Evaluation of My Thriller Film: ‘TAG’

How My Media Product Uses, Develop and Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products
Research into particular thriller films and their conventions including the use of extreme close ups in Psycho (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock such as in the shower scene where the camera focuses upon the femme fatale’s (Marion Cranes) eyes in order to show her pain and fear whilst leaving the graphic details of the murder to the audience’s imagination. Also, the use of entrapment and confined spaces in Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004) (not a conventional thriller but contains certain thriller conventions) by Quentin Tarantino where the Bride is buried alive in a coffin underground by Budd. The use of soundtrack to build tension such as in Heavenly Creatures (1994) by Pete Jackson where the humming chorus from Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini is used to build up to the climax during the murder scene in the garden where Pauline and Juliet kill their mother along with the frequent use of close ups on the hands and feet. Also, in The Third Man (1949) by Carol Reed the use of canted shots, quick cuts and chiaroscuro lighting create discomfort and can be disorientating for the audience building tension and pace especially in the sewer scene where Harry Lime leads the police through the sewer systems maze. These films have shown the character types and filming techniques that create an effective thriller film and have all been influential on ‘Tag’ which uses canted shots, close ups on hands and feet, extreme close ups on eyes during the murder, and even the same soundtrack as is used in Heavenly Creatures. This soundtrack was chosen for ‘Tag’ as its narrative is comparable with Heavenly Creatures’ with a lot of intertextual references including the location of the murder scene being down a suburban pathway setting away from civilisation where the victim is susceptible to danger, the predatory aspect of the two girls following Pauline’s mother and once in a sufficiently deserted spot is mirrored in ‘Tag’ where Hope is being stalked by an older man. The Humming Chorus in the Madame Butterfly opera tells the tale of a woman and her child beginning the long wait for the child’s father and woman’s love to come to them after returning from war. As the night falls the baby falls asleep but the woman keeps her vigil. This shows a tragedy within itself as her love has not returned, but within ‘Tag’ the long wait could connote the time spent where Hope is being followed, and the climax where the baby falls asleep could represent Hopes murder. Also, in ‘Tag’ the supposed murder weapon is a red ribbon; this idea was inspired by an episode from the British TV crime thriller ‘Spooks’ where a woman is strangled with a thin wire. Red ribbon in ‘Tag’ connotes fragility, femininity, blood and danger.

How My Media Product Represents Particular Social Groups
Hope Lost is a modern day femme fatale, representing a lot of young women today, a strong independent character that the young female demographic can relate to and connect with. The second character, ‘Tag’ is a negative representation, he falls in with the middle age male demographic and viewers that fall into this demographic may take the representation offensively, but he isn’t a representation of every man in this criteria. ‘Tag’ is represented as a mysterious individual with no apparent reasons to justify his actions other than the word ‘insolence’ written on the tag on Hope’s wrist in the final shot of the film, but there is no explanation to support the allegation, this gives the impression that he is a dangerous man with a sick mind, possibly insane. These theories would be answered later in the film if it was a feature, ultimately clearing up any misunderstanding of representation of the middle aged male demographic.

The Type of Media Institution That Might Distribute My Media Product and Why
Due to the lack of funding and marketing possibilities of an independent student film such as ‘Tag’ the best form of distribution for this film would be virally through the use of internet and social networking sites such as Youtube, Bebo, MySpace and Facebook. These would be the cheapest approach as it is free to post videos onto these sites and contain a large number of potential viewers as anybody with access to the internet could access this film. The film could then be marketed through these social networking sites through the use of forums, posts, and blogging. If the film attracted a large audience this would create potential for the film to go further therefore introducing the possibility of pitching the idea and script to the likes of Working Title or the UK Film Council in order to raise finance, though the UK Film Council would be the more approachable option as they would see more potential in an independent low budget grainy film such as ‘Tag’ that may only appeal to a niche audience. It is hard to gain funding from a well established company when the film is completely unknown with unknown actors, directors and no previous successes to give reassurance of potential success. So the film has to have a unique selling point in order to catch their attention, and I think with the help of audience feedback from the social network audience the narrative could be improved or altered to fit audience requirements and strengthen the narrative ‘Tag’ could potentially be an interesting thriller both following and challenging the generic thriller conventions.

Who the Audience Would Be for My Media Product
Hope Lost (the female protagonist) in ‘Tag’ is an independent teenage girl containing certain characteristics of a modern day femme fatale, where she comes across as a strong individual through the likes of her jogging and walking to the station confidently on her own. This type of character would attract a primary audience of the female teenage demographic between 15 and 20 as they can relate to her character. Since ‘Tag’ contains references and similarities to thriller such as Psycho (1960) by Alfred Hitchcock and Heavenly Creatures (1994) by Peter Jackson it is likely to attract a similar demographic which through imdb.com Psycho has the highest user rating from the under 18 demographic and Heavenly creatures has the highest user rating from the aged 18-29 demographic. This tells me that the younger demographic is most likely to be attracted to ‘Tag’. Also with the film being distributed through social networking sites the audience that uses these sites is going to be of this demographic.

