Evaluation

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

Our film 'Disturbance' uses many of the conventions of the horror films we researched, they gave us inspiration and insight into to some of the conventions we needed to go by like the way suspense is created through camera technique.

For example, when researching, we came across the film 'Don't Say a Word'. The film features a mentally disturbed young female - exactly the same as our film.

We used similar techniques in our film used by the actress Brittany Murphy who did a great job in portraying an innocent young woman, controlled and diminished mentally by her condition.

Here, you can see the character is hunched up and huddled, almost hugging herself for security. She is in a very defensive position to show how scared of the lack of control the mental illness brings with it.
She is clutching a doll, connoting the innocence she still possesses but due to her insanity she has lost. Because she has such little control over her life, by clutching the doll she instantly looks vulnerable and like a young child emphasising the lack of control again.

We tried to convey the same things by using similar body language as we thought it was very effective in 'Don't Say a Word'.
Here we have used the same huddled position to portray the insecurities she possesses, the loneliness and the urge to have someone to comfort her.
In this shot, the character is holding a torch. This anchors the need for comfort and security. It also highlights the fact that the only source of security is a torch rather than a person or anything slightly animate or sentimental.














In this picture taken from one of the films we researched called 'Psychosis', the main character - again a young female, is seen on the computer doing some work. This activity is very common and instantly recognisable as we all do it and it is a normal, everyday thing to do. This scene features quite early on in the film, building up the tension and causing the audience to be subconsciously unprepared for the disturbing scenes that fit with the horror/thriller genre to kick in.

This screen shot taken from our film can be used as a comparison to the previous picture and what it connotes. Again, in this shot, the female is just returning home from work as the formal clothing anchors this. Immediately the audience associates this with a plain job working for a business of some kind and therefore a sense of order and normality to this character's life s established.

Although the shots are not directly comparable, they connote the same portrayal of a mundane, normal, average lifestyle to and both have the purpose of contrasting with the genre and what it entails later in the film inevitably to give the audience a shock, providing entertainment.

From these comparisons, it's obvious how we have tried to stay within the conventions to create the same feelings we felt when watching and researching other films within the same genre we chose.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We wanted to have a very objective main character to keep a constant distance between her and the audience during the opening sequence. This way, we could keep the suspense and mystery high.
The fact that the character doesn't speak adds to keeping the distance. She very rarely shows her face - stopping the audience from seeing her emotions and expressions and consequentially, finding it hard to understand her and make judgements as easily. The only judgements that can be made would be from her appearance and the doctor's analysis that plays over the top of the film.
I think it was a wise choice for us to keep the main role mysterious because we knew we needed to build up the suspense and anticipation as much as we could to cope with the genre we chose. Before we even started any brainstorming for our film ideas we knew we had to be able to do so, because of previous films we'd already watched within the genre and how cleverly they achieved it. To fulfil such a task would be key in making the film as successful as possible.
By casting the main character as a young female, we felt it would connect well with our target audience. We aimed the film at a fairly young age group ranging anywhere from 15 and above. We chose a female role because, similar to 'Don't Say a Word' and 'Psychosis' the choice of a female lead was very successful in generating a creepy feel and a feeling of sympathy throughout. The fact that the character in our film is so young evokes a connection between the audience and the character.

None of the locations and sets we used during our film are particularly extreme, as i said before this was intentional because it juxtaposes with the themes and events.
During the first sequence the fact that the character is returning to her house dressed in work clothes which seem to insinuate quite a professional job. This shows the woman is quite dependent - appealing to a slighter more mature audience around 19 years and above; the age when one starts to think of a career and a home.

The second sequence involves the woman coming back from a run. This shows the character is healthy, likes to keep fit and look her best - appealing to young people who also participate in this activity, as it's unlikely many middle ages people would go on regular jogs.

In the third episode, the main character is situated in her room, which is related with young people. It's not often that 40 year olds spend their time hanging out in their room. So this appeals to the audience who do the same and may imagine having outside their window frequently.

What kind of media institute would distribute your media product and why?

When thinking about a distribution company, we thought of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), our film is a British film as we are the producers and the actors are British so to have the advantage of using an American distribution company would increase the reputation and therefore the overall audience interest dramatically.
MGM would be the perfect distribution company for us because they have dealt specifically with horror/thriller movies before with the film 'Asylum' (2008) and proved relatively successful. Female leads have also seen to be very popular as the films I've previously talked about show so this could attract them to distribute our film. Despite the fact it's only a small British film, horror/thriller films are becoming increasingly more popular particularly with young adults who are most likely to visit the cinema or buy DVDs so this film would be pretty successful with MGM on board!

