WHAT KIND OF INSTITUTIONS WOULD BE INVOLVED WITH OUT MEDIA PRODUCT?
TARGET AUDIENCE
Typical Audience
Debra MacMillan
Age 19
Boyfriend
White
Middle classed
Lives with her mum, step dad, younger brother and 2 younger sisters in a council house in the outskirts of a big town
Studies beauty therapy and works part time at the cinema distributing popcorn
Debra enjoys going out drinking with her mates on the weekend, either to a friend’s house or out clubbing. Aims to become a hair dresser and one day open her own salon
Tyrelle
Age 21
Black
Single
Upper middle class
Lives at home with mum and dad in a nice house in the suburbs
Studies sports at university and a part time bartender
Tyrelle enjoys playing sports such as football and cricket. He also plays alot of video games in his spare time. Aims to become a P.E teacher or personal trainer.
Our target audience is aged from 15-late 20s. Lower to upper middle class males and females. Although predominately more males. We have aimed the film at this type of audience as they are the main cinema customers. Our target audience would mainly be from the working class as and at a wide variety of classes to optimise viewers. We’ve tried to achieve this by creating character that the tagert audience would be interested in. By making them roughly the same age and of the same class we hope the audience would be attracted to Bill. We have kept the violence, swearing and sexual content to a minimum of BBFC guidelines to make Bill no more restricted than a 15 so we don’t lose any of our audience and opening it to the wider public. We took our questionnaire results into consideration as this was from our target audience that we needed to cater to, so tried to make a contemporary film, with added noir aspects and stylistics.
Attract/address the audience
We tried to make a story line that the audience would buy into. And make it based in a place that our target audience may have grown up or are currently occupant. We also made it so the audience could relate to on so many level; Abusive relations ships, Making hard decisions, Taking the wrong path in life, Growing up in a rough area, all things that our target audience may personally have encountered or know people that have.
The characters were based on people that actually exist in real life, we all know a ‘jack the lad’ and a mysterious girl. The ordinary type of people caught up in sticky situations to get out of hand, and try to make the audience feel interacted as this could happen to someone they know or themselves and can relate. And the costumes reflected the commonness of the characters of the casual clothing, to how they act.
We tried to incorporate the titles in with the shots and editing so that the audience could digest the text whilst consuming the footage but also to keep the audience interested and reframe them from getting bored of solid text. We also tried to keep the pace of the piece quite fast to keep the audience attention and interested. But not too fast that you can’t see the emotions and the ideology behind some shots eg blood on the hands and sitting all alone, feeling alone in the world. We used a piece of music that we thought would give an effect of uneasiness and that something had done wrong. Music that gave an edge on the whole piece further more leaving the audience questioning.
We hope the attraction came from the setting of your average place in England that everyone has seen, been to, lives in. And that the characters are easily related to and that people know or are just like these character. Also that the storyline can be interpreted to so many things that people also can touch into; violence, relationships, love. And that the enigma of what happened and the questions keep them hooked and really involved in the story and the character groups?
How did our film represent different social groups
1. IN WHAT WAYS DOES MY MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?
To start my evaluation I will show a film opening I analysed and compare it to mine.
BLOW2001, NEW LINE CENIMA, director : TED DEMME
The opening starts with scenes of men and women and children farming the ingredients to make cocaine as it is a key part of this film it makes sense to start with this it then gets to the part of the scene where George Jung is sitting with some friends talking about the cocaine a voiceover then comes in and it begins to tell his story right from child hood this is where he tell you how he didn’t want to be poor like his dad it then progresses onto his movement away from his family and how he then discovers drugs.
SOUND
can you hear me knocking a song by rolling stones is used in this opening as it is a song that was very popular around the time that cocaine was becoming popular in America and being introduced into the mainstream this is just something that seems to make sense to me as a viewer because it seems to be chosen for authenticity reasons more than anything else.
