Aftermath Evaluation - Alice

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

Our film, ‘Aftermath’, is of the thriller genre and throughout the opening sequences we focused on portraying this genre through the use of mise-en-scene, sound, camera shots, lighting, editing and title sequences. High angle shots and low angle shots were used in order to show status and dominance of certain characters, for example, a low angle shot is used to show the kidnapper to show his dominance and power over Sophie.

From looking at the title sequences of our film, it is quite obvious that we were inspired and influenced by the 1995 thriller, ‘Se7en’. Similar to ‘Se7en’, our titles are written in a white font on a black background, we decided to us e these colours as we wanted to use som ething eye-catching that attracted the audience’s attention and the colours white and red stands out a lot on the black background.

Initially, we wanted to have title sequences similar to those of 'Se7en' including images flickering behind the titles etc, but we found that to do that would be very time consuming. In the end, we did take inspiration from these title sequences by choosing to have flickering white/red text on a black background but we did not use any images or camera footage.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?Our film includes two different social groups. Emily and Sophie are both teenage girls who come across as quite passive. They are represented as being vulnerable, especially Sophie as she is kidnapped. We decided to have both girls dressed in normal, everyday clothing that would be typical of a girl of that age to wear. Both Emily and Sophie have tidy hair and make-up (apart from after Sophie has beed kidnapped which then shows her with blood on her face) which shows that they were dressing for no particular occasion.

The kidnapper is a 25 year old male who has previously been involved in crime. His role in the film is very stereotypical as he is extremely dominant over Sophie and Emily. His dominance is portrayed through the use of low angle shots whereas Sophie’s vulnerability is shown through the use of high angle shots. The status of the characters are also shows through the use of mise-en-scene as we see Sophie tied up which shows the dominance of the kidnapper. Most films of the thriller genre have a villain and they are usually male. We chose to dress him in dark clothing which represents his ‘dark’ personality, as well as him wearing a balaclava to make it look realistic and to hide his identity as most thrillers are secretive and mysterious about the identity of the villain until the very end. Although the characters are very stereotypical at first, by the end of the film, Emily takes charge when completing the tasks etc, and she is the one who frees Sophie, this subverts the stereotype as it puts the women in charge and shows her power and dominance as she becomes the hero. As the film is about two teenage girls, the film will attract a female audience of around the same age and as the females in the film have to take charge, the film could be seen as being inspirational for teenage girls. However, the fact that the two main characters are females could also attract a young male audience. For the older end of our audience, they will be attracted by the intriguing and tense story line, which will inevitably keep them on the edge of their seat.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I think that our film would benefit from being a product of a British film company such as Warp Films as the main characters, Sophie and Emily, will attract a smaller audience due to their age and gender. They will attract more of a younger, teenage audience probably consisting of mainly females but also males. Our film would only need a small budget as the locations used are very basic and very few special effects are needed.

Optimum releasing would be ideal for the distribution of our film as it has distributed films such as ‘This Is England’ which has a similar target audience to our film as the main characters are of the younger generation. In order to attract a wider audience, I think our film would benefit from being shown on the television. It would be suitable to be shown on channels such as Channel 4 and Film 4 as they tend to show low budget, British films. Our film gives many merchandising opportunities such as posters, t-shirts, mugs. Our film could be advertised through the use of media such as magazines, newspapers, radio, television and the internet.

Who would be the audience for your media product?
Before creating the film, we decided that the target audience for our film would be 15-40 year olds, although realistically the film will attract mostly teenagers. Female teenagers will be interested in our film as two out of the three main characters are females of the younger generation, during the film the girls show their vulnerability throughout the kidnap and tasks but by the end of the film they show their bravery and dominance as they over power the kidnapper, this is subverting the stereotype and many females would like to see this happen as they will be inspired by the female characters. The film would also attract teenage boys due to the build up of suspense and action throughout the film. Because of the gripping storyline, the film would also attract older people up to the age of about 40, maybe even older.

We decided that the most appropriate certificate for our film would be certificate 15 as 12 would be too low as the storyline includes violence and swearing, there is also slight drug use included. Certificate 18 would be too high

as there isn’t any sex, nudity or gore included in the film; http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/15-2 see the BBFC website for more details and guidelines.

After finishing making our film, we asked people a few questions about our film and recorded the video above. I also asked people to comment on the film and give their opinions, one of the comments was I thought the film was really creative, and so much suspense and tension was captured in just two minutes - I want to know what happens next! I thought that the use of the camera effect to focus in on Sophie was really effective, and the angles used made it feel as though you were looking through the eyes of the “capturer” which I found really interesting. Overall, an amazing short film, really creative, well done!”

How did you attract/address your audience?The main characters, Sophie and Emily, attract young females as they are inspiring due to their power and dominance towards the end of the film, this also attracts young males as they would like to see this stereotypical male role being played by females. Also, the older generation will be attracted by the gripping storyline.

Point of view shots are used and put audience in the position of the kidnapper. These point of view shots cause the audience to feel sympathy for Sophie as the kidnapper follows her through the park; this builds up suspense and tension. Another attracting feature of our film is the fact that the Kidnapper’s identity is hidden throughout which adds a sense of mystery and keeps the audience curious right until the very end of the film. Music is used very effectively throughout our film to create suspense, for example, when the Kidnapper makes a phone call to Emily, there is background music which imitates a heartbeat getting faster and faster as the conversation progresses, this influences the audience to feel worried which creates a lot of tension.

What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
At the very beginning of the year we did a preliminary exercise which included writing a script and filming. We used small hand held cameras which were incredibly easy to use but by the end of the year, for our two minute film, we used a Sony DV1000 high definition camera which was much bigger and required a tripod.

The Sony DV1000 high definition camera lives up to its name as it provided us with a very clear, high definition image, it was excellent. It allowed us to film all of the shots that we needed and gave us no problems in that area. We did have one problem with the camera; when filming after pressing the button to stop recording, it didn’t stop recording for some unknown reason which makes us think that we had a slightly faulty camera. This did not affect us whilst filming as we did not know that this had happened at the time and it wasn’t until we were uploading the footage onto the computer that we realised we had long periods of time of unwanted footage on our tape, this caused problems as it was very time consuming trying to separate the wanted footage from the unwanted footage. Final Cut Express was used to edit our film and personally I thought it was an excellent piece of software as it was very easy to use and it allowed us to do everything we wanted to do and more. We were able to edit the sound, footage and title sequences on this programme which was very practical. We found the music used in our film on a CD named 'Drones, textures and musical effects'.

During the phone call between the Kidnapper and Emily, we put an effect on the sound to make it sound like we could hear the voices through the phone, we achieved this by merging the sound and the effect together, and this was very effective. After watching the footage, we realised that the white balance needed editing on certain parts of the footage and Final Cut Express allowed us to do this with ease.

As our film includes flashbacks, we wanted to create an effect which would make it clear to the audience that the flashbacks were indeed flashbacks.

To do this we added an effect called ‘light-rays’ which distorted the image and really improved the look of the flashback.

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back to our preliminary task, I think that it was crucial and without it we would have struggled, I think that time management would have been a big issue without the experience as we had to do a lot more preparation for the two minute film including a script, shot list, storyboard and practice shots. From doing the preliminary exercise, we learned about editing, filming and cinematography which made the final task a lot easier and we were all a lot more confident in ourselves when filming and as we knew more about certain shots such as point of view and match on action, we had an advantage as we used both in our final film.

Although we encountered a few problems along the way (such as a member of the group leaving which meant that we had a lot more work to do) the final product is better than expected and it definitely complies with the thriller genre. I think it was very successful and had provided us with many skills which could benefit us in the future.