Sol Goss's AS blog

Monday 25 March 2013

Question 1) In what ways does your media product us, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Location:

Location is very important when establishing the genre of a film. Our group decided that in order to establish the genre of 'Transit' and to connote to the characters, the use of a gritty, dirty, unglamorous location would be most suitable. We wanted a similar gritty feel to 'Kidulthood' and TV drama 'Top Boy', the majority of times both of these media products are set in London council estates. We felt like Anglia Square car park gave a similar feel and look to a council estate becuase it is a very dull building, like a council estate found in London, these tend be dull, gritty looking buildings. It is an open setting which has many claustrophobic areas within it, it is also isolated and empty adding to that dullness.

Adding to this, using an empty car park had a lot of advantages. One of them being that the emptiness within the car park connotes Johns emptiness within the world, the location creates a feeling of it being detached from the world which is like the mysterious character in our thriller 'Transit', John. The main influence with our decision to use a car park was influenced by the music video for 'Angel ' by Massive Attack. In the music video we see many great examples of chiaroscuro lighting. These are two examples of how our thriller develops conventions of real media products.

In Danish TV crime thriller drama 'The Killing' the use of a car park shows suspicious events and actions. Car parks may be popular among crime thrillers because they are usually well covered, secure places which always have a sense of detachment from the environment.

(6 minutes in with this clip from 'The Killing' showing suspicious events)

Costume

A screenshot from 'Ill manors' showing a few youths wearing black clothing

Because of us going for a 'Kidulthood' and 'Top Boy' gritty approach to the opening, we knew straight away to base John's costume on Sam's from 'Kidulthood'. We also took into consideration the apparel worn by many youths around urban areas like London so that we could add more to that gritty atmosphere which is found in these real media products. Johns costume includes him wearing full black, a hoodie with his hood up as well as a hat underneath to represent those attempting to conceal their identities in films such as 'Ill manors' and again 'Kidulthood'. Johns costume attempts to challenge the costume in real media products because Johns costume has slim fitting black jeans, whereas in the image from 'Ill Manors' they all seem to be wearing blue very loose fitting jeans, this is a way in which our media product challenges real media products.

An image of John which shows his black slim fitting jeans

Camera angles and shot types

A wide variety of camera angles and shot types were used in 'Transit'. This is because we wanted to engage the audience as well as show the isolation of the location from several angles. The opening shot of John at the very beginning of 'Transit' had influences from the tracking shot of Josh towards the beginning of Australian crime thriller 'Animal Kingdom'. This shot is important because it shows that our thriller opening is not just influenced from films about troubled youths like 'Kidulthood'. Josh from 'Animal Kingdom' is walking up into a dangerous and wild world like that of John who is walking up into a detached, gritty and dangerous location.

Title

The name of our thriller opening is 'Transit', we decided to use this name because it directly relates to the action. The word transit is defined as the carrying of people, goods, or materials from one place to another. Firstly there is the transportation of Bill who is in the white van, and secondly the transportation of a black bag with unknown content inside it which is being delivered to Hanna by John. there are 2 actions of transportations which is why we found the title 'Transit' suitable. Another influence upon the name would be the white van, the most popular and well known van is the Ford Transit.

Soundtrack

The choice of soundtrack was inspired by crime thriller 'Drive', when 'Tick of the clock' - Chromatics is played over the opening getaway scene. We decided to choose a soundtrack similar to this because we wanted to slowly increase the suspense and tension; within 'Tick of the clock' the music is lowered, dying down which represents the tension at a climatic point.

Question 1) In what ways does your media product us, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

(6 minutes in with this clip from 'The Killing' showing suspicious events)

Costume

A screenshot from 'Ill manors' showing a few youths wearing black clothing

An image of John which shows his black slim fitting jeans

Question 2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Menacing stereotypical Afro-Caribbean youths, with concealed identities

