The change in idea

At first we wanted to do a slender man style film but because of difficulties getting the right props and the times we needed to shoot the film we have decided to change. In the end we stuck with the stalker idea and in ways the slender idea was still being used but we have changed a lot of it, characters and locations still remanded the same so we didn't have to spend ages find new stuff.

Mood Board

We put together a mood board of what we thought was the typical conventions of a thriller

Question 7 - LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?

All of our preliminary tasks helped us to make this film as we wanted it, after learning about all the different shot types and doing some research on the genre we had an idea of what we wanted to do. 180 degree rule we did stick to as you can see in the exchange of views from both the protagonist and stalker we kept it over the same shoulder. A few examples of match on action as well were used especially when he enters the toilet to see him push from the outside and the next shot is him inside. The camera’s we all had a rough idea on how to use from our other subjects and all we really need was a tripod to help us. Our organisation wasn’t the best as we changed idea’s late and we had to go film it all near the rough cut deadline but when we did get all of the sorted the organisation of when we were going to edit was fine and set certain days and times which we stuck to. When researching the genre i did notice a theme of the typical conventions from the way it’s shot like tracking and establishing shots all the way to what is the most common thriller film which was Stalker films. Todorov’s five stages were present in most thriller films i watched but in the end we decided to go against it and cut out the fifth stage. With our questionnaire we were quite straight forward and asked them if they liked it and how they would improve it as we all thought that there was a lot of work needed to fix it. We also asked them though if they thought the certificate was right which they said yes and also if it would appeal to them which was another yes. The planning was key even though we changed our idea and were a bit pushed for time, but we planned every shot we were

going to use ready for the filming and after we turned up at lunchtimes to edit it and get the final copy finished. One a whole the technology was pretty straight forward to get the hang of and if we had made our minds up early i think we could’ve got a better film made and would’ve got more time to edit, but i’m pleased with our opening sequence and i stick to our idea.

Question 6 - WHAT HAVE I LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES IN THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING MY FILM SEQUENCE?

The learning process to making the film and not really knowing what to do has been the most enjoyable part because working as a group you find all these new ways to better your film and from that you can tweak it into what you want. The importance of how close you are to show the emotion on our protagonists face was key and also tracking him with the right amount of body showing to get the perfect body actions. Unless your doing a tracking shot you need to keep the camera still to let their body do the acting to shuffling the camera around to show heavy breathing or anxiousness. Final cut was simple to use and in the end we got what we thought was the right effects for our film to set the mood. Fade in/out between credits and shot at the beginning to show how calm the mood was and how everything effortlessly went into place, but then we put very small clips close together to create a fast paced almost heart beat like mood. Speeding clips up and speeding some down to get the right amount of time in each clip and also to slow or speed the film up. Colour correction to sort out some of the lighting because of our setting, the hand against the window we darkened everything apart from the natural light coming through the window to make the hand really stand out. Before this production i had used final cut in my film studies production where we learnt the basics and also started experimenting a lot more with different transitions and colour edits as well as learning about the power of black and white in a film. Funny games in the beginning where the song changes to a heavy rock song and they don’t even notice as they’ve been so busy listening to opera songs, this caught the audiences attention as it’s something they wouldn’t have expected to happen so early into the film. As i had already used soundtrack pro quite a lot i left the other two in my group to experiment to get the perfect sounds for our soundtrack and they mixed strings with loud drums and during some newspaper articles you would hear static perfectly in time with the clips so overall that worked fine. Motion was a bit new for me as i had only briefly used it in my other film so to do something completely different with newspaper articles was a challenge and it took at least one or two lessons to completely finish all articles in time with the soundtrack. We had other credits that we were going to use with smoke behind the letters while it was shaking but in the end we decided against it as it didn’t quite match what we had intended.

Question 5 - WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

Our audience i would say is everyone from Lower Middle Class to those at the lowest level of subsistence. Our film isn’t to challenging to understand to follow so that means people wont just give up watching it because they’ve lost the plot. But also Middle Class and over i think wouldn’t enjoy it, i believe that this isn’t their sort of film but obviously there will be a few from the higher part of the socio-economic groups that will love and some in the lower half will hate it. They will have to like Thrillers and also the sub-genre of Stalker movies as to other people it might be a bit repetitive so a love for the stalker film is probably needed. When we research into who like Thriller films we found out that young male adults were the most popular and i would have to agree as thriller and horror films excite me more than a drama or even some comedies these days. We hope to attract all groups and genders as we don’t offer the same old Stalker film where the female victim kills the stalker and escapes we have decided to have a darker ending where the victim does not survive and instead is captured, we cut it off there and that can make everyone think what happens next. Location wise it doesn’t matter this film can be liked by anyone it doesn’t have a certain person in mind, if you target it at a certain person then it can end up being terrible to them and someone else might like it. As for taste they need to have a strong love for thriller and stalker films as well as liking difference not just the same old story, they need an open mind on what can happen as the ending is not explained to full detail and they will have to use their imagination to come up with and ending.

