Q4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Tuesday, 27 February 2018
Evaluation Q1
Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
After coming up with my initial ideas, and deciding on the genre that the film would be, I started doing research into thriller films, and their codes and conventions. After watching a few thrillers, I decided on five key tropes which I would follow for my own production; low-key lighting, tense music/ambience, twist at end, hidden/mysterious antagonist and a weak female protagonist saved by a strong male. I conformed with four out of five of these conventions, with the one that I changed being the gender roles.
All throughout the film, I use shadows to my advantage, with lots of low key lighting and close angles. This is typical of the genre. The aim of this is to restrict what the viewer sees in order to create a more tense atmosphere. If the viewer could see that the entire room is empty, it won't be scary, but if the room is dark and they can't see much of it, they are immediately more scared. Couple this together with the silence of the room, a tense atmosphere is created. The ambience I use was downloaded from YouTube and is described as 'silent room ambience'. I used this instead of complete silence because it creates a sense of building up to something, and that something could happen at any time.
To keep the narrative interesting, I use a surprise plot twist at the end, that most audiences have not expected. As mentioned above, this is common of the genre and is used a lot. For example, in Saw three, the 'live' feed that we have been watching all along is actually on a delay, but this is only revealed at the end. I am hoping that the twist I have created isn't predictable when you watch it the first time, but also makes sense when you watch it the second, as that would make it a successful twist.
Throughout the film, I only show the side of Ben's face (the antagonist) twice. This makes it so that the audience knows next to nothing about the character. Done in the wrong way, this can ruin the film, but I feel that I showed just enough so that it made sense whilst still giving him a mysterious atmosphere. This effect adds to the atmosphere, I feel. If the audience were shown Ben in a room full of light, and were told exactly where he was, it would relieve all tension in the film; something I tried hard to avoid.
The last convention is the only one that I challenged; the weak female antagonist being saved by a strong male. This is typical of many older films, not just thrillers, but is something being challenged more and more in modern cinema. Even though you could argue that as Daisy gets captured in the first place, she is a weak character, I would disagree. Daisy escapes without any help or guidance and comes out of the film a much stronger character than when she began. The real antagonist is also revealed to be a female (Daisy's Mother) which is challenging conventions even more. The vast majority of the time, the antagonist is a male, with the only real exclusions being femme-fetales in film-noirs.
My print products also stick to the conventions of the thriller genre - I use a lot of red to convey a sense of danger/urgency, and black as a literal way to indicate that the film will be quite dark. You can see that this is typical of the genre from posters such as The Game, Inception and Sin City, which all use red and black as primary colours. This stays consistent throughout both the poster and review page, whilst I also use red titles in the film.
After coming up with my initial ideas, and deciding on the genre that the film would be, I started doing research into thriller films, and their codes and conventions. After watching a few thrillers, I decided on five key tropes which I would follow for my own production; low-key lighting, tense music/ambience, twist at end, hidden/mysterious antagonist and a weak female protagonist saved by a strong male. I conformed with four out of five of these conventions, with the one that I changed being the gender roles.
All throughout the film, I use shadows to my advantage, with lots of low key lighting and close angles. This is typical of the genre. The aim of this is to restrict what the viewer sees in order to create a more tense atmosphere. If the viewer could see that the entire room is empty, it won't be scary, but if the room is dark and they can't see much of it, they are immediately more scared. Couple this together with the silence of the room, a tense atmosphere is created. The ambience I use was downloaded from YouTube and is described as 'silent room ambience'. I used this instead of complete silence because it creates a sense of building up to something, and that something could happen at any time.
To keep the narrative interesting, I use a surprise plot twist at the end, that most audiences have not expected. As mentioned above, this is common of the genre and is used a lot. For example, in Saw three, the 'live' feed that we have been watching all along is actually on a delay, but this is only revealed at the end. I am hoping that the twist I have created isn't predictable when you watch it the first time, but also makes sense when you watch it the second, as that would make it a successful twist.
Throughout the film, I only show the side of Ben's face (the antagonist) twice. This makes it so that the audience knows next to nothing about the character. Done in the wrong way, this can ruin the film, but I feel that I showed just enough so that it made sense whilst still giving him a mysterious atmosphere. This effect adds to the atmosphere, I feel. If the audience were shown Ben in a room full of light, and were told exactly where he was, it would relieve all tension in the film; something I tried hard to avoid.
The last convention is the only one that I challenged; the weak female antagonist being saved by a strong male. This is typical of many older films, not just thrillers, but is something being challenged more and more in modern cinema. Even though you could argue that as Daisy gets captured in the first place, she is a weak character, I would disagree. Daisy escapes without any help or guidance and comes out of the film a much stronger character than when she began. The real antagonist is also revealed to be a female (Daisy's Mother) which is challenging conventions even more. The vast majority of the time, the antagonist is a male, with the only real exclusions being femme-fetales in film-noirs.
My print products also stick to the conventions of the thriller genre - I use a lot of red to convey a sense of danger/urgency, and black as a literal way to indicate that the film will be quite dark. You can see that this is typical of the genre from posters such as The Game, Inception and Sin City, which all use red and black as primary colours. This stays consistent throughout both the poster and review page, whilst I also use red titles in the film.
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Q2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Powerpoint Link
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