Transit', our thriller opening, interacts with several different social groups. Firstly, the representation of young males from an ethnic minority has a reinforced stereotype, this is done through the character John, who is from an Afro-Caribbean background. His presence within 'Transit' is very mischievous and appears to be damaging to society due to his dodgy role. His costume is full black (excluding the white t-shirt) and has his hood up which suggests that John is trying to conceal part of his identity. We chose this form of costume for John because it portrays a realistic representation of adolescent males in urban areas in society. Johns costume is also very similar to the appearence of young males in the London riots, who wore hoodies and other forms of apparel to disguise their identities because of the crimes they were committing. His realistic representation portrays that he is a shifty and possibly dangerous character, through his costume. So this makes the audience assume that he is a dangerous character who is up to no good, a reason why we chose this costume for him. This is how John reinforces the stereotype, however, his common stereotype of Afro-Caribbean young males is switched and he becomes the victim of what possibly could be seen as a racist attack as he is threatened by a white male in his 40's named Bill; reversing the stereotype of what is portrayed by the media.These are ways and reasons how our media product represents specific social groups. Although this representation of a deviant youth is from an ethnic minority, it may offend ethnic minority communities because it strengthens the negative representation of this group which is shown by the media.

An image of John in his stereotypical costume

Secondly, we have Bill, the oldest character who is a white male. Like John, Bill conveys to stereotypes but also breaks certain representations. For instance Bill is an electrician in his early to mid 40's, he is represented in what is typical for a handy-man - in heavy duty work wear. Bill is hostile to John in the opening of 'Transit' and the audience view Bill as a more trust worthy character than John because part of Bill's career is to be in other peoples houses as he is an electrician, he is also in his early to mid 40's which effects hi stereotype, because this age category doesn't suffer the bad publicity as youths, John's age group. John stereotypically is the character who is feared more than a male in his 40's like Bill who has a career to focus whereas John is seen as the menacing character.

Furthermore, Bill breaks the stereotype by being the older white male who is alarming and feared considering that John stereotypically has this fear to his character.

The representation of females in 'Transit' is limited due to there being only being one female role. The only female role in 'Transit' is Hanna, who's role is fairly minor. Hanna breaks the stereotype of women in film by costume. Her costume is that of an average dressed teenager of the modern day, and doesn't have a glamorous costume like those found being worn by femme fatale's such as Eve in 'Once Upon a Time in America' whose costume features pearls (to signify tears) and another femme fatale being Laura Manion in 'Anatomy of a Murder' (1959) whose costume involves the revealing of skin, unlike Hanna's costume.

Laura Manion from 'Anantomy of a murder' note that skin visible

Hanna may partly break her stereotype, however reinforces a female stereotype with in film, when she is found dead in the lift and therefore represents the stereotype of the traditional femme fatale being the victim and is killed because they are defenseless. A way our group could have played a twist and reversed this stereotype is that we could have made it that Hanna defends her self successfully from her attacker, and make an escape. This representation of female youths could possibly offend those wanting help bring gender equality particularly in film, because we are not promoting gender equality. An example of a character with a strong lead in a film would be Lisbeth Salander in 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' and if were to expand upon 'Transit' to make it a full film, then flashbacks of Hanna would be included and possibly show how she is a strong female character, like Lisbeth Salander. Hanna's look is based on Lisbeth Salander, noting the hair.

'The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo' - Lisbeth Salander

As a group, we decided to base Hanna on protagonist from the action thriller 'Hanna'. Hanna (from the action thriller 'Hanna') is a 16 year old who was raised by her father to be a skillful assassin. She is perfectly able to defend herself from those wanting to kill her. However Hanna from 'Transit' is killed off in the lift.

Traditionally in thrillers the female character is a passive victim, for example in the thriller 'Psycho'.

Hanna from 'Transit' having a very similar appearance to Lisbeth Salander

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

If 'Transit' was to be produced into a full length film, small independent film companies such as Revolver Entertainment would be likely to fund and distribute it. Revolver Entertainment have distributed films such as 'Kidulthood' and 'Ill Manors' which have a target audience of 15-21 year olds, a very similar target audience to that of 'Transit’. ‘Transit’ contains similar locations and characters recognisable to those in films distributed by Revolver Entertainment like ‘Kidulthood’. ‘Transit’ also puts a twist on ethnic stereotypes which challenges ethnic stereotypes, however also reinforces ethnic stereotypes like that in ‘Kidulthood’. The editing techniques used in ‘Tranist’ are similar those found in films distributed by Revolver Entertainment. For example the de-saturated editing gives a gritty look to the film ‘Kidulthood’, the editing techniques used in ‘Transit’ is another reason why it would be distributed by Revolver Entertainment.

