final product

Final product

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

What we have learnt

To begin with we learnt a lot from the mistakes in the pleminary task. Our pleminary task was really bad, but had signs of great potential. We were not very good with the camera shot, the acting was bad and the camera man had no idea of what he was doing. Once we finished the pleminary task we had learnt how to avoid these problems and how to actually create a piece that would impress not only the examiner but our class. As seen in the pictures below we had made some mistakes with the 180 degree rule, but also pulled off an excellent match-on-action shot. 

Our biggest problem however, was the camera shaking our camera man even with the tripod couldn't stop the camera from shaking, this was a massive problem this was something that couldn't happen in our actual task and thanfully with more practice and a shot we found very handy the POV. Also the pleminary task allowed us to find out new things about imovie like how to mute all sound in the movie and manipulate the visuals to look darker or brighter. The most important thing we learnt was how to piece together a movie that would make sense to the audience, by this I mean where a sequence of events are pieced together in a logical order. 

 

Another shot that again worked well for us and this was all thanks to the practice that we had when doing the pleminary task. Without that experience are movie wouldn't be very successful at all. Once we asked for a better tripod and managed to figure out how the camera worked and sorted out what mode the camera should be on, we finally had the confidence to go on and film our opening scene. 

our reaction video

How did you attract/address your audience?

 Audience

We wanted our movie to be an action/thriller that would surprise our audience. We wanted to target a young audience between 15-25 a large age gap, but we believed that this age group of people would want to watch our movie. Also females and males would both be up for watching our movie. We also did secondary research and found that many people between that age group liked the genre of our movie. We also believe that at the age mentioned above many people like doing things that give them a thrill. We also looked at movies that were massive successes such as The Dark Knight Rises and figured out what made the movie such a success. We also looked at Shutter Island and how the mysterious theme in the movie made it such a success. We had to avoid anything that wasn't serious enough in our movie we couldn't have our characters smiling sarcastically or anything of that nature. 

 

 

Here we have our directors cut of our movie. We explain what is occurring in each scene and it makes a more sense about what is occurring. One thing I realised is that our opening scene focused on 'surprising' the audience too much and might have  not made sense to them. However if we were to carry on with our movie it would have made sense to our audience as the narrative would have been similar to Shutter Island, but not as in depth ours would have a more blunt narrative but it would still give the audience an explanation of what is going on in our narrative

what type of media institution would distrubute our media product

The media institution we chose

The media institution we would have produce and distribute our media product is Cipher films. This is because the company isn't a massive Hollywood production company. Our movie would also not have a massive international release it would be a national UK release only. Cipher films is also known for releasing small independent releases such as Kidulthood and adULThood.  We would prefer if our movie was released through major cinemas such as Odeon. I would prefer Cipher films to distribute my media product as they have got experience with distributing action/thriller genres as seen it the example above with adULThood. Also the company is familiar with smaller national releases of movies and this would make it suitable for us.

Another company that could distribute our movie very well is Film4. This company is famous for many UK release only movies. the company has released movies such as; 12 Years A Slave, 127 Hours and The inbetweeners. These movies have been some of the best success stories. If we have the right company distributing our production we could make it a success. Film4 has had experience with selling almost every genre movie that is around whereas Cipher films hasn't got this experience. To conclude Film4 is also more established than Cipher films and this makes it a more desirable choice for us.

technologies during the process of constructing the opening scene

technologies during the process of constructing the opening scene

I see that the use of cut of dialogue gains more attention from the audience as it brings more confusion to the audience and they really want to know what happens therefore they carry on watching. At first, we had dialogue in and it just practically explained what happened so we thought we'd cut the dialogue to get the audiences attention.

We learnt that using a P.O.V shot of the person being tortured gets the audiences attention, because it makes you feel like the character, therefore we used it to make the audience feel like they are being tortured and they enjoyed it.

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

Our final product and media conventions

The music in our movie was quiet and goes against the conventions surrounding action/thriller movies. Instead of going for fast upbeat music we preferred slow-beat music that kept up the continuity effect of mystery surrounding our opening scene. For example the movie Transporter has fast upbeat music in almost every scene, but this movie would need fast beat music as a lot of action is seen in the movie, whereas our movie has a lot of mystery and a surprise element to it. We needed eerie music for this reason.

