Hannahs Evaluation

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Media Studies AS Level, Foundation Portfolio, Main Task Evaluation

In our product mise en scene has a big part. We first had to think of a setting which would go well with the whole idea of our film. We chose a house because this would be easily recognisable for an audience and means they would not spend half the time trying to work out where the characters are. We also were quite picky about our lighting arrangements as we wanted to keep it all looking natural and like it was night time rather than having the whole area lit up if we had done this we might as well have filmed in the day. When filming out side we used one torch so that the characters could be seen we used a black filter over the top so that the lighting was not too harsh and did not shine too much light on each character. When filming inside we wanted to keep all of the lighting quite natural looking. We used one redhead as the key light because the natural lighting was slightly too dark and cast the characters in shadow. We also did a lot of filming inside with the lights off and used very dim lighting so that the characters could be seen but they were not lit up like a light was shinning on them. We tried overall to keep quite low key lighting as to keep everything looking natural we didn’t want it looking like a Broadway show with too much lighting. We also wanted to keep it realistic looking and using low key lighting was the best way to do this.

We made sure that all the characters costume and make up was relevant to the story line. We dressed the burglar in dark clothing with a ski mask to help the audience recognise him as a burglar. We dressed the girl in a nice dress so that it was easy to see she had been out most likely to a party. We used quite fashionable modern clothes to indicate that this is set in present time and that these are quite young characters.

The enigma code is used quite a lot throughout our film we have left many questions un-answered and raised many questions for the audience to think about. We have not revealed too much of what is happening and ended it on a point that would leave the audience wondering what is actually happening and who these people really are. We wanted our film to raise many questions and for it to be quite mysterious and confusing.

The classic iconography that appears in many thrillers that has appeared in our product is mainly the use of darkness and shadows we have included a lot of quite dark shadowy shots because these are usually associated with thriller films and them being quite dark and mysterious looking. We have also used the stereotypical teenage girl that is used in most thrillers. Mainly they go home to an empty house or are left at home alone. This is quite iconic to thrillers because it creates suspense a young girl home alone poses as the perfect opportunity for something to happen to her. Also the covered face of the male character is quite iconic as its keeping his identity hidden this happens in many thrillers you don’t find out the antagonists identity till near the end or part way through the film as to keep the suspense and suspicions from the audience going.

We have used the typical protagonist of a young girl going home alone and something happening in our case there is someone in her house which is typical of thriller films. For example in Prom Night the young girl goes home to find someone in her house who has killed her family. In our case our protagonist is not sure whether she is alone or not but the audience no that there is someone else in the house with her. This creates suspense as the audience no that he is there but she does not. In prom night we see the protagonist hide under the bed but we do not see the antagonists face this is similar to what is happening in our sequence. However we do not see the antagonists face but we do get to see him around the house whereas in prom night the only piece of or antagonist that we get to see is his hands. Our antagonist is quite stereotypical as he is a male who is in a young female’s house when she comes home. However in prom night he is looking for her whereas in our sequence he does not expect our character to come home when she does he panics and hides. In prom night he is looking for the girl and she had to hide from him. However the characters a quite similar a young teenage girl who come home to find someone in her house or thinks there is someone in her house.

We have used the three stages of narrative

· The beginning showing our setting and our antagonist

· The middle sequence being him looking around the house, starting to pack things away, the girl coming home, her finding the things he has packed away

· The end being the girl leaving the room and the audience wondering as to what is happening and where the antagonist has gone.

Most of our peer evaluation includes people saying that it was quite confusing and raised many questions. This however is what we were aiming for with our product we wanted it to raise questions and make the audience unsure about what was happening. Our main strengths seemed to be the use of camera angles and how we had made it faced paced and you had to actually think about what was happening. However most people said that the music was too fast paced and needed slowing down.

In my media product we have presented the male character as a stereotypical male. He is dominant in the way that he is the character that is in control. He is more in control of the situation than our female character. He is represented as mysterious in the way that you never see his face throughout the whole of the opening sequence. This is done so that the audience will wonder who he is. They can see that he is obviously in control of the situation as he does not get caught and seems to get away with what he is doing. However he is not as in control as it might seem. He is caught off guard and has to hide nearly getting caught as he leaves things on the bed that should not be there. Here he is being represented as quite clumsy and forgetful and the first impression of him being quite an in control character is lost.

