2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Choosing Thriller as our title sequence, I think we picked a difficult genre. The code and
conventions of a Thriller were pretty dark as a whole, for example the Mise-En-Scene of
weapons and story plots of kidnapping and psychological mind games. I think it was
difficult to make sure our title sequence didn‟t fall into a Horror genre more than Thriller.
However, developing our Thriller title sequence was not as difficult as we could have
made it to be. From research into Thriller title sequences I felt that our title sequence
required some longer cuts than quick fast pace cuts. We did this towards the end of our
title sequence when the Doctor follows Maria around the streets ready to take her.
We had to reshoot and add more clips to our title sequence twice so overall I would say
that we struggled a little with our choice of genre. For influence we used the title sequence
Se7en and Shutter Island. However, when looking back on these title sequences and
ours, I don‟t see much relation between them. When looking back at my Powerpoint I
made on „Codes and Conventions of a Thriller genre‟ I can see that our group did stick to
the use of the codes and conventions.
3. Brief Summary of my Title Sequence:
The extract begins with the Doctor working in a laboratory like setting, allowing the
audience to learn about the male characters job. There are then two shots which
contrast with each other of Maria and the Doctor in the diary, showing that these two
characters are relevant to the same situation. We then see the title of our film ‘Captive’
with Maria’s eyes looking around behind fainted jar bars, a jumpy pan across her
bedroom is shown to try and portray that Maria is an ordinary girl to the audience,
however the eyes looking around may hint anxiety in our character. We begin to watch
Maria getting ready to go out by painting her nails, applying makeup and putting her
‘party looking’ shoes on. The Doctor’s eyes appear to foreshadow to the audience that
the Doctor is aware of Maria’s social plans and that he knows where and when she is
leaving. The title sequence then shows contrasting shots of Maria getting ready by
showing the Doctor getting ready to leave which teaches the audience that both the
character’s clips are being portrayed in the same time scale.
We show both characters leaving their homes which also shows both characters are in
the present. The Doctor begins following Maria down the street, the Doctor gets closer
to Maria in the duration of the title sequence. Point of view shots of the Doctor are
shown to emphasise that the Doctor is aiming to capture Maria and it is not
coincidence. The title sequence finally ends with Maria turning around and the Doctor
grabbing the camera when the previous shot was Maria’s point of view. Which infers
that Maria is now a ‘captive’
4.
5.
6. When looking back at the Powerpoint I made to help us gain a better understanding of the
media product we was aiming to create we used to following codes and conventions:
MISE-EN-SCENE: Mirrors, Stairs, Tension building music, Facial expressions
CAMERAWORK AND EDITING: Quick cuts, Frequent change in camera angle, Black
and white, Tracking, Pan shots, Jump cuts
THEMES: Two or more characters messing around each other‟s minds, Demolishing each
other‟s mental state, Chase.
7. After we took our footage I feel like editing helped us create more of a Thriller genre
feeling. When putting our clips onto Final Cut Pro, we decided to change all the footage
into black and white. We originally did this because we took our footage in the sun which
didn‟t make our chase clips create tension when the Doctor was getting close to her.
However, turning the footage to black and white made the title sequence more mysterious
and looked better with our use of cross dissolves. When looking as our title sequence as
a whole perhaps our group should have looked into the Thriller film Sin City as the whole
film is filmed in black and white and works successfully.
8. How does your media product represent particular
social groups?
Within our media product, it contained two characters, a teenage girl and a doctor. The setting
was took two average london working class roads which concludes that the social class of
Maria was working class as she lives in a stereotypical home of home. However, you never
clearly see the Doctor‟s area due to the fact as he is in the medical business he could be seen
as a middle class man.
Maria: In the title sequence, Maria is getting ready to go to a friend‟s party, which is
stereotypically an average weekend for an ordinary teenage girl. The way Maria is going to a
party also infers that she may be popular in school despite there being no evidence of this.
