Evaluation Task

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

We tried showing that are film could be suitable for the big screen by using typical convention from the genre we were given, which was THRILLER. We demonstrated these fixed conventions throughout our film because not all of them would be relevant. 

At the start of our opening we have introduced the main character straight away, but we have not shown her face because we wont to create enigmas within the audience. This was to create tension and to engage the audience! Enigmas are a typical convention in a thriller film. 

Another one we included was 'The protagonist will be in peril inane or more scenes before the resolution.' This was straightforward to do in opening sequence as we could use this when introducing the audience to character and this would be easily perceived not to be giving a decision as it would leave the audience not really bothered about watching Silent minds. This would also be easily shown through cinematography and other micro elements, which could help create tension!!!!

This is the main character Lucy, but the audience might not work it out, which create enigmas. This is an other shoulder shot, which capture a figure in the window! The aims for this shot was to show lucy in peril and to make the audience question them selfs about the refection, is it lucy in the reflection??! 

This shot makes lucy look vulnerable, which builds tension and engages the audience!

This is two shot over layering each other, it show Lucy self harming and it also shows Lucys eyes. Lucy eyes show shes scared and its showing that something is bothering her. This makes the audience feel sorry for the character, which builds a connection with the audience! The shot is a close up which still doesn't reveal her whole face!! 

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

We have combined two social groups and represented both of them in depth! We have represented youth and mental health and explore both of them in one character 'Lucy'. Lucy has schizophrenia, so we have link them to micro elements to try and show our two represented social groups, but the same time using the right conventions to keep the genre as a thriller film!! 

We have research the mental illness 'schizophrenia': 

"Throughout recorded history, the disorder we now know as schizophrenia has been a source of bewilderment. Those suffering from the illness once were thought to be possessed by demons and were feared, tormented, exiled or locked up forever.

In spite of advances in the understanding of its causes, course and treatment, schizophrenia continues to confound both health professionals and the public. It is easier for the average person to cope with the idea of cancer than it is to understand the odd behavior, hallucinations or strange ideas of the person with schizophrenia.

As with many mental disorders, the causes of schizophrenia are poorly understood. Friends and family commonly are shocked, afraid or angry when they learn of the diagnosis. People often imagine a person with schizophrenia as being more violent or out-of-control than a person who has another kind of serious mental illness. But these kinds of prejudices and misperceptions can be readily corrected.

Expectations become more realistic as schizophrenia is better understood as a disorder that requires ongoing -- often lifetime -- treatment. Demystification of the illness, along with recent insights from neuroscience and neuropsychology, gives new hope for finding more effective treatments for an illness that previously carried a grave prognosis.

Schizophrenia is characterized by a broad range of unusual behaviors that cause profound disruption in the lives of people suffering from the condition, as well as in the lives of the people around them. Schizophrenia strikes without regard to gender, race, social class or culture." 

-Delusions & Hallucinations Are Common in Schizophrenia

-Social isolation and withdrawal

-Irrational, bizarre or odd statements or beliefs

-Increased paranoia or questioning others' motivations

-Becoming more emotionless

-Hostility or suspiciousness

-Increasing reliance on drugs or alcohol (in an attempt to self-medicate)

-Lack of motivation

-Speaking in a strange manner unlike themselves

-Inappropriate laughter

-Insomnia or oversleeping

-Deterioration in their personal appearance and hygiene

Black Swan shows throughout the film the fight 'Nina Sayers' to keep the black swan within her. In the movie the director has also investigate how modern day elements contribute to her fight and how the coercion of day to day life for a high end dances soon builds up leading to an outbreak she is no longer able to contain which soon leads to her taking her own life!!!!! 

3. What kind of media institution might distribute 

your media product and why?

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

Our target audience would be between the ages of 15 - 30, It has to be above the age of 15 because of our chosen classification age of 15. This is an bigger enough audience to engage and show them in depth what living with a mental illness is like! 

To get people to more about our thriller, I decided to write a review, but before i could write one, i need to do a bit of research before hand!!

Here is an online review :

Here is a magazine review: 

Here is a few magazine/web pages my review could feature on:

Here is my review: 

5.How did you attract/address your audience?

We made a voice over our opening talking about micro elements and how they attracted our audience. I was the spokes person for Camerawork and Sound.

