Evaluation-Patrick Rotzetter

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

These are the conventions we have used in our film and that are important for films:

• Protagonist
• Antagonist
• Restricted narration
• Low-Key lightning
• Enigma

• Antagonist

The antagonist was an important convention in our film since the camera was more on the antagonist at the start of our movie and it made it mysterious for the audience because they had no ideas if he was the main character or not until we find out later. The meaning of an antagonist in the film is basically the term used to represent the main villain; the opposite

of the Protagonist. In thrillers, they are often the main cause for the plot and the final boss of the film... they can be described by appearance to have dark clothes which represent darkness; aggressive and arrogant however, it is not entirely the same because every antagonist can change half way through and have a different personality. 

They are mainly represented as powerful figures to the audience through camera work such as low angles shot to show power; an example would be Voldemort from Harry Potter. He is shown as a powerful being who everyone fears and very scary looking.

The antagonist of our film:

Main antagonist - Patrick was the main antagonist in our film. He was the first to be introduced with restricted narrative.

Second antagonist-  Matt was the second antagonist during our film. He was the third to be introduced next to the main protagonist walking up.


The antagonist for our film was mainly Patrick, but also Matt. Patrick is the first to be introduced during our film with restricted narrative to give mystery to the audience and Matt is the third to be introduced standing next to the protagonist walking up with restricted narrative also, not showing his face also to make an enigma effect towards the audience.


An example from an inspired film called "Usual suspects" where we got the idea of how our antagonist would look and why we chose this idea and how it would make an impact on the audience.

This is the main antagonist of "The usual suspects", his name is "Keyser" and later on find out who he really is, both of this film and our film uses restricted narrative a lot to bring mystery and suspense to the audience and we both never show the identify at the antagonist to the audience at the start.

• Protagonist

The protagonist was also an important convention in our film since the protagonist in our film was an important factor to the story. The meaning of a protagonist in a film is pretty much the term used to represent the main character. In films, they are often introduced at the start to the audience and the film follows their story or their journey; they often stand out of any characters making it easier to determine who's the protagonist to the eye of the audience. They are shown to the the center of the attention in films and sometimes the in the middle of front of a movie poster, this implies that they're the main protagonist of the film and that their role are important.

They are represented as courageous, kind-hearted and as a heroic/heroine figure in films; an example of a protagonist would be Harry Potter from the film "Harry Potter". He is show to be courageous, brave, kind.

• The main Protagonist for our film was Trey. He is introduced later on in the film.

He plays the main character who is kidnapped by the main protagonist during our film. He isn't the first character to be introduced unlike most films; the main antagonist is the first to be introduced to raise questions for the audience. The clothes of his character appear to be of a different social class; mainly "The middle class" having more money than "working class" and "Lower class", making him different from the antagonist who appear to be "working class".

 An example from a movie of this would be in the "Usual Suspects":

The main Antagonist "Keyser" is introduced at the start of the film with some restricted narrative; this gives questions to the audience on how this mysterious man could be? We got the idea from this movie and wanted to give it a try. We wanted to use the antagonist at the beginning to raise tension and mystery to our audience.

• Restricted narration

Restricted narrative was an important factor to our film since this is what made our film so mysterious and sinister. These pictures are both from our movie and a different movie called "Usual Suspects" which I used as an example to show the audience. Both pictures doesn't show the identity of the characters and makes it more mysterious to the audience.

This is the main antagonist of "The Usual Suspects" where restricted narrative is used to not show his identity but just his body; this creates tension and mystery to the audience and we decided to use this to make it more interesting for the audience to watch.

Both of these screenshots share similarities; having the same colour clothes to show evilness as the prime antagonist and both using restricted narrative to bring mystery and suspense to the audience.

    

• Enigma

This is a convention that got used during my film. This creates tension and suspense raising questions to the audience and more entertain for them to watch. Enigma is when the audience are given a situation with no answers and have to solve the mystery kinda like a puzzle; e.g. a mystery man who kills someone at the start of a movie and later on finds out who he is. In my film, I have used Enigma to make it more interesting for my audience and make them want to watch it to find out the truth.

In our film, we have used a lot of enigma to the audience to raise tensions and more questions for them, making it more interesting to watch.

• Low key lighting 

Low key lighting was important too because we had to use light in the gym where it was completely dark and we needed some low key light to film in the gym to show the face of the main protagonist to the audience, "where there's darkness; there's always light". This is convention is used in nearly all thriller films since it represents the mysteriousness and creates suspense which is seen in the genre. 

