My roles within the entirety of the project

Although we all shared our ideas and helped within the whole of the planning and making of the video, all of our group members had control over certain elements in particular.

For example, my role within the project was focusing on the mise en scene factors of it. This meant I was mainly in charge of allocating a setting, deciding on make-up, costumes, the props used and the lighting featured. As I have covered the majority of these things previously in my blog I will not elaborate massively, just state my exact role.

Setting
Finding a suitable setting for our narrative was difficult because we didn't want to have a setting that was stereotypical to the thriller genre, e.g. a haunted house, cabin etc. We wanted something that was still applicable to the thriller genre yet not obvious. In order to find a suitable location, I made a list of all possible places that we could film.
                                                                                                             

                           

As you can see in the image above, I listed all the possibilities and then put them all into consideration, assessing why a few of the options may not be suitable.

Local Park: Although this location would have been easily accessible at any time, it is surrounded by a mass of houses which would have made our story line unrealistic - we couldn't have a kidnapped girl surrounded by houses containing people who could easily report the commotion to the police.

Abandoned Church: This setting would have been unique and interesting however I thought that maybe the audience would assume that there was potentially an underlying religious theme in our storyline - which was not the case. Similarly, it would have been hard for each group member to get to Ashford due to the issue of transportation and above all of this, I concluded that it would have been highly unlikely that we would be able to film there without gaining permission which may have been time consuming and difficult.

Shed in Evie's back garden: This setting was more of a back up plan than anything, incase we were unable to film at the orchard.

Orchard: The orchard was obviously what we went for in the end. I stated that I thought it would be an interesting place to film as not many people have even seen it nor heard of it before. In addition it has decaying facilities which aided us in achieving a creepy theme. There was also no issue within gaining permission to film there and Millie lives round the corner meaning we were able to leave filming equipment there and so on and retrieve it during certain points of the day.

Captsone field and Mote Park: Although I felt these two locations would be effective in the fact that they have a mass amount of 'spooky' woods, I realised that there would be no facilities for Evie to be 'trapped' in, which was a key feature within our film. In addition, both are public places and it would have been an issue trying to film with people regularly walking by.

Make-up, costumes, props and lighting:

Similarly to the setting, for these areas I researched what was most suitable for the thriller genre for each area. For example, I looked into make-up we could use on Evie to make her look scruffy and so on. I found many helpful videos in which we took inspiration from like the one I have put in below...

                                      

Final Evaluation: Question 7

                                                                Part 1 of Q7 Evaluation. 

Part 2 of Q7 Evaluation. 

I feel we have progressed majorly from our preliminary task. Although our prelim wasn't bad, as a group we had to adjust to the equipment we were using (e.g. the cameras and tripods) in order for our film to look as well presented as possible and being able to do such a varied task allowed us to gain experience using such equipment. We noted in our prelim that there were a few problems concerning our editing, for example our match on action wasn't the best that it could have been. We wanted to make sure we overcame these issues in our real film and I feel this is something we have achieved. Eventhough our film is mainly made of disjointed 'memories', there were still elements of it that had to match up, such as the police station section. When editing this particular part we took extra care to make sure it all flowed smoothly. having a smooth running piece makes it look far more professional and this is something we strived for.
Similarly, in our prelim no one was overly eager to act, seeing as we had no experience and didn't feel we could act in a way that was believable. With this being said we addressed the problem head on. We still wanted to use members of our group within our prelim as we felt this made it more personal and we would be able to manipulate it as we pleased without the fear of upsetting an outside actor/actress. Luckily, our film required very minimal actual acting - we used Evie to play the part of the main girl and all she had to do was the 'movements' as such, she didn't have to act out particular scenes. However, we did use her voice as our voice over. Again, the voice over is something I feel that shows our progression. In our prelim, the sound is one of the main things we struggled with, we managed to download music and place that over our existing clips but we did it very caustiously and felt we could have done a better job had we had experience. We went one step further with our real film and really tried to exceed our boundaries - choosing to have a voiceover as well as music was quite an ambitious decision. Regardless of our doubts, we successfully imported our voice over, over the sounds that can be heard in the actual clips. Alongside all of this, we actually made our own music too using garage band. We didn't use garage band for our prelim either, so this was something very alien to us, yet we still managed to produce what we feel is a great piece of music. I feel this is a clear improvement from our prelim to our real film.

                                         

Final Evaluation: Question 6

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Final Evaluation: Question 5

Q5: How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience in a number of ways...

Our storyline: Essentially our main aim was obviously to be able to attract our ideal audience through the use of our storyline. To achieve this we ensured the storyline was both relatable and intriguing to both females and males of any age group.

