1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
After first discussing the concept of our product, my group and I decided that we would cast
Aayush as the main protagonist. The age of Joseph, 17, is not typical of most reported
terrorists who are often older; allowing the audience to associate terrorism with people of
young ages instead of just adults. This also enabled us to shoot scenes in the school where
the actual act of terror would take place, a location that most people consider to be safe for
kids to go. In addition to this, news in Britain reports there is a high terror threat, in effect,
schools have increased security measures. Therefore the level of fear striking the audience
is amplified as the idea of children inside of schools being a terror threat to each other is
being established.
2. Another convention we decided to change early on in the filming/editing process, was the
music. By choosing a fairly unconventional track we were able to represent Joseph as a
more disturbing and deranged character. We played around with this idea for a while,
researching into other films which had used this, such as 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'American
Psycho'. However, we were aiming for something different, a track that no normal teenage
boy would listen too, hence the song 'A Horses Soul' in our early drafts. Despite this idea,
we decided later on in the project that this track did not fit the opening as well as we
anticipated, resulting in us changing the track to a more conventional thriller track. We
trialled various songs and scores, eventually settling on a more upbeat drum & bass type
track, similar to soundtracks of action thrillers.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
3. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The protagonist of our thriller is Joseph, played by Aayush, a brown British male. We firstly
decided to cast Aayush as the terrorist because he is a good actor as well as being brown,
which audiences may associate with a terrorist due to the common stereotype of of terrorists
being brown Muslims. However, we later decided to make Joseph a Christian, hence the
name 'Joseph' which is typically a Christian name. We thought that challenging this
convention may relieve the stereotype of people of certain religions i.e. Muslims being
associated with terrorism. This also creates the idea that anyone could be associated with
terrorism/radicalism, not just the stereotypical idea that only Muslims are terrorists. We
believed making this change this was similar to what thriller/horror film-makers have done in
the past- making an audience scared of a new threat, creating controversy and therefore
publicity. This technique is apparent in horrors and thrillers all throughout the 20th century,
but seems to have diminished after the slasher craze, despite horror films moving onto teen
horror flicks.
In the final 30 seconds of the opening, Joseph is shown walking into a classroom and sitting
down amongst his fellow pupils, each of them white British males. Contrasting to my
previous point about moving away from the stereotype of terrorists being dark-skinned, this
sequence presents Joseph as separate from the other people in the scene. I believe that if
we were to re-do our product, we would cast a white British male to emphasise the fact that
anyone could be a terrorist, as stereotypical terrorists are dark-skinned.
4. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
As our product is low-budget and the full length film would not feature many expensive
practical or special effects, we would most likely publish our film as an independent movie.
Most likely, this film would not attract a fairly large market unlike blockbusters, and therefore
be published on either YouTube or sold to a cheap publisher such as Film4. As we have
been focusing very heavily on changing conventions and aiming to create something original
and independent, we would aim to show our product at film festivals such as Cannes film
festival and Moscow international film festival. Although this type of film typically makes less
money, as passionate film-makers, we would rather create a quality underground film that
doesn't make much money as oppose to a large generic blockbuster which earns a lot more.
Furthermore, the market for British independent films is niche, attracting a smaller audience
and often not achieving success on a global scale. The main goal of this film is to send a
message to the British public, raising awareness of the terror threat all over the country
which is very apparent in todays society.
5. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Aayush, a member of our group, created another survey on SurveyMonkey once our
product was completed. The survey consisted of the following questions:
- What is your gender?
- What is your age?
- Which aspect of Oblivious do you think met the thriller conventions the most?
- Did you enjoy Oblivious?
- Who do you think would be the target audience for our thriller?
- What sub-genre of thriller do you think our opening fits into?
- Would you watch more of this film?
- What do you think could’ve been improved within this opening?
Our audience for 'Oblivious' would be the British public, as it is a British independent film. It
would also be marketed towards both genders interested in thrillers. Previous to our
research survey we believed that males would dominate our audience, due to there being
no females present in the film, as well as our previous thoughts that males would find a
violent thriller more appealing. However in our survey we discovered that around 50% of
females decided to watch the opening uploaded to YouTube. Therefore the film will be
marketed to both males and females equally. This gave us a further understanding of what
each gender finds appealing- the idea that males are less entertained by violence is mostly
a stereotype constructed by media such as films.
6. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Parents, teaches and people in education would be
the people most affected by the message of
terrorists being apparent within schools. As a result,
we would push the idea that the terrorist is in a
school when marketing the film in order to create
controversy and build up the hype around the film.
We also screened the introduction to peers
including most of our classmates, who seemed
intrigued by the introduction- reinforcing them as a
good potential audience.