EDITING/CENIMATOGRAPYthe length of the shot when you first see George Jung is about 25 seconds long it is a mid shot of him which zooms in on him as he is speaking instantly showing you that this is the main character and that is the reason that this shot was chosen and the dialogue was done to match this kind of shot.
MISE EN SCENE
Once again when you first see George it is a very important moment as the room he is in is very bare and plain with just what seems like some meat freezer curtains hanging up I suppose the room was made to look like this to enforce to the viewer that nature and shadiness of the business this character is doing.
My groups film is very different to this in most areas as BLOW is not a noir BUT it does have some noir stylistics, just like my groups film Blow has a voice over to help move the story along into new areas and give the viewing audience a bit of back story.
Brick (2005, focus features, Director: Rian Johnson) is a neo noir I researched and this film gave me a lot of ideas to put into my groups film such as using an enigma to keep you audience hooked , in Brick there were 2 enigmas to keep the audience hooked we opted for one which was how many people did our main character kill and what one.
Our film used some of the key characters of film noir we had a damaged hero who used to be good getting caught up in all sorts of problems we had a truly evil character who usually remained hidden and mysterious and we had a femme fetal. We made these characters more modern than what they would have been in the heyday of film noir our main characters were much younger than what they would have been, this was to make our film appeal to our target audience more. Our main challenge of noir stylistic was not being so obvious about our character choices and being more subtle like Brick was by having a brown haired femme fetal but putting her in red to signify her status in the film we chose to have a blonde femme fetal but not give her any red clothing. Also in the synopsis of our film it is noteworthy that the other female that is seen in our film is almost like a henchman to our femme fetal. Also we chose to make our hero a bit more street savvy than the usual noir hero making him look to the audience like he can handle anything but his softer side is shown when he is caught up in the underworld of society and his frailties show. When editing our film we tried to keep the pace fast and gritty to make the audience feel uncomfortable during the scenes of the assault we used a jump shot to make the fake hits look real.
1. HOW DOES MY MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?
In our film there is a reasonably wide array of people represented in our film but before I talk about what is in the film I will mention the things that aren’t. In our film there are no truly adult characters the sensible ones who are there to offer smart opinions this is just for one reason and that is that we felt our film was to speak to teenagers and early 20s so the more of those age ranges were represented than others. Our film has no minorities in our film however this is just because our group was all made up of British white; I would imagine that a film regulation body would notice this even though there is nothing sinister going on and I’m sure this happens with some films. In our film noir both sexes are represented, there is a male drug dealer the dealer was made male for realism as I would imagine that female drug dealers are few and far between not saying that there aren’t any but if we did have a female drug dealer we would have been really challenging the norm. There is a man who is caught in a very sticky situation this is a classic noir stylistic and this was the reason it was put in our film to make it feel much more like a classic noir. Our femme fatale was a woman already in this relationship with a drug dealer but she is very knifing and when meeting our main character she never told him this but in the end it all backfired on her which generally happens in noirs as the femme fatale usually ends up dead or behind bars once again we put this in to make the film have a noir style. When making our film we didn’t directly think about ideology but you can’t make a film without at least considering them or them being there anyway, our film shows how easy it can be to get caught up in a lot of trouble and no matter how confident and invincible you think you are nothing can prepare you for how tough life can get.
3. WHO MIGHT DISTRIBUTE OUR PRODUCT?
Our film could be possibly picked up and funded by BBC films as they tend to like investing and funding low budget films that they can see becoming cult hits they also aim to make strong British films with range and ambition, bringing the best of British talent to audiences.BBC Filmsis at the forefront of British independent filmmaking, and co-produces around eight films a year, working in partnership with major international and UK distributors. This is why I would also see our film being viewed at a film festival like the raindance film festival as they tend to show a lot of independent films from across the UK, US and Canada. As I would expect BBC films to be our most likely source of distribution I could see our film being shown on BBC FOUR, then maybe BBC THREE if it became popular enough, the film would probably be on just after the watershed because of the 15 rating I would imagine the BBFC would give it.