In its present form as a short opening to an unmade film, ‘Transit’ may be more suitable on the internet for home viewing. YouTube would be most appropriate for its distribution because of its popularity, over 800 million unique users’ visit YouTube each month and over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html YouTube statistics). Another benefit of YouTube is its distribution to a worldwide audience with no fee to upload the opening to our film. Another advantage of using YouTube as the distributer for ‘Transit’ is that the internet is very easily accessible through multimedia devices such as iPods and smartphones, making YouTube easily available.

Because of ‘Transit’ being an opening to a thriller, it would not be suitable for cinema viewing because of it only being an opening. However if produced into a feature length film, independent cinemas such as Cinema City (Norwich) would be more beneficial to screen ‘Transit’ rather than a multiplex such as Odeon or Vue because of ‘Transit’ having an art house feel and Cinema City exhibit “a wide range of features spanning, art-house, independent, documentary and world cinema films as well as Hollywood blockbusters".

Question 4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

Anglia Square car park (Location of our thriller)

London council estate

Transit, our thriller opening, aims at a young male audience aged between 16-25 years old. To begin with, location in our thriller is used to show a specific demographic within our target audience. For example our location lacks the qualities of a pleasant environment, creating a very dim and gritty atmosphere. This location is a lot similar to council estates across the UK, like the image found in London. The scenery of where our thriller is set is rundown and dirty. The location reflects the behavior associated with people who live in council estates, they are stereotyped to have a negative reputation for anti-social behavior; such as violence. This links to the type of action and characters which would be featured in our thriller opening, due to the reputation this type of setting has. Across the UK approximately 30% of people live in council housing, we can expect a large number of these would be included within our demographic because they can relate to the setting and possibly the situations. This makes 'Transit' appealing to those who live in council housing.

Characters from 'Top Boy'

Secondly, the characters within our media product help establish who the target audience is. The characters John is between the aimed age range. Following this, John is a 17 year old male part of an ethnic minority who is identified to be wearing mainly black clothing. His clothing is a lot similar to the clothing seen in the TV drama 'Top Boy' where the colour black is manly worn because of its shady representation, John is also seen with his hood up which may be because he is trying to hide his identity making him have this intimidating feel. The audience is widened because of John being from an ethnic minority, there will be varied races and not just from the majority being Caucasian. John can be understood to being viewed as several types of characters which can relate to the target audience.

Our demographic of 16-25 year old males would most likely enjoy films with a similar setting or a gritty atmosphere. Films and TV dramas such as 'Kidulthood' and 'Top Boy' feature a similar setting to our thriller opening as well as ethnic minority characters. On the IMDB user ratings for 'Kidulthood', males under 18 gave this film the highest ratings because they can relate to the characters, the main reason how they can relate to the characters is because of the age they are. The film follows a group of troubled 15 year-olds growing up in west London. Also another way in which the males under 18 could relate to the film is by the location of the film, being west-London. Many of the raters would be from London and other big cities which are similar to London in setting. Also 'Kidulthood' includes a variety of races, the majority being black and white meaning that it would be popular between both these races.


'Kidulthood' poster showing a mixture of both black and white youths

With Top Boy, the majority of voters were males and the highest ratings were 'males under 18' and 'Aged under 18', which again similar to 'Kidulthood' a lot of people can relate to the location. If the user rating had a section with race, then I would say that 'Top Boy' would be more popular among black and white people. 'Top Boy' follows mainly black characters among gang culture making it more popular with blacks because they can relate to the race of the majority of characters. There are around 1,088,600 black British people in Greater London, however the black population forms around 3.3% of the UK's population (2011 statistics) this is why 'Top Boy' would be popular among both blacks and whites.

Question 5) How did you attract/address your audience?

Question 5)

Questionnaires were essential in gaining effective feedback for our thriller opening, ‘Transit’. After ‘Transit’ was viewed, I electronically sent both males and females within the age range of 16-21 the questionnaire. I thought that this age range would be most suitable because of our demographic being between these ages. Also due to our demographic being 16-21 year old males, the majority of people I sent the questionnaires were to be males, however females also took part so that I could benefit from having a fair rating from the audience (this also meant I could see which gender found it most appealing). Because of ‘Transit’ having a male target audience, my evidence of questionnaires has been chosen from 2 males and 1 female.

