AS Media Studies Evaluation

Scott Kirchgaesser

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

Upon making our opening sequence for a thriller film ‘The Brief’ we used, developed and challenged forms and conventions of real media products. We made sure that we kept to the key concepts and conventions of a action thriller genre yet also challenged forms through our development of our final piece. We made sure we did this so that the audience would receive some familiarity which is important yet not receive something that is to repetitive and cliché.

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Before attempting to film and make our opening sequence, I explored into opening sequences of similar real media products analysing the use of camera, sound, editing and mise-en-scene. By doing this I gained a further understanding of the typical codes and conventions action thrillers have. A good opening sequence I analysed was ‘Salt’ where I noticed the use of the colours black white and red for the titles. I noticed similar formats in other thriller openings and therefore applied it to our own piece giving us a generic convention for a thriller.

In addition to this, with my research into mise-en-scene I found examples used to connote certain meanings. For example in the movie ‘Defiance’ Russian spies are shown to be frequently wearing specific types of hats which the audience will associate with Russian people. We therefore thought it would be good idea to translate this into our own opening sequence showing similar mise-en-scene. Furthermore, this adds to the form of generic conventions by the way Russian characters are presented.

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In other cases however, our opening sequence subverted the forms and conventions of real media products. An example of this would be the presentation and editing of the title of the film. After looking through various thriller openings I found that the title of the film would almost always slowly fade into the middle of the screen and then hold and slowly fade out. Despite this, we used a different editing effect where the title splits into 4 pieces going out in different corners. Even though this is challenging conventions, we believe that this doesn't take any suspension away from our opening or effect our product negatively. Instead we believe that it gives our product a unique original look.

However, the choices we made whilst filming and editing reflect heavily on the genre of our film. Through the use of codes and conventions it indicates a action thriller. This provides familiarity to the audience as we are using key concepts form already existing media products. This is clear to see through the use of mise-en-scene, content, editing, titles and camera work. Firstly, our content reflects our genre as it covers a familiar feature of a thriller and that is the use of a Russian protagonist. Audiences would be able to recognise this providing evidence of repetition in our thriller. Our editing also reinforces this as at [0:44] a pre recorded non diegetic sound of a Russian voice emphasizing that the protagonist is a Russian spy.

The mise-en-scene also indicates that it is a action thriller as when the male protagonist is looking over his mission brief a machine gun is shown to be by his side representing danger and action. The titles also add emphasis to the idea of a action thriller as they are a tinted red mixed with a shadow effect black. The use of the colours red and black add to the tension as they resemble ideas such as death blood and thriller conventions. The titles also were positioned carefully to not draw much attention away from the shot in hand. The camera work also helps to add tension and create ideas of an action thriller. This is done by creating a over the shoulder close up shot of the security cameras at the train station at [1:42].

Overall, I believe that genres are always evolving and by subverting to the conventions slightly we are keeping the genre alive. This would gain a positive response from our target audience as they experience typical representation of a Russian character adding familiarity. I believe that we were successful in using and subverting from conventions as our research will prove. Despite this, I feel as if we could have gone more into depth with our portrayal of a action based thriller genre.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Throughout the making process of our opening sequence our group continuously focused on how particular social groups could be represented in order for the audience to gain further understanding. Our first shot [0:17] presents gender in a stereotypical way as the mise-en-scene allows the reader to see just a male character positioned centre of the screen dominating the scene. This idea of power and dominance is also re-enforced through the use of mise-en-scene where immediately you can see a machine gun positioned to his left. Despite this, the use of a white t-shirt the male protagonist is wearing represents background information of innocence and purity, this is used to create controversy as if we where to make the entire film the protagonist wouldn't go through with his mission but go against the Russian secret service. By having the all black machine gun in the same shot as the male protagonist wearing a white t-shirt , stereotypical representation of gender is contrasted.

Gender is continued to be presented this way as the male protagonist continues to wear the white shirt throughout the opening sequence. Despite this, as the male protagonist approaches the train station he wears a black and grey coat over the top of his white shirt which is still slightly revealed [1:25]. This re-enforces our intention to allow the protagonist to turn good later on in the film as the black and grey coat symbolizes emotionless, efficient and sinister which his mission brief requires him to do, however his own conscious is always still their connoting innocence through the use of the white t-shirt.

