Question 1

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


The genre for our film sequence was a hybrid of Crime and Thriller. Although these are two separate genres, they are often combined in the film industry.
Crime/Thriller films usually contain:
Spider Gram Conventions


A film which follows most of these conventions and is of the same genre as ours is ‘Seven’ – starring Morgan Freeman and directed by David Fincher in 1995. The film uses a male villain who commits seven criminal acts – the film is very psychological and forces the audience to think a lot, there are clues throughout as to who the killer may be just like there will be in our film.

Our film also follows many of these conventions – we have a female character being raped by a ‘hard’ male villain. In our opening sequence there is a mix between the bright lighting of the girl talking to the camera in a direct address form, and dark and gloomy lighting in the build up to the rape.

A factor of our film goes against conventions is the fact that it is from the woman’s perspective. She gets raped and throughout the film, the audience sees how she copes with this and the repercussions of the act. Usually Crime/Thriller films are from a male perspective; either a male helping a female, like a policeman, or from the perspective of the criminal.


Setting
The setting of our sequence was important to create the correct mood and feeling:
- The build up to the rape scene was conventionally set at night - this plays on the audience's minds, suggesting hidden dangers and the sense  of the unknown
- The actual rape itself took place in a brightly lit flat - this is a location where the girl would feel safe compared to the dark outside. It is typical of a thriller to invade the victim's comfort zone and make them feel that nowhere is safe.

Costume

The costume’s we used were very much deliberate and key to our characters:

- We dressed the rapist in a large coat which covered most of his face to hide his identity. Other than that, he was wearing regular clothes as rapists don’t have set attire – they are just like ‘normal people’.

- For our female character, we dressed her in a relatively conservative outfit – a big coat and a skirt that wasn’t too short. However, the pink heels and skirt suggest she had been on a night out which is what we were trying to achieve – a naïve character who wasn’t expecting this to happen to her.

- For the clips of her talking to the camera after she had been raped, the girl was dressed in a baggy grey hoodie done up nearly to the top – this shows that she has been hugely affected by her rape experience and is trying to cover up and hide from the world.


Music

We used two pieces of music for our piece as there were two effects we were trying to achieve:



The first piece is a sad, mournful track called ‘sad story’. We used it in our sequence to create a sense of sorrow and sympathy for the girl. It runs over the second track and creates an eerie effect. http://www.freeplaymusic.com/search/keyword_search.php


The second piece we used is a typical thriller track from the same website. It builds tension and suspense and drives the sequence on – suggesting something bad is going to happen even before it does. 

 
Narrative Structure
 
Our opening sequence also challenges theories such as Todorov's - a theory that claims films should start with an equlibrium where everything is as it should be,as example for this would be Legally Blonde. Our sequence does not follow this structure as it starts with a disrupted equilibrium and it is not restored .

Individual Initial Idea

After being given our brief, we were told to go off individually and come up with some ideas which could then be put forward to the group - taking our group idea from those. The group decided that we'd focus around the horror/thriller genre but this could vary if needed.


Initial Idea 1:


My first idea was based around a paedophile. I wanted the film to be about a man who stalks a young girl - this could be portrayed through him having pictures of her, following her online through social networks and also watching her from a distance as she goes about her life. The opening sequence could be of the man watching the girl from the school gates as she is picked up by her mother. The sequence would be made up of long shots of the girl and the playground and also close ups of the paedophiles face to build up his character.




Initial Idea 2:


My second idea was of a rapist story. I thought that the opening sequence of our film could be of a man as he followed a young woman on her way home at night. The girl would be very drunk and unaware that she was being followed and at the end of the sequence, the man would make his move - this insinuating that he'd raped her. The rest of the film would be about the girl as she came to terms with the rape experience and tried to get over this emotional experience.

Question 7

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


The brief we were given for the preliminary task was;


A continuity task involving filming and editing:
- Character opens the door
- Walks across the room
- Sits opposite other character and exchanges a couple of lines of dialogues


It should contain different continuity techniques


The brief for the main task was;


To produce a 2 minute opening sequence for a fiction film, it must include:
- Titles throughout
- Some form of copyright free soundtrack
- Evidence of understanding of continuity editing


Pre-Production


When planning our production, there were several things learnt from the preliminary task that we put into practice. To avoid any problems with our location, we went on a reccie to see whether it was suitable for what we wanted to film there and to find out if we had permission to film there. We also realised that organisation was key to a successful production – this meant all the planning and research was completely up to scratch before we went of f to shoot. To achieve this we had arranged group meetings to makes sure what we all needed to do in order to succeed with the production.

Production


The preliminary task helped us a lot when it came to shooting our production. Realising that time management was important, we planned out our shoot days well, knowing how much time we had to do what – it also helped that we knew how to use all the equipment so we didn’t waste time trying to figure it out. We also learned in the preliminary task that a master shot was important when it came to editing – it was always useful to cut back to if there was a continuity problem such as a break in the 180 degree rule.

Post-Production


When it came to editing our sequence, we already knew how to use the software we were using – this helped in conserving our time and meant we could learn more advanced techniques. It also helped us to see who was stronger in what place – meaning we could save time when assigning roles.

Working as a team

Throughout the project, listening to one another and working together was the most important factor to making our final sequence. A mistake made in the preliminary task was that one of our group members had made a mistake whilst filmingand the whole team broke down because of lack of communication. This experience showed me how important it was to talk to your group and listen to what they have to say - this way if there are problems, you can avoid arguments.