How My Film Attracts/Addresses My Audience
In order to attract the audience’s attention, the idea was to make the 2 minute opening as tense and climactic as possible, certain aspects of the mise-en-scene such as the use of the uncomfortable alarm clock sound effect in the opening shot that was carried through to the station scene was unnerving and disorientating. Also, the use of the cross dissolve editing technique throughout the 2 minutes gives the film a dreamlike effect making the femme fatale appear very distant causing the audience to ask questions about the character therefore enticing them. Another feature of the mise-en-scene is the combination of the Puccini soundtrack with the use of close-ups and quick changes between point of view shots from the murderer to the victim during the murder scene and the lack of graphic detail which allows the close-ups and the soundtrack to tell the tragedy of the action. A questionnaire was used to find out audience views on the production and how effective they found it. The average overall rating of the film was 7/10 showing there is room to improve the mise-en-scene in order to attract the target demographic more successfully. The general criticism was that the narrative wasn’t particularly clear and that the action was a little slow. I agree with this and see where changes can be made, the significance of the train scene and time jump aren’t very clear. But people did find the cliff-hanger effective and caught their attention effectively enough to want to watch on. They also found the editing, soundtrack and performance the best overall features of the production.

What I Have Learnt About Technologies from the Process of Constructing This Product
From this task I have discovered and learned to appreciate how much effort and time goes into creating a film. I noticed that when capturing shots on a handheld camera moving shots such as panning or tracking can be extremely tricky to keep smooth without a tripod. Another complication with shooting a film is that when the zoom is used whilst tracking a subject it is easy to lose focus. But this can work to an advantage within a thriller film as such a shot reflects confusion and reinforces mystery. To create a ten second shot over 5 minutes of film can be used in order to make sure the shot is perfect, I learned this the hard way and had to go out 3 or 4 times to get enough footage for a single shot. I have found that capturing the same shot from every angle can make editing a lot easier even though barely any of the raw footage would be used, but it gives freedom to find and create the perfect shot. The editing program was initially very confusing but like everything – once you understand how it works it becomes simple. By the end of editing I learned how to cut shots, stretch shots, speed shots up, use effects such as cross fade and dip to black, make titles, fade the soundtrack in and out and more. I’ve also found how the effectiveness of the film can be dramatically altered due to the slightest thing such as the soundtrack beginning too early, or not uncomfortable and loud enough to create tension. Another example of this that I found was with finding the right speed for shots, a particular shot such as the picking up of the ribbon in the station scene could be ineffective at normal speed, but at half speed the action of the gloved hand coming into view and picking up the ribbon is emphasised. Thus the shot is more dramatic and offers the audience more clues as to the significance of the shot.

Progression of Skills and Knowledge from the Preliminary Filming Task through To the Full Product
Looking back at the preliminary filming task it has become clear how much I have learned about not only the shooting but the planning and editing too. With the preliminary filming task I originally thought the shoot went well but when it got to editing me and my group soon realised that although we had shot a wide range of shots, and covered the 180˚ rule along with how it’s acceptable to break it, match on action and shot/reverse shots we couldn’t use some of them because we hadn’t shot enough in between footage to link the action together in edit. Due to time limits the group didn’t have time to re-shoot which shows a lack of planning and inefficient group work. But with the thriller planning was a lot more thorough, and having more time to shoot, and reshoot made initial errors and judgements easy to fix and showed me how extra footage is anything but a waste. Ultimately my group consisted of only 2 people so roles within the production were shared out fairly and we worked productively together, not afraid to put our points across and if ideas clashed we compromised. Freya was acting and I was filming, which meant I had more control over direction but if I had a problem with direction and explained it to her she could easily suggest a solution after looking back at the raw footage. During edit Freya got the hang of the editing technology, Premiere Elements a lot quicker than me so she put together most of the raw footage in a loose narrative sequence, but once I grasped the program we worked together on tweaking the film to make it smooth and put in effects. After, the freedom to work on the edit without my partner at times was more effective as we weren’t wasting time trying to explain the changes we wanted to make and convincing each other an idea would or wouldn’t work. Our group did originally consist of 3 people, but circumstances changed and about a month into the construction our group lost a member so a lot of planning had to be changed, and a lot of precious shooting time was wasted, but we managed to not let it get in the way and worked quickly and effectively in altering our plans and our story, it ended up working to our advantage as the new actor playing the villain worked better, and fitted better into the character as since he didn’t know all the planning details of the production and didn’t have his biased ideas on the character from this he was a lot more flexible to work with, we told him to act in a certain way and he did this rather than trying to create a different character, also working with two people rather than three meant fewer clashes of opinions.

Original Idea For Use Of Props in Our Thriller

These were the original ideas for the thriller before shooting began, once shooting took place circumstances changed and some of these probs have not been used in the final cut.

Se7en Case Study, Mock Exam

The Balance Between Realism and Drama in Soaps

Soaps are ongoing programmes that have to find a balance between realism and drama in order to grip an audience with a good storyline but also be believeable enough for the audience to relate to.
Different soaps go about finding this balance in different ways depending upon the target audience, take for instance Coronation Street which has been a successful ongoing soap since 1960 and therefore has attracted a loyal audience since then making the target audience an older demographic where they expect to watch Coronation Street and find a close sense of community as it would have been back in the 60's so this is what Coronation Street have done. The main sets within Coronation Street are the likes of The Rovers Return, Roys Café, The Corner Shop and inside the characters houses, these are real life, unexaggerated settings which creates the sense of realism, this provides them with the foundation to create dramatic storylines and push the reality of the issue in order to create entertainment.
Another way of balancing realism with drama is by creating a realtime effect which is used in Hollyoaks since it is broadcast every week day, this use of realtime helps the audience to believe they are seeing the characters in their day to day lives, and by using realtime they also get to create dramatic storylines that are based on real issues that are happening in the real world around that time such as the credit crunch, take for instance Calvin resorting to crime because he feels the money pressures of not having enough to keep Carmel happy. This storyline can be related to by the audience as they may feel the stress of the recession and realise they have been looking at other forms of making money, but this storyline shows how turning to crime doesn't help so it teaches the audience at the same time as entertaining them by exaggerating the storyline with the threats of murder, buying flashy cars etc.