have much money or recorses to do it but I would really recommend it. I thought it would not take to long to make a film but after today I learnt that it is a really lengthy process. It took a good month to edit an opening for a film so imagine making the full piece. I would happily make the full film if I could, just because I feel like I could tell more of the story of the character and I would really enjoy making it as I have enjoyed making the opening.