Friday, 31 March 2017
Thursday, 30 March 2017
Wednesday, 29 March 2017
Tuesday, 28 March 2017
Monday, 27 March 2017
Evaluation Task 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms of conventions from real media products?
When we first began to discuss what our hypothetical films narrative and characters would be, we immediately decided after watching lots of crime thriller trailers that we wanted to challenge a lot of the gender and age stereotypes that usually occur in most films. We noticed that in the majority of crime thriller films that the protagonists are almost always male, and the female characters only have secondary roles as the love interest, victim or at most a final girl. They are often portrayed as being very emotional, weak and dependent on the men, whereas the male characters are portrayed to be strong, fearless, intelligent, violent and the heroes of the story. We also wanted to challenge age stereotypes and we did this by having a varied age range of characters from as young as 17 to mid forties, by significant age differences between characters we could develop a more complex plot and interesting relationships could be established between all the characters, therefore making the narrative more intense as different ages and genders can bring a lot of conflict. So by challenging age and gender conventions we break the social and cinematic norms whilst simultaneously enticing our audiences.
1. One of our protagonists is unconventionally female, usually in films such as SE7EN the two lead roles are both men and typically portrayed as the strong, smart and independent working men dealing with the cruel world of crime. However, we turned this paradigm on its head and had a female lead in charge of the actual case itself dealing with the problems first hand without the assistance of a man. Detective Jones does however, have the assistance of another woman to suggest that women are taking on jobs that were considered more masculine, and by having another woman there this could infer that it's not a rare occurrence to have women working within the field of crime scene investigation.
2. Again at the very beginning of the trailer it features a third female character as one of the secondary roles, it may seem very predictable to have a young blonde girl in a crime thriller film playing the "damsel in distress", but her role is much more important that that. Kayleigh is only 17 years old and is the only survivor of the Phillips family homicide, she witnessed her family being murdered in person and fled the scene away from the killer. The next day she is interviewed by Detective Jones and her assistant and remains silent and motionless whilst she constantly repeats the traumatic memories of the night before, this shows that a young and defenceless girl is very emotionally tough as she is coping with the horrific trauma of her families death. So although she lacks physical strength, she has a tremendous amount of emotional strength which is an overlooked trait to have and is often forgotten or dismissed. Kayleigh technically does challenge female conventions as she is so young and has been through so much and continues to go on without her family which takes a lot of inner strength.
3. Here we have Peter Stone (the young rookie Journalist) and Detective Jones working together on the case that has been reopened. By having both a male and female lead we were able to challenge not just cinematic normalities but social norms; we have established a basic form of equality within this shot as a man and woman are working together and are both equally involved and neither character has established who's superior because of their age and gender when in actual fact their conflict is triggered by their clash in personalities and moral differences rather than who's better based on their gender or their age. Although we have a male lead which is a convention for most films in general, we wanted to have a man and woman working perfectly alongside each other, talking about more important things rather than having a mostly female cast so we didn't force female superiority upon our diverse audience as that would be hypocritical of the mostly male led films.
4. As I've previously stated, men in films are shown as aggressive, powerful, independent, work orientated, the hero etc. But we wanted to have a male lead that thinks about more things more logically rather than acting and responding with just impulsiveness with violence or constantly chasing down the killer. We wanted to avoid a character like Brad Pitt's role as, Detective David Mills who is a young rookie detective who hasn't had a lot of experience but likes to be in the playing field so to speak, he wants to be the hero and use violence and be active in the field rather than being sat in an office and doing research for hours on end as he lacks the patience. So we opted for the Morgan Freeman's role of Detective Somerset, the logical patient thinker with more empathy and emotion than most men, who acts more rationally and abides by the law rather than lashing out with his anger and impatience. By having an intelligent, logical and patient character within a young journalist we challenges the conventions of how a man should behave particularly in this environment.
5. This is our "falsely" accused prisoner Mason Carter, imprisoned for the series of family murders from ten years ago, kept away from his wife and children. From this shot here, the body language, the facial expressions and the size of himself compared to his environment clearly shows that he does not conform to the male stereotype; he looks emotional, vulnerable and small. So Mason doesn't follow the masculine societal and cinematic norms because he is showing emotion which could be perceived as a sign of weakness, he looks defenceless whereas men are "supposed" to be fearless and strong and yet he is so small and helpless mainly due to the framing done on purpose to create this affect and for the audience to connote this for themselves. However this is contrasted with some other clips throughout the trailer with him being quite aggressive and shouting angrily saying that he "didn't do it!" and wants "to see my family now!". His frantic, frustrated and fluctuated emotions are all because he feels that he's been wrongfully convicted of a series of horrific crimes he did not commit and has lost his family in the process.
6. Here we have the journalist again and he's working on the case, doing his own research and patiently collected the evidence and trying to "solve the puzzle". Most of the time the male characters in a crime thriller film are in on all the action, chasing down the suspect, aggressively interrogating, getting into fights, saving lives being caught up in shoot outs etc. However, Peter -is patiently working on the case independently, spending hours on end trying to find some sort of lead or any other connection that hasn't been made before. Peter Is using his intelligence and logical rather than his physical strength or violence to find the killer, so this shot reinstates that although he is a young rookie journalist like how David Mills is a young rookie detective, but personality wise he is much more like Detective Somerset because he's empathetic, educated, patient, and logical.
7. In this screen grab we can see Detective Jones and Peter Stone discussing the case when they initially meet and try to compromise and make a deal, although the male character is taller you can see by looking at the female Detective's facial expressions and stern body language that she is in charge and not intimidated by a man even if he's bigger than her. Women aren't normally shown as being aggressive and stern, especially towards a man so Detective Jones challenges the female stereotype by having male traits that are typically associated with men; she's educated, stubborn, career driven, dominant, independent and feels far more superior to other colleagues especially the male colleagues. However, Detective Jones is quite isolated which isn't very conventional for a woman generally as they are expected to be very family orientated or at least married and there's no mention or anything to suggest that she has anyone particularly important in her life except to look after herself and focus on her long career as a Detective.
