Evaluation Activity 6

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

Evaluation Activities 4 & 5

Who would be the audience for your media product? How did you attract/address your audience? In addition for the audience feedback, we found that the audience thought that the plot was typical for the thriller genre, but liked the element of action and the added tension with the scream at the end making them want to watch the rest of the film. One person who watched the film, Callum Chadwick, said: "I think that the rest of the film would be really interesting, as this beginning leaves everyone on a bit of a cliff-hanger as to what happens next." Another member of our small audience, Alex Woodfield, said "As someone who enjoys watching more independent films at the cinema, this film really appeals to me. I like that the main character in the beginning seems like a normal, everyday person." However, one person, Ellen Smithies, did say "I think that the plot could be quite predicable, and also I would be more likely to go to the cinema to watch a big blockbuster or something with a famous person in it than to watch a small student thriller." Overall, our audience members seemed to enjoy our production, with a variety of feedback.

Evaluation Activity 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? The official definition of a production company is a company that provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio and video.  The production company is usually responsible for fundraising for the production, handling budgeting, scheduling, scripting, casting and resource supply, the organisational staff, the production itself, post-production, distribution and marketing.
The film distributor is a company or individual responsible for the marketing of a film or production.  These people set the release date for a film and select the viewing platform of the production, for example either straight through DVD release or theatrically.

 Independent films like ours generally have a small return.  Most ‘indie’ filmmakers do it for the love of telling a story.  However, there are ways of increasing profit, for example through advertising and product placement.  Films that have been released in the past that would be institutionally similar to ours would be films like Attack the Block, which was a mid-budget British film produced by Big Talk Pictures, Studio Canal, Film4 and the British Film Council.  This film used a variety of production companies (as named above), which would be the source of the productions finance.

We chose Coffee Films as our legitimate production company, as when we researched independent film companies, we saw that they had produced some small-scale films like ours, and we thought they would be a suitable company for our production.  Coffee Films is a British independent film company that was established in 1996.  In 2004 the company was recognised as one of Europe’s leading young production companies.  We decided that our film would be made by a small production company because it isn’t in the same style as other Hollywood films.  The company has produced thrillers such as ‘Lucid’: a psychological thriller feature set in the Scottish Highlands.  They have also produced several online films, including ‘A Plaster, A Paper and a Cheese & Pickle Sandwich’: a black comedy thriller short film.  While the company isn’t very well known, we think that this production would be more suited to producing our film.

Our production company that we made up ourselves is called Red Herring Production, after the plot twists in thrillers such as ours.  We thought the colour scheme: red, white and black, looked quite dramatic, as well as thinking about the connotations of the block colours.

In 'The Warehouse Killer', the titles were displayed in this order:
• Production Company: Red Herring Productions
• Production Company: Coffee Films
• Actors (as shown in order of appearance)
• Director
• Credit to Coffee Films
The production companies had to be shown first before the film began because that's how they are shown in proper films.  Then the actors names were shown in order of appearance because there were only two actors in the film and it just made more sense to have them in that order than any other. In our production, the overlay titles are displayed in the corner of the screen, so that the audience can concentrate on the action within the frame, rather than on the words. The text is white with a black outline, looking quite plain to, again, keep the viewers’ attention on the action within the frame.

Our film would be released on a small scale, much like an Irish independent film called 'Attack the Block', which came out in 2011 in 66 cinemas.  The film would also later be released via the internet, on sites such as Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Evaluation Activity 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Pick the key characters from your opening. Take frame grabs of reasonable sized images of them. Think of one or more characters from other films with some similarities to them (but maybe some differences too!), find an image on the web of that/those characters and save it as well. Drop the two into Photoshop, as a split-screen. Export this split-screen image as a jpeg then post it into your blog and write about the similarities and differences in terms of appearance, costume, role in film etc.
So, for example, if you have a flawed detective type character, look for other detectives to compare them with. You need to do this for all your characters and then to expand beyond their character types to discuss any use of social groups including stereotypes or expectations i.e. having a young female victim fits the gender stereotype of weakness and vulnerability or you could have a killer who’s a doctor, which makes them more threatening as it plays against our expectations and normal trust in this profession.