Here was my speech:

 The camera work for our thriller opening sequence mostly were close up of objects and part of Lucy's face, this was used to create enigmas within our audience. Also this helps create a surreal environment and to create tension in the atmosphere. In the opening sequence we have used a montage (made mostly of close ups), this was used to show how mentally unstable the main character Lucy is and what weird thing happen in side her head.

The sound for our opening thriller sequence we decided to layer ambiences and distorted sound effects, this was to create enigmas and to create a unnerve environment. The sounds were random and not in a order, which created enigmas within the audience!!

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

- The HD video camera and tripod that were provided for us were very easy to handle and use. The quality is also a big plus. One problem with it maybe is that the tripod wouldn't be very useful in small spaces and areas.

-Final Cut Express helped me learn about how to create dynamic scenes using transitions such as fade to black and to use quick cuts during the editing process. It was also very useful when layering two clips over one another, this was very effective in our opening sequences! One of its drawbacks that we had to solve was its incompatibility with other cameras other than what we have been provided with.

-GarageBand was very useful for using loops that were provided that were suitable for our film. GarageBand was also very helpful when adding ambiences and over sound effect to our opening. 

LMDB

Article/review

Here is research of an article from a well known magazine called Empire magazine, which publishes articles based around films and feature films. This is how they layout there online article: 

It is very important to not give away the whole story line, give the audience and critical engaging description of the film but not reveal the whole plot!! Give a mix of good and bad opinions!

Here is my rough design and a written review of our thriller film:

Silent Minds 

***

Plot

Lucy Write is confused and is a mentally unstable teenager! She if faced with a number of problems and some things she doesn't take well, leaving her to rebel or break down! Lucy also gets into the wrong crowd at college and she also has family problems!

Verdict 

Silent minds is a creative and factual film, it show deep meanings and expresses life with schizophrenia in a contemporary way! The film show whats it like for a teenager with schizophrenia and how hard it is. The film uses montages and contemporary filming to show the thoughts of the teenage girl Lucy. There is lots of micro elements which are used to engage the audience, for example the music at the start is quite disturbing, which creates an unsettling environment for the viewers. There is lots of enigmas within the audience, which creates tension throughout, the enigmas are like not showing the whole characters face and random object which have a deeper meaning! 

The film goes into depth on teenagers in modern society and how most of them are stereotype as being a problems in today (thugs). There has never really been a film like this, Silent mind is a complex film, which represents youth and mental health in a whole different way! The film is focused on this one girl lucy and her ordeal through her teenage years. 

My plan for the music of the opening

My idea for the background music for this opening sequence was to create an unsettling environment and to leave the viewers on edge. I created this on garage band, which is a music producing software! When making the music I layered loads of ambience's and made some louder than others to give a surreal feel to the montage and because the montage is random clips, i made the music random! The music is random, making the audience question them self and wanting to find out the story! 

Credit idea's and research

Charlie Hall played our only character at the started of the opening. So we will have put that in the opening credits as; Starring Charlie Hall

We then need to show who was the production team and what role did they play in creating our thriller!
Here is a rough exsample:
Filmed and directed by Billy Stocker
Edited by Chloe F and Sarah G
Music By Billy S and Sarah G

Then we need to say the production company and there logo (the long road film company) 

Thriller opening practice piece

This is the first sequence of our opening, this sequence is just before the montage and is where we are going to have a few credits between clips! This will have a non- diegetic soundtrack added to it, we also wish to refilm the clip of both eyes closing and opening!!!

Lindisfarne - James Blake

Me and Billy really like this video and feel that the 'uneasy' atmosphere is relevant to our thriller. As well as this, there is quite a sense of mystery that hangs around this video. Several enigmas are raised;

Who is this girl?
What are they doing?
   - drugs?
   - are they a cult?
Why does the girl cry at the end?
   -is it because of what happened?
   -is it because she doesn't want to leave?

Are among some of the questions we asked.

We like this video because it's abstract, which is something we'd like to get across in in our piece, although we feel it's something that is quite difficult to convey, as it's a fine line between being abstract and being completely random.

The girl has a slightly innocent, yet rather haunted look. She also looks lost, and as if she is not entirely sure what is happening. We would like our girl to have this look.
The song is also strange, and builds up in complex layers, which is similar to what we wish to do with our soundtrack. There is no diegetic sound, only the non-diegetic song (apart from where the man appears to be singing the song), which we wish to do.