8. This shot relates to the stereotypical 'Final girl' as she escapes danger and flees to safety without the cliché of very little clothing for sex appeal, or screaming as she runs away and trips over nothing only to be caught by the killer as you would expect in a teen slasher horror film. Although she is blonde she is not a typical 'dumb blonde' she's just cast as a very lucky survivor of a family homicide that she witnessed for herself at the age of 17 years old. She does however conform to the young female stereotype of being very emotional, vulnerable and basically the victim as she is left to deal with the loss and the trauma of her family's tragic murder. This show when she is sat in shock with a single tear falling down her face and when she says "I don't think I can live without my family any longer". So the character Kayleigh Phillips is both a combination of two contrasting archetypes, the 'Final girl' and 'The victim' or 'Damsel in distress'.
9. In this final frame we have a different angle of the same scene which reveals the Journalists face as he speaks and offers to make a deal in order for him to get a good story to better his early career, and to also help Detective Jones on the reopened case and to help her maintain her reputation in her job. You can see in his face that he is very intrigued, sincere and respectful as he says "I'm Peter Stone, I'm a Journalist and I just wanted to ask some questions about the family murder". Also in this frame you cans still see that Detective Jones is very much still in charge, disinterested and quite rude, whereas normally the man is quite dismissive of the woman and has no time to listen to what they have to say as they would consider it unimportant as they are extremely busy with their job. So here there is a role reversal generally in the frames that have Detective Jones and Peter Stone all suggest that they have almost swapped roles; Peter is empathetic, patient and uses his logic and intelligence rather than his strength and aggression and Detective Jones is independent, rude, acts superior and lacks a lot of emotion towards others and especially lacks empathy when it comes to the crimes she deals with on a daily basis.
1. One of our protagonists is unconventionally female, usually in films such as SE7EN the two lead roles are both men and typically portrayed as the strong, smart and independent working men dealing with the cruel world of crime. However, we turned this paradigm on its head and had a female lead in charge of the actual case itself dealing with the problems first hand without the assistance of a man. Detective Jones does however, have the assistance of another woman to suggest that women are taking on jobs that were considered more masculine, and by having another woman there this could infer that it's not a rare occurrence to have women working within the field of crime scene investigation.
3. Here we have Peter Stone (the young rookie Journalist) and Detective Jones working together on the case that has been reopened. By having both a male and female lead we were able to challenge not just cinematic normalities but social norms; we have established a basic form of equality within this shot as a man and woman are working together and are both equally involved and neither character has established who's superior because of their age and gender when in actual fact their conflict is triggered by their clash in personalities and moral differences rather than who's better based on their gender or their age. Although we have a male lead which is a convention for most films in general, we wanted to have a man and woman working perfectly alongside each other, talking about more important things rather than having a mostly female cast so we didn't force female superiority upon our diverse audience as that would be hypocritical of the mostly male led films.
5. This is our "falsely" accused prisoner Mason Carter, imprisoned for the series of family murders from ten years ago, kept away from his wife and children. From this shot here, the body language, the facial expressions and the size of himself compared to his environment clearly shows that he does not conform to the male stereotype; he looks emotional, vulnerable and small. So Mason doesn't follow the masculine societal and cinematic norms because he is showing emotion which could be perceived as a sign of weakness, he looks defenceless whereas men are "supposed" to be fearless and strong and yet he is so small and helpless mainly due to the framing done on purpose to create this affect and for the audience to connote this for themselves. However this is contrasted with some other clips throughout the trailer with him being quite aggressive and shouting angrily saying that he "didn't do it!" and wants "to see my family now!". His frantic, frustrated and fluctuated emotions are all because he feels that he's been wrongfully convicted of a series of horrific crimes he did not commit and has lost his family in the process.
6. Here we have the journalist again and he's working on the case, doing his own research and patiently collected the evidence and trying to "solve the puzzle". Most of the time the male characters in a crime thriller film are in on all the action, chasing down the suspect, aggressively interrogating, getting into fights, saving lives being caught up in shoot outs etc. However, Peter -is patiently working on the case independently, spending hours on end trying to find some sort of lead or any other connection that hasn't been made before. Peter Is using his intelligence and logical rather than his physical strength or violence to find the killer, so this shot reinstates that although he is a young rookie journalist like how David Mills is a young rookie detective, but personality wise he is much more like Detective Somerset because he's empathetic, educated, patient, and logical.
8. This shot relates to the stereotypical 'Final girl' as she escapes danger and flees to safety without the cliché of very little clothing for sex appeal, or screaming as she runs away and trips over nothing only to be caught by the killer as you would expect in a teen slasher horror film. Although she is blonde she is not a typical 'dumb blonde' she's just cast as a very lucky survivor of a family homicide that she witnessed for herself at the age of 17 years old. She does however conform to the young female stereotype of being very emotional, vulnerable and basically the victim as she is left to deal with the loss and the trauma of her family's tragic murder. This show when she is sat in shock with a single tear falling down her face and when she says "I don't think I can live without my family any longer". So the character Kayleigh Phillips is both a combination of two contrasting archetypes, the 'Final girl' and 'The victim' or 'Damsel in distress'.
Sunday, 26 March 2017
Evaluation Task 2 script: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Commonalities in my texts
In my work I had a few common themes throughout such as the backgrounds in my official poster, teaser poster, magazine cover and trailer. I had a background of tree's in all of them as they are associated with one of our protagonists, the journalist Peter Stone as he has some scenes in a forest and being outdoors, so I decided to echo that into the rest of my work. However, all of the tree's look different to one another but I just wanted some synergy within all my different texts. Some of the common occurring colours that were used for our palette were red, white and black in all of my texts to connote danger, death, loss and innocence.