Question 4 - WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

The people that are mostly interested in Thriller films are young male adults (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Al6oZp_aOY), the action mixed with the suspense creates an ideal film for this target audience and keeps them entertained, this group also works for horror as they tend to prefer blood and killing a lot more than females and the older generation (http://rbsmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/target-audience-thriller-film.html). The idea that we chose i think would be more of a film four production as they tend to invest in low budget UK films and they are all different genres and styles(http://www.imdb.com/company/co0197272/?ref_=tt_dt_co). Lots of film four production films have made it big from relatively nothing, four lions a dark comedy had a low budget but achieved big when it came to awards after it’s release and the same for Slumdog Millionaire, Shaun of the Dead and Trainspotting. So companies like Film Four and Dimension will set a low budget but expect brilliant and different films, something that people might not have seen before. As for the marketing side a lot of that is done on social networking sites and for a small film like ours that would be a good place to start. Four Lions was advertised through social networking sites after it’s release in cinema as they thought it would reach a larger audience and in the end be more successful. Youtube is another growing way as you can advertise between videos so for a small independent company like Film Four it might be a cost effective way and also meeting new audiences. The UK film council did invest heavily into low budget UK films and over the eleven years it was going for they made great films like 28 Days Later and This is England, this was an organisation funded by the National Lottery.

Question 3 - HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

Our film represents two social groups, our protagonist being the normal everyday who may or may not be seen as the usual victim. He’s male which isn’t usually the case with stalker films, they tend to be female and they usually survive against the villain. He’d be classed as working class to the audience and his age could place him as one of the most vulnerable because he wouldn’t be able to protect himself against an attack. He looks like just like a average person so determining what region he’s from would be difficult and there’s no talking in the film. He seems like the kind of guy that could quite easily be pushed over if it came to it so in my opinion there was no better actor for the role as we don’t have to make people believe that he can be bullied like if it was a tall strong person. Our stalker on the other hand you barely see but he’s clearly a person with mental problems as he’s trying to destroy this persons life by kidnapping him. You see he wears tracksuits and typically chavs wear them so you get a rough idea of his class from that. But just like Eden Lake you wouldn’t expect youths to behind all of this so for one to stalk and kidnap our protagonist is a bit shocking. Apart from that the only other thing you can see about him is that he towers over our protagonist showing his power over him and making our story a bit more believable. As it’s a thriller the tracking shot was popular within our film showing a 180 degree of the protagonists POV, but would also turn around and look at the camera showing how scared he is. Close-ups were another big one as you can really see the panic on his face as he gets more weary of the presence around him, we would film within the Social bubble of Edward t. Hall’s personal bubble graph as this allowed us to captured the whole face and also some body movement when he would turn around to make sure. The stalker’s POV is used when he’s standing behind the tree, this was to show the stalkers first presence and also the distance at first between the protagonist and the stalker. The colours we chose were all dark like black and dark browns, this is because it’s not a happy film everything that happens is quite dark with the kidnapping so the colour scheme should match that. The colours also make the characters stand out with the light early morning setting that we had decided to shoot in.

Question 2 - How Did You Attract Your Audience?

