Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Q1: In relation to the film

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Evaluation Q1: In relation to film part 2

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Evaluation Q1: In relation to ancillary tasks

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I found an interesting article about The Final Girl. The article explains that teenage audiences of my film may enjoy the idea of watching women get tortured, killed and raped in films. This is disturbing but the article also believes that many audience members want to empathise with the woman. This tells me that sticking to genre stereotypes and using conventions such as phallic symbols will help attract my target audience.

I have also studied a number of genre and narrative theorists which can be viewed in these presentations:

Genre Theory

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Narrative Theory

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Ancillary Development

The video below shows the development of my poster. It also shows the techniques I used during the process of editing on Photoshop to create my ancillary product. Tools used to create my poster include the clone brush, colour filters and gradient filters. To record myself editing my poster I used free video capture software called "aTube". It allowed me to record my editing in high definition to produce a high quality video. I used the song "Don't Stop" by "Foster the People" as I felt the upbeat tune went well with the video.

Here is the first poster I created. I sought feedback from my peers. The first thing that Dan Bates said (one of my friends, aged 17) was that there was too much empty space. I then went around the media class with a likes/dislikes page in which they wrote down what they thought was good and what could be improved. They all commented that the image was great but that there wasn't enough content. They also thought that the image was too bright. Henry Scott (another friend, aged 17) said that the title should be at the top as it would improve the composition. I agreed with him and added a gradient filter to reduce the lighting. A key feature from my research was that psychological thriller posters were often used dark, low-key lighting to create enigma and mystery.

This shows the progression I made from audience
feedback.

This was my first attempt at a double page spread. A convention used in double page spreads is an image running between both pages. I used a screenshot from my film and the quality wasn't very good. I tried to improve the quality of it using filters on Photoshop but unfortunately it just wasn't a good enough image. The feedback I got was also negative with negative comments on both the image and the font (as it was too big and bold for the genre).

When producing my actual double page spread I will use Empires layout as I thought it was professional and appealing to a younger audience. I will use an image from my photo-shoot and hope to create a professional looking DPS.

Directors Commentary- Filming Mock Up

Ancillary Task

For my ancillary task I have to create a movie poster. Before creating a movie poster it is important to look at existing media products. The first thing I noticed when looking at existing media products that are within the psychological genre is that their is predominantly a close-up shot of the protagonist. Below are a few examples:

Shutter Island shows how the use of a close-up shot of the main character can successfully promote the films psychological nature. It is clear from the film poster that the character is distressed. It could be argued that the poster could be advertising a horror film, but similar conventions of both the horror and thriller genre are apparent in the creation of film posters.

Psychological thriller posters often contain facial expressions of distress or unrest to connote the genre. Low-key lighting on the subjects and dark colours are used throughout posters of this genre to project the eerie nature of the texts.

Black Swan subverts these conventions but also unsettles viewers through powerful imagery of the main character.

Here is another example of a close-up shot being used effectively.

The manipulation of the red eye creates disequilbrium within the poster. The two-shot also connotes the genre through the close-up shot. Close-ups are used to connect the character with the viewer and help attract the viewers attention.  I want my movie poster to have the protagonist as the dominant aspect of the poster. I also want to connote her vulnerability by photographing behind her with her face turned towards the lens. This could appear to be a POV shot from the stalkers perspective.

Conventions of psychological thriller posters

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Initial mock-ups:

Title and Fonts Poll

Hidden
Obscured
Hunted
Watched
Followed
Isolation

Filming Rough Cut

This is an edit of the best shots taken during our latest shoot. Unfortunately the lighting was brighter than I expected. Also, We only got 1.30 of footage so when re-filming we may have continuity issues. This is because it was a very sunny day and we have to film over the christmas period, where it is unlikely that there will be many sunny days. Therefore we may have to pospone filming to a later date.

Film: Mise En Scene

Mise en scene means "placing on stage". The mise en scene is basically everything within a particular shot and the arrangement of it. Before creating a film, you have to know what is going to be in each shot and the purpose of it. In my film, the key aspects of the mise en scene I will be focusing on in this post are costume, lighting and acting.

Costume:

Our leading protagonist is going to stand out against her surroundings. From our preliminary filming shots, the red jacket was very successful in making our protagonist stand out. Not only does it help to establish her as the prominent character, but the colour red also signifies a number of things. Red can be seen to represent love, romance and femininity. Woman are often portrayed this way in films as it follows the .."not sure".. code. We want the protagonist to project a feminine gentile facade as it will to highlight her insecurity. Other props we could use to highlight her femininity would be a handbag and lipstick. Another reason for using a red coat is that the red signifies death or blood. This helps to create an element of suspicion within the audience to whether she is in danger. Bright coats can often be linked to childhood. Many children in playschool wear brightly coloured raincoats. This could further connote her innocence and vulnerability. Other readings of the red could be an increased heartrate which would fit with the running scene.  

 This is a image from Schindler's list. Schindler's list is based around the time of the Holocaust. A colour filter was used in this section of the film to highlight her prominence to Schindler. It could have been done to highlight the child's innocence. The colour filter shows the contrast between him and the child and the red could represent the blood of war.

Here is a link to the extract in the film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1VL-y9JHuI&feature=related

Lighting:

I got inspiration from the film Jane Eyre (2011). The film was shot rurally and much of the locations reflect where we are shooting. The dark, menacing atmosphere created in many of the shots on the more land, and in the wooded areas were filmed in overcast weather. Therefore both me and my filming partner will be organising film shoots when the weather forecast says that it will be overcast. We are using natural lighting to create a realistic ambiance, helping the audience to get drawn into the film. We will be filming in daylight, but in the afternoon when lighting is slightly dimmed.

Acting:

To reflect the femine clothing, we will be directing our actress to project femininty through her body language. Stepping gently, twidderling her hair and raising her hands slightly are all visually signify femininity. We also want her to look vulnerable when shooting close up shots.