Chosen character in the texts
We chose Oliver Wyatt (Journalist-Peter Stone), because he features in the trailer the most, so the audience would be more familiar with that character and audiences like to see familiar faces and will easily recognise the character the character and immediately know the film as he is directly associated with it, even when he features on different things like posters and magazine covers. Peter Stone wore a white long sleeve shirt with no tie, a black blazer, black trousers, black shoes and for most of his scenes he's seen holding his camera. We wanted Oliver to wear this costume purely because we wanted his character to look professional, mature and emphasise his intelligence. The poses of the character would typically be him looking around as he gathers evidence and taking photos. Some of his facial expressions would be Peter Stone looking immersed into the investigation and the evidence, constantly with a puzzled and curious look on his face when he's concentrating and in deep thought. We have some shots of him looking angry and frustrated which conforms to the male stereotype, but we had to show characters emotions to reveal their emotional journey and the difficulties of what they've all been caught up in.
Character relationships
The relationships suggested are mainly between Detective Maria Jones and the Journalist Peter Stone, they make a deal to work together for their own benefit (so Peter can get a good story and Maria can finally solve the case and maintain her good reputation as a detective). However they both end up clashing and disagreeing to them both being intelligent, headstrong, independent and stubborn. Jones is particularly intimidated by Stone because she's had this career for a long time and she's very experienced, and yet a young male journalist could potentially solve the case before she does and doesn't want him to take any credit for her case. Because she's so intelligent and successful she feels superior to not only her colleagues, but to Peter as well and his only agenda is to get a good story to commence his career in Journalism and to help others by putting a stop to the killer. So they both end up reluctantly working together, when they both know they need each others help and a rivalry begins to establish between them. By having a relationship like this between the two lead protagonists, the audience will be captivated in the trailer by seeing the juxtaposition of them both working together and disputing with one another, so this will result in the audience wanting to know how their relationship develops and whether they end up finally solving the case together and being successful in their jobs.
Narratives included in the print texts
For my print texts I had the same tagline on them for the posters which was "The truth will be exposed" the key word "exposed" is used in relation to the Journalist and his camera. The tagline suggests that there's a mystery that needs to be solved, and that it will be over once and for all. In my two posters and my magazine cover, I drained the saturation to refer to the low lit scenes in my trailer and to the reflect the genre conventions into my print texts, it also makes them look more filmic and sets the tone of the film. The low saturation and exposure connotes to my audience that there's an unwelcoming and mysterious atmosphere set in the film, which is a continuous theme throughout my print texts and trailer.
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The print texts attracted my audience by having the same actor featuring in all my posters and magazine cover, and other people in my group had done the same thing but we all used unique photos each. By having the same actor featuring in all of the print texts, the audience can recognise and immediately know what film we are promoting. We did this for the same reason people use very famous actors in their films; they have such immense star power and the public will recognise them and know they are talented and want to watch the film, purely because they recognise the actor and have seen them in previous films. I also used the colour red, which strongly contrasted with the grey, black and other sombre colours. Red is a very striking colour and so would be successful in commanding the audiences attention and therefore allowing the audience to make connotations of their own of what red could symbolise and what the poster as a whole entails to the audience in terms of narrative. On my magazine cover I had small sections of text mentioning information about other films (Psychosis, Delirium, Soldier Unknown, Here I come and Love me) By advertising other films, I can attract more people into buying the magazine cover if it were to be a real one and hopefully getting them to read all the information on my trailer/film as well.
Genre conventions and Synergy
I emphasised one of the simple thriller paradigms of key lighting by draining the saturation, decreasing the exposure and turning down the opacity. This created a dramatic and eerie look whilst also making the main image and the background blend together. I made use of some other basic conventions like my colour scheme, with the colours red, white and black. Red served the purpose of suggesting that the film would entail danger, blood and violence the white would reflect purity and innocence and the black would connote death, loss and mystery. By using all of these three colours I'm already immediately telling the audience what genre my film is and what may happen. I have synergistic features in all of my print texts such as the background of tree's, using the same character, low lighting, same colours, identical font and tagline. Although I have used some continuous features, I have altered them so the print texts do not look completely identical e.g. for the title "Contradiction" I use the colour red in my magazine cover and official poster, but for my teaser poster I use the colour black.