With the audience we did show a lot of conventions that are of a Thriller. The first noticeable one’s are with the actually filming and the shots we use, Pan and tracking shots. These are typical shots used to establish the location and settings used which for us was the lonely park. We constantly show the isolation of our protagonist to show the audience that he has no one to rely on to help. People expect to see a main character overcome problems and in the end defeat or stand up to the enemy or villain, but for us we mixed that up so for the audience it might be a bit confusing and they might not understand why he dies in the end rather than ending up victorious. As a group we agreed on a 12/12a rating as we feel the film didn’t have any graphic images or violence shown, but the stalker idea may be seen as an adult theme so putting it at a 12 would be right. But keeping it at a 12 will attract different audiences to see our film as they will think it hasn’t got a dark tone and will be suitable to others including younger adults and children. With the mise-en-scene the audience can relate to our protagonist as he looks and acts like and ordinary person. The setting of the park is just a normal setting where you wouldn’t expect someone to be stalked especially during the day with people around. Our protagonist is just an average person who has stumbled into the wrong situation and people might be able to relate to that maybe not in the stalker way but in a day to day living way. He ends up having to be cautious when he suspects he’s being followed and he acts like any normal person by trying to get out of there, but unfortunately for him he doesn’t escape. Every year people are taken off the streets never to be seen and with our film we want to get the message across of be careful who you trust. Our character didn’t know or even acknowledge the stalker but this just says that you need to be careful wherever you are and to not put yourself in any danger. Theres never really any equilibrium within our film apart from the beginning where both parties are unaware of each other and our character is just having a normal walk in the park. Our questionnaires we gave out had mix responses both good and bad and to do with different aspects of the film. Acting was one aspect but we didn’t want to change our actor as compared to the stalker he seems a bit unspoken and powerless which for this films was key. Editing especially over the type of transitions used between clips as we usually just went with the stop and start or a fade in/out. Black and white was also suggested because of the mood we were going with (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4), but we thought that it wouldn’t work because we wanted this to relate to normal people and their everyday lives. And finally the overall idea people thought it wasn’t enjoyable or made much sense why it was happening, we wanted this to say that things like this can happen to anyone not matter where you are.

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

As a group we had to decide what type of thriller film we wanted to make and we thought that a typical stalker movie would be appropriate. We had to be careful to not make the film seem like a horror which for the stalker sub-genre is very easy. Even though it’s a thriller film horror was the main inspiration behind our idea, and films like Funny Games (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808279/?ref_=sr_1) where you have no idea whats going to happen were a big help for our group.

We did use the typical signifiers that people expect from a thriller, the main signifier is the stalker idea. The stalker idea is one of the biggest within thriller films and these days people know that it’s a thriller just by seeing that. The lonely protagonist which is a big signifier in both horror and thriller, in thriller he guards and defends himself well even though he may come up against a few obstacles. With the stalker you will all ways know he’s there but not really see him til the end in most films, ours keeps that idea as you see glimpses of him but nothing major until the end. With the music we went with the slow tension building music, we started with strings and as the story went on we added drums to build the tension. Most thriller films do this in their sequences using something louder and faster paced when the action starts and beforehand using strings like in Psycho (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnYpF758Os0). During each paper with the credits we would have different sounds like louder drums even though it doesn’t match the timing, we did this to make the credits stand out more and each noise slowly gets louder and louder to fit whats happening as the story progresses. 

As far as Todorov’s 5 five stages go we kept the order all the way until the return of a equilibrium. Everything was fine in the beginning of our story were you see the protagonist just walking around the park, but then we start to see the stalker following and watching him as he goes on with his day. We see that this has happened because the main character is now aware that he thinks someone’s following him, his facial expressions really show off how worried he is that there might be someone there. An attempt is made when he quickly leaves to get as far way as he can, but the audience see the stalker take another route which makes them think what could happen. We then disrupt the order when our protagonist is taken when Todorov’s fifth stage is a restoration of this equilibrium which we did not stick with. In Funny Games it starts off with a nice family drive but we get indications that this might not be the film we’re expecting as some heavy rock music starts playing which completely breaks the mood. They end up being captured and tortured as a family, you see this corruptness when their son is killed and both the mother and father have to try and cope with this even though two men have them held at gun point. The attempt and restoring this is when they escape the house looking for help only to be recaptured and the male being shot. The film ends like ours as there’s no complete restoration as she also dies, Both our film and Funny Games are Thrillers but both don’t follow Todorov’s.

We added our style with the stalker as you never see him not even at the end, most stalker films you will see the stalker at least once usually at the end. This is to keep that sense of unknown and that it can literally be anyone doing this. Not following Todorov’s five stages was on purpose as we didn’t want to be like every other stalker film where the victim would be captured but eventually would escape and live their normal lives again. Our stalker if people noticed is wearing tracksuits, this is to keep it more british like Eden Lake (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6j3K4MmOKs) where the people tormenting them ends up being some troubled youths. This just proves that it doesn’t have to be the usual middle aged man stalking someone it can be someone a bit closer to home.

Final Product

Our finished film

Shots Log

This is the log we kept to show the shots we took, how many attempts to take them, the type, duration, location and description.

Risk Assessment