The audience for our film would be people who like a film that would keep you guessing and enjoy film with a dark undertone, crime, and even a small love story. The British Board of Film Classification would probably make our film a 15 in classification because there is some drugs ,violence and a bit of bad language this would be ok to us as our main audience would be 18 to 25 year olds a large proportion of the main cinema going audience. In viewings of our film we found out that our classmates thought the film had a good enigma and they became hooked by it, this was what we wanted our opening to end up being.
Synopsis for opening Open with a man sitting in a corner, head in his hands covered in a hood. The man appears emotional as he throws objects from nearby over the room. He sits in the room as he thinks. As he thinks he has a flashback, seeing a man walking down a road and seeing a girl, their eyes meet and the problems begin. The film goes back to the man in the room he has various flashbacks which could link to the story which will follow, leaving an enigma for the audience. Synopsis for rest of narrative Later on the man is getting ready for a party with some of his friends, they talk about the girl he saw earlier that day and he finds out from his friends that her boyfriend is a physco drug dealer. At the party the guy and girl begin to talk then they get together, the boyfriend bursts in on them and hit’s the guy then proceeds to chase him out the house where he catches him and they both fight. During the fight the guy picks up a metal pipe that’s lying on the ground and brutally attacks the drug dealer, killing him in the process.
4. WHO IS OUR AUDIENCE / HOW DID WE ATTRACT OUR AUDIENCE?
Our class mates were mixed on what they thought the film would end up becoming some got our preferred reading and others could not see what would happen this means for us our enigma worked.
To address our audience we made a film that would speak to teenagers and young adults by mainly featuring them in the film. In our opening we used some mystery by placing flashbacks and images of dead bodies to give the audience some possibly misplaced association to keep them thinking about why it has been shown who is linked to it and that kind of thing we all do in thrillers where we go “oh it’s that guy but wait he also was there and involved” we done all this to create a link to the audiences mind and keep them hooked. The reason this suits our target audience is because the opening has a enigma which sets up the rest of the film and based on our class screening we achieved to make an enigma and fits our questionnaire.
5. TECHNOLOGIES USED?
During the process of this project I have used a lot of different hardware and software, during the research stage I was using my blog to document the things I was finding out putting a few YouTube clips up to help illustrate the things I was talking about in this I done a lot of digging around the internet to help earth up some facets about noir that I might not have found out in lesson or from books, the research stage also involved watching a few noir and neo noir films on DVD to look at how noir has evolved and changed over the years and the things I learned and saw could then be applied to my groups final piece. In the planning stage I was also using YouTube to give me some ideas on what our synopsis could be. During editing and filming we used aHD tape camera, lighting equipment, microphone, tripod, Facebook to keep in contact with the group, hotmail, phones, Finalcut pro an editing programme, logic sound software, voiceover recording microphones.
6. WHAT I HAVE LEARNT?
In my preliminary exercise I found that there were errors and just some improvements that could be made which made me think more about what my groups final edit should look like from the preliminary exercise called “The exchange” I noticed that at times continuity was a problem as we didn’t seem to make much notice of it and just hoped it would all fit together so when it came to making our main film we all made sure that we noted body position what hand certain things are in so that if we cut mid shot or had to get another angle the continuity would not be a problem. When planning our film it was important to keep in mind a schedule so that we did not get behind on our project and so that we could keep organised, we set dates for filming in different locations this helped us to organise our shots correctly so that when it came to editing stages we could find what we wanted very quickly, also because of these two dates we set it made us have in mind what we wanted to get done making us get our filming done in just two days.
Since our first project i feel i have learnt a lot about filming such as the 180 degree line rule how important ECMS is to how producers make their final product and that they don’t just get lucky they think about every single minor detail to make a finished product. I also learnt that getting more shots and angles than you need is better than having not enough and that is what i found out after my first two projects.
