Evaluation

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

We began the stages of preparing our film by researching other films of the same genre and seeing if our target audience had seen and enjoyed these films too. We watched various clips from films such as 'the Bourne' series, 'James Bond' and 'Mission Impossible'.

Due to our target audience enjoying chase scenes we had also seen the opening of 'Silence of the Lambs' directed by Jonathan Demme and decided to maybe include something a likened

to this in the opening of our film. Although

this is not a chase scene it shows Jodie Foster running through a wood with the camera and some points doing close ups on the various parts of her body including her feet which we used in the opening of our film also.

We studied clips from other films analysing the textual representations and decoding the messages as well as focusing on mise-en-scene, camera shots, sound and editing. Find the conventions of the genre and then embedding these within our own film. The use of villains was a common convention within the genre ex

examples of which can b

e seen as 'Le Chiffre' and 'Dr Julius No' in 'James Bond as well as in the popular American series 'Heroes' you have the villain of 'Syrus'.

Looking at these villains

we created our own villain Vladimir Weiss. We used the representations that many of the films also used such as dark clothing connoting danger and giving a sinister tone as well as the Weiss being mysterious and lurking in the background of shots to show the audience that White (our hero) is unaware of his presence or is he? Typically we found that weapons were also used by both hero and villain in many of the films the typical weapon is either a gun of some kind or explosives, however this kind of action would have been hard to pull of so in our film the weapon used was a knife. The audience are only aware of Weiss carrying the knife and so thus this automatically makes them associate Weiss as the villain within the film. As well as a villain within these films you have heroes such as 'Jason Bourne' in the 'Bourne' series and the infamous 'James Bond' in 'James Bond' films. We found that heroes within the action/thriller genre can come in various types the two most common of which are the James Bond type whereby the hero is cool, collected and smooth compared to the Jason Bourne type where the hero is a normal man, casual and has less gadgets. The hero path we decided to take was that of Jason Bourne our hero was David White played but Ollie, we decided that we would dress him in everyday clothes as to make him an unsuspicious hero and therefore connoting to the audience that he is on a undercover mission trying to hide his identity. David White is carrying a weapon but due to the briefcase in his hand you are lead to believe that maybe is his unarmed however the audience soon realise that in fact he also is carrying a knife and this heightens the tension as Weiss approaches White and White draws his knife. At the end of the opening of our two minutes we decided to end on a cliff hanger a likened to other real media products as well as using the effect of the opening being back in time.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We decided to only use two characters in the opening two minutes of our film as to keep the opening as simple and as effective as possible so that our target audience could focus on both the action on screen and the voice over as to draw the audience in and make them watch on. It was important to convey to our audience particular social groups and we achieved this through both the characters and the setting. The characters in our film were British agent David White played by Ollie Johnson and terrorist Vladimir Weiss played by Matthew Johnston. Later on in our filming we found that our film did not flow as well as we wanted it to and so added the character of another British agent who collects the briefcase off White containing the BluePrints this part was played by Ollie's brother and this character remains nameless connoting to the audience that he doesn't play a vital role in the film. It was important that both of our characters remained within the action/thriller genre.

The character of DavidWhite is portrayed to the audience as an enclosed and secretive man, within the opening two minutes the audience learn very little about White as a person but rather meet White the agent. This is a typical convention of many action/thrillers where the personal life of the agents is secondary to their working life. Due to the voice over the audience learn that White is an agent on a mission and a incredibly wanted man, this connotes that White is unfazed by danger and enjoys it as he is walking down the middle of a residential area holding a suitcase containing important information and he is alone without protection. We decided to film White walking down the middle of the road to show how he is confident in what he is doing and remains focused on the task in hand, it could also connote to the audience that he is used to this type of work and isn't new to being an agent. White's casual attire make him almost blend in with his bland, groggy surroundings meaning that he is able to fit in to his surroundings easily as not to draw unwanted attention to himself. The audience could also get the impression that is is working undercover or masking his true identity which is a common convention of the action/thrillers that we looked at. This yet again linking to the attire and casual nature of 'Jason Bourne' compared to the suited and swarve 'James Bond'.

Our second character Vladimir Weiss is introduced second in the film connoting to the audience that White is the main focus of the film we used the conventions of a typical action/thriller villain to give Weiss his status as killer shown to the audience using a close up of Weiss's knife with White in the background portraying Weiss as the predator hunting his prey and this anchors the fact that Weiss's main intention is to kill White. Weiss is dressed all in black and wearing heavy, black army boots giving a sinister feel to his character. On the close up of Weiss's face the audience can see the focus in his eyes on his prey and they know that he will not stop until White is dead, however these roles will soon be changed as White gathers the upper hand in the situation and draws a knife on Weiss.