Multimedia technology
In our Premier Pro project, we used a diverse range of effects within our trailer for transitions, sound effects, accompaniment, lighting, duration etc. For our transitions, we have cross dissolves, fade to blacks, fade to white, additive dissolves and jump cuts. Cross dissolves were used to infer that time is passing as the Journalist works on the case, fade to blacks reflect the night time, danger and foreboding, fade to white was primarily used for our short scenes of the crime scene with the dead bodies and crime scene tape, this was to suggest that a camera was being used between each shot of the bodies as in a real crime thriller they would take pictures of all the evidence at the scene. Another connotation of the fade to white was to show that the trailer had moved on quickly in time to the morning of the crime scene. Jump cuts were used to increase the pace of the trailer for the final build up of the third act where all the action and violence is mostly revealed, this is to excite and engage the audiences attention. We found an area on the school computers to source lots of sound effects, some of them were the thunder claps in the flash backs, boom sounds for the appearance of the production logo and captions, the police sirens for the crime scene, overlapping voices for the Arc shot of Peter, car screeching for a car swerving on a road and a gun shot for the very end of the build up. We recorded some of our own SFX and one of them was a news report briefly explaining the crime that had taken place the night before and a recording of the killers voice and editing it in to sound like a phone call to Maria Jones telling her that her career is over if she doesn't solve the case for the last time and that time is slipping away for her. The soundtracks were probably the most difficult thing to edit into our trailer as we wanted all the separate tracks to blend together, and not seem like sudden changes of music. We made use of the exponential fade and constant fade between tracks to smoothly play one after the other or between looped tracks of a certain section of the music. In the process of editing the tracks together and overlapping them with the visual aspect of our trailer, we managed to create a few moments of synchronous sound with the motion of the clips e.g. the ending of the track "Death Match" when Peter looks down, the dubbed over clip with Peter speaking with a recording overlapping as he says the same line and the gunshot sound as Peter punches the steering wheel in the car. Some of our scenes were to bright and didn't suit the atmosphere of our assigned genre and so we altered the contrast of the clip so it appeared darker and for the survivors flash backs early on we needed a black and white effect to connote that these scenes are in the past and therefore make it obvious they are flashbacks. We did this by going to saturation then changing the contrast to gain that effect. To make some of our clips faster such as the prison scene and the tree shot, we increased the speed duration of the clip along with the tempo of the soundtrack. For all of my Photoshop projects I decreased the saturation, exposure and increased the gamma slightly and I did this to blend the main image and the background together and make them look like one image. Once I made the main image darker and changed the opacity, the overall image looked more intense, mysterious and creepy and so I had managed to include a thriller convention of low key lighting in my print texts. When I was initially cropping the main image before importing a background, I had to spend hours making sure I had removed as much of the outside around the main image. I did this by using the polygonal lasso to crop the large areas of excess image, magic wand to delete small spaces and curved edged areas and the eraser for some of the finishing touches. Once the main cropping was done, I imported the background and began using the blending tool to smooth out the edge of the main image so it blended into the background and didn't stand out like an individual image. One of the most tedious tasks was fixing the hair; I had to use the smudge tool to make the hair look less cropped and give it a more natural look. So the hair eventually looked more blended with the background and it wasn't as obvious that it was cropped. For the text, I experimented with different fonts that look simplistic and professional, I adjusted the size, the distance between letters, the height of the text, tested out different colours, made the text bold or regular, used a drop shadow and an outer glow to highlight the word "exposed".
Institutional information
Our production company is called Siberian Studios, this was the name of our production company in our AS opening title sequence MUTATION. Our reason for keeping the same production company is because we liked the simplicity of how it looked; the logo didn't look too complex but it looked modern and professional. The initial reason for having the name and logo in the first place is because we had to think about what we wanted our production company to represent and we wanted to symbolise power, intelligence, resilience and to be seen as a force to be reckoned with. We felt that a close up of a Siberian Husky's face encapsulated all those characteristics for our production company; they are a powerful and strong breed of dog, they are very intelligent, resilient to harsh conditions and treacherous journeys and they are also quite fearsome animals, they will protect their pack so there's a sense of community as well by having Siberian Husky as our production company logo. Our certificate rating is a 15, this is because the themes in the hypothetical film would have been quite mature but nothing too excessively violent, no sexual references were made in the trailer and gore was kept to a minimum. Because of some of the ages of our characters we wanted to bring the certificate rating down to a 15 as we have a character as young as 17 and one in their very early 20's, so by having younger characters we had the ability to appeal to a younger audience and therefore expand our audience too. Two of our other characters (Detective Jones and the falsely accused prisoner) were significantly older than the younger characters (from the age of approximately 40 and above), so by having characters within this age range we can have a mature audience as well as a young one, as a variety of ages have been represented and the diverse age of people will all be able to relate to the characters that are of a similar age to them.
Effectiveness of campaign and conclusion
To conclude I think that overall that we collectively as a group and as individuals that we have had a relatively successful campaign; we have appealed to a range of age groups by having varied ages of our characters, we have all used the same actor for our posters and magazine covers so the audience is familiar with his face, there's some strong elements of synergy with the fonts, taglines and colour schemes. All three of us have shared the trailer on social media to receive as much audience feedback as possible (real films would have their own Facebook page and other social media accounts to promote the film), we have all made magazine covers and posters to promote the made up film and I did an extra poster as a teaser poster because I found out that lots of films make simplistic posters as a teaser to excite their audience rather like how they make a teaser trailer or short preview of the film. We even sent the trailer to the St Neots museum so they can upload it onto their Facebook page because we used their old real life prison to film some of the scenes in our trailer. Overall we have done as much as possible to promote our made up film with all of our different texts and making use of our full access to social media and all of our hard work has gained us a lot of positive feedback, so our campaign has definitely been a success.
In my work I had a few common themes throughout such as the backgrounds in my official poster, teaser poster, magazine cover and trailer. I had a background of tree's in all of them as they are associated with one of our protagonists, the journalist Peter Stone as he has some scenes in a forest and being outdoors, so I decided to echo that into the rest of my work. However, all of the tree's look different to one another but I just wanted some synergy within all my different texts. Some of the common occurring colours that were used for our palette were red, white and black in all of my texts to connote danger, death, loss and innocence.
Chosen character in the texts
We chose Oliver Wyatt (Journalist-Peter Stone), because he features in the trailer the most, so the audience would be more familiar with that character and audiences like to see familiar faces and will easily recognise the character the character and immediately know the film as he is directly associated with it, even when he features on different things like posters and magazine covers. Peter Stone wore a white long sleeve shirt with no tie, a black blazer, black trousers, black shoes and for most of his scenes he's seen holding his camera. We wanted Oliver to wear this costume purely because we wanted his character to look professional, mature and emphasise his intelligence. The poses of the character would typically be him looking around as he gathers evidence and taking photos. Some of his facial expressions would be Peter Stone looking immersed into the investigation and the evidence, constantly with a puzzled and curious look on his face when he's concentrating and in deep thought. We have some shots of him looking angry and frustrated which conforms to the male stereotype, but we had to show characters emotions to reveal their emotional journey and the difficulties of what they've all been caught up in.