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our film would be young adults as recent horror films have proved extremely popular with this age group. It could also be popular with more mature age groups as they can marvel in the mystery and challenging storyline our film has with it.
At first we decided to allocate a 12A film rating to attract a broader audience but then we thought about the themes and storyline which features murders etc. and raised that to a 15 rating. Although this reduces the audience range from the younger ages, older members would be more inclined to go and see the film due to more mature themes as opposed to a 12A which they might feel would feature very 'safe' themes and quite a drab storyline for what they expect with a good horror/thriller.

How did you attract/address your audience?

To help us gain insight from potential audience members, we produced 3 questionnaires. Here are three examples:

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We gave out 20 questionnaires of the same type as shown above and received interesting results that encouraged us during film planning. We took the most common answer to use as pointers to go by.
One useful reply we obtained was from the question 'What is your favourite movie genre?' The most popular answer we received was thriller/horror and as a result, we decided to base our film on it, plus it's quite an adaptable genre to choose.
The intention to involve the audience and get them to constantly be asking themselves questions and having them revealed was premeditated as they acquire the feeling that they can help solve the mystery.

If we were to release a full film, we would use this poster to help with promotion because it's intriguing and draws attention to itself well, the exact intentions a promotional poster should do.

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

Digital Video Camcorders:

We didn't get to a great start with the camcorder because we didn't have an HD tpye so we used a Canon MV930. This offered us a slightly weaker definition to the camera shots but it did not hinder our filming as we got straight on with it despite the lack of the top gear. The only drawback we faced was that the camera didn't pick up that much detail and it was very difficult to film in any sort of light but broad day light. We attempted to brighten the footage on Final Cut Express but we had no luck as it just didn't look right so we re-filmed the footage we needed in a brighter light/earlier time of day and edited that footage's brightness to still keep the eerie feel. Although the film's definition is not as professional as we would've liked it to be, we had to make do with what we had which was still a very capable camera indeed and having never really used a camcorder of that stature before, I persoanlly learnt a lot about how to use them well.

Apple Macs:

Being a strict PC user, at first I wasn't a fan of Macs at all, but that was before i had used them for over a long period of time. I still stand by my view that using a PC computer is definately easier but the facilities and applications that the Macs come with are so extensive and useful, I learnt how to use many programmes with great ease.
I'll admit there were some things that took me a while to get the hang of but towards the end, I really got the hang of utilising all the programmes we needed to use in order to edit and finalise our film.
I'm very pleased I've had the opportunity to use the Mac and its functions because I really enjoyed it and it was incredibly satisfying to see the footage turned into an edited, professional film that we have produced all by ourselves.
With the use of Final Cut Express and LiveType, which proved incredibly useful and simple to use, the film was able to take place and look skillful within merely a few days of editing.

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

It seems odd to look back at the preliminary task because we produced it such a long time ago and since then all of our skills in film production have advanced so much.
The main thing that producing the preliminary task taught me early on was how important keeping continuity really is. I didn't expect it to be as hard as it was when moving on to making the 2 minute film.
Using the Mac applications and editing the film was more fun and exciting than i expected as I had never come across anything as technological as that - being a first-time Mac user.

Planning & Storyboards

Here are our shooting schedules and storyboards:

Textual Analysis

Research

We reasearched many films following similar plots and themes to ours to get a few ideas and inspiration. We found 3 key films that encouraged us to use certain aspects in our film and in general give us a jist of the genre.

'Don't Say a Word'

The first film we looked at was 'Don't Say a Word' (2001). The main character of this film is a young female who suffers from a mental illness and is therefore in an asylum, similar to our film on some levels.
The main reason we used this film as a key source of inspiration was because of the main character called Elizabeth played by Brittany Murphy being so similar to our idea to have a young female as the protagonist. Her characterisation was extremely powerful and we used some of the theatrical techniques in our film.




This clip shows those techniques. The director uses slow, steady camera work to contrast with the woman's mental state; the camera zooms while she repeats "I'll never tell", emphasising her worrying mental condition which we used in our film.

The Trailer



'Psychosis'


The second film we used for inspiration and brain storming is 'Psychosis', a film based on a woman who's disturbed by the thought of her own death. She expriences extremely far flung visions inside her head which makes it very hard for anyone to believe her and so she get gradually more and more mentally ill with no one to confide in.

This is typical of the horror genre but it works well and the conventions of a horror by including previous traumas haunting people beyond the occurance are certainly present.
This useful portrayal of a woman's psychotic breakdown being driven by a previous trauma persuaded us to go include this conventional storyline, it proved successful in this film.


