Evaluation Questions

1. Evaluation Questions Tommy Kirwan

2. 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? The title sequence of our film ‘Lethal Romance’ relates to the thriller genre, the first real convention that is challenged in our piece is that the victim is a male with the female being the killer. Whereas normally in other films it would be the other way around, we thought this role reversal would help us edge other competitors as it would be give a totally different edge to the story. Films that we have taken inspiration of conventions from our the ‘Twilight’ series and ‘Obsessed’. Our film involves the conventions of a thriller film, for example, jealousy, revenge, murder, fear, obsession and an antagonist/protagonist. The narrative structure is something else that relates to other thriller films, because of the suspense build up in the film and lots of twists being involved. Our characters are typical of the thriller genre as they are young teenagers, and not a lot is different from typical characters except the fact of the role reversal for victim/criminal. Our title sequence introduces two white teenagers and there is no back-story or history, although as a group we did come up with a film treatment. The mise-en-scene was typical of thrillers; we were in a secluded area with bruised and bloody make up, another typical convention of a thriller film is using natural light, this is very typical of the Twilight film series. The soundtrack is a mysterious piece of music with no lyrics or words, we used this to try and create an atmosphere and tension. We used a range of shots from extreme close ups to long shots and tracking shots. We also used a POV shot which is very typical of thriller films. The editing techniques we used were match on action shots and shot/ reverse shots. We used continuity with the scene with things such as trees/logs helping us to do so. This meant less editing because we had already thought a lot about the continuity of our film.

3. 2) How does your media product represent particular social groups? Lethal Romance has two main characters, both of whom are teenagers, there are both a male and female character, and unlike most thriller films, it is the male that is the victim and the female who is the criminal. The characters are average, white, British, working/middle class teenagers, typical of thriller films. The representation of the characters is difference in the sense that we have a girl that is portrayed as dangerous instead of the boy. They would be seen as normal, British youths though possibly the story line could affect the way people think about the characters, they could be seen as ‘yobs’ or ‘hoodies’ because of the storyline of our film. There are a few elements from our mise-en-scene that relate to the characters we have used. For example, the fact that both characters are wearing hoodies show they are part of youth culture in England, this could however give a negative effect to youths in England as the storyline is violent at times. The bruised and bloody make up portrays the violence of our film. Our characters reflect the same sort of characters in the ‘Twilight’ film series, we do have some differences as there is no supernatural element to our characters, however the characters in Twilight are involved in a love story, are teenagers and show typical youth culture.

4. 3)What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? During the pre-production stage, we decided that we wanted our film to be a Hollywood production. Because if it was made into a feature length film we did not want to have had to had a limited amount of resources and budget for things such as marketing and advertising. If we used a UK film distributor it would be Revolver Entertainment for several reasons, first of all they are well known within the UK and have already won awards and been noted for films such as Sherlock Holmes & Shank. But if we were to make it into a Hollywood production we like to use the distributors of the ‘Twilight’ film series; Summit Entertainment. This distributor has also had success with films in the same target audience as us such as ‘Remember Me’ and ‘Letters to Juliet’. We would like our film to be show in all major cinemas in the UK, including Odeon and Cineworld, we could also look at the film being distributed in the USA in cinemas such as Regal Cinemas and Cinemark Theatres. These sort of cinemas and distributors would allow for great advertisement of our film, for example adverts in magazines and billboards, and it would allow our trailer to be played before other films, preferably before films of the same genre. We would need support from the cast of the film to take part in interviews and campaigns to promote the film.

5. 4) Who would be the audience for your media product? The target audience for our film would be teenagers and young adults, preferably in the age range of 12-24. Our film could appeal to both genders because of the different conventions in our film attract different genders, for example the romance in our film would attract a female audience, on the other hand the violence and thriller genre in general would attract more of a male audience. The reason we decided to aim for this audience is because this is the main ages and people that are interested in thriller and romance films. This relates to the interest of the ‘Twilight’ film series, we would try to use to same ideas as Twilight by attracting our audience using books, online adverts and TV adverts, If we made our film we would like to make a book adaptation of the film, which will relate to another audience which would allow others to enjoy our narrative in another way. We also came up with the idea of advertising on social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter to try and attract our audience, this could link in with these sites being mentioned in ‘Lethal Romance’. If we were able to create our film, our group decided our ideal director would be D.J Caruso, as he is a well known director in the thriller genre. He is very experienced and has worked on a lot of successful thriller films before so we thought he would be able attract more of an audience. This would be an example of the audience on a wider base as fans of D.J Caruso would come and see the film, this would create a wider audience for our film, this could create a word of mouth campaign for our film as people who watched the film because of D.J Caruso will tell others about our film. We decided that our main actors would be ShiaLebeouf and Jessica Alba, these are both experienced thriller actors and have a massive fan base, this would once again bring in a bigger audience for ‘Lethal Romance’.