As evident from the feedback on the questionnaires, both negative and positive feedback was received. The positive feedback which was given includes: easy understanding of the narrative, and good use of camera work and editing. It could be said that a reason why 2 of the participants in my samples gave the understanding of the narrative 4 out of 5 (the other scored it 5 out of 5) is because of it being a linear narrative. This means that it's a sequential narrative which has a beginning, a middle and an end in that order. Story techniques such as flashbacks were not included within the narrative. This could be attractive to our audience because it means that a great level of detail is not needed when watching 'Transit'.

Accompanying this, another aspect of 'Transit' which showed popular by the questionnaire was the good use of camera work and editing. In all 3 samples it was given 5 out of 5, which is most likely because of our groups choice of using DSLR cameras in manual focus which enables contrasting depths of field; giving a more professional feel and cinematic look. Also with the editing we made the decision to decrease the saturation and included a green tint to the edit. The use of DSLR cameras would have attracted part of our audience because it gives a cinematic look to the thriller opening, giving that cinematic feel which some people may look for.

Furthermore, the soundtrack showed to be an attractive factor for people who took part in the questionnaire, they all said it reflected well with the film. One participant stated that 'it reflects the grittiness well', the soundtrack may have been very appealing to to the audience because the soundtrack includes a fast playing beat and instruments as it plays on. The soundtrack also has a very intense modern feel to it creating a sense of a tight, gritty atmosphere. The advantage of using a modern sounding soundtrack means that it fits our thriller because of it being set in the present day, using a soundtrack with an old feel to it would not fit era its set in, and could possibly confuse the audience. This is another reason why the soundtrack showed popular among the audience. The soundtrack had a huge impact on clearly notifying the audience that 'Transit' is the opening to a film in the thriller genre, a reason why on the questionnaire every participant gave the question 'is the production clearly the opening of a thriller film' a 4 or 5 out of 5.

The shot of John which is difficult to view

As well as positive notes, there were also negative issues with 'Transit'. For example one of the issues involved was lighting. One participant of the questionnaire noted that 'there was a scene where the lighting was very dark'. This attendant of the questionnaire gave the question 'how do you rate the standard of mise-en-scene to include colour, figure, lighting, objects?' an average mark of 3 out of 5. I believe that his reason for this is mainly because of the issue of lighting in one of the scenes, where it is a little difficult to view. This is an example of how the mise-en-scene was dark making it unclear in certain scenes; like when the character John went down to pick up the watch. This can give the effect of loosing the audiences attention with the action. What we should have done was consider the use of using lighting during this shot, which would have massively improved the scene.

Another issue which was raised by a participant of the questionnaire was that 'the link with the watch took me a time to work out' when asked the question 'was there any parts you found confusing or hard to understand'. This link with the watch was proposed to be a vital part within the opening becasue it was there to build tension and suspense in the thriller and let the audience know that something very negative was going to happen. And if the audience didn't fully understand this, then it wouldn't hook them to watch the rest of the film. I feel that the reason this participant found it difficult to understand the link with the watch was due to lighting. If lit well, then the scene would have been much clearer, making it a lot easier to see what was going on. Another way our group could have made this link clearer would be by including a flashback. This flashback would have to include John handing over the watch to Hana and also what this would have done is show a stronger link between the 2 characters.

Regardless of this the use of intertextual references is another technique which would help hook an audience into watching the full film. References to other films are included within 'Transit' for instance when John approaches the white van and finds both van doors wide open creating a menacing shot which makes the audience ask questions. This is an intertextual reference to Australian crime thriller 'Animal Kingdom', when 2 policemen approach an abandoned car with both of its doors wide open. Intertextual references help hook the audience by making them feel intelligent that they've found a link between a scene or shot. In such a way interetextual references would help hook an audience because the members of the audience to work/notice the reference may have enjoyed the film that it is linked to, allowing them to think that this is worth watching because it has influences from that film; In the case of 'Transit' the film 'Animal Kingdom' has been referenced.

'Animal Kingdom' shot of the car with the doors open

'Transit' shot of the van with the doors open

A generic convention of thrillers we used, were the use of enigmas. For example an enigma in 'Transit' was the black bag, and the content inside this. This is unknown and this enigma allows room for other enigmatic questions to be asked by the audience, such as why does Bill have such an interest in John and Hanna? An enigmas intention is to create mystery so that the audience can keep interest and try answering the unanswered questions. In the questionnaire samples the participants said that the sequence held their attention and 2 participants scored it 4 out 5, the other 5 out 5. The use of enigma's would have helped influence this to hold and hook their attention.

