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

Main influences for our Thriller Opening:

·         Guy Ritchies:

·         Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,( 1998)

·         Snatch (2000)

·         Rockn’Rolla (2008)

·         Reservoir Dogs (1992)

·         Point Break (1991)

The idea of having the masks was based on the film Point Break (1991)

In the film Point Break (1991), the gangster use masks as a
disguise which enhances its genre as a thriller

With our film ‘Take Off After’, we have made it our priority to stick with the Codes and Conventions of a Thriller genre. The research has been very useful in reminding ourselves of the basic conventions of a thriller. However throughout the research, we have picked up on ideas from other films which has helped enhance ideas when further developing the film: Reservoir Dogs (1992) was the original basis in the treatment, however we looked to progress on the  plot to make it more threatening by using ideas from further research: In Point Break (1991), the robbers wear masks as their disguise; this appealed to us and we feel by adding this into the misé en scene of our film, we can enhance the mystery and suspense that takes place during the opening.


Our film offers jeopardy because of the protagonist. The film opens and is left in a deadly situation which develops  the conventions of thriller which usually take place similar to our thriller.Our editing of camera work and soundtrack draw the viewer into the action. The number of shots that include the car driving into the estate builds the tension which is very typical of thrillers however our film does not include as many variety of shots and fast paced editing like most thrillers typically would. 


Our misé en scene in our film contributes to the tension with its gritty urban setting with the lonely Industrial estate, the masks provide terror whilst the common tool of a hammer suggests brutality and the threat of violence once placed in the wrong hands. 


Our use of sound for our thriller opening, the soundtrack has not been based on any films that we have been influenced by. We wanted to create a Soundtrack that would enhance the conventions of our film, in particular the suspense which would cause the viewer to be gripped to their seat's wondering what would happen next.

We deliberately picked this shot of an English flag waving in the background because
it immediately suggests the location of our film.

We needed to include a shot of the car entering into the Industrial estate
otherwise it would be unclear onto the whereabouts the gang is going,
however we didn't want to make the location too obvious for the viewer, e.g with signs.

Our soundtrack creates foreboding and menace the tracks help drive the action forward, the timings have all been placed within the action of the footage for example after the first character is introduced, he nods his head to the driver and on timing the bass line comes in adding another dimension to our soundtrack in the hope that the suspense is building throughout the opening. As with any thriller suspense acts as the main convention for the attraction of this genre. The music reaches a climax symbolising the highest point of suspense/tension once the boot opens in the car. The soundtrack gains up to a high pitch which immediately cuts out, I feel this achieves the target for our opening in attracting the audience to continue watching the rest of the film after gaining a short insight with the opening. 


We believe our thriller is unique to others, in comparison to the thrillers we have researched, I feel there is even more mystery in our opening: not one time do you actually see the victim in the boot of the car, our purposes of doing this is because our film is going to rewind back in Guy Ritchie style: As his film Snatch (2000)  proves when revealing the situation in which the group owe debt to the boss) the majority of our film will reflect back as an action packed thriller that will unveil what this man has done to be left in such a situation. Another point to make is whilst you see a hammer been pulled out once the boot has been opened, there is no way of truly knowing the end result of the victim, this provides mystery in itself and one thought that the audience will question throughout the film up to the climax at the end.




HERE IS OUR FINAL PRODUCT:

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

Our film ‘Take Off After’ relates to a genre of films that relates to the topic the social under classes inside a London’s close inner-city life. We have taken our inspirations from the tenacious realism of Guy Ritchie’s depiction of modern gangland conflict (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels 1998, Snatch 2000, Rockn’Rolla 2008), we targeted to contribute another take on a Guy Ritchie modeled plot we has been very popular to Ritchie’s target audience which we have based our film on, however we didn’t want to base it so much on his style with the quick editing and shuffled plot. The underbelly criminal class operating just below the surface, just around the corner, but close enough to audiences in daily life to excite the horror and fascination that fuels a number of successful TV dramas such as the hugely successful The Wire (HBO 2010) to recent films such as London Boulevard (Monahan 2010).

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) capturing the underbelly criminal class
of East London. 