Location planning

.Close up of her putting makeup on - shot in a bedroom
.Montage - loads of random locations, They will be a mix of inside and outside shots
.Close up of her face, but in a dark room with a light-Shot in a dark room, e.g shed, wardrobe etc
montage  shot and location
.different body part shot - shower
.close up of her smoking - outside
.walking -field
. nervous hands - bedroom
. screaming - field
. close up for her self harming - bath room
. close up of her walking - road
. staring out the window - upstair window sill

Mise en Scene

Costumes.
For the montage of the girl scared, we will dress her in a white dress as this shows purity and contradicts everything else we have seen on the screen creating numerous enigmas within the viewers mind.
This will also allow the girl to stand out as a majority of the shots will be taken in a very dark room.

Planning for Testing Footage

Plan of testing footage

These are the microelements we have chosen to use within the opening of our thriller.

·      Micro Elements combine in a build up of suspense

·      The protagonist will be seen in peril in one or more scenes before the resolution

·      Themes of identity

How we’re going to portray these microelements.

1.     Micro elements combine in a build up of suspense.

The music will be very distorted in order to make the viewer feel uneasy, this will then be added to by the mise en scene. Our character will be in a very confused state (shown by the distress in the facial expressions) She is also in a dark room, which has connotations of being sinister.

When filming this the camera will use an extreme close up of the character we are filming, this will make the scene very intense and won’t let the viewer escape from there discomfort zone. It could also makes the viewer feel claustrophobic in the same way the character does.

2.     The protagonist will be seen in the peril in one or more scenes before the resolution

In-between the montage clips the main character will be shown in distress. This will be portrayed by the camera shoots and the makeup we will use. There will be an extreme close up of the characters eyes closed and her eye makeup will be smeared in the way it does when a girl has been crying excessively. Another shot could again be a close up of the girl rubbing here arms, this is often done when some one is nervous alerting the audience that the character (for some reason) is feeling scared and/or unsettled. 

3.     Themes of identity

As within our opening the character is shown with two completely different personalities, one, which is ‘normal’, and one which seems very confused and distressed. This will be shown with a mixture of shots, half showing the character in blatant distress and the other half showing her doing normal things like showering or painting her nails. However within these shots there will be slight hints showing that the shots are not as simplistic and straight forward as the eye would have first seen it, for example when painting her nails the colours will be dark and not colours you would associate with young, happy teenagers.

Final Piece Ideas

After collating all our initial ideas this is what we have decided to do in our final production;

• Woman with her eyes closed running throughout the whole opening.
• Small clips running along side the long clip.
• The small clips involvve normal acts e.g. washing, brushing her hair and doing make up.
• The long post will be in a dark room.
• Lots of voices mixed together and over lapping. Becoming louder and louder.

This is the basis of the opening.

Production Logo Ideas

In our group we all designed a logo which we thought would look good for the Production Company we have created. The first is Charlie's logo, the second is Chloe's logo and thirdly is Billy's.
We think at the moment that Billy's will be most appropriate as Charlie's connotes horror and Chloe's is more juvenile.

Thriller conventions - Billy Stocker

Inception is a science-fiction action film, It written and directed by Christopher Nolan. The film was released in 2010 by Warner Bros. I think it has used steriotypical conventions a lot thriller movies have.

The narrative centers around crime, Inception uses crime as the prime theme of the thriller by going into Fisher's son's mind to persuade him to give up the business and not follow his father. The idea of Inception is then used to plant an idea into his mind, this was done on a 10 hour flight to US and then was consummated, within this time period to change is mind. Inception is a thriller because there sudden rush of emotions, excitement, sense of suspense, apprehension, and exhilaration, which all drive the narrative, this is very stereotypical in most thriller films.

The protagonist (‘Cobb’) is fallible of his wife ‘Mol’ his dead wife but she is also antagonist, the villain of the film! This Makes the Protagonist weak and vulnerable, this creates Achilles heel and stops him doing his job properly because of his wife! Cobb originally made Mol the enemy by planting thoughts into her mind, resulting in her getting confused and killer her self by think she is still in a dream. So ‘Cobbs’ memories of her and the children distract him in his dreams!


In Inception the protagonist, was definitely seen in danger at many times during the film. Cobbs makes himself to be the quite vulnerable at points especially when Mol his wife makes an appearance. The places he created in his mind is so subversive and sometimes proves to be impossible and presents to us his fear and the danger which confines him. Cobbs takes risks to help people he is in the layers with, as well as covering his own back from approaching danger. This shown by different camera angles, like close ups to capture fear and emotions or to capture action by using long shots . In a certain scene where the protagonist is seen in peril is near the end of the film where he is sat in the house with Mol his wife and she is asking for him to stay and share a life with her in the subconscious world they created years ago, but she becomes apprehensive and stabs a kitchen knife to his body. He is was then hurt but had to find strength within his mind to work out that it isn't reality and he will be okay once he wakes up.