The awkward eye contact with the screen also shows that Maria may be shy or nervous which
is common in teenage girls compared to more older women. Maria‟s character does not show
her in the way people way presume the media presents teenagers in movies, for example, she
is not fitting to the mise-en-scene of a typical teenager which is usually a hoodie or wearing
something rebellious. The use of heels perhaps shows that Maria is more mature compared to
other teenage girls. I don‟t think Maria is represented badly on behalf on teenagers in Britain,
she does not show any bad connotations in our title sequence, the only thing I believe that
could present Maria badly is the use of lipstick which may represent the character as
promiscuous.
9. The Doctor: In the title sequence we are shown the Doctor in his workplace and him leaving
the door but have no idea of his neighbourhood and wealth due to only footsteps being shown
leaving the house. The workplace suggests that he is perhaps a hard worker and very
knowledgable juxtaposing with the teenage girl who does come across less wealthy and
slightly anxious. The Doctor‟s workplace is shown with a „Bad Film‟ filter on it which shows that
it is in the past and could also represent his work being recorded which makes him seem more
professional. The mise-en-scene of rubber gloves and a mask also shows that he is a
professional middle class man.
The conventions of a middle class man portrayed in the media are usually well dressed and
wealthy or sometimes arrogant. The Doctor is seen in professional clothes at the beginning of
the sequence which does not break any of the conventions, however when following Maria
later on in the title sequence, he is seen wearing quite modern and fashionable clothes which
may portray his look as being more working class and less wealthy than we originally believe
after seeing clips of him being in his workplace and looking professional. Looking back the use
of our actor Christian wearing desert boots instead of more formal shoes may of been a
mistake but I don‟t think it effects our title sequence and the Doctor‟s role too badly.
10. What kind of media institution might distribute your
media product and why?
When doing our research before making our title sequence we decided
to choose Film4 and Lionsgate for our production companies. We
decided to choose Film4 as our original idea was to make an
Independent film like Film4‟s „A Field In England‟. We also decided to
pick Film4 as they seem to have targeted a similar audience to us, for
example „The Inbetweeners Movie‟ was clearly targeted towards to
young adults as it was about a group of friends going on holiday
together. However, we realised that Film4 was not appropriate for our
film idea after performing our Film Pitch to our media teacher and other
students, a big Hollywood budget film would be more ideal because of
the actors we wanted in our film to create star power to attract our
target audience.
Another reason our group firstly decided to choose Film4 as our
production company is because of a film which has a very similar plot to
ours, “The Lovely Bones”. Film4 producing a Thriller containing a
troubled teenage girl including some mind games and a dark thriller
storyline brought in our attention but after some early feedback we
realised it was not suitable despite this similarity.
11. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
We decided to choose Lionsgate for a number of
reasons regarding the amount of different genre of
films they release which are successful with the
target audience we was going for.
Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a novel which
was adapted into a Thriller/Adventure genre well
selling film which made a gross of $424,339,131 in
America. It could be questioned that the Hunger
Games series gains popularity due to the stars
which the film contains. Jennifer Lawrence is a
popular and role-model to a lot of teenagers and is
known to have a lot of fans of the target audience
which The Hunger games has. This gave our
group the idea of using „star power‟ in our film idea
which took our film out of the idea of being an
independent film.
12. The Cabin In the Woods
Another reason we decided to choose Lionsgate for
our title sequence is because of another Thriller film
„The Cabin In the Woods‟ which is a psychological
thriller. This film contains deceptive mind games
and this could be compared to our film idea as we
tried to create deceptive mind games in ours due to
our surveymonkey feedback coming back as
deceptive mind games being popular with our target
audience.
The film had an interesting and unique plot which
was influential for our film idea. Although the film
does not contain much star power like Hunger
Games does, I feel like this is a great influence for
Captive because of the storyline, using these two
movies as influence was a successful mix as they
used different techniques to create their target
audience when having the same production
company.
13. Who would be the audience for your media product?
When creating our title sequence we created a „Surveymonkey‟ and got 18 responses to
our survey. One of our questions on the survey was the age range of the people who
took the survey. The majority of the audience were 14-17 so we decided that to target
teenagers and young adults, because of this decision we decided for our main cast to be
an actor and actress that would interest this target audience so we picked Emma Watson
and Leonardo Dicaprio who are popular at the moment and attract the target audience
we‟re aiming for.
