What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the production?

During the process of constructing our production, I used www.blogger.com to upload, organise and share my research of the psychological thriller genre, and the planning materials of our own production, as well as for the evaluation of our finished product. Using a blog system to do this allows audiences opportunities for interactivity. I learnt how to upload, organise and share this information so that audiences can post content on the blogs. I also learnt to use iMovie to edit a short video that I recorded on a mini DV camera for my evaluation blog, and also to edit clips in our film. In iMovie, I learnt to use transition effects to make the clips and videos flow better. I learnt to add credits and titling in the editing stage, such as the main title of our film and the credits. We used iMovie for all our editing.

I used a digital still camera to take photographs of our locations for our planning, I then uploaded the pictures using a USB cable connected to the Apple Macs.

We used a Canon mini DV camera mostly, to film our production. The mini Dv tape was inserted into the camera and was captured in real-time, but it can also capture in up to 4x speed of real time. I learnt to use the mini DV camera during the process of making our production. Using the camera and a tripod I learnt how to gain steady shots and create different camera techniques, such as tilt shots, like the shot of the pictures of Mia, and zooming in shots, such as the zooming in on Horatio's eyes.

Who would be your target audience? / How did you attract/address your audience?

We asked some people from our target audience to watch our film and then answer some questions about the film, to see whether they understoon the story-line and how effective they thought it was as a psychological thriller. The clip below shows the questions and the audience's answers:

How Does Your Media Product Represent Social Groups

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

The Distribution Company we chose to distribute our film was Fox Searchlight Pictures. We decided to choose Fox Searchlight Pictures as the distribution company of our film for various reasons. The company specialises in British and Indie films, and also distributed the psychological thriller film, 'One Hour Photo'. As our film is a British film we thought a company that speciliases in British and Indie films would be a good choice of distribution company.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Titling

The main title of our production is presented over a black screen, in a red font. The title appears on screen for around three seconds, about 54 seconds into the opening twominutes. Before we decided to create our main title in the way we did, we had to research other films of the psychological thriller genre to identify the typical codes and conventions. 'In the film The Shining' the main title is presented over the image of the film:

This technique helps the audience to establish the setting of the film. However other films I looked at such as 'The Butterfly Effect', displays the main title over a black screen:

From looking at these films as well as others, it seemed that the typical conventions of a psychological thriller are either the title presented over the image, or over a black screen. So in this way, we are following the conventions of this genre of film. In terms of the colour of our font being red, it seemed that common colours for the main titles were blue and red. For example, the titles in 'The Shining' and 'The Butterfly Effect' are both blue, and I found that the title in 'The Secret Window' is displayed in red:

The font of our main title in our production is red, and inappropriate font for the genre of our film. In this way we used the typical codes and conventions of the psychological thriller genre. We also chose to display our main title in this way because we believed that having the title over a black screen and in a prominent colour would attract audience attention to the significance of the title.

Camera Movement

In the film 'The Secret Window' there is a zooming in shot of the main character. This not only highlights the character as a key role to the audience, but also symbolises the audience going into the mind of the character. The mind is an important concept in a psychological thriller and so we thought this was quite an important convention to imitate. In our production we used a zooming in shot at the end of our opening two minutes, going into Horatio's eyes, meaning the audience would establish Horatio's character and take a step into his mind and intentions.

Still from 'The Secret Window'

Still from 'Neurosis'

Framing of Shots

In 'The Other's and 'The Ring' there are lots of close-ups and medium close-ups of characters faces; these show their facial expressions well and allow the audience to interpret their moods. 'The Others' also shows an over-the-shoulder shot of one of the main characters, allowing the audience to follow her eye level and see what she is seeing in the background:

In our production we also used a medium close-up of our main character at the end of our opening two minutes, showing how we used this convention of a psychological thriller. As well as this we used an over-the-shoulder shot when Horatio is typing up the article of Mia, to allow the audience to see what he is seeing.

Camera Angles

In 'Hide and Seek' and 'The Butterfly Effect', low camera angles are used. Low camera angles give the audience a feeling of speed and movement, and also produce in the audience feelings of confusion and powerlessness as well as feeling dominated by the action in the scene.

In our production we challenged these codes and conventions of the psychological thriller genre. We kept the camera in a statutory position in most of the shots. By keeping the camera statutory, especially on the shots of Horatio, we conveyed the idea that he is a key character and will remain throughout the film.

Mise-en-scene

In 'The Ring' and 'The Others' there is a lot of low-key lighting used, as well as settings of domestic locations, such as within houses. The low-key lighting creates a sinister and eerie mood, whereas the domestic settings make the audience feel suspenseful and as it they're waiting for something to happen. This creates an equilibrium which is then disrupted, making the film more frightening.

In our production we used these conventions of a psychological thriller. We used low-key lighting when Horatio is in the newsroom to create a sinister atmosphere, as this is when the audience start to get an idea of Horatio's intentions. All our settings were also conventional, every day settings; such as Welham Road when Horatio is following Mia.

