Final Two Minute Film Opening

Evaluation Question 1

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

My media product challenges forms and conventions of real media products because I have kept to some of the conventions of a psychological thriller film, but I have challenged the forms by modernising a serious issue such as stalking. A convention that we followed, was the fact that 'suspense comes from within one solitary character, who must resolve conflict within their own minds'. We kept to this convention as we only cast Max to play our solitary male stalker. However we did challenge certain conventions, as when our two minute film opening  begins it shows our male character first, we created the notion that it is all about him, we as viewers are in his world. I believe that this sets our psychological thriller apart from the rest as we decided to focus on our killer straight away, this allows the audience to gain an understanding into his complex characteristics and therefore the audience will empathise with him, where as in other psychological thrillers the victims are showed first forcing the viewers to pity them. So by showing the perpetrator first rather than his victims, we have challenged this convention. However there are subtle hints that he does have these 'victims', but we thought that by not seeing the victims first this would surprise the audience in a way, and subvert the usual convention that we expect to see in a psychological thriller.


Another way that we challenged a convention is that we showed our killer in his natural enviroment, which was his room. This allows the viewers to gain a deeper meaning and understanding of him and to see the true nature of our characters mind. However we didn't challenge the stereotypical gender convention of stalkers. We stuck to what's expected by using a male stalker, as we thought that if we subverted the gender stereotype it wouldn't be believable and realistic. Also whilst on the topic of gender, we also kept to the convention of females being portrayed as the victims, we could have challenged this convention by making our stalker a woman, only I believe that if we used this idea and didn't rely on the gender stereotype, our opening would have been unusual and therefore unrealistic because people don't expect to see a female stalking a male.We have also challenged the another convention of the age stereotype of stalkers. People usually perceive them too be old aged perverted men, whereas in our opening we used a young male to surprise and intrigue our audience. 


As a group we didn't really challenge the camera angles you would expect to see in a psychological thriller, we stuck to the traditional angles, such as close ups, medium close ups, panning, tracking etc. We used the close ups mainly to show and emphasise the detail that our male stalker puts into his obsession with women. 


Films such as 'One Hour Photo' and 'Red Road' were the basis for our film opening. I  followed the conventions of the film 'One Hour Photo' most as I think it portrays an obsession quite well, also due to the way the character in the film becomes obsessed through the photographs, this was an aspect that we used within our film, as we used a notice board that displayed images of our characters previous victims. Also the films that I have listed previously gave us an idea of what kind of font we should for our titles. The film 'Seven' gave us a great basis of what style of font suits psychological thrillers, we then searched for this font on the programme 'Imovie', we used a font style called 'Cracked'. We kept to the colour scheme of red and black as these colours have connotations of death, lust, blood etc. Due to our title being 'His Lady In Red', we thought that the colour scheme would suit our title and we therefore put a lot of emphasis on the particular colour red. We did however stick to the convention of using dark settings and lighting to emphasise and signify the troubled demina of our characters personality. The dark setting represented his dark nature and this was something that we tried to portray within the lighting that we decided to use. We used transitions such as fade outs, and cross dissolves to add a modern look to our film opening, but to also keep within the creepy style we were trying to create.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your Media Product represent particular Social groups?

My media product represents particular social groups such as: psychopaths, people with mental illness,youths,males and people who are isolated from society. I believe that our film opening represents psychopaths as our male stalker is portrayed as having psychopathic tenancies, as he is shown to be a person with no thought for the rights of others and for the rules of society. Through the characters actions we can clearly see that he would be perceived by the audience as a psychopath. I also think that our film opening represents people with mental illness, as our stalker appears disturbed and unaware that his obsession with women is unnatural and wrong. The audiences will notice the pleasure that the male character is getting from him obsession which will highlight his mental state. 

Also our opening represents males and masculinity, through our main character being a male. Also the fact that he is a young male represents the social group of youths. Through the colour red we used a complex way to show how the character asserts his masculinity and how sure of himself he appears to be. Also through the ending shot, which revealed the main characters body whilst he was about to harm himself, we see that he is in a good physical condition which brings about the notion that his victims will be vulnerable and feeble compared to him. Which also backs up the idea of the gender stereotype that males are superior and stronger compared to females. 