6. 5) How did you attract your audience? The target audience for ‘Lethal Romance’ are teenagers and young adults, so those being socially active could provide a massive way to be able to make it easier to appeal to our audience, for example them using Facebook and Twitter. By advertising on these websites it would allow us to advertise directly to the teenagers with things such as advertisements or links to trailers etc. Another way of attracting our audience would be to have the trailer played before/after popular T.V soaps/dramas (things that are popular with our target market). When it comes to our trailer being played before movies in cinemas, we would try to get the trailer shown before films that are relevant to the genre and story of our film, for example the Twilight movie series, this is one of the most relevant films to ours as it involves a love story with a dark side to it. This is one of our unique selling points, that the story involves romance but at the same time a dark, mysterious side to the main characters. Another unique selling point would be the role reversal in our film, when you think of murders & violence in films, there is normally a male character who would be the killer, where as in ‘Lethal Romance’ it is the other way around, with the female character being the main actor, and she is the protagonist in the film, but at the same time being an antagonist as she is causing problems that she must overcome. When the film first starts, there is a real sense of mystery as the main character wakes up with what appears to be a dead body next to her, and she looks like she has no idea what happened. This attracts the audience straight away as they will be hooked on the idea of what happened and how the dead body got where it is. We used camera shots that look over the dead bodies to create an atmosphere that these characters are defenceless. There are particular parts of our film that I feel will relate to particular genders and types of people, for example the love story side of the film I feel would relate more to the female market, where as the violence would be more enjoyed by the males watching the film, especially young male adults. I think this would give us a big advantage with other competitors in the market as our film is for both male and female audiences because of the different conventions in the film.

7. I think our film would be classified as a 12a for several reasons; first of all there is not excessive violence in our film. I feel the love story side of our film would also bring the rating down, for example if the main narrative of the film was about a serial killer you would think the rating should be higher than ‘Lethal Romance’. We would try to create a positive word of mouth campaign, we could establish this through TV interviews with the stars of our film, this would hopefully further increase the hype around our films release. We have also had suggestions about further attracting audiences via merchandise. For example t-shirts with characters or our films logo on them, we have also thought of things such as screensavers/themes for phones, for example free themes for iPhone/Blackberry users as a lot of people in our target audience use these products, this would once again hopefully create a further audience for our film. Our film has several USP’s (Unique Selling Points) first of all, there are many unexpected twists in our film, especially with the death straight at the beginning. Secondly, a main USP is the role reversal of characters in our film, where the female is the criminal and the male the victim, whereas the typical film would be the other way around. Another USP would be the director and actors in our film (D.J Caruso & Jessica Alba/Shia LeBeouf) we feel this would bring a different audience for fans of these actors and directors. Our film also has a complex narrative, which mixes different things together, for example the love story with a mysterious, dark side to it, we see this as another USP. We would like our film’s trailer to be shown before films of the same genre, also we would like it to be shown at major film festivals such as Comic-Con International and London Film Festival. We would advertise via digital marketing a lot for our film, because our target audience are main users of social networking sites such as Facebook & Twitter. We feel it would be a huge opportunity missed if we did not try to appeal to these people. Last of all, our film would be rated as a 12a for cinemas and 12 for DVD release; his is because our film agrees to the guidelines for this category from the BBFC.

8. 6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing your product? Our title sequence I feel hooks the audience to want to continue watching for several reasons; first of all it makes the audience ask questions, like what happened? Why she killed somebody and what would happen next. Also the use of our voiceover to show that the police were looking for the girl leaves the story open for lots of possible storylines. During the process of this project I have learnt many important things that I could use if I ever was involved in something like this again. First of all, I have learnt a lot about creating atmosphere within a scene using things such as camera shots/angles and mise en scene. Our opening two minutes we tried to base on a mysterious atmosphere, so for our mise en scene we tried to imply this. For example, our film was shot in the middle of the woods, something that straight away identifies mystery; why are the characters there? The makeup that we used was also used to create mystery, for example the blood and bruises, how did they get there? Are the characters seriously hurt? These are questions that we wanted to try and get the audience to think about, therefore adding to the mystery in our film. We used certain camera shots and angles for different reasons in our film, for example, the running scenes we shot from lots of different angles, could this mean people were watching the character? We hoped that this would give the effect of another mysterious element to our film. During the pre production we didn’t use many programs that were not familiar to most of the group for example we used programs such as Microsoft Word and Power Point. We used the internet a lot during pre production for the research stage of our project, this involved researching the thriller genre, studying things such as the conventions of different thriller films and sub-genres.

