Evaluation

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

In the first frame you are introduced to the setting, the main character and the title of the film. The title of the film is Lola Grey and appears along side with the main character who is named Lola Grey. We chose the name Lola Grey as the characters name for several reasons; we chose the surname Grey as it suggests a gray and dark plot which is a ground convention of a thriller film. We chose Lola as it fits well with grey and isn't a particularly common name so therefore sticks in people's memories. We used a red tone for the lettering as it has connotations of anger and blood; conventions that are often in thriller films. We made it fairly translucent so that the title didn't draw away all of the attention away from the film. The title appears in the corner also for the reason as to not dominate the whole frame as it would cover the image of Lola. Also having the name appear alongside Lola lets the audience make a logical guess that this character is Lola.

The setting of our film is rural; the location was set in fields next to a railway and rustic farm barns. It is a run down place and can look quite fearsome. The barns are visible from the first frame so could be linked with Lola's flashbacks as she comes from that direction. Conventions that we used for our setting that link to thriller films are the frightening and daunting appearance that is given especially from these barns; thriller films don't have a particular setting as it is a vast genre so it would be difficult to generalise. However psychological films tend to have wide, isolated settings which is a convention clearly used in our film.

For the filming I played Lola Grey so therefore had to wear appropriate clothing. I wore dark, plain clothing so that it would continue the dull and desaturated theme. There isn't any focus on clothing regarding conventions for a thriller film, so the decisions were linked more towards the mis-en-scene. We wanted my appearance to look quite shocking to the audience and to appear as if I had fought in some kind of struggle, possibly with Lola's agressor. We made my clothing muddy to implicate this as well as using makeup to look as if I had been beaten. Ketchup was used over my hands and clothing to represent blood, however we were aware of the risk of it looking too unrealistic but we only mildly focused on it when filming.

For the long shot filming of me walking towards the camera (frames one, two and four) we used a tripod to steady the camera; it took many attempts to get the distance and zoom right as we found it difficult to control the speed at which the zoom would go in or out. Therefore we opted to do it manually than use the camera's zoom as it was jerky and too quick. The use of long shots allows the audience to study and make judgement of Lola and to why she's in the condition she is in. For the rest of the filming, including flashbacks and closeups outside, we filmed hand-held. It was mainly for the purpose of giving the audience a closer experience of Lola's emotions; the camera was shaky which reflected how Lola was fearful. This is a convention we used from psychological thriller films as it lets the audience look at the film as if they were there themselves. We used close-up shots of me outside towards the end of the film and also in the flashbacks. The close-ups give a contrasting effect to the long shots which are spacious and give the feeling of freedom compared to the closeups which are more confined. The close-ups allow the audience to acknowledge the details of my appearance, especially the dark eyes and poor condition. the sixth frame where I'm outside and rocking in a disturbed manner the audience are able to take in Lola's nervous actions. We followed the rules of thirds otherwise it would be too uncomfortable for our audience to watch, especially as Lola's behavior is distressing.

We used totally different settings for the flashbacks to make the clear difference of tenses distinguishable for the audience, the flashbacks are in a dark and enclosed setting; completely different to outside. Our plot is about Lola who develops schizophrenia which is about the mind and is therefore a convention of psychological films. The use of flashbacks in our opening also reflects elements about Lola's mind and confusion which we used especially to follow conventions to do with psychology.

We wanted to create a tense and depressing mood hence the dark setting and tonal range we used, we further enhanced the desaturated tones when editing using Premiere Elements Pro 7.

Overall we feel we have followed key conventions of both thriller and psychological films, they were helpful for us when making decisions and we used them for ideas towards our plot.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?


Our character Lola Grey wasn't initially based on anyone, character or real life people but as we developed our plot we noticed that Lola shared similarities to other characters from psychological films.

The main character from the film 'Shutter Island' named Teddy Daniels has psychological problems which overtakes his life. This is what is similar to our character Lola as she also has psychological problems which dominate her life. However this is possibly the only shared link between the two characters as there are other major differences such as the time setting and location, ours is set in the present day, UK whereas 'Shutter Island

Our character, Lola is meant to be from the under class of British society, however she doesn't necessarily represent the social group of all under class people as she is under class through her unfortunate background. If it was for her drug taking she might have money, and if she had money she wouldn't have to commit theft or other crimes which result her to being an underclass. If anything she might represent a homeless social group as Lola is homeless and shares the same life style as many homeless people. Plus homeless people tend not to have chosen to be homeless, but have no way to get a way out of it.

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


Our production company consists of Sophy, Bethany and myself as we physically produced our film plus we were also assisted by members of our school's I.T team. A production company is a company that produces and releases a new piece of media, like we have done. The production company needs funding to be able to produce their new media and if they're a small company they will need to sell their media to a distributor.
We didn't have a specific budget for our filming as we used all of our own props and clothing and we used the filming equipment acquired from our media department. However is were to make the whole film then we would need a considerably large amount of money to produce it.

