Evaluation of Post Production

In the preliminary task I felt we used very basic camera shots, we tried to be adventurous with a pan shot. But after shooting and editing our finished product, we used a scissor lift shot, a tracking shot, several pans and many shots that were significantly out of our comfort zone at the time of shooting the preliminary task.

The editing process for doing our preliminary task was very simple and short. We literally put a shot first, and then we cut it directly into another shot. We didn’t even use titles. But we did have to dub over our final cut, because no sound was recorded on the day, due to no fault of ours, which was more advanced than all the other groups. In our finished product, we used animated titles, fades and various sound effects as well as the sound we recorded on the day. Our sequences involve sequences of short cuts leading up to a specific moment, where the tension is imminently cut away, at the same time building more suspense. We are trying to create a mood of tension and suspense, which is reminiscient of the style of the slasher genre.

The ambient sound from our shoot day wasn't really that important in the end as I ended up adding a soundtrack that the audience couldn't hear (non-diegetic), this consisted of drones and various tones, but something else that was integral was how I used sound FX to double up sounds to make sound like real objects, these sounds were however diegetic as the whole point was that the sounds were created by the misdoings of the protagonist. If we ended up shooting the whole film, we would need a dark and ominous score that reflected the style of the film we were trying to do. After all we are trying to build the suspense up to these crucial breaking points we're the tension is cut and the audience are left without a leg to stand on.

We placed the titles of our thriller at the start, as not the change the tension during the build up to the climax of the opening sequence, fast sequences can't have slow titles, so we decided that it would be best if our product only displayed titles at the start.

All of our choices have been chosen to appeal to our audience. The whole point of our thriller is draw in thrill seekers, so hopefully we have rewarded with our opening sequence, the sound and editing reflects our target audience directly as it is for horror junkies, and we edited the sound and edited the whole sequence with this in mind. We want this to appeal to the fans of Saw and Hostel, therefore with having a series of close-ups, POV shots and keeping it in a claustrophobic setting we were able to mkaintain the tension and drama which are a prerequisite for the horror genre.

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

Redrum productions isn’t a currently existing production company, this in itself challenges the forms of conventional media products. The text blurs into separate colors (red, green and blue), then fades out. This evokes a sense of mystery in the watcher, it upholds the reputation in slasher movies of particularly peculiar titles. (e.g. Halloween). Also Redrum is murder spelt backwards which is from the cult horror classic The Shining.

This shot challenges conventions of real media, because unlike the majority of slasher films, the film doesn't open with teenagers having sex, or another teenager babysitting. We are slightly dependant on gore and latex make up, but, unlike most horror flicks, we never actually show a victim being tortured, we merely build the tension to make the audience believe that this is going to happen.

One of the largest factors behind our thriller, unlike films in it's genre, is that we try to lead the audience to false assumptions. For instance in the above shot, we lead the audience to believe that our thriller is going to centre around what is outside the window. We use my soundtrack and some sound FX from soundtrack pro to create this illusion. (The noise idea was from The Blair Witch Project). We challenge the conventions of real media by building tension that isn't heavily relient on a central antagonist. In this shot, we used an exploding lightbulb (the lightbulb doesn't really explode, we created this effect by inserting sound FX and editing the white balance and exposure on shot) to create the tension. Most slasher films revolve around a central antagonist (i.e. Jigsaw from Saw, Freddy Kruger from The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Jason Voorhees from the Friday the Thirteenth franchise and Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise.)

We used this shot, because the room isn't lit, the only light source is from an old torch and this forces the audience to focus on the victims face, and this makes the audience feel sympathy for the victim, because we see a look of anxiety and confusion on his face. We conform to other media products that are already successful in this scene by borrowing from The Blair Witch Project and Kill Bill Vol. 2 which use darkness and sound to create tension.Here we conform with current media conventions witht he over use of gore. This shot merely sets the scene for a room full dead bodies. Many films are overly reliant on this feature (i.e. Saw). We challenge current media by not being overly reliant on this. But we do mix in a bit of gore to create this tension.
This title challenges most media conventions because it isn't overlayed on top of real-time shots. It is merely overlayed on blackness. The title, like the first titles convey a sense of mystery, and seeing as this is the final shot of the opening sequence, it begs the question to the audience as to what happens after the titles.

How does your product represent particular social groups?