The camera work used for shots of the male character is mainly close up or tilted angle shots. These are to keep his identity quite mysterious and keep the audience wondering who he is and what it is he is doing. All shots with our male character in are also quite dark to keep the anonymity going and keep the idea of it being night time. Fast paced music has been used to represent that our male character is in quite a hurry and that he is unaware of things to come. We have included all of these conventions to show that our male character is the antagonist of the story.

We have used a young white male character to help appeal to a mature young audience. We have represented him as a stereotypical male with other conventions including clumsiness and unawareness. We have done this to make him less stereotypical but still recognisable as an individual character. However we have made him out to be like a stereotypical burglar. With him breaking into the house and the fact that he is wearing a ski mask to cover his face and that he is in shadow a lot of the time. We have done this so that the audience will draw to the conclusion that he is burgling the house as he breaks in which obviously means that this is not his house. We have used a male character because they are stereotypically the gender that would burgle a house rather than a female character.

We have represented the female character as a stereotypical teenage girl. She comes back from a party drunk and enters the house alone. This is a stereotypical thriller convention as it seems like a silly thing to do but it happens in many films where the teenage girl is left home alone in the dark this seems to please the audience more rather than if it was a male character doing exactly the same. She is young and pretty and also dressed up. We have done this because we wanted to represent her as a stereotypical teenage girl who is in danger but does not realise it herself. We have used mainly long shots and mid shots so that it is easy to see her facial expressions and we want the audience to see clearly what she looks like as she is the protagonist. Unlike our male character whose identity is hidden throughout the whole sequence.

In many shots our female characters will turn lights on this is so that we can clearly see who she is and that this is her house. Unlike our male character we want her identity to be noticeably shown in every shot that she is in so the audience can see that she is the protagonist. We have represented her quite negatively as she is drunk this puts a negative look on teenagers this also represents her vulnerability to the situation. She is represented as a typical teenager who has gone out and had a good time at a party however who has come home to something most teenagers would not.

We have used POV shots with a ghost affect on as she is walking up the drive to represent how she is not in control of the situation and how vulnerable she could be as she can not see where she is going properly. This will also help to appeal to teenagers as they no what it is like to not be in control when they have had a bit too much to drink. The sound is very faced paced to add to the idea that she is not aware or in control of what is happening she just seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Both characters have stereotypical conventions about them with the male being the stronger character and seeming more in control and the female seeming to be the weaker character and less in control seeming like she would be less able to fight back if the male character was to attack or harm her in anyway.

The audience we have aimed our media product at is late teen’s young adults. This is because it raises a lot of questions and a younger audience might just find it confusing and might not quite understand what is going on. It is also quite faced paced and younger audiences again might not like it as it has a more complicated faced paced story line. We have decided on late teens to young adults because they would appreciate the more faced paced storyline and the fact that it raises questions it gives them a challenge and makes it more interesting for them. Because it includes younger characters and touches on more subjects that young adults are more likely to appreciate like a drunk young girl and a young male skulking around her house they are more likely to appreciate and understand this piece than perhaps an older or much younger audience.

A real thriller that an audience of a similar age would have also enjoyed would be Donnie darko. This has the same elements of having the audience ask questions about a younger audience would find it confusing and an older audience might think it does not make sense and it is pointless. An audience of a similar age to the one for our product would have also enjoyed Donnie darko as it is quite mysterious and hard to work out which is also what our product is aiming to do. This audience is the best audience because they are young enough to appreciate what our product and Donnie darko are trying to do but both use young characters with particular storyline that’s difficult to understand which would challenge younger minds but not too young and appeal to people a similar age to the characters as they have more of an idea what the characters could be going through in both cases. In Donnie darko the point of growing up and how difficult it can be.

When using the camera I found it quite easy as I had similar cameras before. At first we had trouble working out how to record because we had forgotten which button we had to press. After we worked it out using the camera went quite smoothly. I did not forget to change the white balance every time the camera was moved and remembered that we were able to use the zoom if we were not able to get in close enough. When filming in the dark it was hard to get the camera at the right distance but after a couple of tries we managed it fine. The third time we filmed the camera we were given was not as good quality as the cameras we were given the first two times which meant the quality of our filming was not as good. I also found this camera needed manual focus to be used at lot and had trouble focusing in the dark when we had set up the lighting arrangements. We also were shown that we could film using different effects but the camera we were given did not have the affect we wanted on it (time delay) so we decided to do this in the editing suite instead.