Next, one of the females who participated in the questionnaire said that she wouldn't watch the full film if made, when asked the question 'would the opening inspire you to watch the rest of the film'. It was not stated why she wouldn't. But it can be presumed that this may be because of the only female character in the opening being Hanna is killed off very early on. This may give the assumption that the rest of the film may only have a male cast. What we can learn from this is that we may not have produced an opening that is attractive to the female audience, however this was not the target audience we were looking for.

Having 'Transit' set in the present day means that costume is going to be up to date; costume could be seen as an attractive factor to the audience because it means that the audience can relate to what the characters are wearing. Another important factor to take note of is that when addressing the audience, we made the decision to do it in an emotionally detached away. The reason for this is because the audience would have found it difficult to relate to the character John as a result of his numb response to the finding of Hanna's dead body in the lift.

Altogether, the use of questionnaires worked well in finding the audiences responses. It was a quick and easy to understand way of seeing how well we attracted/addressed our audience. It can also be gathered that our group addresses and attracted our audience effectively because the lowest mark out of 10 for the rate of the overall product was 9. However the killing of the female in the opening didn't show to be popular among females. This suggests that it put off certain females in watching the full film if it was made.

Overall though, the most important factor to take into consideration of attracting an audience to keep their attention, would be the cliffhanger. It is one of the most important elements with the opening because it provides that hook which is needed. Our cliffhanger involves Bill's boot aggressively being placed in the elevator door, preventing it to shut and makes it open. We decided that this would be an attention grabbing cliffhanger to make sure that the audience wouldn't loose attention in the action. This also makes the audience ask questions as to what happens next?

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

Technology has enabled us to construct our thriller opening in a variety of ways. In order for our group to gain the knowledge to construct a thriller opening, research was essential. Watching the opening to several thriller films was key, however to extend upon this, the internet played an important role within technology to construct an opening. For example IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base) allows access to thousands of films and multiple information on them including: movie ratings, cast, reviews, photos and trailers. It is also possible to gain information on demographics, which was useful when researching because we could see the demographic for a certain film which was similar to ours, to identify target audience.

Another way in which the internet vital were websites such as YouTube. YouTube allowed me to embed videos onto my blog, this meant I could embed a trailer or a scene from a particular film when doing a case study. For example I embedded a scene from 'Heavenly Creatures' when doing a case study on the film.

Another final use of the internet was being able to get access to 'blogger'. I had no previous use in using a blog before starting media studies. The advantage of using a blog is that it's electronic, this means that work can be easily monitored and feedback is much easier to keep track of. Once I got the hang of using a blog, i found them much easier and more efficient to use, rather than doing handwritten work.Organization is also much easier than doing work handwritten because there isn't the option to physically loose it and also with the use of labels, work is organized much clearer.

An example of using the manual focus

When it came to filming our thriller opening, our group decided that we wanted a different feel to the opening. Our group aimed to acquire a cinematic look using two DSLR camera's (Nikon D3100 & Canon 550D) that could record in 1080p HD format. The use of the camera's meant that we could manually focus on specific points, this helped give our footage a more cinematic feel we were looking for.

When it came to editing our final cut, we used iMovie. The initial choice of software was to use Adobe Premier to edit the final product. Unluckily we were unable to use it because it didn't come on the laptop we were working on, so therefore we had to use iMovie. The member of my group I was working with to edit the final product very quickly learnt the basics of using iMovie and easily taught me how to use it as well. The precise trimming function on iMovie was something that was founf to be very useful. This function allowed us to cut and match clips to the millisecond creating a constant fluid motion between shots that do not include transitions.The effect of using this meant that action was not 'jumpy' in any way and had a very smooth flow.

Colour correction and grading setting

To add to this, a setting that i never came across before on video editing software was introduced to me by my editing partner. The setting had the ability to correct the brightness and colours of the footage. This allowed us to enhance shots that weren't visually good and also adjust the colour saturation, giving the mise-en-scene a very gritty feel; a look which we were after. This skill which was introduced to me can now be applied to other future media projects, which I see as coming in very useful.


The effect this setting has before and after