Overall, our opening sequence alone portrayed a mostly stereotypical view of a Russian male protagonist therefore allowing audiences to familiarise themselves with our thriller.

In addition to this, the use of starting the opening sequence and ending the opening sequence with the same male protagonist emphasises the overall dominance of males in comparison to females within this genre. In our research few opening sequences of real media products just included one character, despite this we felt that our story and content only needed one character for it to work and it allowed us to further convey key conventions of what our male protagonist was meaning to convey to the audience.

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

In the process of trying to decide what media institution that would distribute my media product, I looked at films within the action thriller genre and found out what media institution they belonged to. I firstly looked at the film ‘In Bruges’ and found out that they were produced by Film4.

In Bruges: Guilt-stricken after a job gone wrong, hit man Ray and his partner await orders from their ruthless boss in Bruges, Belgium, the last place in the world Ray wants to be. (www.imdb.com)

Similar lighting connoting ideas of an action thriller.

The mise-en-scene shows the us of guns to be a typical action thriller convention

Film4 productions is a British film production company owned by channel 4 television corporation. The company has been responsible for producing a large number of films made in the united kingdom.

Die Hard: John McClane, officer of the NYPD, tries to save wife Holly Gennaro and several others, taken hostage by German terrorist Hans Gruber during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles. (www.imdb.com)

The use of a machine gun rather than a pistol portrays the character to be evil and dangerous.

Dark lighting be used when portraying the ‘bad guy’

The use of a still image has been taken to represent a particular scene in the film. This makes the scene more iconic and well known.

20th Century Fox, or 20th Century Fox Pictures, is one of the six major American film studios. Located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, just west of Beverly Hills, the studio is currently a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

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

Based on my research of thriller films, I believe that our film could potentially fit into two different production companies. One option is that it could be made into a British film through the production company of Film4. Our reason for this is that Film4 usually produce low budget films that target a smaller audience. Despite this, the action thriller ‘In Bruges’ produced by film4 gained high popularity with many people watching it. And because our film is similar to this, we believe Film4 could be a suitable choice to distribute our film. Furthermore, we also believed that our film could also have been distributed by 20 th Century Fox. By doing this our audience would be based on a much larger scale gaining a greater amount of viewers. 20 th Century Fox has distributed many films similar to ours in the action thriller region, such as ‘Die Hard’, ‘Alien’ and ‘Independence Day’. Therefore 20 th Century Fox could also be a good company to produce our film as it has distributed similar films in the past and due to its reputation will gain a larger audience.

In addition to this, we also decided that our film would be based in Cinemas rather than just online due to the our research saying that most thrillers have come out in the cinema first. By producing this only through the internet would massively decrease our potential audience and due to only few people familiar to downloading films on the internet we would be decreasing our profit margins and target audience.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We have decided that our media product would be targeted at the certificate 15 market due to the themes and issues raised in the text. This is shown through the dangerous intention that our protagonist portrays to the audience. In addition to this, we believed that our action thriller film would not fit into the 18+ region as comparing it to my research I found that our film if made professionally would most likely be a certificate 15.

Furthermore, due to our protagonist being similar yet slightly older to our target audience we feel as if our target audience would be able to identify the characters with meaning more easily. Despite this, gender on the other hand may be more biased towards males than females. This could be because our film is primarily dominated by a male character who shows little to none female aspects that some women could relate with. Furthermore, because our thriller raises issues of typical thriller conventions such as a Russian spy, this familiarises the audience with the content and genre of the film. Therefore, audience’s that continuously seem to enjoy thriller movies are more likely to like ours maximising our audience.

Films that we believe to be similar to ours can evidently be linked to ours such as ‘Salt’ and ‘Defiance’. As the film ‘Salt’ was a Hollywood film audience’s ranged widely due to the large target audience and was a popular film around its release. Despite this, ‘Salt’ was rated PG -13 where as ‘Defiance’ was rated R. Therefore we believed that due to our film being similar to both ‘Salt’ and ‘Defiance’ we would take aspects of both films and collaborate them to make a rated 15 thriller. Further research on the BBFC website also helped me with our judgement whist deciding its age certificate.