Character relationships
The relationships suggested are mainly between Detective Maria Jones and the Journalist Peter Stone, they make a deal to work together for their own benefit (so Peter can get a good story and Maria can finally solve the case and maintain her good reputation as a detective). However they both end up clashing and disagreeing to them both being intelligent, headstrong, independent and stubborn. Jones is particularly intimidated by Stone because she's had this career for a long time and she's very experienced, and yet a young male journalist could potentially solve the case before she does and doesn't want him to take any credit for her case. Because she's so intelligent and successful she feels superior to not only her colleagues, but to Peter as well and his only agenda is to get a good story to commence his career in Journalism and to help others by putting a stop to the killer. So they both end up reluctantly working together, when they both know they need each others help and a rivalry begins to establish between them. By having a relationship like this between the two lead protagonists, the audience will be captivated in the trailer by seeing the juxtaposition of them both working together and disputing with one another, so this will result in the audience wanting to know how their relationship develops and whether they end up finally solving the case together and being successful in their jobs.
Narratives included in the print texts
For my print texts I had the same tagline on them for the posters which was "The truth will be exposed" the key word "exposed" is used in relation to the Journalist and his camera. The tagline suggests that there's a mystery that needs to be solved, and that it will be over once and for all. In my two posters and my magazine cover, I drained the saturation to refer to the low lit scenes in my trailer and to the reflect the genre conventions into my print texts, it also makes them look more filmic and sets the tone of the film. The low saturation and exposure connotes to my audience that there's an unwelcoming and mysterious atmosphere set in the film, which is a continuous theme throughout my print texts and trailer.
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The print texts attracted my audience by having the same actor featuring in all my posters and magazine cover, and other people in my group had done the same thing but we all used unique photos each. By having the same actor featuring in all of the print texts, the audience can recognise and immediately know what film we are promoting. We did this for the same reason people use very famous actors in their films; they have such immense star power and the public will recognise them and know they are talented and want to watch the film, purely because they recognise the actor and have seen them in previous films. I also used the colour red, which strongly contrasted with the grey, black and other sombre colours. Red is a very striking colour and so would be successful in commanding the audiences attention and therefore allowing the audience to make connotations of their own of what red could symbolise and what the poster as a whole entails to the audience in terms of narrative. On my magazine cover I had small sections of text mentioning information about other films (Psychosis, Delirium, Soldier Unknown, Here I come and Love me) By advertising other films, I can attract more people into buying the magazine cover if it were to be a real one and hopefully getting them to read all the information on my trailer/film as well.
Genre conventions and Synergy
I emphasised one of the simple thriller paradigms of key lighting by draining the saturation, decreasing the exposure and turning down the opacity. This created a dramatic and eerie look whilst also making the main image and the background blend together. I made use of some other basic conventions like my colour scheme, with the colours red, white and black. Red served the purpose of suggesting that the film would entail danger, blood and violence the white would reflect purity and innocence and the black would connote death, loss and mystery. By using all of these three colours I'm already immediately telling the audience what genre my film is and what may happen. I have synergistic features in all of my print texts such as the background of tree's, using the same character, low lighting, same colours, identical font and tagline. Although I have used some continuous features, I have altered them so the print texts do not look completely identical e.g. for the title "Contradiction" I use the colour red in my magazine cover and official poster, but for my teaser poster I use the colour black.
Multimedia technology
In our Premier Pro project, we used a diverse range of effects within our trailer for transitions, sound effects, accompaniment, lighting, duration etc. For our transitions, we have cross dissolves, fade to blacks, fade to white, additive dissolves and jump cuts. Cross dissolves were used to infer that time is passing as the Journalist works on the case, fade to blacks reflect the night time, danger and foreboding, fade to white was primarily used for our short scenes of the crime scene with the dead bodies and crime scene tape, this was to suggest that a camera was being used between each shot of the bodies as in a real crime thriller they would take pictures of all the evidence at the scene. Another connotation of the fade to white was to show that the trailer had moved on quickly in time to the morning of the crime scene. Jump cuts were used to increase the pace of the trailer for the final build up of the third act where all the action and violence is mostly revealed, this is to excite and engage the audiences attention. We found an area on the school computers to source lots of sound effects, some of them were the thunder claps in the flash backs, boom sounds for the appearance of the production logo and captions, the police sirens for the crime scene, overlapping voices for the Arc shot of Peter, car screeching for a car swerving on a road and a gun shot for the very end of the build up. We recorded some of our own SFX and one of them was a news report briefly explaining the crime that had taken place the night before and a recording of the killers voice and editing it in to sound like a phone call to Maria Jones telling her that her career is over if she doesn't solve the case for the last time and that time is slipping away for her. The soundtracks were probably the most difficult thing to edit into our trailer as we wanted all the separate tracks to blend together, and not seem like sudden changes of music. We made use of the exponential fade and constant fade between tracks to smoothly play one after the other or between looped tracks of a certain section of the music. In the process of editing the tracks together and overlapping them with the visual aspect of our trailer, we managed to create a few moments of synchronous sound with the motion of the clips e.g. the ending of the track "Death Match" when Peter looks down, the dubbed over clip with Peter speaking with a recording overlapping as he says the same line and the gunshot sound as Peter punches the steering wheel in the car. Some of our scenes were to bright and didn't suit the atmosphere of our assigned genre and so we altered the contrast of the clip so it appeared darker and for the survivors flash backs early on we needed a black and white effect to connote that these scenes are in the past and therefore make it obvious they are flashbacks. We did this by going to saturation then changing the contrast to gain that effect. To make some of our clips faster such as the prison scene and the tree shot, we increased the speed duration of the clip along with the tempo of the soundtrack. For all of my Photoshop projects I decreased the saturation, exposure and increased the gamma slightly and I did this to blend the main image and the background together and make them look like one image. Once I made the main image darker and changed the opacity, the overall image looked more intense, mysterious and creepy and so I had managed to include a thriller convention of low key lighting in my print texts. When I was initially cropping the main image before importing a background, I had to spend hours making sure I had removed as much of the outside around the main image. I did this by using the polygonal lasso to crop the large areas of excess image, magic wand to delete small spaces and curved edged areas and the eraser for some of the finishing touches. Once the main cropping was done, I imported the background and began using the blending tool to smooth out the edge of the main image so it blended into the background and didn't stand out like an individual image. One of the most tedious tasks was fixing the hair; I had to use the smudge tool to make the hair look less cropped and give it a more natural look. So the hair eventually looked more blended with the background and it wasn't as obvious that it was cropped. For the text, I experimented with different fonts that look simplistic and professional, I adjusted the size, the distance between letters, the height of the text, tested out different colours, made the text bold or regular, used a drop shadow and an outer glow to highlight the word "exposed".