In Inception antagonist (Mol, Cobbs wife) is very controlling and powerful over Cobb's mind and thoughts and at some points blocks any other thoughts he may have, so that he cannot stop thinking about Mol and whether what he is doing is the right thing to do. Near the end she traps him in the world which they created together by using memories and ideas they shared, this makes him extremely vulnerable to Mol to enter his mind with thoughts of her. At the very start she was so preoccupied by this thought that she wasn't living in the real world and that she should take 'a leap of faith' to reality so they could be with their children is reality. She tried very hard to persuade Cobbs that what she was saying was true and that he should jump of the side of the building with her and they'd be able to live "happily ever after" and here it proved to take a lot for Cobb to know she wasn't right and not to listen to this complicated theory that she had thought up. When she did jumped of the side of the building and fell this left him feeling helpless and lonely in his world because he hadn't understood what she had been trying to explain about and this is then where the whole idea of inception occurred making him then live an isolated place within other people's subconsciousness minds!!

Most of the places in the narrative of Inceptions is created in the protagonist mind, In his mind he created cities, hall, buildings, landscapes and things from memory, but none of it was actually real! There was a group of people who joined the protagonist, to filter through the subconscious and to change what people thought by planting idea into people heads. They could change the way someone lived there life by attacking them in there head and forcing ideas into there mind, like they did with Fisher on the Flight to LA!!!



Sound
Most of the sound was mainly diegetic and either consisted of speech, gun shots, machinery, or the music which was played into the ears of the person to wake them up out of the subconscious. The sounds heard by the audience were all heard by the characters too, as they were mostly just the surrounding background sounds in characters environment. There wasn’t any non diegetic music or sounds used to create an atmosphere or certain mood. However the sounds of the gun shots and explosions may have been enhanced non diegetic sounds to create a more realistic sound and atmosphere.

Camera work
There was lots of long shot to capture the action to build up the suspense, like for example the shooting scenes and the floating down the corridor. Another camera work which helps build up suspense was Cobbs point of view when his wife was about to jump of the building! There was arrange of over shoulder shots with Mel and Cobbs when they were having a conversation.

Mise en scene
The character are dressed in clothes for the situation they are in, this acts to help them blend in and to wear clothes which are suitable for the situation, For example the ski clothes for when they went to that locations in the snow or when they were on the plane or when the were in the sea. All the clothes don’t look out place, therefore help them blend into there surroundings! The Guns, ski’s where used to back the genre of the thriller, whereas chairs, table and house hold objects etc.. were used to help create the scene.

editing
Editing was used to create suspense, for example explosions or when that massive storm cloud came when Cobb was in his subconscious to show fear of time running out or when the city was turned up side down, it all help to create an atmosphere for a good thriller. The storm clouds was created using CGI and some of the scenes like when the city turned upside down where done with a green screen. When of the character is floating down the corridor they used a rotational green screen to make it look like he was floating around!

There used all 3 key elements for this thriller, all to a certain degree throughout the film, but the main theme was most probably amnesia as at the end of the film we clearly see at the air port when Fisher's son sees Cob he doe not recognize him and remember the events which have just taken place in the layers of his subconscious mind. All of the work they do in the minds of these people is forgotten apart from the main objective which is to change the someones mind about something or make them want to do something. Although it proves that when Cobb meets Mol again it is clear that he can soon suffer amnesia about his task in hand and can soon slip away to forgetting she is dead and is only a created in his head.

Inception uses all these elements, which show all these themes. The main idea of this film is to enter someones mind and alter what they think by planting ideas into there subconscious. The images trick you into thinking everything is reality, but really its just a figure of your imagination!

At the very beginning of Inception Cobb lying is in the sea as if he had just been washed up there, this moment carried on to show him in a Japanese building showing him sat opposite end of the table to an man who had found him and was trying to get words from him to discover information about the spinning top Cobbs has. This moment then was carried on to create the rest of the film, but then at the very end, we only then find out how Cobb became to be washed up in the sea and went back to the same place!!!
which then resolved the film and the task they had been working to complete. This then put all the pieces together and then you work out the task and then inception is completed!!!!