 We dressed our character simply as we wanted to show that he has no interest in his aesthetic appearance, he only has interest in his unnatural obsession. The main prop being the notice board this showed and highlighted the fact that our male character is in fact planning to kill his next victim, so this was a way of representing killers and criminals. People who are isolated from society are also represented in our film opening. As our male character is portrayed as being alone and isolated, also because we filmed our male character in one location/setting which was his room, he never actually left his room, which shows how isolated we portrayed him be. So our male character can be generalised to all of the isolated people in society. This aspect makes our film opening more relatable and realistic. Also considering our storyline of a man being obsessed with a woman this could represent and signify the true and sometimes dysfunctional male and female relationships, and how in other media products they are sometimes glamorized. I believe that because our film opening depicts the notion of obsession, it reveals the true grittyness of it and how it affects people. This could relate to victims of obsession and the perpetrators themselves.

Evaluation Question 3

What kind of Media Institutions might distribute your media product and why?

After I conducted research into various different media institutions I decided that 'Fox Searchlight Pictures' would be best to distribute my film as it specializes  in independent and British Films alongside horror as well non English language films. Fox Searchlight blends speciality films with trademark art house fare, meaning it has solidified its position in the Independent film marketplace. So considering that our film opening is a British independent it would be distributed best by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Also the film 'One Hour Photo' which I have used a number of times for research was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures , and this particular film was widely perceived by its target audience as it received no bad reviews. Proving it was distributed well by Fox Searchlight Pictures. I decided that I wanted my film to premiere to sky box office so that it becomes a well known film. I would then like my film to either go onto a Movies on demand service, sky movies or even straight to DVD sales, so that my film becomes well known globally and therefore recognisable.  

Evaluation Question 4

Who would be the audience for you media product?

The audience for my media product would be any one aged over 18, due to the research that I conducted via a questionnaire into the thriller genre we discovered that this age group are the main ages that watch thriller films. Also because our opening contains inappropriate images and swearing it isn't appropriate for anyone under the age of 18 to view it. However with the swearing element we were unsure whether we could include it so in the end we decided to mute in out in the programme 'Imovie' which we were currently editing our footage on.  I discovered the statistic that 6 out of every 10 people prefer to watch a psychological thriller rather than a horror. So this helped to me to stick to the genre that we chose, as it was clear that it is a popular genre and is widely liked amongst people. Also people with a high socio- economic status, so middle class people with high paid jobs, good incomes and a good education were the types of people that we tried to attract. The reason being is that we felt our film opening is complex and sophisticated so we thought that these types of people would understand it best. We also knew that because it was something that socio- economic people wouldn't really see everyday, the film would be unique, different and new due to the fact that its imaginative, creative, disturbing and complex, I believe that it offers a great sense of escapism to all those who watch it.

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

Our target audience research informed us that we would be attracting and addressing anyone aged over 18. We attracted them through the use of our storyline, as we moulded but challenged the usual conventions of a psychological thriller. So viewers would be unsure and intrigued by what they were seeing as it wouldn't be what they expected. I believe that we attracted our audience because our character is sort of surreal and because he represents several social groups such as males, isolated people he is extremely generalisable to all, and therefore appealing. I think that because we tried emphasise dysfunctional relationships through the notion of obsession and the scenario of stalking, this will draw people in if it is of interest to them. Within our film opening we tried quite hard to use as many conventions as we could of an 18+ film, these include swearing and inappropriate images, however with the swearing element we decided to mute it out. Also through the of suspense and curiosity I believe that this will attract many people, as the film opening would cause them to wonder what's going to happen next further on into the film.


I think that the media element of our film opening will attract our audience, because we aimed to attract middle aged people as well as young, we used traditional way of stalking as well as a modern way of stalking. Through the use of the notice board, this portrays stalking through images and notes,which is a fairly old fashioned way compared to using modern day technology such as the laptop. The laptop emphasised how easy it is to stalk someone through the use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The laptop is the symbolism of 'voyeurism'. Voyeurism is the sexual interest in 'spying and observing' others, the word 'Voyeurism' comes form the word 'voyer' which translates to watch someone. So we tried to signify this notion of Voyeurism through the use of the laptop and the interest and pleasure that our male character got from looking at the images that were on the laptop. Also I think that by using this contemporary technology we added a modern concept/theme to our opening which helped to attract and address  teen audiences that were over aged just over 18. Whilst we were trying to attract these audiences we realised the problems that occur due to Voyeurism, such as 'one nation under CCTV'.  A  statistic states that a person can be pictured on CCTV over 300 times a day.  Also the lighting , camera angles, storyline, the music and the mise en scene, makes the film opening intriguing and intersting which also helped us to attract our audience.