Editing Directions

I noticed that films of the psychological thriller genre had lots of dialogue between characters in which reverse shots were used, in order to show both characters' facial expressions and moods to the audience. In 'The Secret Window' and 'The Ring' there are a lot of reverse shots with short cutting rhythm, as well as some reaction shots. Reaction shots are effective in this genre as they are very successful in creating suspense in the audience, through the characters' uneasiness and suspense.

In our production, we challenged this aspect of the conventions of the psychological thriller genre. We did not use any reaction shots or reverse shots in our opening two minutes, and our cutting rhythm was also slightly longer. We did not use any reverse shots due to us having no dialogue in the opening two minutes, and we also wanted to create a more mysterious opening, by not having any dialogue; meaning the audience can concentrate more on the action of the film and try to interpret Horatio's intentions.

Sound Techniques

In 'The Ring' there is diegetic sounds such as rain or TV noise, these help to set the scene and create atmosphere. Whereas, in 'Hide and Seek' eerie music is used to create a creepy atmosphere, even in situations that would normally seem harmless. It seemed that diegetic sound and non-diegetic sound are used in this genre to create atmosphere in different ways; often diegetic is used in domestic situations, underneath dialogue, to set the scene, and non-diegetic sound is often used to create an eerie or sinister atmosphere, even withing ordinary situations.

We used some of these conventions in our production, but also challenged others. We used non-diegetic sound in terms of eerie music, to create atmosphere, and also carried the music across each scene, creating a sound-bridge, which links the scenes together and suggests to the audience that they are all linked and essential to the rest of the story-line. However, we did not use any diegetic sound in our production to help set the scene, as we wanted the opening two minutes to be more of an introduction of the story to the audience, and for them to gather an interpretation of Horatio's intentions, and possible outcomes in the story through the first two minutes of our production.

Question 7

FINAL FILM

Newspaper Shot

When we asked some people from our target audience to watch our film, most of them seemed to be confused about the newspaper article which Horatio writes up. They said its layout made it unclear that it was an article and some mistook it for other things like a diary. The one person who realised that it was a newspaper article suggested that we rearrange the layout to make the concept much clearer, we took this in mind and so this is what we did; making the title font larger and a different style, as well as putting the text in more of a column shape. The article now looks much more realistic and makes it easier to an audience to grasp its meaning.

When our media teacher saw this shot, they questioned us on whether we thought a diary would be a more sinister idea than a newspaper article. We thought about this and thought that a diary kept on a computer would be more like a blog, and thought it unlikely for our main character Horatio to keep a blog as this would mean people would find out about his obsession with Mia before the story line had developed. Due to this we stuck with our original idea of a newspaper article and improved it as had been suggested by the audience.

Alternative Endings

At the finishing of our film it was suggested by a couple of people that our ending was quite abrupt. Taking this in mind we filmed an extra scene to see which ending an audience would prefer. We showed four people from our target audience the two alternative endings, and recorded their responses:

Rough cut of NEUROSIS

This is a rough version of our film, not including music. We decided to make a rough cut and put it on youtube.com to gather people's reactions to the film so that we could make any improvements in terms of the camera shots, angles, costume etc. which would help make the narrative and the concepts of a psychological thriller clearer. These are the questions we asked people to answer in their comments:


1. does the male look sinister?
2. is it clear that he is following the female?
3. can you rate it out of five for how clear the story line is (5= great and 1=poor)
4. does it suggest that the female is vulnerable
5. any other strengths or weaknesses?

The comments we received are below the clip.

In general most people seemed to think Horatio was sinister, or that there was something not right about him. Most people also seemed to think that Mia was vulnerable. Some people said that they didn't realise Mia was vulnerable until they saw the pictures at the end of the film, however this does not seem like a big issue, as it means the opening two minutes still gives hints that Mia is the victim and Horatio has a sinister element to him, meaning we conveyed what we had orginally aimed to convey after all.

Deleted First Scene

This was our original first scene for our film. After filming it and watching it through, we decided it was wrong for our film. There were too many characters for the opening scene, and the scene as a whole did not work well with our film. We thought that Leon falling over and the comments from the other students drew attention away from the story-line and also made the film quite comical, neither of these did we want. We wanted to focus more on the sinister element to our film, and not draw the audience's attention away from the essential action in the scene of Horatio following Mia. We put this deleted scene onto youtube.com to see whether other people would agree with us, these are the comments we received:

mediag321coursework

The trip seems a bit too comical and slightly unreal

but however comparing that characters clothing to the female

characters he does seem isolated from society. As well as this

there are too many characters introduced within the opening where

its hard to work out who is the main character and most important.

genieabbott

its a bit comical the fall because like he kicked the metal

thing before hahaa and its a bit over dramatic

the comedy doesnt really fit into the conventions of a

psychological thriller