Evaluation question 1

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

 

In the two minute film opening we decided that we were going to establish the plot and have the most important/climatic event (Beth passing out and vomiting) of the film happen right at the beginning before the title sequence and the complicated situation(the death of Chloe and what Lola and Beth will do) unravelling afterwards. This is challenging conventions as typically in a film the title sequence is at the very beginning and the storyline and climatic moment happen afterwards. This is linear and gives our audience an insight to what the film is about.

We decided on the theme of a psychological thriller which meant that we needed to include things that would play with the minds of or audience and get them into the same frame of mind as our characters. To do this we needed to make sure that we got the correct iconography.

The iconography as usually thrillers are gloomy and sinister, therefore we thought that the best lighting for our film would be dark at the beginning when the girls are discussing the drugs, the darkness of this foreshadowed the dark and horrible events that were about to happen. We also took long shots which made the room look very large and like their was a lot of empty space which is often seen in thrillers to create a sense of the character been alone and create dramatic tension as anything or anyone could be hiding somewhere and no-one is around to help them.

 

We used typical camera positions, angles and shot movements that would be seen in psychological thrillers. Usually in this genre of film a few shots are off like showing just parts of a character its focussing on,
 long shots to show everything that is happening around them and close ups to show the characters facial expressions and reactions to what is happening to them. An example of this is as Beth as just been sick and she is washing her face we used a close up of her doing this as from that the audience could see her look of worry and regret. We also had a shot of Lola where she is not quite central but you can see around her that no-one is there but you can see the door frame so someone could appear from the door which creates a sense of unease because no-one knows what could happen.

We used a fast editing pace in the film as it puts the audience on edge and creates tension as people become panicked and shocked, the editing was fairly smooth throughout apart from a slight jump near the ending.

In terms of sound we tried to keep the dialogue minimal as we just used it to make sure that the audience knew who each character was and what the girls were doing. All of the sound in our film is diegetic as right at the beginning of our film as we used another thriller playing in the background to create dramatic tension and the sound was easily recognisable so the audience would have an idea that something bad was going to happen. I think that the use of silence whilst Beth is in the bathroom is very important as the audience have no idea of what is happening outside of the bathroom and to the other girls so that when she opens the door and Lola rushes in panic the audience is shocked as they didn’t anticipate that this would happen.

 

We used a great deal of mise-en-scene throughout the film to create realism

• Costumes and clothing – everything that the characters wore were our own belongings we just put them together to represent each characters personality such as Lola being a girly-girl and wearing minimal clothes and skirts.
• Location – we filmed in only one location which is not typical of a psychological thriller as usually the film starts in one place and then the characters try to escape and flee the eventually end up at home. Whereas in our film we shot it in a group members house to create tension and the feeling of what happens in the house, stays in the house.
• Props – the props we used were also our own or were props that we found in the house such as the magazine was already there and Autumn brought a cigarette with her to use as the drugs.

• Font – the only font that we used was in the title sequence and we used a standard font (non-serif) and we used a small font for the cast and crews names but a much larger font for the film title which is typical in any film, but we added effects to each piece which faded them in, distorted them (to look like an explosion) and faded them out. This was very eye catching and stood out so the audience would remember. We used Final Cut Express to do this.