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The key character in our production is Karen, and she is played by Emma Bailey.  If our opening were to actually be a part of a full feature-length film, the plan would be that Karen wouldn’t feature in the film, but only in the beginning, as it is implied that her character dies at the end of the opening just before the main title, with the high-pitched scream and the sound of something clattering.  This fits in to the stereotype that women are vulnerable, and in thrillers one of the first people to die.  However, we killed the male character first, going against the general thriller convention and stereotype.   This is because we wanted the killing to be a surprise to the audience.  We essentially wanted Karen to be the catalyst of events yet to come in the film. 

Her character was partly inspired by the teenage girl from the opening scene of Ils/Them, because she witnessed a crime and tried to run away, but still ended up dead.  Being a young woman in a thriller fits the gender stereotype of weakness and vulnerability.  Although their situations aren’t exactly the same, both of the characters were female, and therefore were portrayed as vulnerable.  Both characters lose people close to them: the girl from Ils lost her Mum, and Karen loses her friend and work collegue, and then dies.  They both have a similar role in each of their films: both are used to set the story and to give the audience an idea of what is to happen to the main characters in the film.  For costume, the teenage girl is dressed more casually than Karen is, because this fits her character better than for her to wear office clothes, as she is portrayed as a rebelious teenage girl.

               

Another character similar to Karen is Olivia William’s character in Sixth Sense: Anna Crowe.  While Anna is married to the victim in her film, and doesn’t die, she still sees the death of her husband.  In this way, both Karen and Anna show that while they are stereotypically vulnerable, they are also both strong individuals that are capable of dealing with these difficult situations.  Both wear costumes fitting for the locations: while Anna wears a dress because she’s come home from an awards dinner, Karen wears smart office wear because she is at work and she has to look professional.

Evaluation Activity 1

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

warehouse killer commentary complete from Emma Bailey on Vimeo.

Film Shoot Analysis

The First Shoot:   We got off to an unsteady start, as we weren't quite as organised as we should have been.  Both of our original actors told us on the day that they couldn't do it anymore, but we decided to carry on regardless because Alex and Emma both had a little amount of acting experience.    Also, we had to get used to using the equipment, which took us a little while to get the hang of.  We had some trouble with our microphone, so the footage that we got out of the shoot didn't have a good enough quality for what we wanted.  Originally we only planned to have one shooting day, as everything was to be shot in the same location, however in the end we didn't have time to finish all of it, and we had trouble with the lighting in the warehouse.

The Second Shoot:    On the second shoot, we were a lot more efficient and quick with the filming.  We had to redo a couple of shots from the first shoot because of the quality or the change in natural lighting.  Everything ran a lot more smoothly and we got all of the shots that we needed to, because we had got used to the equipment and we got the correct microphone working, and we were all working together a team more than the first shoot, because with two thirds of our team acting, it would have been difficult to dedicate different people to specific tasks.

Soundtrack Analysis

The second piece of music we use in our production is called All This. This piece of music plays when Karen sees Joe on the floor of the warehouse near the van. Again, we thought this sounded fitting for the thriller genre, but as you will hear, the first minute of music isn't used, because we didn't think that that part of the music was appropriate for our piece. Again, this was a free piece of music made by Kevin MacLeod.
 
Above, you can see a video of the main piece of background soundtrack non-diegetic music we used in our production: a free piece of music we found off the internet called ‘Bent and Broken’, which we thought sounded fitting for the thriller genre. The song by Kevin Macleod was designed for a Horror film; however we thought that the piece had thriller connotations within it. The piece had to be cut down for our production, as it was too long and it wasn't appropriate for all parts of the film, however it does run from the very beginning of our production, through the production company logos, as we thought the music sounded quite dramatic and good for the logo title music.

Production Logo Analysis For RHP & Coffee Films

Below is our subsidiary production company logo that we have made up for our production.  We chose the name ‘Red Herring’ because in thrillers there are red herrings to make the plot more exciting, leading you to believe one thing when in fact not everything is at it seems.  We thought this would be suitable for the sort of thriller we wanted to produce.

MEDIA Red Herring Productions Logo from Emma Bailey on Vimeo.

Coffee Films is a British independent film company that was established in 1996.  In 2004 it was recognised as one of Europe’s leading young production companies.  We decided that our film would be made by a small production company because it isn’t in the same style as other Hollywood films.  The company has produced thrillers such as ‘Lucid’: a psychological thriller feature set in the Scottish Highlands.  They have also produced several online films, including ‘A Plaster, A Paper and a Cheese & Pickle Sandwich’: a black comedy thriller short film.  While the company isn’t very well known, we think that this production would be more suited to producing our film.