We used three different types of software to put our product together. These were Imedia HD, Final Cut Pro and Live Font. First we imported everything into Imedia HD. We used this programme because we already new how to use it which made the process of putting our sequence together a lot faster. However we were slowed down by having to re film areas of our piece. After uploading all of our footage to Imeda we were able to cut clips down and piece them together to create our final product. We used a number of different effects which were easy to use and we found we did not have any problems using them. These included Ghost effect on the girls POV shots to help make everything look out of focus and wobbly as she is meant to be drunk. We also sped a couple of shots up because they were too slow. These included the car pulling up as when we watched the footage back the car pulled up extremely slowly.

We also used Imedia to add our music to our product. We first used a machine to record our music off a tape onto the computer we then imported it into Imedia. At first we had trouble cutting and pasting our music together and could not make it sound right. Eventually we managed to get it to sound ok but I was still not happy with the music on the final product. We then exported our product and imported it into Final Cut Pro to add the tittles into our film. We first created the tittles in Live Font as this had a wider selection of fonts and effects for fonts. We did not now how to use this programme and it took us quite along time to work out how to use it eventually we worked it out and created our title sequence. We then had to export each title and import them into Final Cut Pro. We had trouble doing this but this was because we were not saving them as a quick time movie. We then placed them in the place we wanted and then proceeded to add tittles to the rest of the sequence this being our names. We had to select where we wanted each title to go and how big and what colour we wanted them est. We had to be shown how to do this but once we were shown it was quite easy to do and took us no time at all to complete out product.

Using each of the programs helped me learn something new each time as I had not used Final Cut Pro or Live Font before. However once I had worked out to use them it was quite easy and was easy to shape our product to how we wanted it. As I did quite a large amount of the filming selecting the best shots was easier for me as I could see what I had done wrong in some shots and which shots looked better than others. I found using Imedia a lot easier than the rest of my group and grasped using it and worked out a lot of the shortcuts quite quickly. This meant I did a fair amount of the editing as I could do it quite quickly and new how to use the programme quite well. As I had done most of the filming I found I was quite critical about what should be used and what shouldn’t so that we used only the best quality shots in our final piece. As a group we worked extremely well together and helped each other learn how to use the different software so that we were all able to put our own input into the editing of our rushes and creating our product.

Our peer evaluation indicates that our editing was quite clear and sharp and didn’t contain any noticeable mistakes. They have also identified that the use of tittles was very good and liked the idea of the clock images flashing up between the tittles. Also that they were quite basic but this was effective because they did not take the focus away from the action. Overall they said that the tittles were effective and looked good. They also think that the music was too loud in places and seemed too dominating but I was not happy with how the music was in our final piece myself.

I feel that we have progressed immensely in this task from the preliminary task. We had to film three times but this time this was due to technical faults rather than us not knowing what we were doing. Everything ran a lot smoother as we knew how to use lighting to make things look more natural and when we were filming in the dark easier to see the characters outside. The first time we filmed outside the light we were given ran out of battery so we were no longer able to carry on filming. We were able to re-film out side and had learnt from our preliminary task that filming in the dark needed a strong light with a filter to make it look more natural looking on the character. So we used a white filter to make the light less strong which seemed to help.

Our continuity editing improved as we used mainly match on action this time as our film was quite fast paced and we wanted lots of close ups of hands in draws est. out match on action was a lot better this time as we had learnt from the preliminary task how perfect it needed to be. We made sure each shot was lined up perfectly with the next and tried to make them look flawless like they had not been filmed at different times.

We had a stronger story this time as we learnt from our preliminary that we needed a storyboard to work from and we needed all of our shots planned out to make it easier for us. We learnt from our preliminary that we needed a strong story line for our final piece to work. This is because our preliminary did not work because we had not thought out our storyline out properly. This time around we thought out our storyline and went thought every shot to make sure we new what we were doing and that we would not have to go back and re-film.

In my evaluation I wrote ‘’ One of the main things we need to include on our final piece will be to include more camera angles’’. In our final piece we made sure we used a variety of different camera angles and camera framing to make our piece more interesting and less samey. We even included a shot where we put the camera into the bottom of a plastic bag and let everything fall onto the camera.