When making our film i was heavily involved in the writing of the script and picking some key shots we wanted to get then when we came to filming as cameraman i decided that when i had an idea for a shot that i would talk to the group and see if they thought i should get it and we would then being to run through what the shot should look like without filming it then once we were comfortable we would then do it. On our film i made our production logos that went at the start of out film and also the distribution company logo these went at the start of the film i also made some key decisions on effects and shot sequence during editing as well as putting them together. In our group i undertook the role of cameraman but I also did some acting in the film and had a large part to play in the editing of the film, picking effects to go over clips to make them look like flashback sequences and various clip placements. A selection of music was gathered by a member of the group and we all had our say the piece that ended up in our film I was the one who placed it in and adjusted it accordingly to any other factors and sounds in our film the final thing I done in editing was to place our titles in making them fit into screen and not take away from the action. For the preproduction i wrote up the original voice over script which somebody else then integrated into the main screen play. i also done a rough copy of the storyboard so that we could then get a idea of the shots we wanted to do this was then done in neat by our art director. I completed a production schedule so we knew our filming dates. I then found our locations with help from our art director who allowed us to use her home as a film location, I then did a risk assessment for one of our locations. After editing I then as well as every other member of the group done an evaluation sheet taking down thoughts of our film from other classmates and our tutor.
During shooting we decided to make a few changes: When we shot the street scene we decided to take more shots than we had planned, we planned to take a total of 4 shots, however we decided to take a wider variety of shots in order to have a greater choice, in total we took about 8 or 9 different shots for that scene. Because of this when we started editing we had a wide choice of shots and so we could keep continuity and interest in that scene as the shots weren’t too long. When we shot the main part of the opening we kept to the main storyboard of ideas, however we used different shot types again in order to create a better, more interesting clip. We also tested different coloured light filters in order to create a better lighting appearance but decided that the natural colour of the light appeared the best. Also during the first long shot we filmed, we used a piece of card with strips cut out in order to create a Venetian blind effect. We did this in order to keep to the stylistics of classic film noir apparent in our contemporary noir opening
From the research we undertook we found out that for the age group we are aiming at would prefer a contemporary style noir that contains modernised aspects, however contained some of the classic characteristics of film noir, such as an enigma and a possible twist at the ending.
To me blow had something’s that seemed to be taken from a film noir as it had a very gritty storyline and a damaged main character who you were supposed to feel sorry for but also question at the same time it also had a voiceover the entire way through.
The opening starts with scenes of men and women and children farming the ingredients to make cocaine as it is a key part of this film it makes sense to start with this it then gets to the part of the scene where George Jung is sitting with some friends talking about the cocaine a voiceover then comes in and it begins to tell his story right from child hood this is where he tell you how he didn’t want to be poor like his dad it then progresses onto his movement away from his family and how he then discovers drugs.
SOUND
can you hear me knocking a song by rolling stones is used in this opening as it is a song that was very popular around the time that cocaine was becoming popular in America and being introduced into the mainstream this is just something that seems to make sense to me as a viewer because it seems to be chosen for authenticity reasons more than anything else.
EDITING/CENIMATOGRAPY the length of the shot when you first see George Jung is about 25 seconds long it is a mid shot of him which zooms in on him as he is speaking instantly showing you that this is the main character and that is the reason that this shot was chosen and the dialogue was done to match this kind of shot.
MISE EN SCENE
Once again when you first see George it is a very important moment as the room he is in is very bare and plain with just what seems like some meat freezer curtains hanging up i suppose the room was made to look like this to enforce to the viewer that nature and shadiness of the business this character is doing.
The music in this opening scene is a non diagetic piece of music that speeds up as the attack gets more brutal and closer to its conclusion this is put in the film to make the watcher become more and more uncomfortable with what they are watching and also this kind of music tends to get the heart racing.
CENIMATOGRAPHY
During the attack the shots of the woman being attacked by jaws are all just slightly below the surface of the water i think this has been done as it couples with the music in making the viewer feel uncomfortable. At 3:26 in the film there is a close up of the woman with a large scope of the sea behind her this shot is put in to show the pure vulnerability of her.