Evaluation Question 6

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

Through constructing this media product I have learnt a lot about the new modern day technologies that are available to me. I have learnt how to use a Sony hand held camera that has features I have never heard of before. I also learnt how to use  a tripod, MacBook computers, which I found difficult to use to begin with as there are many differences between the functions of them and normal everyday computers. Also I have learnt to use the programme Imovie when constructing my opening, I also found this quite difficult to use as I have never used a programme like it before, however when I was in the process of editing it became a lot easier to use. I did however find it difficult to continually connect the Macbook to the internet each time I used it, through the system and network preferences, I also struggled when trying to upload our videos to Youtube as we encountered several problems. Such as the Macbook would 'time out, insufficient memory space etc'. To solve this problem of uploading we attempted to upload the videos directly to our blogs, however due to the size of our videos this was also a lengthy process and often was unsuccessful. But with repeated attempts the videos successfully saved to our blogs.

I have also learnt about the process of blogging, I am computer literate but I had never used a blog before, so I found the layouts and hyper link buttons difficult to understand and use. The blog is very interactive and creative, I researched how to add 'Prezis' to my blog which helped me in other ways to import documents and images such as logos into my blog aswell. I also have learnt a lot about the video streaming website 'Youtube', I have learnt how to upload videos and add tags to them, which I could not do previously. I think that the biggest achievement I can say I have reached is learning how to edit and use more up to date programmes and software 'Imovie' which proved to be a great programme to use when editing our footage. As within 'Imovie' I learnt how to add transitions to our footage to add to the fluidity of the footage, I also learnt how to add a fade out to the end of our footage so that part of the titles stayed on screen to create a memorable effect. I also learnt how to speed up clips and slow then down which in the end created effective results. Also the other programme that I learnt how to use was 'Garageband', this programme was complicated as there were many functions and so much that you could do on the programme. I learnt how to import soundtracks and how to lower the volume in certain areas, mute parts and time the soundtrack with our film opening. 


Also because our group re- filmed our entire opening, I have learnt about the continuity of lighting and how on the programme 'Imovie' you are not able to brighten up your footage. Even though I had learned how to edit the colour, contrast and saturation of our footage, we were unable to brighten it up enough on the 'Imovie', which resulted in us re-filming it all to achieve a better overall quality.

Evaluation Question 7

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

Looking back at my preliminary task, I can’t believe how much I have learnt and how much the quality and standard differed between my preliminary task and my two minute film opening. If you were to compare the two, you would notice drastic differences between them. I noticed that my preliminary task looked a lot less professional and the editing was jumpy and disconnected. This could have been because when I first started media I wasn’t confident with using up to date technology as Macbooks and software such as Imovie as I have never experienced them before. In my preliminary task I was unsure about camera angles and the effects they would individually create. So I think I have learnt a lot more about camera angles and which ones to use and where to use them. I also have learnt how to edit footage on Imovie which I found really difficult at first, but it got easier over time. In my preliminary task the editing was poor and it didn't contain any transitions, however by learning how to use Imovie, I was able to add transitions and improve the quality of my film opening. Also I think I have learnt how the importance of a good storyline can impact the quality of the finished product. For example in my preliminary task there wasn't much dialogue and the storyline wasn't direct and clear, however in my film opening the storyline and narrative are clear from the start. With my preliminary task I didn't really plan what to do and how to do it, where as I believe I did a lot of planning for my opening. I have realised the importance of planning and how vital it can be. For example I created a number of story boards to help the process of filming. I also feel that I have learnt the importance of titles how they benefit the footage. On the preliminary task we only had titles at the beginning and end of the footage whereas in my opening I incorporated them into the footage, as I had learnt how to do this in the process of editing. The quality of sound is something else that I learnt from my preliminary task, because we filmed outside in several scenes and this impacted the sound, so for this reason I stuck to filming indoors for my opening. So that the sound was understandable and clear. I also learnt that adding a soundtrack really does make the opening a lot better, it creates great effects and it adds a lot to the fluidity of the footage whereas in the preliminary task we didn't have a soundtrack which made it a little dull and boring. So I have learnt that in most occasions music really does benefit the footage and the way that it’s perceived by its audience. I have learnt that meticulous planning is important as you need to be aware of your audience and how to attract them, so this is why I conducted research into the conventions of psychological thrillers so I knew what my audience expected. Also I think I have learnt a lot about selecting the right clips to use, because with the preliminary task we never had a time limit so we could just film whatever, however with our film opening we could only go up to 2 minutes, so I had to select appropriate clips to keep our film opening direct effective and therefore memorable.

His Lady In Red (FIRST DRAFT)

The video above is our first attempt at our Two Minute Film Opening. I managed to upload it to 'YouTube' even after all of the technical problems I encountered. I have evaluated certain aspects of this footage previously, however I will go into more key detail about how we improved in my evaluation considering we re- filmed all of our footage.