Our costumes were also very different to many main stream major action/thrillers. Going back to our example of 2 Fast 2 Furious where their characters had shirts and smart trousers on, our characters had hoodies and jeans on. This is something that is not usually seen in a torture scene, but our scene was not designed to be gruesome it was there to let the audience know that this movie is going to be full of twists and surprises in the story. We had the characters in hoodies and jeans to show that they are at the bottom of the hierarchy.

The characterization of our characters can go against action/thriller conventions as our characters don't look like the typical professional criminals that you get in action/thrillers. Our characters are not like the professional/crazy depicted characters like in the movie Casino. In our movie our characters are more like characters from the movie Adulthood. We have young characters that have been characterized to act as if they grew up on a rough estate, and that they didn't have much hope.

Our movie also didn't keep up with the film style conventions as we had problems with the lighting. We couldn't have much lighting in our scene as then too much of the mise en scene would be given away to the audience so we decided to have low key lighting with only POV, close-ups and mid-shots as our preferred camera shot. In the movie Casino Royal the lighting is similar as it is low-key but it is also has a wide range of camera shots in it's torture scene from close-ups to long-shots and over-head shots, they had a wide variety of different shots but then again, they had the budget for more and
better equipment.

comparison with another movie

Comparison with another movie

Here we have one of the best torture scenes ever shot. This is a scene form 2 fast 2 furious, the camera shots and the idea of using the rat to tunnel into the persons stomach was too good. This movie's torture scene, however, was different to ours. It had a much clearer picture, better mise en scene an example of this would be the empty bar; this shows the power and money involved within the context of this torture, it shows a position of power. 




In our movie we had a small dark room where the mise en scene would make the audience believe that our opening scene is shot in a ghetto with two young gang members as the torturer's. Whereas in 2 Fast 2 Furious the characters all looked smartly dressed and had a presence that showed money and authority. We had two 'stray' looking young men in our movie that where wearing hoodies. The only thing that our movie had in common with 2 Fast 2 Furious is that the person being tortured was on his own and looking very vulnerable.

reaction video

Reaction to our first screening

In our first screening we had one of our actors review the movie and give his honest opinion, he wasn't involved in any of the editing of the movie and gave his final opinion on our movie. We believed that this person gave an honest opinion of what they thought about our movie and we were grateful for their opinion and criticism. 

We also had another person watch our movie, they had no involvement with our movie and was more ruthless and blunt with his feedback, we respected this and liked his attitude towards the questions we gave him. We ultimately achieved what we wanted from the reactions and this was the bad points of our opening scene. We liked the criticism that was thrown at us.

self assessment

Self assesment for the final film

We came into our movie not knowing much about how the production of a movie worked. Me and my team loved this challenge. We wanted a story that would be thrilling and would make good viewing for our audience. We knew we would face amny challenges when making our movie, some of which would not be our fault. However, we prepared for this and we took initiative when faced with a problem, editing the story to what suited the camera when filming. 

When we eventually came up with an idea we adapted it to suit our budget and avoid running into trouble with the law. We decided to extend our torture scene as it was indoors and we could use weapons for our filming. We also realised that with the use of correct camera shots we could make our torture scene look real and intense. The way we managed to adapt the story when we needed to was something that the team could do very well, many of us decided to take on board tasks by judging what we were best at. For example Zenny took charge of editing, Denis took charge of camera shots, whereas I was director.

opening credits

Opening credits

With our opening credits we followed all the movie conventions of: Studio company, the production company, Directors name, The movie stars and the Title. We wanted everything to seem normal the whole point of our movie is to surprise the audience as it makes them anticipate what will occur next. The element of surprise was vital for us, and this is what made us decide that we should follow the media conventions.

media

Media conventions

Our movie seems to challenge the media conventions of other movies that have torture scenes in them. Our movie deosn't have a crazed redneck in a denim outfit with a chainsaw cutting someones body parts off. Neither do we have a professional hitman dressed in a suit and black leather gloves performing his 'business' on the victim. Our movie has two amateur looking teenagers who are trying to learn the trade by being given an order to torture a captured enemy of their gang.

