Ossie Idehen
Evaluation

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

My media production “Us against them”, is a supernatural thriller; however there are certain aspects of the film which represent spy thriller. The reason behind this combination is because the victim is trying to investigate and find out government’s interest with him. Whilst many films today tend to be genre hybrids, films such as “Dark Knight (2008) and Watchmen (2009)” contain crime thriller and psychological thriller as their hybrid genres. The film’s opening sequence is a close up of a person lying down on the bed lifeless. Following a different approach to film production my interest is to include flashbacks in film production because I have noticed this idea has been effectively used in recent years namely in films such as “Get rich or die trying (2005) and Watchmen(2009)” However for the opening shot a lot of fascination can be drawn by applying hostage type scene often seen in Bond films whereby the victim in a miserable state is knocked down leading to his eyes opening up first time in a whole new environment. Inspiration in my imagination is highly influenced by the film Avatar (2009) with fascination of the protagonist corporal Jake Sully who entered the body of an Avatrian and for the very first time opened his eyes. As part of the first episode of shooting the film the main point of focus is to impact a high level of interest by way of shooting the victim similar to other films but lying down and looking up towards two people talking unaware of the stimulation gradually they were rendering to the unconscious victim who as a result starts blinking with every sound of the two people’s conversation and progresses to consciousness with each blink and finally the victim retains full consciousness. This point of view is excitingly fascinating to see the helpless and vulnerable victim accidentally benefits in an unimagined source of input to his need towards gaining consciousness in a way which has a scary impact to the two talking above.
The main character in the film is a stereotypical “hero” in terms of the fact that by chance he discovered that he had hidden abilities and everything seemed new to him. On the other hand it is essentially important that where there is a stereotypical hero there must be stereotypical “villain” to contrast, match or clash character and so help draw different emotions from the dynamics of interacting with different personas. For this effect, I tried to emulate the “Matrix” idea of having the same character acted by two different people; I felt that this helped portray power of the villains.

Looking at my plans for camera work, as the director I want my shots to be adventurous by having various types of shots. This is important because I noticed during my research that most thriller films tend to have point of view shots which give the audience an up close and personal moment to themselves exampled mostly by horror film. On background sound effect my plan is for creating theme music which does not dominate dialogue but helps enhance and draw the unconscious minds of viewers to context of the dialogue in subtle ways.
For the rest of the sound, especially at editing stage my plan is for using various non- diegetic sound because I know that majority of the film industries tend to do this because the sound quality is far much better in post production rather than during the production process because of the none interfering sound from outside. The use of sound bridges made it easier to change from one scene to another because of the transition of the music act as a distraction.

I decided on applying the typical mise en scéne which you would normally see in a horror thriller. For the opening shot is in a dark room for the interior and for the exterior scene I used the woods which are normally seen common in horror films. As result this association of human fear to ancient and wild life is portrayed by wood and forestry.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

This thriller production represents the people from the government as vindictive and trying to build a powerful military control and always trying to hide information from the public. The white man, who is at an old age, seems to be a war hero as he is portrayed to have more power and is the villain in terms of wanting world domination. The idea of having a black man from a working class society as the hero is emulating the idea of trying to break free from the authority of the government. In this production I tried to work against the stereotypes by not having a "token black guy" who would be expected not to deliver or save the day, instead I decided on a hero, like Will Smith who plays the hero in "Hancock (2008)". On the other hand the female’s role as the doctor having a caring attitude towards patients represents the stereotypical way of the natural emotions of woman but in the film she is a woman of status in application and use of her care instinct and abilities as a doctor a way of breaking away from being domestic as can be generalised in higher and wider perspective as breaking away from government authority. Having an old man as a villain gives the audience a hint that he is from an upper class background and is now bitter about everything, angry and hungry for power, and in the major films production they will usually have an old person play villain for example: Sir Ian Murray McKellen played as the villain Magneto in “X-Men 2 (2002)” this piece of evidence shows that its stereotypical acting role for older people to play as villains.

I tried to represent how the government would try and hide information by having a very dark room where the hostage is kept this connotes high risk, that this something dangerous and should not have a way out. Also, the sound of the heartbeat monitor helps to giving the feeling of fear and anxiety from a living machine. Therefore the characters help to provide and represent genuine identities of people, society and life in general.

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

As this is a supernatural thriller this type of media would be suitable for television or film companies such as (Channel 4 especially, Working Title and the BBC) they may be interested in this type of thriller because they want to help produce British films which can boost the British film industry, so that they can compete with the American film industry. This media product would also be widely publicised through the internet allowing viewers to see it online. If any of this major television broadcasting companies decides to produce this media production they would get some of their funding from the government and UK film council. The funding would help produce films which will help break stereo-type thinking on women seen as doctors, expected upper class old man as villain

The BBC and Channel 4 would be interested in distributing this media project not only because it is British film but the other reason is that there is no competition with major Hollywood industries whose majority of its industries are interested in “Love story”. However for BBC and Channel 4 enjoy monopoly over this type of film production and have been distributing successfully supernatural thriller shows such as (Doctor Who on BBC) and (True Blood on C4 although it is an American import). On the other hand support could also come from Working Title who are British based film production, although they are owned by Universal, they are still managed and produced by British Blockbuster films such as Ali G in the House(2002), Billy Elliot(2000) and Nanny McPhee (2005).