The Trailer



'Shutter Island'


This film was our final influence and although it wasn't released at this point, we found a preview trailer after a friend who had read the book informed us about it. The story is extremely clever and it's a truly gripping film with a great twist!
If we were to finish the rest of the film, we had ideas to include a twist similar to this film but the opposite of the this film's ending in that the main character wouldn't actually be mentally ill but gifted because she can see into her future and is really experiencing premonitions.
The terrific creepy depiction of mental illness in the film inspired us to base our horror clip on the breakdown of an innocent person's mind.
This film also uses previous traumatic tragedies as the cause of the main character's unstable mental state. As this was frequently the basis for most of the horror films about psychology we researched, we used the same conventional plot line.

The Trailer



In the trailer, it is clear that the main character, Teddy Daniels, is very traumatised by the death of his wife. The representation of the way he is haunted by her death and abscence in his life is fantastic and although we couldn't possibly use the same type of editing and filming, we tried to represent the same feeling of despair and show how much the character in our film is at her wit's end.

Mise-en-scene

Costume:

[the female]
In the opening scene we decided to have the woman dressed in a suit to create a formal feeling and to ease the audience into a sense of security, monotony and dullness. This contrasted well with what was being said in the voice-over about insanity through the doctor’s analysis. By wearing a suit, the audience can immediately connect this with an official everyday job and therefore a pretty normal life. We didn’t want to give anything away in the first scene so we decided to begin with a mundane, typical task of the average person, which would later contrast with the character’s mental disfunction and create a large distinction from the dark twist that comes in at the very end of each dream sequence.
In the second sequence, the female now wears a tracksuit sports type clothing showing that she's just partaking in every day life activities. Again, to lull the viewers into a false sense of secuirty to make the abstract twist at the end of the scene - that much more dark and unexpected.
In the third sequence, the main character is dressed even more informally. She is wearing pyjama shorts and a hoody and is in her bedroom which couldn't be more of a relaxed situation heightened by the relaxed attire.
All the locations and clothing in each sequence emphasises the randomness and maliciousness of the attacks, heightening the suspense for why these occur and what they entail. This woman goes by her everyday life but is still harassed by this killer in her dreams, she is never safe and this is what we wanted to strongly convey.

[the male]
During every single sequence there are very slight variations to the male character or mysterious killer. His attire changes very slightly but a few things are always represented. He's always covered up somehow so that his face cannot be seen and consequentially, his identity is hidden throughout the two minute clip.
We purposefully decided to keep all identities hidden to accumulate suspense, tension and anticipation, feelings all fitting with the horror/thriller genre.
The killer is always dressed in dark clothing to connotate his immoral motives and keep up the sinister feel of the film. It also allows the killer to be unseen in darkness creating mystery and fear from not only the viewers perspective but also the female victim who shares the same fear.

Location:

We chose random locations to fit well with the unpredictability of the murder allowing a 'have to find out more' feel to the film. It attracts viewers, keeps their attention and entertains the mind throughout with a confusing, puzzle styled storyline.
Because the locations are so random and normal, the ability to predict what is going to happen is made slightly more difficult and therefore more compelling. In horror films the predictable scene in which the protagonist is going to be killed is usually made clear whereas this juxtaposition of ideas throws the audience off a common trail.
We purposefully set the final murder scene within the woman's bedroom. People feel that their bedroom is a place of great personal space and security so to have it inavded by someone else and to be at risk of death emphasises the frightening experience the young female goes through.

Voice:

We chose not to include any dialogue from the main character to keep a distance between the audience and her identity for the first 2 minutes so people want to watch the rest of the film and understand her.
We did choose to use a psychiatric analysis as a voice over to play on top of the film. It makes the film quite sinister with the official tone used in the voice over.
Because of the slightly confusing storyline, we realised we needed a voice over to add an extra professional touch and essentially explain what was going on in the film.
The analysis of the young female evokes questions that can be asked by the audience such as why she experiences the hallucinations in the first place and whether they mean anything. By doing this, the audience participate in the need to help the main character and diagnose her key problem which inevitably adds an entertainment factor as you get involved and gripped on the film.

Look and feel:

We all decided our film should be in black and white to convey the fact that the clips are flashbacks of the protagnist's memory not present day. By using a plain, formal appearance, the audience can concentrate fully on the storyline as our film is quite confusing with the changes from past to present etc.
The black and white edit adds an eerie and mysterious look and feel perfect for heightening the emotion filtering through to the audience.