This was really important for our film to show the mysterious figure of the main antagonist and thus creating these sinister character in the gym where we can't see their face but their figure and body only. We had to have some light on the main's protagonist's face to show his facial expressions and identify to the audience since he is an important character which the audience will be following throughout the whole movie since it's his role to be triumph at the end.

                                                   

                                                         An example of Low key lighting

                                                            

Thriller opening film:

Shot 1:

• In this opening, We have used an establishing shot, extreme long shot to start off our film. It is set in the evening, thus creating this atmosphere where the sun is about to set, making the location mysterious due to, this establishing shot shows the audience where our movie will be taking place. 
• The scene starts off with a fade-in effect with a sinister non-diegetic sound making it sinister to the audience's ear.
•  I have used a different colour correction to make it seem more like a thriller by putting the contrast up and the brightness down to give this spooky effect to the audience.
• Low key lighting was used in this shot to bring out the location's light even more and later to be edited by changing the colour correction to bring out the contrast more and make it more spooky and to imply that this location will be the setting where something bad with happen, strengthening this hypothetical theory with the non-diegetic sound. The lightning and editing created by this lighting signify the sinister mood and atmosphere of the scene.

Shot 2:

• This is the second establishing shot where we are more in depth to where the setting is going to take place, this shot takes place after the first shot to make it seem like we are in the same location but getting closer and closer on where it will actually be taking place.
• The non-diegetic still plays from the first scene (shot 1)
• The first scene (Shot 1) cuts to this scene to show where it will be taking place.
• Low key lightning was used here again to bring out the lightness of this shot and edit it later to have the contrast up and turn it into a spooky colour correction

Shot 3:

• This is a low angle shot used on the main antagonist to show dominance and mysteriousness.
• This shot creates enigma and mystery to the audience since they have no idea who he is because of his back turned.
• We used restricted narrative here to raise questions for our audience and create mystery, at this point they have no idea if he's the protagonist or the antagonist but later on the codes used in our film gives the hints what role he will be playing. 

Shot 4:

• This is a tracking shot, medium close-up shot we used on the antagonist having his back turn to provide mystery again. 
• The antagonist seem to have dark clothes which signify that he might be the antagonist of the story.
• Restricted narrative used to not show identity to the audience again so it brings more questions to the audience.

Shot 5:

• This is a close up shot of the antagonist getting something out his pocket. We got this idea from the"Usual suspects" when Keyser gets his lighter out his pocket and smokes a cigarette.

Shot 6:

• This is a long medium shot of the antagonist entering a building where it's dark and we can only see his figure here.
• I have used low key lighting here to make it more sinister and dark to the audience kinda like entering a dark place which only the antagonist knows, which makes it more interesting for the audience.
• The low key lighting has created this brilliant silhouette which we hoped to achieve before filming and it did a perfect job since the location where we filmed it was dark and we had light outside the door; it created the figure of the antagonist walking inside a building.

Shot 7:

• This is a POV shot of the main protagonist's perspective, here we see him walking up and go to a POV shot where he is tied to a chair and has no idea what happened. At this point the audience already know that he's most probably got knocked out and lost unconscious. When he wakes up and go to a POV shot we see the second antagonist staring at him with no speech or dialogue, the protagonist having no idea where he is; asking questions to his kidnappers with no response, and struggling to get away.

• Low key lighting was used in this shot to show the silhouette of the second antagonist but not reveal his identity. 

Shot 8:

• This is an extreme close up of the antagonist's hands inside his pocket where it goes to a match on action to show a knife in his hand. This is to show shock to the audience and fear; at this point we know that this guy is dangerous and would kill anyone until he gets what he wants.
• The prop (knife) is used to signify that the antagonist is a man who doesn't fear killing another person and this prop brings fear to the protagonist who asks; what's he holding in his hand?".

Shot 9:

• This is another POV shot of the protagonist's perspective to the audience, at this point the main antagonist interrogates the main protagonist about the location of the money; knowing no idea about what the main antagonist is speaking of; the protagonist gets punched in the face and ends up on the floor.

• For this scene, I have used a foley of a punching effect when the antagonist hits the protagonist in the face to make it more realistic to the audience's eyes.

• The scene goes to a fade out effect after getting punched by the main antagonist implying that the protagonist has passed out of consciousness and finishes with the title.