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

The type of media institution we would use to distribute our film would be Working Title a British film production company based in London and founded in 1984 and has produced both film and television since then. I think that they would be the perfect company to distribute our film 'Blue Print' due to there knowledge and success. They have released various successful action/thriller films including 'Gone', 'Hidden Agenda', 'The Interpreter' and 'State of play'. Another media institution which would benefit our product would be Universal Studios founded in 1912 and is

one of the oldest American film studios, they have released films such as 'Green Zone', 'Hannibal' and the 'Bourne' series, which we have heavily based our film meaning that Universal Studios would be the perfect distributer of our film 'BluePrint'.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience for our film would be between the ages of 12-30 as the films that we have studied such as 'James Bond' and 'Mission Impossible' have been rated at around 12 so we feel that our film doesn't include any strong scenes of blood and violence but is around the same level of such as 'James Bond' making it suitable for a younger audience. It is hard to say the maximum age of which someone will not enjoy our film as 'James Bond', 'Die Hard' and 'Mission Impossible' have all remained popular with both a young and older audience. The gender of which will prefer our film is also hard to say as both males and females may enjoy it however traditionally these films seem to be aimed more at the male population than female due to the cars, gadgets and women. However in our film we have much less of these and therefore could suit any gender in which enjoys the action/thriller genre, however if we did want to attract a bigger audience if creating this film on large scale a 'star' who has a large fan base would be used, therefore attracting a female audience. During our questionnaire we discovered that the majority of people who had seen the films in which we had drawn our inspiration from had liked the idea for our film and these people would be our target audience as they will enjoy the genre and the action in our film. By producing a questionnaire that we handed out to people so that they could fill it in if they liked the genre of action/thriller, we gathered an idea of our target audience and what they look for within this genre of film, this gave us the idea to start our film at a fast pace as the majority of people who answered the questionnaire preferred fast pace beginnings.

How did you attract/address your audience?

When we first started looking at ideas for our film we took a while deciding on what genre we would chose and one that we would all enjoy. After choosing the theme action/thriller we all decided we wanted to create tension that would build up and climax at the end of the two minutes of filming. Although this isn't a genre I enjoy in a film we all worked to together to produce something that we would all enjoy and would make us want to watch on thus hopefully making the audience want to continue watching. We decided that our piece would contain an unexpected twist at the end where White pulls out the knife on Weiss and this would attract our audience to watch on as it creates the sense of the unexpected and heightens the dramatic tension and suspense anchoring the theme of a action/thriller. Due to the opening of our film being fixated around the BluePrints contained within the suitcase and the determination of both characters to protect and ultimately own the BluePrints its seemed the obvious to name our film 'BluePrint' this title allows the audience to see that our film will focus around these documents and the storyline will unfold from here. We also wanted to express this throughout the production linking back to the title. Attracting an audience can also be produced by a gripping poster advertising the film, in our questionnaire we also analysed what attracted them to watching films of this genre. Our questionnaire found that most people preferred the Bourne series to the Bond series, here the characters are more intelligent and believable like normal people. To reflect this in our film we used a knife rather than a gun in our first scenes as well as our characters wearing normal clothe, this anchored the fast knife fights which the Bourne series are famed for.

In order to attract audiences we also produced a small- scale campaign on the internet to encourage viewers. To keep to the popular British theme of the genre our narration was with a British accent and our 'villain' was a stereotypical Russian likened to many villains in other action/ thriller films. This allowed the audiences to understand the story and enjoy it more as the definitions of the genre remained the same, as it keeps the conventions of the Bourne series.

The fast paced start of the film was produced to create a immediate audience response and grab them in the first few minutes of the film and ensure they watched on, this was made possible with the flash back beginning of our film.

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

Before this task I had very little experience at using Macs so this task was very useful and a learning experience at advancing my knowledge of technologies and computers. I found out of the whole experience that I enjoyed the filming most we had little problems with not enough footage as we tended to over record scenes making too much footage than not enough although this did prove useful. We did however find that we needed to plan more what shots we were going to use rather than just going out and filming which I had thought would have happened before. The storyboards came in very useful in doing this and helped us to achieve the shots we wanted. I had also thought that shooting would take up less time than it did but I soon discovered it was a long and technical process with arranging the tripod and getting the shots perfect. The tripod was a major help to our filming as it provided us with smooth shots however it did provide harder than expected when you had to perform a panning shot for example when the camera is following White down the road. After we had recorded our footage we used programs such as garage band to create our theme tune and Finalcut to perform the editing and cutting of our film. We found it very hard to get the right theme tune to our film and this took various tries using a variety of instruments and settings but in the end we finally found one that we all agreed fitted to the film. We also used various sound effects such as the typewriter for the opening credits which provided effective. I found it hard to pick up using Finalcut but after finally understanding what was happening I enjoyed editing and found this a payed off. I found that using the Macs wasn't as hard as I initially thought it would be and overall this has paid off.

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

I feel that the preliminary task was a great preparation for our real product, it allowed us to experiment using the cameras and also to practise and see which camera angles worked and which didn't look as good. Also we realised that you need precision when you are filming as we filmed our preliminary task on two different days we forgot about some of the things that had been different on our first day of filming such as my hair had been tied up on the first day and not on the second as well as Ollie changing his tie. Our two days of filming our preliminary task was due to the sound on the first day not being good enough and so when we went to film our final product we made sure this was ok as well as if we were unsure of a certain shot we filmed it in a different way or we did the same shot again to make sure we had a shot we were happy with. In the preliminary task I learnt a lot such as if you are filming two people having a conversation you film the whole conversation over both peoples shoulders in a point of view shot and then you edit these.