Our film is set in a predominantly masculine world where men are the dominant gender in action and represented in masculine environment, carrying out with stereotypical masculine activities: in our film, the major roles are all taken by men and they are depicted driving a powerful car, dealing out with their dangerous weapons. In one of the final scenes of our opening, the hammer is raised up against the intended victim to reveal the nasty side of gangland culture: the hammer tool is classed under a domestic surface where a situation along with a tool such as a hammer can turn violent and any tool can become a weapon. Hacking a man to death is a particularly nasty and terrifying threat for someone to witness. We want to position our audience so that they experience naturalistic jeopardy: the POV shot from the victim’s perspective in the boot positions the audience as if they are a potential victim within the situation.

The leading characters are all represented wearing masks in order to conceal their identity. This immediately suggests to the audience that they are criminals: they are hiding something. Men wearing masks are typical carrying out criminal acts because they want to escape from identification. The masked intruder is a stereotypical figure, and you can pick out from his eye they appear through the mask, that he his is not all that 
sane.

I feel a lot more suspense and terror is provoked from the masks
which alter the criminals identities. 

The setting for our film opening places the criminals in an inner city estate, anonymous enough to be anyone of those found in South East London. It is important that there are no people situated about: no workers or policemen are present to witness any of the acts of terror and violence carried out by the gang. It maybe situated in Britain however it depicts the dark and lonely side like: Kidulthood (2005), Harry Brown (2008) and Bullet Boy (). When we visited the BFI this month, we watched a screening of Shifty (Eran Creevy, 2009) in which local gang culture results in violence during the thriller.

Adulthood (2008), this film evolves around gangland culture
depicting one side of Britain.

Domestic tools such as hammers are being used in cases
of domestic violence which relates well to the
nature of our film.

We have used a deliberately realistic, low-key style in our representation of this particular social group. The dimmed down streets and unemotional tone of the setting place our film into traditional modern realism. The men involved are not acting outside their ordinary scheme: casual brutality, loyalty and punishing disloyalty in everyday occurrence.

Question 3- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

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

Current FDA Members:

Artifical Eye

-Dogwoof
-El Entertainment UK
-Entertainment Film Distributors
-Eros International
-Icon Film Distribution
-Metrodome Distributors
-Momentum Pictures
-Optimum Releasing
-Paramount Pictures UK
-Park Circus
-Pathe Distribution
-Reliance Big Entertainment PLC
-Revolver Entertainment
-Soda Pictures
-Sony Pictures Releasing
-Twentieth Century Fox Film Co.
-Universal Pictures UK

-Verve Pictures

-Warner Bros. Distributors

-Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, UK      

          

According to the list of current ‘Film Distribution Association’ members, we had to decide upon who would distribute our film product. It is important to understand the importance of the distributor. It is essential if a film is to be successful that the film is distributed well; otherwise a potentially good film could not achieve its realistic chances.

The Distribution is the third role of the film chain, the distributor is possibly the least credited although a has a heavy burden to help the film thrive once it is on screening. It is arguably, the most important part of the film industry, where completed films are brought to life and connected with an audience.  In the UK, distribution is very much focused on marketing and sustaining a global product in local markets unlike in Hollywood where it is all run under the control of one company to complete the phases of production, distribution and exhibition.

 An independent film, works differently to many studio produced movies, the making of a film and the three stages does not operate the same way as a studio would. The Producers don’t have long-term economical links with the distributors, who likewise have no formal connections with exhibitors. Therefore, the distribution is required to gather all the materials together on its own, requiring the rights of the producer and the willingness of exhibitor’s to promote the film and exhibit it in the best way possible. In some cases for a distributor they are divided into three stages - licensing, marketing and logistics.

We needed to find a distributor who would be suitable to the genre and budget of our film. But our choice of distribution came very easily after visiting the BFI for exam  summer preparation, the producer of a film called ‘Shifty’, Rory Aitken, gave a talk about his the film ‘Shifty 2008'. When talking about the film, it was clear that he was representing a relatively a low budget independent film. From the genre and suitability with 'Shifty' and the comparison with our own film ‘Take Off After’; we felt Metrodome would be the best suited distributor for our low budget film and it seemed a perfect distributor.