MISE EN SCENE
the giant body of water is a key setting for this scene as it is put in as it once again couples with the music and the shots during the attack in making the viewer feel uncomfortable as they see this huge empty body of water and realise the woman will have nowhere to run to. The fact that the woman is nude in this scene make me think that the reason she is nude is because it is reinforcing how vulnerable she is.
EDITING
after the attack there is a 6 second establishing shot of where the attack just took place showing it is all over and the viewer can begin to reflect on the scene they have just seen setting up the movie brilliantly as the seems a calm after the storm when in fact it is more like the eye of the
Starts with a man walking down a road and seeing an old enemy and having a flashback as to why they don’t like each other the film then flashes forward to a scene of him sitting in front of a dead body he then gets up and proceeds to narrate as to why he is in this situation picking up key items and explain their part in his enemies murder he then hears sirens and runs this would be where he would begin on his run from the law. Whilst trying to explain his story as to why he done what he done.
Brick is a film that helps to carry and reinvent some of the classic noir techniques in brick a teenage boy is the anti hero who is like an anti hero should be very morally questionable, he is looking for something he has lost this starts out as his ex girlfriend he is then looking for “Brick” after the death of his ex girlfriend after that point he is fighting to find something out, who is brick? This movie is a great example of a modern noir, not only the dark and edgy plot but the execution of action, deliverance of dialogue and classic cinamatic techniques. The snappy dialogue and exchanges pair with shot reverse shots keep you involved and engaed in the conversation and the action. Brendan’s ananti-hero like Sam Spade (the postman always rings twice), aggresivly inteligent and ruthless inhis convictions, an outsider and loner with few friends, a model noir anti-hero. The Fem Fetal of the film ,Laura is just like phyllis dietrich in double indemnity; playing innocent and victimised but truly a dangerous and minipulative woman who tricks brendan all the way.Low key lighting is used in the more dangerous and suspenseful scenes like when Brendan is in the strange underpass drainage type area.
One reviewer said “ you will not see a cooler film this year. Witty, gripping and massively original, Brick is this year's cult hit, hands down. As Brendan would say, "Don't heel it.” The reviewer also mentions this film is a classic example of how noir has evolved and he dubs this film a “Smart noir”
MES is used in this film just like a film noir would use it by using shadow, darkness and poor lighting to conceal characters. There is an urban setting like most noirs and the classic characters dress in the conventional way the femme fatale in Brick has piercing red lips and near enough every scene and figures of authority are always in suits or uniform.
The classic characters are all in this film, femme fetal there is a sidekick type character a fellow loner called The Brain, there is a character who is just caught up in all the trouble without realising this is Brendans ex girlfriend she is similar to phyllis’ husband in the fact that they both seem to end up dead without doing a lot wrong. There is no corrupt police officer but there seems to be a similar character in the fact that the vice principle seems to take on that role.
In groups of 2-3 we were asked to create a preliminary filming exercise, For our preliminary exercise we had to make a 30 second clip of somebody walking down a hall into a room sitting down and having a 5 line conversation about something and We also had a 6-8 shot limit to create this scene.The purpose of the exercise was to familiarise us with the camera and the editing software, and also some of the rules of filming such as the 180 degree line rule and the rule of thirds.
i think that given the task we were we done well as there were no continuity mistakes we stuck to time limit and we kept to the rules of filming. In our Preliminary exercise we used a wide variety of shot types such as close up, long shot, medium long, two shot and over the shoulder/reverse over the shoulder shots. one of the over shoulder shots felt uncomfortable to me as it did not show the girls entire head where I would have liked to show all of it. the dialogue was not very good as we did not write a script so it was improvised and this did not work so if there was something i wish we had have done different it would have been a written script.
In our group i undertook the role of cameraman but I also did some acting in the film and had a large part to play in the editing of the film, picking effects to go over clips to make them look like flashback sequences and various clip placements. A selection of music was gathered by a member of the group and we all had our say the piece that ended up in our film I was the one who placed it in and adjusted it accordingly to any other factors and sounds in our film the final thing I done in editing was to place our titles in making them fit into screen and not take away from the action.
