Evaluation; Question 6

Evaluation; Question 5

How Did You Attract by lizzieadcock

Evaluation; Question 3

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

Our thriller 'Corruption' is a very stylised film noir inspired film targeted at a niche market. The opening of our thriller is slow and builds up tension very gradually through the use of music, lighting and camera angles/shot types. The costumes and mise en scene are quite traditional of an old school noir detective and a glamorous  sophisticated damsel in distress. The film is more aimed fairly middle aged, upper class people. These qualities make our thriller not mainstream, therefore companies such as Universal would be very unlikely to distribute our films as it is not their scene, they have distributed well known, award winning, money making extravaganzas such as Les Mis, The Bourne Legacy and Fast and Furious. 

Pathe however, is a UK based distribution company that has distributed similair style films. Non mainstream fairly slow films with noir style costumes and lighting such as The Black Dahlia which has some similar qualities to our film 'Corruption'. For example, the passive, helpless damsel in distress victim, with some underlying corruption and plot twists, all in a very old school, film noir style. 

Studio Canal is another UK base distribution company. They specialise in low budget, non mainstream, independent films such as Broken City, The Double and Under the Skin.

They also have a deal with love film that means there movies are promoted via Love Film. This would be suitable for our film 'Corruption' a low budget, non mainstream, independent film!  

The link with love film is a critical one. Modern times see's the increase of people watching films on demands from home via websites such as love film and net flix, this is mainly because it's cheap, quick and convenient. The amounts of people purchasing DVD's and visiting the cinema is decreasing rapidly over time. For this reason, my film being promoted on love film will make it recognisable amongst the public and more likely to be watched.

However, the vast proportion of cinema goers these days are the older generation. Our Thriller 'Corruption' will appeal to these types of people and will bring them into the cinema to enjoy the movie. For this reason our film should be played at Cinema City as my target audience is much more likely to attend here than other cinemas such as Vue or Odeon. 

Evaluation; Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Name: Nigel Saunders

Occupation: Writer

Marital Status: Married

Age: 48

(the man below is just from google images, he isn't really Nigel!)

 

Through being a writer Nigel has formed a love of stylish cinematography found in niche market films of fairly unknown directors/producers. He likes to take the occasional trip to Cinema city to watch Scandinavian thrillers for their fantastic cinematography qualities and enjoy a glass of red wine. He hates main stream films with predictable story lines and over rated actors and directors. He feels that they use special effects and action packed explosions and violence etc to compensate for the unintelligent story lines and poor script writing. He much prefers films  where he will be required to use his brain, complete with a stylish use of mise en scene and varied camera angles/ shot types. He appreciates when the use of lighting creates suspense and various emotions. He is of a high social class and is known to look down his nose at people, he drives a posh car and uses long words in unnecessary social situations...

The diagram shows that Our Thriller is generally aimed at those in the 40+ age category, fairly gender equal but steering slighting closer to a male audience. Very niche market. 

Research into user ratings.

The Black Dahlia  is of a similar style to our film Corruption. The user rating of this film on imdb shows that its audience is fairly gender equal. Under the assumption that our film would have similar types of viewers, it suggests that our film would have a fairly gender neutral audience. 

Black Dahlia (2) by lizzieadcock

Evaluation; Question 2

Evaluation; Question 7

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

Since creating the preliminary task of ‘shooting a conversation’ I feel my understanding of varied shot types and camera angles and the effects they have is a lot more comprehensive. We had a lot more time to create our thriller openings which allowed opportunity to familiarise and experiment with the cameras and what different shot types and angles looked like. Putting the theory into motion has definitely extended by understanding of how it all works. In the preliminary task we stuck to the straight forward establishing shot with the occasional mid shot which makes for a not very stylised or sophisticated piece. Whereas the final piece was more varied, long shots, mid shots, close ups, extreme close ups and over the shoulder shots to convey different emotions and to create enigma and tension at certain points in the thriller.

Preliminary

Final cut

The longer time period meant the planning was a lot more thorough for our thriller than the preliminary task. This meant that the story line was more thought out resulting in it being more in depth and stylised with clear archetypes created by more sophisticated locations and mise en scene. The preliminary task was shot in school, in the clothing the actors had happened to wear that day, it didn’t require much planning or organisation. Our actual thriller required the planning and finding of suitable costumes to portray a corrupt detective and a damsel in distress, glamorous type character and the making of props to make the locations more believable. We also had to find the suitable locations, with a little added creativity to polish them off.  By filming in locations that were not in school it meant the filming schedule was less flexible, this required us to be more time efficient and organised.

Bad organisation - the cups are empty!

More sophisticated props

The use and understanding of the effects of different forms of lighting has also become a lot clearer. In our preliminary task we just used the natural lighting of the study hall, this didn’t require much thought or planning. In our thriller to achieve the perfect film noir style lighting we experimented with the use of single source lighting from a fairly vintage style lamp. This worked perfectly with the costumes and mise en scene to create a film noir style detectives office. It created enigma and cast strong shadows which are both iconic features of film noir.

More advanced editing was required to complete our thriller openings complete with the finding and downloading of sound and fonts most appropriate for our particular style. In the preliminary task, simple editing was used to create a fairly shoddy piece with rough cuts and very poor sound. In the final piece we trawled through several sounds and musical pieces to find the perfect tracks for our thrillers, we then had to download these and edit the footage around the sound, so that it was in time and specific shots would happen at specific points in the sound track, this helped to create tension in certain parts of the thriller. We used diagetic sound in parts along with the music, for example the sound of her footsteps and her trying to open the door. Apart from this we took out the sound from the footage and just had the music, this created a more stylish piece and avoided the cringeyness of poor sound quality. We also had to consider the effect and use of credits; this required us to find a font appropriate for the theme of our film noir style thriller, download the font and judge where the best position would be for them on the shot. All of this meant our understanding of the purpose and the effects editing can have more advanced than in the preliminary task. 

Use of titles

How my skills have developed?

Compared with the preliminary task I now have more confidence and better ability to use the digital camera to film various scenes using a variety of different shot types and camera angles to create enigma and tension. I can now work better with lighting and use it to create strong shadows and connote moral ambiguity which can be seen in this shot. 

I can also edit more efficiently and effectively and find music and fonts that will work well with the footage. I can also find locations and use creativity to make them more appropriate for our chosen film noir theme by constructing props, planning costumes and experimenting with lighting. 

Evaluation; Question 1