Film Poster

My partner has created a Film Poster which is seen as an essential part of advertising to the audience about our 'new' film. The image was chosen from what we deemed as our favorite visual image from our film opening. The image seemed very suitable for a Film Poster because it contained a large amount of white background that could be used to fill over with the text. I like the black used on the image because this neutral colour provides a clear contrast to the white in order to help it stand out and viewable.

Q4- Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our Target Audience:

 The target audience for our film would be aged 15-35 with predominantly men watching it, this is because our film is a gangster thriller and it would not fit covertly as a pleasant film for anyone younger than the minimum age that we have set as our target audience for someone to watch and for example some women might not enjoy its violence and plot. 

Films our Target Audience would see:

As I have mentioned in the research; we wanted to base our film on a Guy Ritchie style, and after producing the film, I feel there a number of similarities that we can pick out in comparison, for example they contain a similar plot; both misleading plot from the beginning providing a sense of mystery because whilst both films reveal the endings of their plot, the film is all about how they get to that point. Another point to highlight is the location, I feel the industrial estate on our film is relatively similar to Guy Ritchie’s Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, giving of the class involved in our film (very much lower class). 

The originial basis of the idea with the car in the opening of our film was based on the film 'Reservoir Dogs 1992'. There are a many similarites with our film and 'Reservoir Dogs' both are thrillers in genre and some of the plot.

As you can see the our shot is based on Reservoir Dogs()
however whilst it is similar, I feel our film experiences
more suspense and terror because of the props
e.g. mask and hammer.

We took inspiration from the boot scene in Reservoir Dogs () I felt this shot
was very striking.

However saying that our film is very similar to Guy Ritchie’s is not strictly true, as we have developed our film, redrafting the storyboard, we incorporated features that could relate a number of other films. For example my partner thought of the idea to have Masks on the four actors, this relates to the film, ‘Point Break (1991)’ in which the plot is about an FBI agent who goes undercover to catch a gang of bank robbers who wear masks as part of their disguises (this is where the mask idea came from).

Drawing from the uses and gratifications model four needs that audiences seek to have gratified by the mass media, this model helps see what points audience gain out of our film :  


1. diversion (we enjoy escapism, entertainment, release). This comes with our genre as a thriller particularly as suspense is built throughout our opening which most audiences seem to enjoy in particular our male audience because they like to enjoy escapism and feel entertained by the situation in hand for example is the victim in the boot of the car dead.. The diversion that comes with our film means that the majority of our audience wouldn't usually experience in everyday lives.


2.surveillance (we need information about what is happening in the world), although our target audience would not usually experience the plot which is taking place in our film, they will feel out of their depth because they are touching on the criminal underworld experiencing a less than comfortable location/situation in our film which leads through a nastier side of Britain than most people generally avoid. 


3.personal relationships (we like feeling part of a social group; we feel companionship) the audience is given the freedom to build an understanding of the gang that they come across in our film Take Off After, we hope that the audience will build feelings for some of those characters whether they like them or not. By doing this we are engaging the audience with our film and we can use some of the codes and conventions of our thriller to entertain them more easily because of the personal relationships gained, for example the audience will be stressing about the victim in the boot of the car in hope that they might not be killed in the end. This helps extend the film engagement even when after finishing the thriller,because the audience will continue to reflect back on those characters and moments in the film that most likely decided fate for some of those characters.


4. personal identity (we explore and reinforce our values through comparison with others), it is often very common for the viewers to build  an affinity with a particular character, it might be that character is very similar to yourself. Our film takes personal identity very carefully and although you haven't met the victim in the boot of the car (yet) you won't be surprised to provide comparisons that might be similarly to the viewers otherwise making a similarity with the other side of the gang. 

Question 5- How did you attract/address the audience

It is part of the distributers job now to build awareness of the product before it goes on general release . Independent film has a particularly acute need of effective marketing because, unlike the US studio system, it does not have a vertical distribution where films go smoothly from production to exhibition within the studio system. Independent films have recently have benefited from new initiatives from the UK film council digital innovation fund which they describe on their website in a film presented by Anglia Ruskin University. I am going to refer to just one case study to show how this works. This is what I have learnt from one individual case study.