 

This is an example of a crazed torturer/murderer who is out their to get what he desires, in this case death. Our movie wasn't based on this wasnt looking for a character that could suit being crazy and unpredictable, we wanted two characters that looked as if they weren't meant to be doing what they are doing, but the 'thuglife chose them'. I belive by breaking the conventions of a torture movie we managed to put our movie in a context that would suit our budgets. However, we do keep up with conventions as we have weapons in our movie. We have a gun and pen kife that has many other tools that can be used for torture. In this way our movie has similarities with the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Our movie also keeps up with conventions as we shot our movie in a very creepy looking movie. 

These two are our characters, they look young and innocent, but their ambitions are to reach the top of the underworld. I believe they suited this context very well. They have all the stereotypes of young and ambitious criminals. They are willing to do the dirty workin order to be respected by their bosses.  With the clothes they have on the audience will be able to judge on their backgrounds in this case our audience would believe the two characters are childhood friends who grew up on a council estate.

In our movie we decided that we shouldnt have dialogue as it would add to the intensity of the scenes. With the audience having to read the body language of our characters then we could add to the suspense of our scenes. We have a major twist in our movie as the character with the gun decides that only one worker can reach the top and decides to kill his closest friend and then deal with the victim himself in order to get more respect in the gang.

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

Technology

Whilst making our short movie we learnt many things about the technology we used. For our camera we used a Panasonic SDR-S70. 

This Camera did the job and that is about it. It was all we had an Iphone camera would have been better, the only problem was that we would have problems with buying a good enough stand for the phone for a cheap price. This camera was all we had and we hated the battery on it, it would go from 100% charge to 0% in the space of 20 mins. This was frustrating and we had to find ways to improves with things like extension leads that allowed us to keep the battery on.  

Also we used the Mac to edit our opening scene and it was sensational. We could edit a lot of bad filming into amazing quality scenes. This allowed us to use transitions and the music provided for us and this meant it wasn't copyrighted - thankfully. However we had problems downloading free sounds as it had a warning sign, meaning we had to re-downloading these music each time it occurred and it took a lot of time to find. This happen 3 times. Nevertheless, this really helped us put our movie together.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How social groups are represented in our media production

Class-in our movie the characters are presented as being lower class 'bottom of the food chain' people. This is the only thing that we had to try and make obvious to the audience, we didn't want our movie to appear upper-class criminals to our audience so we made sure of this by ensuring that our costume design depicted lower-class petty criminal that are chasing a 'scarface' dream.

Age-Our characters are young because our target audience is a young adult age group. We want them to be able to relate to our movie and how teenagers can make mistakes because they aren't thinking clearly. Other age groups can also view our movie and enjoy it, but children shouldn't be allowed to watch our movie, for one because they aren't old enough and secondly, they can't make sense of it. This can be seen as biased, but it is also logical as we wouldn't be able to launch an advertising campaign aimed at children. 

Gender-We only had male characters in our movie, but I believe that after viewing the movie having a female character could have added to the intensity of our movie. One problem that could arise of just having male charactersis that some people may view this as biased and refer back to stereotypes of women not being allowed to be around violence. This is not the case in my opinion as even having a female present in the scene has a type of effect that shows authority and power, this may have been a good addition to our movie just to create mixed emotions in the audience.

Ethnicity-In our movie we had characters from different ethnic backgrounds. Two of our characters are eastern-European and one of them is north African (Arab). This fits in nicely with the class of our characters. There are many stereotypes of eastern-Europeans being drug dealers and human traffickers  this is similar with Arabs and again reinforces the appearance of the characters being from a council estate. It also lets the audience think that these characters are young criminals starting from the bottom and trying to make it to the top.

Disability-None of our characters are presented as being physically disabled, but mentally they are on the verge of doing so. To become the criminals they want to become they have to cope mentally with the violence that they will witness. This could lead to such disorders like post-traumatic stress and many other mentall health problems that a soldier may endure. The only type of disability that would be presented in our movie is psychological and not physical.  