Towards the end of our title sequence editing and the coursework
as a whole, we received feedback from our class which thankfully,
are the target audience we was aiming for.
This is the best feedback our group received and I am aware that
the student which filled it out enjoys Thriller movies herself. The
„developing‟ points actually helped our group a lot when making
final changes to the title sequence.
It was nice to see from the feedback from our target audience that
they approved of the black and white video filters we went for and it
fitted to the genre and made the genre more clear.
14. From this survey I created an audience
profile for our title sequence and looked
into the demographics and the
psychographics our target audience would
most likely have. I decided that our target
audience demographics would be most
likely be E as the people that would see
this film would be an AS student or in
higher education. The psychographics I
picked was Explorers and Aspirers as our
audience is still young and experimenting
with what they want in life. With this
attitude the audience may like to look into
all different kinds of genre, including
Thriller. When thinking about the
stereotypical likes and dislikes for our
target audience, I would see our audience
being a frequent user of social networking
and interested in the latest trends if they
live in the city.
15. How did you attract/address your audience?
As mentioned before we decided to cast actors
and actresses which may be seen as „teenage
heartthrobs‟ so we decided to choose Leonardo
Dicaprio who has been in romances such as
Titanic and Romeo and Juliet to attract the
female audience. Dicaprio also had the leading
role in the famous Thriller film, Shutter Island.
For the male audience we decided to pick Emma
Watson as she is found attractive by many males
in the UK. Watson also usually plays teenage
roles in recent films such as Perks of Being A
Wallflower.
16. I think the use of star power in our title sequence helps attract the audience that we was
aiming for. I think the production company we decided as a group (Lionsgate) would help
promote our film to our target audience as they have released teenage targeted films such as
The Hunger Games. We decided for our film to have a budget of £600,000 which would allow
us to work with Lionsgate to promote our title sequence. As our production company is
Lionsgate, if our film was to air on television it would be before the Watershed as Lionsgate
films usually are. Our film being promoted before the watershed would allow our film to reach
our target audience of teenagers as it may be shown on television at convenient times such as
coming home from sixth form and college.
17. What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing this product?
During this project we mainly used two programmes on the computer which were Final Cut
Pro and Photoshop CS5. Final Cut Pro was hardly a struggle to use due to our preliminary
project at the beginning of the year, but as a whole I think Final Cut Pro is an easy software
to use for simple editing and has a lot of effective add-ons such as Video Filters and
Transitions for the clips to work better together.
Photo CS5 was not a struggle to use for as I have used it in my year 10 and 11 coursework.
I did not use it much this year as Sophie was left to do screen credits on Photoshop. I felt
like I helped her use it because I had previously used the website „DaFont‟ and Photoshop
together before in previous coursework. The only time I used Photoshop this year for this
coursework was to create a logo for our production company „Silent Studios‟.
I created a logo by filtering and modifying an image I found on the internet and adding text
over the top. I also filtered the text I found on DaFont. I liked the design of our production
company and thought the image matched well with the production name, however we
never fully developed this because we never took the photo the text is overlaid on
ourselves so left it out of our future decisions. As a whole I didn‟t find any difficulties using
either of these programmes, I found both simple and had no major struggles.
18. This was the last adaption which was made to our production company‟s logo. I think it was
effective to the genre we was aiming for and matches in with the theme of our title sequence
because of the idea of secrecy and loss of freedom for our main character.
19. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you
feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the
full product?
At the beginning of the year we was put into
different groups from our coursework groups to
create a continuity editing video. When recording
this I felt pessimistic and thought the shots would
not come out as I expected. After taking my tutorial
with the media department of Final Cut Pro, I
realised that the stress of combining multiple clips
together was unneeded. Using the razor tool was
simple and was able to make clean cuts of clips to
make the editing more accurate.
My experience with Final Cut Pro was successful
the first time I used it which gave me confidence
with my coursework. Our preliminary task contained
the editing techniques Match On Action and Shot-
Reverse-Shot which were quite simple to do. Shot-
Reverse-Shot was used in our coursework title
sequence so it feels like the preliminary task was a
lot of help to create my work.