For the preproduction i wrote up the original voice over script which somebody else then integrated into the main screen play. i also done a rough copy of the storyboard so that we could then get a idea of the shots we wanted to do this was then done in neat by our art director
<--- neat version of the story board.
I completed a production schedule so we knew our filming dates. I then found our locations with help from our art director who allowed us to use her home as a film location, I then did a risk assessment for one of our locations. After editing I then as well as every other member of the group done an evaluation sheet taking down thoughts of our film from other classmates and our tutor.
In a group of 4 we were asked to create a exercise to be called the exchange where we would use our current knowledge of filming and editing to develop and learn new techniques and stylistics so that when we came to make our final piece we would have more experience editing and filming . This project further increased knowledge of group work and also got us familiarised with the group we would be in for our final project.
Our task was to create a minute long clip with a minimum of two characters that would exchange an item in our case it was a envelope of money. The scene wasn’t allowed any dialogue but non diegetic music over the top, in order to set the mood for the action. We needed around 8-12 shots to create this scene, in our clip we had 11 different shots . In this exercise we used a wide variety of angles including, close ups long shots cut away shots and also shots through objects such as a fence, which creates effects which are similar to those which are used in classic noirs, this shot also made the character look much more menacing almost giving the effect you get when you see a criminal in a film walking though or up to prison bars.
In our piece we kept to the 180 degree line rule, so our piece made sense and kept continuity. Even though we kept to this rule our group we did have a slight problem with continuity where the held object switched hands, we realised this as we edited and that shot was eventually cut from our final piece as it caused too many problems.
overall I would say our exchange exercise was a good learning curve helping us to bring in a wider variety of skills to our final piece, it also fit the brief very well keeping to the restraints that were set and I am pleased with the final outcome as i believe it was a good attempt at making something feel like a thriller.
If I could re-film this piece without the restraints I would film a larger number of shots so we had plenty to create our piece out of also to act as a safe guard to any clips that did not have good continuity so they could easily be replaced with another, I would also keep track of shot continuity throughout filming, which would have prevented the lack in continuity which we experienced in one of our shots when we came round to editing.
We added Light ray effects added to the flashback of the dead body give mysterious look to it.
We added car sounds to the main (street) flashback create an urban effect
We lowered the sound from the main flashback because it was a windy day and the sound gear picked up too much unwanted noise
We moved the flashbacks of the dead body to make it fit to the character, because it didn’t fit in because it didn’t make sense being flashback straight after flashback.
We added an effect called “over drive” To the flashback of the fight scene and we changed the white and gray colours to create an effect so it was clearly a flashback.
We shortened the fight scene and sped it up to make it appear more violent and more physical to the audience.
Tuesday march 15th
We put a fade on the shot where Ashley is opening the bathroom door and we also put a fade on the flashback where the door is being opened in order for the shot to swap over nicely and smoothly from the present to the flashback.
We put on the title of the film “Bill” and also the production titles such as “ a teleport production” and “BXU” which are our production companies.
We added a bit of non diegetic music at the beginning of the scene, this is our start off point for music in the scene.
We deleted the close up shot of Ashley as it appeared too quick on the edit and so was unappealing to the eye.
Tuesday march 22nd
We recorded the voice over and cut and paste it onto our film noir style opening
We typed out and researched the audience views via a questionnaire
Tuesday march 29th
We changed the colour on a clip of Ashley as the colouring stood out compared to the other clips as it was too red/orange. Because of the colour difference we altered the orange clips with a colour altering effect.
We placed the voiceover clips in the correct place so it made the best out of the scene, we placed a large section of the voiceover on a large shot so that the clip appeared less boring to the audience.
We decreased the volume of the music where the voiceovers were also playing so the voiceovers were audible.
We faded the music just before the voice clips so the alteration in music was not too noticeable
We added character titles in so the actors are known within the opening sequence, we placed the titles over the shots on an invisible background so the titles linked in well with the opening scene.
