The Candidate Final Cut

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

There are several features of our thriller opening sequence which conform the conventions of a typical thriller movie. A few of these features take place in the bathroom scene, which the setting in itself is often witnessed commonly in thrillers. The blood which is being washed off the man’s hand is a common convention of a thriller, as it symbolizes death and danger. The blood suggests that the man has just committed a crime, or so we are led to believe. It also implies that he is dangerous and lives a violent lifestyle. The mirror in this bathroom scene plays on our knowledge of thriller movies where it is common for the audience to see something else in the reflection of the mirror. Of course, nothing is shown in the reflection, so the use of the mirror almost challenges the conventions of mirrors in typical thrillers.

The use of a black screen at the beginning of the sequence conform the suspense and mystery conventions commonly used in thrillers. The audience is left to concentrate on the sounds as opposed to the visual, and we felt that this confusion would engage the audience’s attention, as they would want to know what has happened.

The shot from inside the wardrobe and the shot from underneath the bed, suggest the possible places in which a body could be hidden. They give the illusion that something or someone is watching him as he is taking the suit out and getting dressed. This creates mystery and suspense, in that the audience feels that there is someone else in the room with him.

It is common in thrillers to have an attractive female in distress, who are killed by the antagonist. Our thriller challenges this common convention, as instead of an attractive female, we have used an attractive male, and as opposed to him being in distress, he is portrayed as an anti-hero throughout this opening sequence.

A gun is also a convention of a thriller and so we have a few shots of the gun on the table and him putting the gun inside his trousers. This represents violence, which is very common in thrillers.

Another convention is the door opening as we do not see who is coming through and it creates suspense. There is also a squeak as the door handle opens quite slowly and this is quite common in horrors to scare the audience. However, the way that we use the door challenges the conventions of real media products as we have the innocent victim coming through the door rather than the antagonist, who is on the other side and is the one who is feeling the suspense.

Task 2 - How does your product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller, the representation is mostly done through our main character as he is the most significant thing. Our main character has many characteristics of most action/thriller protagonists. He seems like an average guy, but is very mysterious.

I think our main character mostly resembles James Bond. James Bond always dresses smartly, showing a sophisticated element and this is significant in our protagonist as the opening sequence shows him getting dressed into a suit. This shows that he is conscious about looking smart, however it also suggests that he has stolen the idetity of the man underneath the bed. Nevertheless, our character has something different to that of James Bond which is that we are not shown that he works for the secret service, instead he is on his own mission under his own motives and intentions which are revealed throughout the film. The opening sequence shows him out to be an 'anti-hero' figure but his real character would be shown throught the actual film.

Task 3 - Institution for our thriller.

I think our thriller would be produced by the institution 'Lionsgate'.



This is because our film genre is an action thriller and Lionsgate has produced many of these. It is also not a huge institution as I think our film would be low budget. It is a leading independent producer and distributer of motion pictures, television programming, home entertainment, family entertainment, video-on-demand and digitally delivered content.

Lionsgate produce The Exepndables, which is the type of genre we have aimed for in our thriller.
Here is the trailer:

Task 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

 

Thrillers are generally particularly popular with the under 25’s and have a slight female skew, however, due to our thriller having an action/thriller genre, our films core target audience would be 15-24 male age group, as it is normally men who like guns and violence. However, there are various ways in which the film will break out from this core audience. The main character in the film will attract the 15-24 female age groups, as he is considered to be attractive and have a good body.

Having these people in a particular age range makes it easier for the distributor to reach them with targeted advertising, for example, the 15-24 age group are likely to use social networking sites frequently, and so a viral advertising campaign might be useful to advertise the film. Also, statistics show that these age groups are the most frequent cinemagoers and so when the film is distributed at the cinema, the film is likely to get more views than a film targeted towards a much older audience.

The film has different marketable elements which will appeal to different audiences. For example, the attractiveness of the protagonist, which refers to whether the target audience sees themselves reflected in the protagonist. The protagonist in our film came from an unstable background and he was essentially traumatized as a result of this. This is reflected by the way he acts throughout the film; however we discover this as the film unravels. This could potentially attract another type of audience, who can relate to the man’s feelings, and who have perhaps experienced a similar thing. The subject matter can also impact a films target audience. Our film is based on a man working undercover as some part of conspiracy, and generally people interested in conspiracies and secret services will be enthralled by the movie content.

Task 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

Task 5

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Task 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Task 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back on my preliminary task, I have realised many things which I would now change having learnt a LOT more now. These things are:

1) mise en scene.
We do not have much mise en scene apart from a table with some files, a couple of chairs and a light.

Now I would make sure that the scene is set completely with nothing that will distract the audiences attention or make the location look bad in any way. That is why in our thriller we made sure the whole room was completely set to the scene with the double bed made very nicely, a desk with some books on, a dressing room table and other things.

as you can see here, the wall does not fill the entire screen and so it is obvious they are on a set and makes everything look very unrealistic.

2) sound.

In our prelim task, you can hear people talking and laughing in the background.
Whereas, in our thriller we made sure to be silent whilst filming and if there is any talking or unwanted sounds we have cut them out.

3) Lighting.

The lighting in our prelim task is very obviously much lighter in some places than others. This makes the light look very artificial and ruins the feel of the scene.
In our thriller, we made sure that there was not too much light as to make it look artificial and that the light was consistent throughout.

Above, the lighting is much lower than on the shot that it leads into (below).

The lighter here looks too bright for outside and therefore artificial making the scene seem unrealistic.

Props/Costume

For our mise-en-scene we managed to create a double bed out of two single beds by pilling on many pillows and duvets! We had to strip the room of all photo's and posters that didn't set the scene. However, we left a beetles poster up and placed a record player on the shelf to insinuate that the partner who has been killed was a music fan. Along with this, we set up a make up table to show that the room is unisex and a couple live in it.

We chose a suit as the costume for our actor to be getting changed into. This is because it had a sophisticated feel and made him look like he was in control of the situation and knew what he was doing. We also had some ideas about nice shots which we knew we could get of the tie and the buttoning up of the shirt, for example. We had a gun and a passport layed out on the dressing table. The gun represented danger and violence, whereas the passport displayed the possibility of stolen identity or escaping. Another prop we used was a mirror, which we used for quite a few shots. This one to show how the man likes to take care of himself and even though he is in a rush for time, he still manages to make sure he looks good.

Cast

We picked our actor because he is good looking and so it would appeal to young women or teenage girls. He also looked older and more mature and we wanted the character to be older, so not a teenager, but not too old and he was the best choice. He also had a look about him which signified a bit of danger which was good.

Locations

Our location for our shooting was inside a room in one of the boarding houses. We had completely changed the room around the night before our shooting day and got everything totally sorted, this required a lot of tidying up and moving beds and tables!

Shooting schedule

The start of the day went just how we had planned. We came to school to collect the camera's, stands, lights etc. that we needed for our shoot. We also collected our actor which was one boy in our year. We took these things, including him, to the boarding house and up to the room where we were going to film. We wanted to get started straight away as we were quite short for time due to our actor and a member of our group having to be back at school to go on a theatre trip at 3:30.