After watching my preliminary task and then my final product I can see that the final film flows a lot more smoothly as well as containing more complex shots which we gathered from other inspirations and then practised. I am pleased with our final product and don't feel this could have been achieved without learning the techniques of editing and cutting on Finalcut in our preliminary task or practising and learning shots also in out preliminary task.

Mise-en-scene

Due to the genre of our film being an action thriller we decided to film in a residential street on a cloudy, grey day. For the opening of the film we show David White walking down the centre of the road connoting to the audience that White and the contence of his briefcase are the main focus/ the centre of the film. White is dressed in casual clothing showing that he normaly would blend into the background however in the contrast of the bleek surrounding he almost seems to stand out. The casual stance of which White walks in and also his posture with his hand in his pocket connote that he is not in any doubt or worry even though he is carrying important BluePrint documents, it shows the audience that he is experienced in this field. Weiss on the other hand is dressed all in black connoting to the audience that he holds a threat to White and that they and White should all remain weary of what Weiss is capable of.We intended to film on the calmest day possible weather-wise, therefore eliminating the movements of tree branches by wind which we considered would be a background distraction. The stillness in the setting in which the film takes place would also help to anchor the concept of the characters being more important than the setting. Unfortunately, the weather and the added factor of decreasing daylight meant that we did have to hold back our filming, and if looked closely at, it is noticeable that filming had not taken place on the same day.Halfway through the film, it can be seen that my hair is shorter than in previous shots. Another problem we realised when being forced to film on different days is that the weather is never going to be exactly the same. During the shots of White handing over the briefcase to an accomplice, the wind can be seen to have picked up and it is also raining in these finals shots, which is particularly noticeable in the shot of the accomplice in the phonebox.

Voice Over Script

Here is the script which we used for our voice over read by Ollie:
Two years ago I obtained a package designated Blueprint from a terrorist cell operating out of the suburbs of Amsterdam. In the wrong hands, Blueprint had the potential to cause worldwide destruction. Intelligence agencies across the world wanted to get hold of Blueprint and as a result I was probably the most wanted man in Europe. MI6 were in on the situation and a range of leading terrorist wanted possession of Blueprint, especially Vladimir Weiss- the head of a Russian Cell.

Sound

We used a variety of different sound effects as well as creating our own theme to fill the entire opening two minutes of the film. To set the genre of our film the first sound effect used is the 'typewriter' which connotes to the audience that this film is of the action/thriller genre and creates a serious tone. We decided on the use of the typewriter from some of the films which we gathered inspiration from. We decided to remove sound from the majority of the film and only use sound effect accompanied by the voice over to draw the audiences attention to the action on the screen rather than unnecessary background noises. We used a voice over to give the audience some information on what had occurred previously to the opening, we also used the use of voice over to connote to the audience that this action has occurred in the past. Matt created the backing track which contains a heavy beat creating a sense of tension and at the moments of importance such a White seeing the knife the music cuts out drawing all of the audiences attention on the most important factor in the shot which is the knife.

Planning

Prior to making the opening two minuets of our film we planned the area of which we would film along with producing a questionnaire finding out what our target audience wanted to see within the film. We decided to film on a Sunday in amersham as it was reasonably quiet in a small residential area connoting to the audience that this private agent is trying to remain as desecrate as possible and seems to be on the run from something or someone and isn't the ordinary man you start off thinking he is. We encountered a few problems however working in the residential area due to a number of people walking through our shots meaning that we had to stop filming a reasonable number of times and due to this we began to lose light, forcing us to continue on a different day and leading to a discrete but noticeable change in weather and lighting which led us to looking and changing the color of our film to sepia giving the film the wanted effect of the action seeming to be set in the past as well as the lighting no longer being a problem.

Here is the questionnaire which we produced and from this we decided in what our target audience would like to see contained within our film:

1) What is your favourite action thriller film?

2) Is it more exciting to have a death in the opening of scene?

3) What do you look for in an action thriller?

-Suspence

-Death/murder

-Chase scenes

-Dramatic irony

-Other

4) What other action thrillers have you watched?

-The Bourne Series

-The Die Hard Series

-James Bond

-Mission Impossible Series

5) Out of these films you have watched what elements made them successfull?

-Amount of action

-Chase Scenes

-Villians

6) What is your idea of a typical villian?

7) We are thinking of doing an action thriller about a terroist organization who are hunting down a British agent who has obtained their activity BluePrints what do you think of this idea?

8) Would you watch our film?

9) How could we improve our idea?

The feedback we recieved from our questionaire clearly showed that people would prefer to have a chase scene in the opening of the film as to draw attention to the villian and the hero and to keep them wanting to watch more of the film as the story progressed.