The selling point of this media project is that it draws a number of viewers that are interested in supernatural thrillers for instance teenagers would be interested in this type of film production, because I have witnessed from films such as “Harry Potter (2006)” and “Iron Man (2008)” overwhelming popularity in both these films that opportunity on maximising profits was extended to meet needs of their fans like through production of T-shirts, Bubble- heads of Harry Potter. This is an extension which occurs as benefits of popular film production that it will echo itself on other items such as textile products, plastics, toys etc.

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

This media production focuses between the ages 15 and 25 mainly male and uses a cast from the age group. From the research I gather that this age group will be interested in my type of film because of the main topics that are featured. I believe that the whole supernatural thriller has been popular for a number of years through the development of technology; this also involves the economical world affairs about the government trying to improve the security defences through the military. As this is a high paced action it well be very appealing to this new generation because everything in this world is developing at a fast pace. In my research it showed that the target audience mainly enjoyed a thriller film if the characterisation of the character matched the thriller. Moreover the target audience preferred films such as “Avatar (2009) and Matrix (1999)” was mainly preferred by the male audience, whereas for the female audience they enjoyed “The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009)” because of the plot of the film.

The BBFC classification that I am hoping to achieve is “15” there reason for that, it is because there is a couple of swear word within the film which may not be suitable for children under the age of 15. The reason behind for BBFC classification rating of “15” is because I had various numbers of thriller films that inspired me to produce this media production, such films “Dark Knight (2009)”, “Avatar (2009)” and the television series “Heroes (2006-present)”, I feel that these films that I mentioned appeal to both male and female because of the plot which is futuristic and show how the directors manage to produce their vision to perception of the audience.

5. How did you attract/address your particular audience?

There were several elements that were used from my interviews; firstly we found out who enjoyed thrillers, prefer them to be more on the fantasy rather than believable, but at the time we wanted to have the character to represent realism. For example their social class, which the characters portrayed, are those that we see in today’s society. Agent 11 is a victim of the government which has his identity stolen from him. This is shown there is an established shot of the agent lying on the bed after he was used by the government as part of their experiment. This shows that the current world affairs may lead governments to produce an enhance military.

There is feedback from the audience that they particularly enjoyed the visual effects of the different range of scenes, however they were some downsides to the production in that the audience managed to pick on some errors such as; they felt that the cutting from credits to the scenes was not sharp enough or was tight. This type of error does not help with production of supernatural thriller because it slows down the pace expected of that very film.

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

There were few things that I had to learn in order to produce this media production. I thought this was going to be easy but I found it difficult when it came to directing the camera person on how and when you using the camera (Cannon XM2) during shooting of outdoor scenes. It is difficult to shoot on a wet day because the poor weather condition would get the equipment wet. The fortunate thing was that I had umbrella which protected the equipment and at times the weather condition played in our favour when it came to holding the tripod in place on the muddy ground. It can be tricky to build and catch into camera emotional effects.

When using the software programme Final Cut Pro, editing proved to be the most daunting task to do. It is very taxing on mind and patience. I had to learn the shortcut way of editing since I was interested and willing to learn different types of shortcuts. Though it made my work much easier and faster it remained a challenging task to do in terms of quality of work expected. What I really found difficult was cutting and pasting the different types of shots and try and match them together, so that it looks free flowing. However I discovered that use of the sound pitch bar helped me interlink different shots of a similar scene depending on the pitch of the word. On the other hand I thoroughly enjoyed the creative work of designing the title sequence and the challenging task of ensuring no colour clashing occurred. It is put all different types of knowledge and skills together from art to science and I eventually got my ideas right and in place. Whilst using Final Cut Pro, I came across editing software called Live Type.

This programme Live Type which is very similar to Final Cut Pro in terms of the timeline and how to operate it, I used this programme to create the special effects on my credits. I learnt mostly through experimenting with the effects on both programmes because I felt that through this way I will get the type of result I wanted and expected to have, even though it was time consuming, it was worthwhile.

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

I would like to believe that the preliminary task that I did with my group prepared me well in the terms of what I going to face when asked to do the full film production. Even though the preliminary task seemed as a “Mickey Mouse project”, it also made me familiar with what is involved, especially the equipment needed for thriller sequence. For example using and setting the cameras, tripod stands and editing of software in the proper manner, just like how one of my lecturer’s Ian showed me. Furthermore the different techniques that we learnt together helped me know ways to avoid any unnecessary errors such as cutting during dialogue which does not interlink with another scene.

In conclusion whilst I appreciate a lot of learning, I believe as a group working together we failed to maximise the opportunity of pulling our abilities together effectively. To a great extent we lost out on lack of group work skills which are very important in film production work. We appreciate the opportunity of having one of the best lecturers with vast experience within media industry, Mr Ray Poole and exhibited great enthusiasm to share his knowledge and skills with us, with poor group skills we lost our time during the early stages of this media project but we have as learning curve also learnt the importance of managing ourselves on focusing on meeting our targets within a group of different abilities and characters and managed to salvage some of our pride and completed the media project. From this project when I am watching television my mind is taken to imagination of the amount of work involved in production of a film or whatever to please viewers. I am now very analytical on details and do not take viewing passively and for granted, it has a real place in society and thanks to the Film Industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5NYEgUzkWk