Example of a thriller we got ideas from Usual Suspects and comparisons:

Video clip of the opening of "Usual Suspects"

1. 
   

• This is an extreme close-up shot of a prop where a character ignites the candles to smoke a cigarette, this could be a symbolic to how the fire ends like the will of fire ending, this is a shot we considered of doing as the opening of our film but we wanted to do an establishing shot instead to make more sense to the audience on where the location would start.

• This a low angle shot used to show the antagonist kinda like the one in our movie where the antagonist walks up the stairs with restricted narrative too.
• Low saturation was used in this to make the atmosphere seem kinda like dark and sad to the audience
• Low-key lighting is sued here to make it sinister to the audience and only show the figure of the antagonist and not his face which enables the use of enigma which we used in our film as well to bring mystery to our audience.

• Close up shot of prop used here to show irreplaceable object of the antagonist  which the antagonist may hold onto a lot to the audience, we used this as example for our film where Patrick get's his cigarettes and prop knife out
• Low saturation used in this too, to make the scene's colour atmosphere rather sad and well with goes well the non-diegetic sound in the background which makes it sad for the other character.
• Restricted narration is sued again to bring mystery to the audience; having no idea who he is.
• Low-key lighting is used again to make it seem sinister and dark for the audience.

• Close up of prop (gun) used to show fear to the character, we got our prop (knife) idea from watching this and came up with the knife instead of the gun instead.
• Low angle shot used to show dominance over the character. We used a shot similar to this when Patrick punches Trey where the camera uses low-angle shots to show dominance.
• POV shot used to show the character's perspective to the audience, we used a similar shot to this in our film where Patrick punches Trey in his POV. 

2. How does your media represent particular social groups?

The main representation in our movie were mainly: Social class, age and gender.

In our opening sequence only three characters are shown (main ones):

• Two antagonist, the ones who kidnapped the man.
• The Protagonist who gets kidnapped.

Social class are normally shown through costumes, way of speaking, and hair styles. The social class of the antagonist is working class, this is due to his casual dark clothes at the beginning of our film and the dirty shoes and way he talks. A prop (knife) that also suggests that he could be a working class because of him getting a knife out of his pocket which you wouldn't expect from a upper class, middle class

The social class of the protagonist is a middle class, this is shown through his costume and props. We are shown how he dresses when we are introduced in the scene where he wakes up; he seems to have a t-shirt and a good manor of speaking, but his hair got messed up this could imply that it's messed up because he tried to fight back and lost. Another hint would be when the antagonist says that he knows where he has hidden the money; this could suggest that the main protagonist has a lot of money which could class him as an upper class individual with a lot of money.

Age The age group of all characters in the opening is identifiable. Judging by the tone of their voice, looks, height; the audience could assume that the antagonist are mid 20s and that the main protagonist could be young because of his voice tone and young skin.

GENDER
The representation of the characters seems to be stereotypical. All characters seem to have mens clothes and talk like them, we can assume they are all male characters in their late 20s or mid 30s.

The characters in our opening was all young teenagers in their 16-20 teens age. We choose Patrick as our main antagonist for a lot of reason and we needed somebody tall and had the "scary look" face to portray as the main antagonist. I thought of the stereotypical that would make an antagonist:

• Dark hair
• Dark Clothes
• Scary eyes
• Tall
• Big
• Scary atmosphere     

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





Since this was a low budget film, we are an independent film . We are not a big company because we can't advertise big films or make them nor have the money for it thus making the only possibility for us to advertise online and other methods that do not involve money  . The likely hood is that the advertisement for this film will be posters, internet and a trailer.

• Internet - A good way to distribute my film would be the internet since  I can target my audience by uploading my film on social webs like: Youtube, Facebook, Twitter; so I can get people to watch my content online and for free

There are many ways to advertise your film online. One of them is uploading your content to Youtube where people can watch it and you can earn revenue for it if you get a lot of views. This is as the best method for us to distribute our film since it's one of the most popular video streaming website in the world and a lot of people upload their content on there to gain feedback or popularity 

Marketing- second option 

Another way to distribute your film would be at Film Festival where they showcase your film to people. This gets you the chance to make your film become popular and get your work out there.

• Magazines - We could also get magazines to write reviews about our films since there are a few trusted magazines out there that would do it, this way, it would get our film out there to the public and we would be able to advertise it.