Institutional information
Our production company is called Siberian Studios, this was the name of our production company in our AS opening title sequence MUTATION. Our reason for keeping the same production company is because we liked the simplicity of how it looked; the logo didn't look too complex but it looked modern and professional. The initial reason for having the name and logo in the first place is because we had to think about what we wanted our production company to represent and we wanted to symbolise power, intelligence, resilience and to be seen as a force to be reckoned with. We felt that a close up of a Siberian Husky's face encapsulated all those characteristics for our production company; they are a powerful and strong breed of dog, they are very intelligent, resilient to harsh conditions and treacherous journeys and they are also quite fearsome animals, they will protect their pack so there's a sense of community as well by having Siberian Husky as our production company logo. Our certificate rating is a 15, this is because the themes in the hypothetical film would have been quite mature but nothing too excessively violent, no sexual references were made in the trailer and gore was kept to a minimum. Because of some of the ages of our characters we wanted to bring the certificate rating down to a 15 as we have a character as young as 17 and one in their very early 20's, so by having younger characters we had the ability to appeal to a younger audience and therefore expand our audience too. Two of our other characters (Detective Jones and the falsely accused prisoner) were significantly older than the younger characters (from the age of approximately 40 and above), so by having characters within this age range we can have a mature audience as well as a young one, as a variety of ages have been represented and the diverse age of people will all be able to relate to the characters that are of a similar age to them.
Effectiveness of campaign and conclusion
To conclude I think that overall that we collectively as a group and as individuals that we have had a relatively successful campaign; we have appealed to a range of age groups by having varied ages of our characters, we have all used the same actor for our posters and magazine covers so the audience is familiar with his face, there's some strong elements of synergy with the fonts, taglines and colour schemes. All three of us have shared the trailer on social media to receive as much audience feedback as possible (real films would have their own Facebook page and other social media accounts to promote the film), we have all made magazine covers and posters to promote the made up film and I did an extra poster as a teaser poster because I found out that lots of films make simplistic posters as a teaser to excite their audience rather like how they make a teaser trailer or short preview of the film. We even sent the trailer to the St Neots museum so they can upload it onto their Facebook page because we used their old real life prison to film some of the scenes in our trailer. Overall we have done as much as possible to promote our made up film with all of our different texts and making use of our full access to social media and all of our hard work has gained us a lot of positive feedback, so our campaign has definitely been a success.
Saturday, 25 March 2017
Evaluation task 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
Also our repetitiveness of the shots with the clock was done on purpose as a constant reminder that time is running out for all the people in the story, it keeps the audience on edge as it suggests the inevitability of time passing, the clock is there to foreshadow that bad things will happen. The fast paced scene with the prisoner is to reflect that time is passing over a long period of time rather like a time lapse, this clearly says to our audience that he's been in there for an extremely long time (roughly ten years). By having this scene it also emphasises that he's enclosed in a small environment with nothing to do and gradually becoming more furious and upset.
The music was very difficult to edit as there were gaps in the trailer as we were making it due to the gradual process of the filming, but we did the best that we could do with it and we wanted to make sure we had three different sections of the trailer so we had three different tracks. One of the tracks was replaced by a clock noise for the climax and the other two tracks were there as a the beginning and middle sections of the trailer.
When it came to the quality of the trailer we could not help this as we only had access to the school equipment but we did our best and we spent at least over three months planning and creating the entire product and it was worth it as the feedback from everyone we knew was across the board very positive.
To conclude, the feedback we received has opened our eyes to all the flaws within the trailer that we hadn't noticed before but all of it was helpful and will be taken into consideration for any other media projects. We have done this to the best of our ability by drawing inspiration from other films such as SE7EN, Zodiac, Nightcrawler and Silence of the Lambs and we believe we have made a decent attempt of looking more like a professional trailer, but we know where are weaknesses lie.
Thursday, 23 March 2017
Evaluation 4: Use of media technologies
We used the following media technologies: Facebook messenger, school email, Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, Premier Pro and Photoshop. All of these media technologies helped us organise, communicate, research and above all create our trailer, posters and magazine covers. Without them we could not have accomplished completing all the work that we have now and we have all realised how essential they have all been to `us for all aspects of our A2 project.
Facebook messenger: We had to use this app everyday to communicate amongst the group outside of school to schedule, plan and share ideas pictures etc. I also had to use it to arrange days to film with other actors and inform them where they need to be, what time, what to wear, what to bring and what we needed to film that day. It was essential that we had something to help us communicate with the team and the actors; none of the filming would have been done at all, especially since one of our actors lived in Huntingdon, another in Buckden, one in Hail Weston and one in Loves Farm. So all four of our main actors lived so far apart from one another, which made scheduling extremely difficult but only achievable by using Facebook messenger. School email was primarily used to send links to music, images and communicate with teachers which was important for those particular purposes. We used Gmail in order to create our Blogger accounts and I used Gmail to communicate with the St Neots museum to arrange an initial visit to have a look around, speak to the managers and take pictures to show the group. After the initial visit, I used Gmail to communicate further with the manager to arrange the day I wanted to film with one of my actors so that they can be informed in advance to set up the prison. Blogger is the social media platform that we use to upload all of our coursework, it has been helpful to use to see other students blogs for comparison, and it gave us easy access to our own work, whilst keeping ourselves updated and on track.One of the first tasks we were assigned was to research non copyright music, I had spent hours searching for three different tracks for the beginning, middle and end. This was a difficult task because it was hard to match three tracks that made a good combination, set the tone, suited the genre and stood out as individual tracks. A couple of times we ended up changing the soundtrack due to it not fitting with a trailer, or not blending with the other tracks and trying to find better soundtracks that sounded more professional and modern. YouTube Audio Library was an important part of the trailer as a soundtrack can be powerful and make the audience feel a certain way and create a certain atmosphere for them. We wanted to captivate our audience by having soundtracks that made them feel uncomfortable, intrigued and excited. So without YouTube Audio Library, we could not have found a soundtrack so quickly and would have had to compose it ourselves which would have been time consuming.