9. When we started the preliminary exercise, it was the first real time that we used the video cameras and equipment ourselves, so this required us learning how to use the cameras, for example adjusting exposure and white balance. Other equipment used included a boom microphone and a tripod. The tripod was important to our preliminary exercise as it allowed us not to have shaky shots or shots from different heights/angles; this allowed us to smoothly use continuity. Once we finished filming, we used the editing suites for the first time as a group. This involved us using Adobe Premier 7. This involved us learning how to capture all the footage, before the filming process we learnt techniques to make our footage effective, for example to 180 degree rule and how to do shot/reverse shots to a high standard. For our preliminary exercise we were required to make a storyboard to help us with filming, so we used drawing materials and paper for this. To allow us to put our storyboards on the blog, we had to use a scanner. On the filming day, as a group it was the first time we used the filming equipment outside the college without any guidance, so there was a lot of responsibility to make sure we filmed correctly. A major decision that the group made was to not have any sound on our film, once again relating to the mysterious side of our film, this therefore meant we did not have to use a boom microphone for our filming. A very important aspect of the filming stage was adjusting the white balance and exposure for each shot, as when filming in a forest, lighting changes all the time with things such as sunlight coming through the trees and the shadows of the forest. When we first looked back at our footage, we decided that we would leave out some of the scenes that we shot, for example some of the running scenes became quite repetitive and an opening scene of a fast forward of a POV shot of somebody walking through a forest. However this footage was very shaky, so we decided to cut this scene from our opening titles.

10. We then had to apply our soundtrack, we decided that we would put this over the top of all sounds in our film, except the voiceover and a police siren that was coincidentally recorded when filming, however it ended up fitting into our film. In the editing process we searched for a font that we would use for our titles, we cut down to a list of 3 or 4 and decided on this font: We used this font because we felt it did not really tie into one genre, for example lots of fonts had blood on them to signify horror films or big bold lettering for action films, this font also relates to our film as we feel it reflects the young, romantic sub genres in the film as well as an overall thriller genre. I have learnt a lot of camera skills and camera shots, for example in our film we used a close up to create tension and introduce the characters, we also used a POV shot, which I feel is very typical to the thriller genre.

11. 7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression to the full product? In comparison to the preliminary task, I think the things I have learnt have helped me during the end product. When I look back on the preliminary exercise, the first time I used any of the equipment, my knowledge of how to use the video cameras properly, adjusting the exposure and white balance, how to use the boom microphone and how to use the camera tripod has increased greatly, these may be very basic skills but they will help If I do something like this again in the future. I think I have learnt how to manage my time a lot more, for example filming schedules and deadlines have helped me do this, this has also related to having enough footage, all linking to being organised and having an efficient planning process, this also applies to me learning that using a detailed storyboard is something that helps when making a project as it allows you to picture each scene and what you could do to make it better or making sure that it looks exactly how you wanted it too. For our filming, our group learnt how to shoot shot/reverse/shots and the 180 degree rule, these are very important to have smooth continuity running in a film, especially with ‘Lethal Romance’ during the running scenes. I have also learnt how important mise-en-scene is when shooting a film. Mise-en-scene allows the film to connect with audience by creating atmosphere and moods, making the audience think about what is happening in the film, and start to ask themselves questions, I feel this was very important when we made ‘Lethal Romance’. I have also learnt a lot about representations of films, and how film companies appeal to their audiences through marketing and advertising. I think our planning process helped a lot during the production stage, it allowed to keep us up to date with everything and all tasks that needed to do. We didn’t have to change many scenes when we finished filming, we only made one decision that was not really planned, where we cut a scene that was a bit shaky and to cut down the running scenes a little bit. This helped our film look a lot more professional. I feel overall our end product was very successful and I feel we made quite a good job of what we had to create. However some things could have been improved, for example if we had more resources for the soundtrack, fonts and things such as money for special effects etc. We also had a problem of group members not being present at all times, however we overcame this to create a finished product to a high standard.