Characters: We distributed the roles equally - one female character and one male, we were equal to the genders. Again, the audience will be able to associate with characters of a similar age to them (e.g. the older audience may be able to associate with the older male within our film).
I asked people from these particular age groups to take a look at our opening sequence and give me some feedback;
My dad (Age 49) said: "The product was put together well, the clips run smoothly together and the transitions are not disjointed at all - it looks very professional. The music was different, not the sort of soundtrack that is frequently featured in thriller films but strangely, it works and manages to compliment the storyline at the same time. In regards to the older male character, I feel his age was portrayed well and the costume he was in was definitely representative of his age group. The same goes for the young girl".
My sister (Age 19) said: "The product was gripping and I definitely wanted to watch on, I have seen many thriller films and I felt this product fits in well within that genre, it managed to build the suspense slowly with a climax (the scream) at the end which gripped me. The location was really interesting, it appears to be an abandoned warehouse type of thing and that really intrigues me, if I were to pass it in real life I would be interested as to what was inside. I felt the teenage girl was portrayed well, the outfit she was in and the way her hair was styled is symbolic of the way many girls dress these days".

Music: We used creepy music that built speed, essentially building tension along with it - suitable for our target audience as they like something that keeps them on the edge of their seats and their brains ticking over.

Costume/props: Similar to the age groups of those represented (e.g. thought carefully about what Kate's dad should wear)

Set: abandoned warehouse type of thing - people our age are young and naive and would be intregued by something that is abandoned and essentially 'off limit', their rebellious sides making them want to go in. The fact that the young character was trapped in there would act sort of as a shock to the younger audience whereas the older audience would be able to associate with what we imagine the young  girls parents are going through.

Final Evaluation: Question 4

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The ideal audience for our media product would be mainly young adults - male or female, Although it could easily branch out to the older generation also. The context of our film has the ability to be flexible to a variation of ages as stated above. I feel this way because a range of themes are covered within our product that appeal to a mass audience, the themes cover things from kidnap to a more complex psychology side of things, for example; we see the main character slowly start to loose her wits and deteriorate. We felt that the film wouldn't really be appropriate for anyone under the age of 12 as the themes may be a little distressing to anyone younger and it could be difficult for them to follow with the flashbacks and such. Although there is no graphic violence or actual footage of sexual content etc within the short clip we produced, there may have been if we were to have made a full length film, again enforcing the idea that it wouldn't have been suitable for anyone under the age of 12. We decided that if we were to involve violence, drugs, sexual content or anything along those lines, that it would not be graphic as that means we would have had to raise the age limit to 18, which obviously reduces the amount of people that would be able to watch our film. I feel we were successful in the fact that our film is relatable to the age group we were aiming to attract.

Final Evaluation: Question 3

Q3: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I feel an British production company such as Metrodome Distribution (who were partly responsible for producing Cherry Tree Lane) would be most likely to distribute our media product. I feel a British production company would be the most suitable institution for our film mainly because I think our film is of a similar standard of the type of films they produce. Obviously we did not have high tech cameras or the type of equipment they would have, however our film could definitely not have been produced by a hollywood production company as usually they have extreme budgets and very high tech expensive equipment and software. Although I am aware any type of production company would have better resources than what was available to us, I feel British films are often a little rough around the edges and don't always have massively extravagant budgets - making them the most similar to our film. I think just using an independent production company would be best for our film seeing as if it were a real film it wouldn't have a massive budget and we filmed in a local, remote area so using this sort of production company would be most realistic.

Additionally, I feel British Production companies are the most likely to produce films with deeper types of themes (e.g. Drugs, rape and Kidnap) and they show these types of themes as they truly are whereas I feel American Production companies may try and powder them up slightly. So, with this being said and with our film displaying films of both Kidnap and physiological factors, a British production company would suit our film well.

A good example of some British Production companies work is the film 'The disappearance of Alice Creed' which features Gemma Arterton was produced by Isle of Man Film and CinemaNX. The film features the same theme of kidnap/abduction as ours and shares similar features such as low level lighting, the idea of using a vulnerable young girl as the main character, who, similar to our girl - is very cunning and plans an escape and the use of one main, remote location.

Final Evaluation: Question 2

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?


The main social group represented within our product was young teenage girls. We took inspiration for our female lead from the character Effy from the very popular UK Tv series Skins. We noted how Effy was of a similar age to ourselves and showed many similar charcteristics as we see in ourselves. She appears outgoing to the outside world however within the comfort of her own home we can see she is insecure and still has a sense of vulnerability and innocence about her. In addition to finding inspiration from her personality traits, we also found inspiration within her clothing choices - again, noting how we, as teenage girls would wear the sort of clothes she does. Effy is regularly seen in dull, baggy clothing and this is definitely something we tried to re-create within Evie's character.

As you can see from the image next to this text, the colour schemes of both Evie and Effy's outfits are very similar, with some items of clothing looking basically the same. Evie wore simple black leggings, an oversized baggy grey jumper and black doc marten shoes. We asked that Evie did not put too much effort into her makeup as we felt this would be inappropriate to have a very glamorous star acting as if she had been confined for numerous weeks. In regards to the outfit, we decided her outfit was a success as we personally would wear it as teenage girls ourselves and the fact that teenage characters wear similar things on television programmes suggests that is how the outside world sees us.


We also briefly covered the representation of middle aged males. We used Kate's dad to play our kidnapper and asked him to wear whatever he felt comfortable in. We felt the best way to represent his age group was to just let him do what he felt comfortable doing and wearing.