Premier pro has been used for the entire trailer, although it has been difficult to learn how to use it has been very useful to our entire team. Not only have we used it to edit the final cut of our trailer, we have used it for our first draft of the trailer and individual interviews with all the actors and my group. So Premier Pro has been helpful in creating other tasks and not just the final version of our trailer, We have made use of the visual effects such as: speed duration, saturation, contrast, transitions, lighting and framing. We also made use of what we could do and experiment with for sound effects and the soundtrack e.g. fades, cutting, looping, overlapping, volume, tempo, voice recordings and sourcing SFX. Photoshop was used to create our magazine covers and film posters, we had to use this program so that we could develop our technical skills and abilities further than just Premier Pro. By using this program we gained an understanding for the importance of advertising and promotion, with things such as synergy as there has to be some form off continuity through both the magazine cover and poster. In comparison to my previous years magazine cover for MUTATION, I have now developed my technical ability and independence with the program significantly as my A2 film poster looks more filmic, simplistic, and has a nicely balanced colour scheme.
Wednesday, 22 February 2017
Contradiction: Synopsis
Approximately ten years ago, a series of family murders occurred in Cambridgeshire and with each murder there would always be one survivor, Maria Jones, an excellent high profile Detective "solved" the case and the "killer" Mason Carter was arrested. After ten years of Mason Carter's imprisonment, a family murder takes place in Cambridgeshire that is identical to the ones from ten years ago with one survivor remaining, a 17 year old Kayleigh Phillips. The case is reopened by Detective Jones and she must retrace her steps and go back to square one as there is a series of questions that are still unanswered, "Did she imprison the wrong man?, was there more than one killer? Or is this just a copycat killer inspired by Mason Carter?"
On the day of the crime scene investigation of the Phillips family murder, a young rookie Journalist Peter Stone arrives in the hopes of finding a good story and there he meets Detective Jones. Jones and Stone realise they both need each others help in order to get what they both want; Peter wants a good story to initiate his early career in Journalism and Detective Jones needs a fresh pair of eyes on the case alongside her and someone who can write a good enough story to maintain her glowing resume and her career. The duo reluctantly work together as they clash due to their headstrong, intelligent and independent personalities. Detective Jones is intimidated by Peter as she fears he will solve the case before she does, and prefers to work alone and take all the glory as she is quite selfish and insensitive. Jones only wants to solve the case for her own personal gain, not to prevent the loss of other lives. On the other hand, Peter actually wants to help others and close the case to protect the innocent, but in the process becomes too involved in the case and is consumed by the harsh and dangerous reality of the world of crime.
Peter soon figures out on his own that he knows who the killer are going to murder next and tries alert Detective Jones, but she dismisses his claims as she thinks he's just a young and oblivious boy, so the duo begin to fall apart and their trust breaks down. Peter goes to the next house of the killers target and arrives to try and save them, but the killer calls Detective Jones to send a warning that her time is running out and that her career will be destroyed if the killer isn't caught this time round.
On the day of the crime scene investigation of the Phillips family murder, a young rookie Journalist Peter Stone arrives in the hopes of finding a good story and there he meets Detective Jones. Jones and Stone realise they both need each others help in order to get what they both want; Peter wants a good story to initiate his early career in Journalism and Detective Jones needs a fresh pair of eyes on the case alongside her and someone who can write a good enough story to maintain her glowing resume and her career. The duo reluctantly work together as they clash due to their headstrong, intelligent and independent personalities. Detective Jones is intimidated by Peter as she fears he will solve the case before she does, and prefers to work alone and take all the glory as she is quite selfish and insensitive. Jones only wants to solve the case for her own personal gain, not to prevent the loss of other lives. On the other hand, Peter actually wants to help others and close the case to protect the innocent, but in the process becomes too involved in the case and is consumed by the harsh and dangerous reality of the world of crime.
Peter soon figures out on his own that he knows who the killer are going to murder next and tries alert Detective Jones, but she dismisses his claims as she thinks he's just a young and oblivious boy, so the duo begin to fall apart and their trust breaks down. Peter goes to the next house of the killers target and arrives to try and save them, but the killer calls Detective Jones to send a warning that her time is running out and that her career will be destroyed if the killer isn't caught this time round.
Saturday, 18 February 2017
Friday, 17 February 2017
Tuesday, 14 February 2017
Friday, 10 February 2017
Tuesday, 7 February 2017
Soundtrack and sound effects
Finding a non copyright sound track has proven to be quite difficult; there's such a wide variety to choose from, you begin searching with a fixed idea in your mind of how you want the music to sound and you have to find approximately three different tracks for the beginning middle and end of the trailer.