‘The girl with a dragon tattoo’ is a small independent film based on a Swedish book which never the less attracted huge audiences in the 12 week lead up to the general release through its internet campaigning. The distributers created audience awareness of the film through a series of exciting interactive games/interfaces, where the audience could click on different characters and learn more about them each week. Audiences could download an application onto their Facebook page, which meant their friends would see the films information reaching 65,000 people. With the Dragon Tatto they asked local communities if they would like a private screening before the actual film release.

The disappearance of Alice Creed, audiences could vote for the location of the premiere; Distributors fed pockets of interest with special private information which wouldn’t be released until late creating a sense of privilege in the audiences. 

The premiere was held at Southampton University which had made bigger headlines than the usual Leicester square with even the paparazzi coming down to see ‘Gemma Arterton’ . They had front page coverage on Metro which meant that everyone passing the newspaper saw it.

Infidel took a different approach, they created an internet campaign they invited audiences to submit jokes online about Religion and they took the film into mosques and synagogues that was used to diffuse antagonism towards the film to reduce feelings of hostility. They then drew attention to the comedy by having breaking dancing Hasidic Jews dancing and women in Burka’s

Spot the man in the areas around the UK and take a photo and upload it to the facebook group

Charity preview where everyone is invited to get a half price preview ticket if they wear a mask to the showing. 

W e created  a 'mock-up' of the website that will publicize our film

It is essential in order to attract an audience that we have a website, it also shows our authenticity. We used our favourite image from our film and I produced a design for our website including all the typical features you would see online.

Here we have created a facebook group page which is public for anyone to see

Fin's film poster is essential in order to validate the film to public we could have these placed in public areas to view.

I believe the mystery surrounding our opening and the climax that it reaches will hook the audience into understanding how the film came to this situation. This is why our film is set up like this in Guy Ritchie style reflecting back to the beginning of the whole incident picking up clues which will get the audience thinking throughout our film with the sense of mystery conveyed. 

Website Plan

I have produced a website plan as an idea for what our website could look like, now I am going to produce a design on Adobe Photoshop similar to how it looks (above).

Film Website

It is essential in order to attract an audience that we have a website, it also shows our authenticity. We used our favourite image from our film and I produced a design for our website including all the typical features you would see online.

Facebook Page

For our film to gain recognition we need to advertise the film to attract an audience. Facebook is a well known Social networking site and people we'll be able to find out more about the film with our Facebook page as well as this they can suggest the group to a friend, which should help build up a fan base for the film. The group will also give the audience and 'extra' insight into want the film is about before the run up to it release in the cinemas.

Twitter

I have found twitter very useful as a way to moniter people who are well regarded in for example the Film Industry and I have been able pick up tips and advice from them such as articles they have recommended. Twitter is really useful because you have the freedom to say what you want in a maximum of 140 characters allowing people to read what you have said simple and easy. It is similar to Facebook however I prefer when you can 'follow' numerous subjects which you can regularly keep up to date with.

Q6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

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

During the whole assignment have used technologies in helping construct the product that I have had to learn in order to continue processing the film and as well as the research. 

On the research side we assigned to produce a blog to upload our research on as well as showing the structure and evidence for creating the film. I understand that ‘blogs’ are a ‘new’ and ‘professional’ form of presenting work, and therefore it is very useful to become familiar to blogging. The website http://blogger.com is new to me (I have used twitter but no other blogs before) and so it took me a couple of weeks to become familiar with its functions. I have found the blog very useful in keeping in close contact with my fellow students and my teacher in particular I am able to gain constructive feedback to further improve my ‘posts’. Blogger has definitely been a more interesting way of presenting my work, and I feel it is a more easier way of viewing a student’s research.

Another program that I would need to get to grips with is iMovie, this was the editing software that we were going to be using on that Macs. Before starting the main task we began with a prelimary task to prepare ourselves for the task ahead. After filming a short plot, we imported the footage onto iMovie and tested with the software, understanding how to trim a clip, transitions, adding text onto an image. After numerous hours working on the editing software I felt relatively comfortable with it.