Screen grab from Total Film Magazine home page

Hammer Film Productions would be a great comapny for our thriller film  is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also producedscience fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies – and in later years, television series. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success. This success was due, in part, to distribution partnerships with major United States studios, such as Warner Bros. This would be a good comapny fr our thriller since it targets low budget films and shows them to people.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience would be the between the age of  male of age 15-25 this is because we have found that male audiences between 15-25 watch more thriller than any other group of audiences by surveying online. These images below will show you all our results we found about our audience and our reason for choosing our target audience.

6

As you can see from this chart again, the dominant audience are the male being 6 and the female being 2. This suggest to us that our target audience are mainly male viewers.

By surveying online charts, we have come to conclusion that that our target audience are mainly males who are in their 15-25. I found a graph which represents the age of the population who watch thriller movies.. These graphs shows the younger, teenage demographic which we have chosen to be our target audience which seems to be the most successful audience for us since our film is a thriller and involves characters around their ages

GENDER

Since our main protagonist is a young male antagonist, we think that this may attract more male audience to watch it since it's a male playing the part 

AGE  The main protagonist seems to be in his early 20s so we think that maybe the relation between the protagonist's age may attract the  young audiences who are also his age or near his age.

AGE CERTIFICATE  We all came to agree that our movie would class as a 15. This is because our film contains violence and strong language. As you get into our film, you can clearly see that the antagonist hits the protagonist and the use of imagery and language in it.

What does the 15 symbol mean?

No-one under 15 is allowed to see a 15 film at the cinema or buy/rent a ‘15 rated video. 15 rated works are not suitable for children under 15 years of age.

Are there any limits on what sort of theme a work can have at 15?

No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate for 15 year olds.

What might I see in a 15 rated film or video?

Any of the following:

•   strong violence
•  frequent strong language (e.g. 'f***').
•   portrayals of sexual activity
•   strong verbal references to sex
•   sexual nudity
•   brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
•   discriminatory language or behaviour
•   drug taking

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

• By putting the video on social websites such as : Youtube, Facebook, etc. This way I could get some comments about my video and see on what I could improve on next time.

• We wanted the audience to have a lot of questions in the opening to who the character was so we asked them what they thought of the opening. The beginning starts off with a non-diegetic soundtrack which seems quite sinister and we think that having a sinister soundtrack with the opening of our sequence will attract a lot of male audience who love thriller films.

• I showed a few of my college friends my thriller opening to get criticism and feedback about the opening. Here they are: 

"Liked the soundtrack used during the opening scene. Liked how the camera wasn't showing the identity of the villains to bring mystery, I also liked the scene where you punched the guy in that building where it's dark which makes it sinister and spooky. Overall it was a good film I would just work on more shots and more lighting during the interrogation since you could see the main character a little bit but it still made its point "

"Overall I thought that the opening was good, I think the mystery guy made me more curios while watching the movie and wondered who he was so that was smart to not show his face during the whole film to bring enigma to us. If I would redo this film, I would say work more on the syncing and edits of ore shots really but overall it was good to watch ."

We hope to attract our target audience with our use of editing and sound, by having a sinister soundtrack in our background and restricted narration to show mystery to our audience and the use of enigma; unable to identify who the characters introduced at the beginning of the film are; to bring curiosity to the audience and making them more interested to watch it.



Why our audience would enjoy the film?

• We included non-diegetic sinister soundtrack
• We used restricted narration to bring mystery to the audience
• The editing
• Use of lighting
• Cuts
• Colour correction
• Costumes of Characters and their social class differences
• Mystery
• Use of enigma ( Raising questions for the audience)
• Camera work

Feedback

I have asked 3 questions to a few people in the target audience of male 14-25: 

1. What did you think of our film and the story line?

'I think it was an okay film. I liked the editing combined together, and also liked the roles given. I didnt get to see much of the other characters's faces which was a let down or was this done on purpose? But overall it was a good film with the right use of soundtrack and roles and setting"

2. What could we improve on and why?
"I think you could improve more on your shots, if you took different variety of shots, this film could have been better but it was overall very interesting but if it had more shots then it would have been right on!"


3. What certificate rating would you give this movie and why?

' To be honest I would say a 15, since the're a lot for swearing in this and violent imagery of knifes being shown. It's what to be expected in a 15 certificate movie to be honest with your'

'seems like a 15 to me because of the knife and language really...''