At first we wanted to take inspiration from The girl on the train trailer soundtrack but it had lyrics in the song and we struggled to find a modern track like that, but we did use the idea of including a piano track early on in the trailer called Letting go. However, we felt that this track didn't suit the genre and tone of the trailer and so we changed the middle and end tracks to Chaos and Death Match; they're slightly more edgy as Chaos creates the same uncomfortable atmosphere as the intro music to SE7EN and Death Match has just electric guitar in it like one of the trailer tracks in Nightcrawler. We have another track called Echoes of time which is used at the every beginning when it starts of quiet and slow, we did have another track called Extinction level event but it was to fast paced and we felt that it fit an action film more than a crime thriller. For a climax we want to have a clock ticking sound effect so every fast paced shot will be in sync with the ticking effect to suggest that time is ticking so the synchronous sound will increase in speed so the ending is more action packed, builds tension and captivates the audiences attention. When we play the recording of the serial killers phone call with the detective he says at the end "time is ticking, tick tock tick tock..." and so as this continues we'll fade it out into the ticking sound effect.
We have also sourced lots of sound effects that we plan to use such as a car screeching, thunder roll, thunder clap, overlapping talking (crowd of press and reporters), boom sound, police sirens, telephone ring, camera click, gun shot and ticking clock to name but a few. We have these saved on premier pro in the hope that having these sound effects will make our trailer sound realistic, like a real Hollywood trailer and that some of the sounds will tick the boxes of crime thriller conventions but also add more texture the all the sounds in the trailer as they go in hand with the dialogue and soundtrack and compliment one another.
Chaos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR_E6TOpR70&index=23&list=PLNGeXmfZiEFv7eYqT1ZhzfSokaxxelkuj
Death Match
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvNlvtvJdBo
Letting go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MIDmPMlbcg
Echoes of time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6T4WtembgE
Extinction level event
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNFNOEi9QV4
At first we wanted to take inspiration from The girl on the train trailer soundtrack but it had lyrics in the song and we struggled to find a modern track like that, but we did use the idea of including a piano track early on in the trailer called Letting go. However, we felt that this track didn't suit the genre and tone of the trailer and so we changed the middle and end tracks to Chaos and Death Match; they're slightly more edgy as Chaos creates the same uncomfortable atmosphere as the intro music to SE7EN and Death Match has just electric guitar in it like one of the trailer tracks in Nightcrawler. We have another track called Echoes of time which is used at the every beginning when it starts of quiet and slow, we did have another track called Extinction level event but it was to fast paced and we felt that it fit an action film more than a crime thriller. For a climax we want to have a clock ticking sound effect so every fast paced shot will be in sync with the ticking effect to suggest that time is ticking so the synchronous sound will increase in speed so the ending is more action packed, builds tension and captivates the audiences attention. When we play the recording of the serial killers phone call with the detective he says at the end "time is ticking, tick tock tick tock..." and so as this continues we'll fade it out into the ticking sound effect.
We have also sourced lots of sound effects that we plan to use such as a car screeching, thunder roll, thunder clap, overlapping talking (crowd of press and reporters), boom sound, police sirens, telephone ring, camera click, gun shot and ticking clock to name but a few. We have these saved on premier pro in the hope that having these sound effects will make our trailer sound realistic, like a real Hollywood trailer and that some of the sounds will tick the boxes of crime thriller conventions but also add more texture the all the sounds in the trailer as they go in hand with the dialogue and soundtrack and compliment one another.
Chaos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR_E6TOpR70&index=23&list=PLNGeXmfZiEFv7eYqT1ZhzfSokaxxelkuj
Death Match
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvNlvtvJdBo
Letting go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MIDmPMlbcg
Echoes of time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6T4WtembgE
Extinction level event
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNFNOEi9QV4
Wednesday, 25 January 2017
Story Board
Then there's a series of fast paced clips for the third act/ climax of the trailer in sync with the ticking sound.
Thursday, 19 January 2017
Script for 'Contradiction'
Maria Jones: Kayleigh can you tell us what you
remember?
Detective: What happened?
Maria Jones: You can tell us
Detective: Kayleigh? Kayleigh?
Kayleigh: …They’re all dead
Police sirens
News report: Last
night, at 11:36 December 5th an entire family were murdered in their
home in Cambridgeshire, only one survivor remains. The Police are linking the
murders as they appear to be identical to the ones from 10 years ago, but Detective
Maria Jones appeals to anyone who has any extra information to come forward
immediately.
Overlapping questions.
Journalist: I’m
Peter Stone and I’m a journalist, I just wanted to ask some questions about the
family murder.
Detective Jones: I’m not releasing any
information.
Journalist: You may have imprisoned the wrong
man, I need a story and you need to keep a good reputation…we can help each
other.
Policeman: This County depends on us they need to feel safe. We’re right back where we started.
Maria: The suspect always leaves one survivor so they’re left alone with the loss and trauma…
Peter: He feeds off knowing the devastation they’ve caused...
Prisoner: Let me out! I want to see my family! I didn't do it!
Peter: I think I can figure out who he’s going kill next.
Kayleigh: I don’t know if I can live without my family any longer…
Maria: You’re out of your depth! This is my job not yours!
Peter: You’re just intimidated that I might be able to actually solve this case because you’re incapable without my help!!
Voice message or phone call from killer: Hello Maria, I’ve been watching you, your career will be ruined unless you catch me this time. Time is ticking… Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock (continue saying this)
Sunday, 15 January 2017
Locations and Settings
One of the most difficult location to find was the prison; we have a character who's been wrongfully imprisoned for ten years for multiple family murders across Cambridgeshire, so we wanted to have a couple of shots of the prisoner in an attempt to achieve a professional look but this could only be done by having a lifelike location. I was informed by another media student that their friend had used the St Neots museum that was a real life prison, which is 100 years old and so i contacted them and requested to film there and to scope out the location to show the rest of my group.
We were worried that we would never find a location that resembles a prison since we could never go to a real one, however we are extremely lucky to have found this perfect location and it'll look accurate and realistic in our trailer.
Other locations will take place in an office, in houses, outdoors which will all be located in Buckden, this is because they're easy to get to and look how the group had in mind for the rest of the settings. Although some settings that we wanted to include in our project may have to be cut since location hunting can be quite difficult and long process.
Prison corridor and the cells.
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