Web 2.0 has become a more attractive way for distributors to market their product, web 2.0 includes facebook, twitter; social networking sites which tend to address audiences between 15-24 year olds, who make up the majority of cinema sales. I now understand how important this method of marketing can be, and because its virtually free to distribute through this form, it allows low budget films such as Shifty, the chance to build an audience/awareness.

In producing our Thriller opening, I have understood that the global social networking site, Facebook is not only used for communicating with friends, but it is also a way of advertising products, through the communication of the social network and with its set up the seller is able to voluntary feedback, almost acting upon Facebook as a prototype for the product to be advertising too until it is finally released publicly. On the knowledge of advertising through Facebook me and my partner have produced a group page on the subject of our film, which we have invited our friends to view and hopefully we can attract people to spread the ‘word’ about our new film.

One of the final areas of the film, was producing a soundtrack to support our thriller opening. Along with the help of a fellow student in the class, who is well experienced on using a software called Logic Pro on the Apple Macs.Although I was only working from the background of his expertise, I now feel confident enough to work on Logic Pro even if I decide to do the video brief next year. We are very grateful that Will Jones could give us a help in hand for this area and we feel that the music track suits the chosen genre well and should enhance the suspense of our movie.

As extra production for the film and in order to help market the product, I produced a website design on photoshop in the style of how a film’s website might appear online. Although I am quite familiar with photoshop already, I am always learning new methods and functions to use and whilst it was a relatively simple finding, I learnt how to make a layer transparent providing a neater layout to view the page.

Question 7- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel I have progressed a long way since the prelimary tasks have learnt a lot since my preliminary coursework. Before I had decided what direction I wanted to take with the brief (film opening or print media), I prepared with two separate prelimary tasks to prepare myself for the choice I make.

I produced a magazine cover which consisted of selecting an interesting image I had taken in the past. I decided to use an image of an interesting skyscraper building I had seen in Canada. From choosing this image I now needed to decide the genre of my magazine; and from being interesting about fashion and style’s magazines such as Esquire; I decided to base it on an architectural magazine. My target was too produce a ‘clean cut’ looking magazine because my magazine would be targeted at designers and anyone interested in the architecture and design. I was pleased my finalised draft for a magazine cover, however I realised that I wanted to explore further and see whether I would be more appealed by the moving image task.

The ‘moving image’ prelimary task was kept nice and simple, focusing more on work with the camera, shot types/angles, as well as working on iMovie in order to gain experience working with the movie editing software. I found the prelimary task very constructive I was made aware how important continuity and working with a number of varied shot types was in order simply to prevent the film from seeming boring. These two specific points were developed onto our film and after some careful analysis checking for any continuity errors, I can’t seem to pick any errors in layout etc. from our film which is very pleasing as a director of the film.

An important point to highlight from the prelimary task is the fact that our film cannot truly be compared with professional material in which full-time trained staff working hundreds of hours each are given small roles in the production of a film, and so we needed to make sure our film was not too complicated, because it simply won’t work out. Therefore the ideas that we thought up for our film needed to be within reason so that they weren’t going to affect the quality of our film, and for this purpose we have not placed huge expectations from our thriller opening because it simply cannot be compared to work of the professionals quite yet. However I feel there has been good progress from the prelimary task and our final produce, and so I believe we can take more positive from the progression into the final product. From my point of view I am pleased with my groups film and I feel it has fit in with the qualities found in the thriller genre.

Soundtrack

We used logic pro to create our own soundtrack to support our Film. First of all we booked the music technology room to do this because its provided us with Macs and keyboard equipment in order to facilitate producing the soundtrack. In all it took around 3 hours of trial and error, touching up the tracks. We ended up with three different soundtracks which we felt could all be suitable as an end product to film however, we could'nt decide what track would work best. This gave us the perfect time to get feedback on both our film and the soundtrack so that we can firstly, go back over the film and edit any parts that the audiences didn't feel work before the time has come and were are too late to sort out any issues. Secondly, decide find out which  soundtrack is best suited to our film in order bring out its Thriller genre. Next lesson we will review our feedback and narrow down which will be best suited to our film.