6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

This is a video tutorial on how to use a mac:

During my progression, I have become more knowledgeable on a MAC and developed certain skills at using since. I have never used a mac before and after couple of times practicing I started to get the hang of it and knew how to navigate on it without anyone's help. I will be showing you the examples at what i got better at on the mac. 

How to use Final cut pro tutorial;

Final cut pro- was one of the programs I got to use on the mac, I have never used this editing software before and I, personally had no idea how to navigate on it when starting, it was a shame to me since I was an editor myself that used Sony Vegas and had experience with editing, but after practicing on it and getting some help from Sophie. I ahve become an davcned user on Final cut pro and knew how to use it properly without anyone's help. I knew how to edit on it; cut; change colour correction; import and export, use effects and transitions, text, audio mixing and cross cutting.

Video on how to use Garageband:

Garageband is another program that I have learnt to navigate during my progression. Sophie showed us how to use it step-by-step and I ahd some practice on it myself so I wouldn't struggle in the future with it. We all had to use foley sounds and other sound effects and replace the audio track of a five minute clips from a movie and make it sync with garage band. It was quite fun to do this since I had already ahd the experience on Garage band from video-production and it was easy for me to navigate on it.













                                                  This is a video on how to use Blogger:

Google blogger was another one for me which I never came familiar with before but after again posting comments and work on my blogger; I started to get the hang of it and it was easier to mpost work and edit etc. At first I struggled with this because I didn't know where to navigate to, or how to edit a post or even post one but after playing with it, I started gaining some knowledge about blogger and life was more simple and easier for me.

Camera filming was one of the most difficult one for me; I had no knowledge on how to use a camera before or record; so I practiced with my group and later on gained knowledge on how to work it. I have learnt how to put white-balance on and import my files onto the MAC thanks to Sophie again and the tutorial they showed me! Now, I have no trouble with filming and can set up a camera perfectly fine on my own and film correctly and set up white balance with no trouble.

180 degree rule diagram

Camera editing; I have learnt new techniques about camera editing through Marion. She showed us the rule of 180 degree, white balance. She told us that breaking the 180 line would confuse the audience and make the audience think the character is talking to himself but some directors do it purposely in their films sometime so I learnt a lot about camera angles, shot sizes such as: Close-up, Extreme close-up, medium shot, long shot, low angle, high angle, Tilting, Crab, Jib-shot, Ariel shot.

Lighting setup

Lighting: I have learnt about how to use lighting in my progression through Marion and Andrew. They taught me "High key- lightning" and "Low key lightning" and what their differences were. At first I got it straight away because I had lessons about lighting before in my video production lessons and gain experience on how to use it straight away. Lighting is an important key in shooting pictures since it's what makes your eyes see and it's also important to use lightning even in dark places to show the appearance to the audience and so they can see. Where there's darkness, there's always light.

This is a video explaining "High key lighting and "Low key lighting"

7. looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned into progression form it to the full product?

Final cut pro:

Final cut pro was something that I definitely learnt more about and got more into! I knew the most basic stuff on it such as: Cutting, inserting audio, and exporting at first, but while practicing everyday I began to advance more higher and got into it more! I liked editing personally because it was one of my hobbies and  i loved doing it. This was open of my best quality really because I was fast at editing and would get my work done quick and I gained experience on it more and more by editing everyday and watching tutorials. 

Sound Recordings:

After earning more about Camera, we were told that sounds were also an important factor in our films, because we would have to record sound and make sounds (Foley). After learning more about sound on Garage Band and tutorials, I have come to understand how to use the recording device and make Foley sound effects for different type of noises by watching some examples on Youtube.

Video of Foley sound examples:

• I have learnt to always have white balance on!
• I have learnt about different variety of shots while doing my preliminary such as: Medium shot, Long shot, Close-up shot, Extreme long shot.
• Also I learnt to finish all work on deadlines and meet time management and get everything done quick so we don't lose marks
• Before doing the preliminary, I have never used the lighting or bothered putting white balance but now I have learnt that both of these factors are rally important while filming and I always make sure I have them on. 
• The preliminary shots that i have learnt :

-Shot Reverse Shot
-Keeping the 180 Degree Rule
-Match on Action

• We found it easy to make our movie because we all individually had one skill we were all good a; Patrick exceeding in editing; Trey exceeding in Blogger and navigating; Matt exceeding in getting work done and punctuation and correction. This made our team in control and we succeeding in our preliminary task.