Target audience feedback

In order to fully evaluate our final product, we created a survey using Google survey to help us design the questions. Below are some comments from our audience feedback:

Do you want to know what happens next? Why?“yes, I found the opening sequence engaging to the viewer and I wanted to know what happens after he gets off the train”

Would you say the representation for the character was correct? Why?“yes I believed that the character was a Russian spy of some sort going on a mission to London”

Did you like the music? Why?“yes I thought it fit in well with what was going on and I like the bit at the end where the train doors shut and the music matched it”

Did you like the titles? Why?“yes I liked how they were both red and black as it fit into a thriller type film. I liked how it was slightly different from normal titles as well”

The graph on the left shows the results from the genre of the film question. As you can see the highest score without a doubt was Action. This therefore proves that we have successfully created an opening sequence that fitted our targeted genre which we wanted our audience to believe. Our audience ranged from ages 15 to 35+. This gives us a clear understanding to what all age groups think of our thriller. Overall, as most of our feedback was positive I think that most people enjoyed our opening sequence.

How did you attract/address your audience?

By using a over the shoulder shot looking down at the protagonist’s book the audience is drawn to what the character is reading.

By having many different props all in one shot the audience automatically tries to identify each object and there significance, attracting the audience.

By naming our thriller ‘The Brief’ audiences should associate this with a mission brief which is most commonly seen in action thrillers to which we were trying to convey.

By introducing our protagonist with a long shot, the audience can identify the location. This involves the audience as they are included in the narrative.

By having a close up of the location the protagonist is going (London) the audience is further included in the narrative.

By having a close up over the shoulder shot of a security camera, the audience immediately associates it with crime and action. The use of the over the shoulder helps the audience engage with the character as they see what he sees.

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

Throughout the process of filming and editing our action thriller, I learnt a variety of different skills with the camera and editing software in order to present our media product in the best way possible. In comparison to our continuity task we as a group achieved a lot more work done in a more efficient manner. Throughout the process of making our thriller we planned each shot and idea carefully so we knew exactly what we wanted to film when we filmed it, to which we did not do as well in our continuity task.

After doing various different tasks such as the continuity task, anamatic and our thriller opening sequence I have developed skills that allow me to use a digital whilst capturing various shots to connote meaning. An advantage of being able to use the digital cameras was that it allowed a great amount of independence to our group allowing us to film what we want with effective and high quality equipment. One slight problem we faced whilst using the cameras however was the use of the zoom. It took quite a few attempts to get the shot we wanted whilst using the zoom effect due to it not always zooming at a continuous speed or keeping the camera still at the same time.

Furthermore, throughout the process I also gained experience of using the tripod to which I now have a good understanding of how to use. This allowed me to film steady and a different types of shots adding variation to our work. At the beginning of this process I did not acquire the skills that allowed me to do this, now however I feel confident and able to use the equipment correctly. One shot that I felt looked the best was the over the shoulder shot. A problem I had to face whilst performing this was getting the tripod set up at perfect height so the shot wasn't uneven. Despite this, I felt as if I was able to perform this task appropriately and the shots came out good.

Finally, during the editing process I learnt how to use the software Adobe Premiere Pro. When I first attempted to use this software I didnt know how I would put our film together nor did I no how to create any effects. Despite this, with the help of teachers and practice I kept getting better at using the software and now can use it with ease to create a product. This software allowed me to cut certain clips to the exact point I wanted and create transitions and effects on the titles.

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

Preliminary exercise: Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.Main task: The titles and opening of a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.

Looking back on our preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a lot in many aspects that helped to create and finish our final product. With the in depth research and planning I learnt the importance of organization whilst trying to put together a media product. Researching into the specific aspects such as genre, framing, sound and editing all proved to be very important and valuable to our final product. If I was able to change anything I would most likely focus more primarily on the codes and conventions, as I believe that we could have had a few more typical elements of a thriller included in our opening sequence. Another thing I would try and focus more on would be the storyboard. This is because if we had a storyboard that we spent a great and careful amount of time on our final product would reflect the hard work we put into our storyboard as we learnt early on that a strong storyboard leads to a strong product. This is because our storyboard didn't accurately predict how long each shot would be and looking back on our storyboard now a lot has changed.

Overall, I feel confident that I have progressed a great deal since the start of the year and am able to effectively use all the equipment and software to there fullest. I feel as if my progress can be seen from the difference in the continuity task and our final product.

Here for example, after the protagonist leaves the shot the camera holds for longer than it is needed to and finishes shaky. In our final product we made sure every shot was edited smoothly and cut appropriately.

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