Producing the Soundtrack

Update on the Soundtrack

After reflecting back on our Soundtrack for our film, we gain some new feedback from the teacher in class who suggested that we include some more tracks onto our film in order for the opening to send a clear message to the audience that it was a Thriller. The Soundtrack is very important especially for our thriller because the suspense needs to be built on the track to work in with the footage otherwise the audience will not feel the full effects of our thriller opening.

Experimenting with possible Title Credits

 To make our credits more interesting I had the idea of making our film opening use a more graphical style to it in a way that might make it look more proffessional. A possible solution to this would be to screenshot (image on the right) and then blacken out the background (as done on the image below) on photoshop. My intention would be to add a fading transition in on the editing hopefully meaning the footage would pause at the stage when the character turns his head which would then lead onto the background turning to black and leaving the white mask distinctively stand out with the characters name below.




However we attempted this idea but unfortunately it didn't work because the transition wouldn't work in timing with it, which was dissapointing.

Film Update- The Main Title Credit

Whilst we are going through the editing, the idea came about to close the film off by setting a mask on fire containing the film title: 'TAKE OFF AFTER' are intention was to see the plastic melt causing the titles to dissapear.

We decided to use the stones as our background because it was quite neutral/natural space rather than using a plain white background.

The idea of having a very natural effect to the titles seems more appealing than using only digital effects.

However after the four takes involved at creating the effect, unfortunately we were not able to gain the effect intended and remove all the text from being visable. Saying that the mask can almost act as a metaphor in relevance to the plot of the film, that you 'can't just erase someone in life'.

Update on Film

Today we managed to finish the filming stage of our product, after learning from a number of mistakes in the past I have come to realise as one of the directors of the film, that 'continuity' is essential in producing a clear cut looking film. I very pleased with the progress made today, and on monday me and my partner will begin editing the footage on the Mac using the software iMovie.

Editing

Today we began editing our footage, we managed to trim the clips and ordered the clips based on the storyboard sequence. After learning from our mistakes in previous filming sessions, I am relieved that most of our footage was extended longer than it needed to be on each shot and we had used a number of takes so we had the freedom to choose are favourite shots. I am pleased with the film it is now making progress!

Film Distributor

We have chosen Metrodome to be the distributor for our film. The decision was made simple after visiting the BFI for exam  summer preparation, the producer of the film Rory Aitkin, gave a talk about his the film 'Shifty 2008'. When talking about the film he went over differences in a low budget independent film in comparison to a Hollywood Blockbuster title. From the genre and relation of 'Shifty' in comparison with our own; we felt Metrodome could be the most suitable distributors for our low budget film seemed completely suitable as the distributor.Metrodome distributed 'Shifty'  to 50 screens around Britain which would be the targets expected as a low budget film.

Filming

Today we begun with out filming using our intended location situated in Imber Court. However I see this filming as more of preparatory work and so therefore after learning an important number of points from this exercise, we will need to reshoot the film all the way through in order to make it easier for the process and plot of the film to be made clearer.

 

Title order:

1. Distributor- Metrodome

2. Producer- Our own creation

3. Director- Alex Atkinson and Finbar Murray

4. We had the idea that once the character turns around it slows down in motion until its at a freeze frame and the background will black out providing a strong contrast for the black background and the white mask. From this point the titles will appear for the characters name.

5. Once again using the same idea inside the car but this time we will include both characters suggesting there close ties and similarities as roles in our film.

6. The Written by will be represented from inside the boot of the car from the point of view of the victim suggesting to the audience from what is taking place.

7. A wingmirror capturing the driver and the titles will appear below his face on the wingmirror.

8. The final sequence for the titles- we will have the titles appearing on a mask

9. Within the sequence the mask will set on fire and the title will fade from the mask.

My Evaluation

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
2.How does your media product present particular social groups?
3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
4.Who would be the audience for your media production?
5.How idd you attract/address your audience?
6.What have you learnt about technologies from constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your prelimary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from its to the full production?