Our Protagonist is a teenager, we don't actually learn much all we learn is that he is trapped. But in terms of representation, he looks like an emo kid as he is pale. He looks similar to guitarist Pete Wentz who is from a particularly emo rock band. In terms of negative representation, he is beaten up, this may make the character seem weak. My film Mute is about teenagers who have been captured and literally piled up in a pitch black room waiting to die or even worse have the horrible torture waiting to come for them just to please one sick minded and mentally disturbed man. Teenagers in my film are represented to be weak willed and helpless. Other films that employ this tactic are basically any other kind of horror, but usually the American films. Just like capture and torture films like ‘Saw’ the adults usually make it out alive since they have more wit and life experience than the younger generation. This fits in with Saw as there is just one man trying to escape after been drugged and kidnapped from his home, you don’t find out the reason but later on in the film everything becomes clear as to why he was put here and he starts put together the clues he realises the horrible truth that he is actually the mastermind behind this whole scheme of things. This movie is not intended to be aimed at a audience younger than 15 as it is very jumpy and features a lot of blood and gore .This movie connects with teenagers since it is a thriller/horror and this is the particular genre of movie an average teenager will go to see and since all the cast are teenagers it works even better. This wouldn’t connect as well to Adults since most don’t go for horrors, they like the high concept action movies like the Mission Impossible franchise.Young people are often represented as chav’s and hoodies and the fact that a certain group of hoodies were banned in shopping centre Bluewater just outside for wearing hoods .The representation in the press is about them being vandals and hooligens who prey on the older generation robbing , mugging and beating up people for fun . People are scared by a group of hoodies hanging around they feel imtimitated. Our film represents teenagers in a very different way. This man who captured all these teenagers and taken them hostage in this room. He has a strong hatred for teenagers as a social group as they are seen as vandals and have no feelings for the older generation or anyone else except them selves. Maybe he has been mugged and assaulted often and has had enough of the hoodies taking advantage of him and his age. But our film makes teenagers seem like weak and subservient people as they are all tied up and gagged and this renders them useless to themselves as they have no chance of escaping. This shows teenagers in the light of a victim, making them the prey and no longer the predator hunting down easy targets on the street.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The Audience for our thriller who include emo kids and horror junkies. This is because there are apparent emo kids in our thriller (above), many thriller viewers would watch this largely due to the amount of gore and horror involved. Any class could see this as it could relate to anyone as if your working class or if your upper class as horror targets a main stream audience , since most people rich or poor love being thrilled and scared. The main target audience for horror film in general is the 15-24 year old market . A saecondary audience would be older horror fans of 25 + Our film is most likely to be aimed at teenagers of the age of 15 to 24 year olds this beacuse who we have in our film is in the age range of 16 -18.
This is because people who are into heavier music with lyrics about death and dying or angry agressive issues . Tradtionally more working or middle class older men prefer this kind of music they will be more fond of the thriller/horror genre as it fits there music taste and in some cases their sense of style aswell .This subculture fits in with the fashion of metal and goth which some influences come from horror films like vampires etc. example above is an Emo teenager.
Even 15 to 24 year olds fans don't have to look gothic or emo or dress differently . Normal looking teenagers can still like this kind of movie.
Whether it being the horror if they were kidnapped as a teen or if there child was taken away as an adult .It would be more likely for boys as not many girls are into the horror genre unless there with there boyfreinds. Our vilm through out has high tension . It is very chillintg the whole way through and jumpy . This is done by use of sound and clever camera work . The whole thing remains mysterious and it is left with a cliff hanger as the last scene is the apparent dead body waking up suddenly.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Target audience

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

Looking Back at Preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to full product?

In the preliminary task I felt we used very basic camera shots, we tried to be adventurous with a pan shot. But after shooting and editing our finished product, we used a scissor lift shot, a tracking shot, several pans and many shots that were significantly out of our comfort zone at the time of shooting the preliminary task. The editing process for doing our preliminary task was very simple and short. We literally put a shot first, and then we cut it directly into another shot. We didn’t even use titles. But we did have to dub over our final cut, because no sound was recorded on the day, due to no fault of ours, which was more advanced than all the other groups. In our finished product, we used animated titles, fades and various sound effects as well as the sound we recorded on the day. Also the storyline was much more developed, and we put a lot more thought into our choice of actor, as opposed to the preliminary task where we literally just found someone who was free at the time.

Unlike our preliminary task, we spent weeks planning our thrillers, largely because the more preparation we did, the smoother the shoot day would run and as a result, the better the overall product would look. There were so many aspects of pre-production; we had equipment lists, cast lists, props list, set designs, extras designs, storyboards, costume lists, and information on the setting of our thriller and of course lighting requirements (i.e. whether it was night or day and how we would replicate these effects in the studio).

In comparison, the preliminary task’s editing process was much simpler and less time consuming than the main task, but we gained a much greater knowledge of final cut pro through the editing of our main tasks as a result of this. In the preliminary task we used titles and sound to help sell our finished products, we had to change this frequently to accompany the mood of the thriller, and also because we hadn’t used titles on our preliminary tasks, so the whole concept was a bit new to us.

The use of sound developed hugely, we didn’t add any sound FX to the preliminary task, we only re-recorded the dialogue due to a faulty microphone, in our thriller, we kept our sounds because our microphone wasn’t faulty, but we also added and changed sounds using soundtrack pro. I made a soundtrack for our thriller out of various drones, and sound effects, we doubled up on many sounds also just to thicken them out and make them wholly more realistic. The overall result of my soundtrack was a tense and suspense building atmosphere.

As a result of recruiting a better actor, the suspense in our thriller was much better, and comparing this to our preliminary task, where our actors where really quite bad, it really makes a huge difference even in a thriller like ours where there is no dialogue, because there is no one to talk to.