Stereotypes-In our movie we have youngsters in hoodies. This keeps up with stereotypes of teenagers being hot headed young thugs. Both of the teenagers have their hoodies up at all time and only certain facial features can be seen. The two characters in the movie were specifically chosen because they had to be the ones that did the dirty work. The way they look allows us to keep up with the stereotypes of the type of people that do the dirty work, they are either completely crazy or young and trying to get up the ranks. The torturers in our movie look young and innocent but also very dangerous and willing to do what is ordered by the boss.

     This picture is an example of how our characters appearances keep up with the stereotypes that we tried to keep up with. I believe that we kept up with the stereotypes of the young 'dirty workers' that are trying to rise the ranks in their gangs. Some movies try and meet different stereotypes of torturers. For example in Texas chainsaw massacre the torturer is completely crazy and he's on a mission to hunt people down. In our movie we wanted to show the audience that our torturers were trying to become professionals.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our movie 

The audience for our movie will be people between the age of 16-30 who like to watch action movies. The audience will also have to love surprises and dramatic twists in the story. Our movie will be action packed, no time for a toilet break and 100% attention on the movie. We want our viewers to stay stuck to their seat and not miss a single bit.

file:///Users/imed10/Desktop/images-1.jpeg

Final Shots

Final Props

 

This is the knife we used as it was perfectly legal to carry out in public and the teachers where perfectly fine with us having it in school as long as a teacher was present when filming. It was a useful weapon as it had many other tools on it that could be used for torture. The spot light we used also made the weapon looked even more intimidating as the light would shine off of the silver paint on the knife. The reason we chose this weapon was because it purpose was to inflict pain on the victim and not kill them that was what the gun was for.


We also had a black bb-gun which was something we did not want to have with us as it caused a lot of problems with authorities in our local area. But as a movie prop it was perfect it looked real, which was what we needed, this allowed us to keep up with continuity. The best thing about the gun was that we could have any camera shot from close-up to long-shot it looked intimidating. This is what we needed and it was worth the risk of carrying it around. 

Location

Location shots

This is where we filmed our torture scene. We chose this location because it when the curtains were closed and the lights turned off the room was very dark and scary. This was perfect for our scene as the spot light would would be directly on the characters and only show some of their features to keep up with the whole element of confusion about what is going to happen. The scene is very creepy and intense and this effect is intensified by the location of our shooting.

Our flashback scenes where filmed in Florence park. We found this to be suitable as it looked like a typical meet up location. It fitted all the stereotyoes of a meeting place for two friends. The park is a real calm and relaxed placed. Not many people where about and this was suitable for us as it meant members of the public where not scared by our filming. This location also fit the theme of betrayal and avoiding the police as it was a very quiet place at the time of our filming.

Location Shots

Location Shots

We recorded our torture scene in a drama classroom at our school. We could see that with a spotlight and all of the curtins drawn in the classroom we could make it look very creepy and ghetto warehouse style. The room itself was in a very bad condition the walls were chipped and the dark blue paint added to the creepy effect once the spotlight was on as the audience couldnt make out the location of our filming. 

Our flashbacks where filmed in florence park once the sun started to go down. This location was suitable for a 'meet-up' because it is a large park with many tall trees and not many people inside it which was perfect for our filming purposes. 

These were the only two locations we used for filming as we didn't need to use many locations for our movie. These locations in my opinon where the best for our movie.

Audition Videos

We auditioned many people for our movie but in the end we opted for three of the people we auditioned to be in our movie. The two torturers were a perfect match of ruthless and low rank. They did the dirty work and enjoyed doing it. I played the victim and I had to be good with the POV shots and I was. Many of the people we auditioned were either too soft to fit any stereotypes of a criminal or too big and tough to play a low rank worker that does the dirty work. The videos of our auditions will be up shortly.

Music and Sounds

Music and Sounds

The music in the movie was made by our team. None of it was copied from the internet. The heartbeat was not hard to obtain as it was already on the software we used to create any music or sounds for our movie. We found it interesting and entertaining making our music for the movie it was a good experience and the music we produced was perfect for our movie. We made the non-diegetic sounds on a software installed on a music producers laptop. He works at our school and kindly helped us with our non-diegetic sounds. The dialogue and the diegetic sounds where recorded on the cameras mic. However, it wasn't ideal but it was the only option for us and we had to use our initiative.