As we would be considered as a small production company we would have to sell our film to a film distributor. A distributor is responsible for releasing media to the public and in our case a film distributor would release the film to cinemas, television, DVD or similar places where you can view films. We wouldn't be able to this ourselves as we don't have the funds. Another popular film that used a film distributor was 'Paranormal Activity'. Their budget was only $15,000 and was produced using hand-held cameras and it was through Paramount Pictures that distributed their films. Other big film distributors include 20th Century Fox Film Co. Ltd., Warner Bros. Pictures, The Walt Disney Company Ltd. and Buena Vista International. However Paramount Pictures would probably be the most suitable distributor because they have distributed other films from the same genre as ours including 'Shutter Island'. Furthermore Sophy, Bethany and myself could be seen as distributors ourselves as we burned our film to a blank DVD and were able to show people our film.

However if we were serious about finding someone to distribute our film we might think of starting at a film festival by screening our film to the public for free. This would gain recognition by distribution companies who would hopefully want to distribute our film for profit.

We haven't used any names on our opening as they didn't fit in, but if we did complete the whole film we would need to include certain peoples. I researched who this would have to be:
cast and crew
film producers/ production company
film distributors
director
film name
sound producers.

Bearing this is mind it is clear that titles are used to give appropriate recognition for the various people involved in the film. If we were to complete our whole film then we would need to include titles as it would give us recognition and furthermore make us competitive in the current film market.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our demographic age range was 14-18 year old, mainly for the reason that we are in this age range so we could put our interests into consideration. We didn't feel confident enough to create an 18 certificate film as it would either have to be more dark or violent, something we felt we could better achieve on a smaller scale therefore aimed for a 15 age certificate. More than often people under 15 watch these films so that's why we aimed from 14+.
Older audiences are likely to watch our film too, however we felt that it would be easier to target our age group as we use different technologies more on average. Technologies including laptops and phones which open our opportunities to advertise our film.

How did you attract/address your audience?



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

Before our main task we only used filming equipment once before when we did our preliminary task. Since this was such a smaller project I feel I have learnt a great deal more about the different technologies that are involved to create a film from the main task. Firstly I learnt more about handling the camera:

We used a Sanyo Xacti camera with a tripod, we used the tripod to make steady shots as when hand-held the picture was very shaky. We found that when we tried to zoom with the camera it only moved at one speed which was too quick for us.

After filming we then had to upload and edit our film on the computer, using Premier Elements 7.0 programme. When editing we had several difficulties, we felt premier elements wasn't a good enough programme as we had many set backs. To begin with we struggled uploading the film, it would crash therefore delay the progress we had made especially if we hadn't saved recently. The programme had a tendency of crashing throughout the whole editing progress which became quite frustrating as we didn't have any alternative equipment. Eventually we found as we deleted shots we didn't need, the programme didn't crash so often indicating that the film was too big for the programme at the start of the progress. However once we got past the stage of editing the sequence of the film we were able to add colour or a hue over the film.

In this print screen you can see some of the options we could choose from. We also had difficulty burning our film to a DVD for other people to watch our film. This was because the programme put our film into a format which isn't commonly recognised by other programmes. We also clumsily made the mistake of burning our disk to a CD, from this I certainly learnt that we needed to burn out film to DVD for it to play.

We used VLC to play our film with sound, this was one of the programmes that did play our film, we used it to show other people our film.

When we made graphs and storyboard we had to use paint to put them into the right format to put on to blogger, which we used to record our work. Originally we made our graphs using excel but we needed to save them on paint so we could upload them to blogger.

Other technologies we used were facebook to ask permission to use the soundtrack and youtube for our evaluation and to distribute to our audience.

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


I feel my knowledge on how to use the different technologies in particular have improved a lot since doing the preliminary task. Through the preliminary task we were able to experience difficulties that we could address for our main task whilst gaining basic understanding on how to use the cameras and other technologies.

For our preliminary task we had to include the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and match on action. Before the preliminary I didn't know about these terms so I gained knowledge of these different camera angles and why they're used.

I didn't feel I learnt enough through my preliminary task with how to use the camera so for the main task I wanted to gain more skills. So to do this I researched different camera angles and shots specifically known to be used in thriller and psychological films. I came to understand how the camera shots are able to help create a tense or claustrophobic atmosphere simply by being close up to something uncomfortable to look at.
I also hoped to develop my knowledge on using the editing programme, Premier Elements 7.0. In the preliminary task we focused mainly on learning how to cut and put the film in order whereas in the main task I wanted to focus more on sound. We learnt how to add non-diegetic sound on to our film and to fit it in with the timing. I also learnt how to add text and other techniques such as editing lighting which was useful particularly with out flashback shots which before hand were very dark and difficult to see.