After looking at the British Board of Film
Classification (bbfc), we decided we would give the
product a 15 age rating due to the strong violence
that would occur post the opening. Therefore the
film would only be legal to watch for over 15's,
which is in range with target market we wanted to
aim for. The only other barrier which could possibly
make in a 15 and not 12a, is the use of mild
discrimination against race. It is also not viable for a
higher rating (18) as there is no very strong
violence, sexual scenes or very explicit language.
By avoiding these criteria the product is therefore
available for a wider audience; gaining more
publicity, revenue and awareness.
7. How did you attract/address your audience?
In order to introduce our audience to the character and the plot, we used a threat video at
the start of the introduction. The video featured a close-up shot of the character ‘Joseph’
behind a threatening mask. Through the dialogue we established the characters intensions,
emphasising them with the sound editing Benoit achieved on his voice. The low and
aggressive voice connoted anger and threat- giving a tone of danger and violence. Also for
the shot we focused on mise-en-scene by ensuring the room was dark and the background
was barely visible. This enabled us to draw more of the audiences attention towards Joseph
as he was centred in the shot as well as being the only real visible figure. The audience
therefore focused more on his movement and voice which brought the tones of danger. By
adding a border and the word ‘streaming’ to the shot; the shot looked more homemade and
authentic- further signifying that it is a threat video shot at home.
In addition to this, we wrote the script in order to entice the audience- the threat suggests there
will be lots of action later in the film. We achieved this by mentioning an explosion in another
setting. Therefore, later in the opening when Joseph and the bomb are in school, the audience
is aware of what is going on.
8. Continuing on from the threat video, is a sequence of Joseph building the bomb and getting
ready to go to school. Dialogue of a man, presumably Joseph’s father, tells Joseph ‘it’s time
for school’ which informs the audience that Joseph is a student. Therefore the audience is
more aware of what the story will entail, as typically a terrorist is a grown adult. This fact of
the radical only being a child is disturbing to most audiences as young teens/children are
often associated with innocence and kindness. We believe this change is similar to that in
Alfred Hitchcock's ‘Psycho’ as audiences would possibly be more disturbed and afraid of this
character- creating controversy around the film; bringing in a wider audience.
Furthermore, the costume design of Joseph whilst in school implies he is a nerd, therefore
his fellow classmates; they will not suspect his intentions. This emphasises the fact that
Joseph is a disturbed character, and brings forward the idea that even the most unlikely and
innocent of people could be a threat. We use a medium shot featuring Jospeh placed in
between two classmates. This mise-en-scene suggests that Joseph is just like any other
classmate, blending in amongst the crowd.
How did you attract/address your audience?
9. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing your product?
From our first lessons of planning to the editing of our final piece I have learnt a lot about the
production of a film. Whilst first planning out how we would film the piece, we discussed and
researched different methods of shooting.
I gained my first experience with using a camera during the filming of the continuity edit in
which I helped film some shots; learning how use a video camera. After looking back at the
footage and deciding on how we could improve it, I learnt that the most important aspect of
controlling a camera was to keep the camera steady as well as keeping the subject in frame.
Lighting is also a very important aspect of film-making which I previously did not anticipate
to be so important. We used two cameras whilst filming our piece- a GoPro and a Nikon.
Unfortunately the GoPro, which we used for the threat video, had a very high exposure,
therefore the lighting for that sequence was darker than we wanted. The Nikon however had
a lower exposure enabling us to film the other sequences with the lighting we were aiming
for.
10. However this was not so much of a problem because during the editing process we were
able to lower the brightness and add a filter in certain shots. As co-editor, I had a fair amount
of input in a few of the editing sessions, and had a say in what changes were needed in the
editing. During editing the drafts I learnt a lot and was guided mostly by Benoit as he had
previous experience in editing. Therefore research on how to edit our footage was minimal,
and we focused more on the mise-en-scene.
We were able to colour-correct the whole opening to give it a look that represents the tone,
as well as dimming/brightening some shots which we were unable to get the wanted lighting
when filming.
In addition to the colouring, we added titles
during the opening which would fade in and
out, lasting four seconds. This was possibly
one of the hardest tasks in editing as we had
multiple drafts of different fonts and had to
decide where to position each one. Eventually
in our final draft we were happy with how it
ended up. However we did face problems
such as the font being too dominant over the
footage and being too spread out or close to
each other. One way we could have
combatted this problem early on would have
been to plan out where titles would go during
the storyboarding stage.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing your product?
11. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
Our preliminary task was my first experience of working on a film set, although it was not as
professional as the set for our final piece. Despite this, I still learnt a fair amount about how
to use a camera, direct, and edit. During the filming of the continuity edit, my group and I
each communicated fully and ensured we got the most out of the task as we could.
Personally I feel the most important benefit of this task was understand what was important
in order to get a good grade. On our first draft of the task our teacher gave us feedback,
telling us that most of the shots we were using were unnecessary and ineffective. Prior to
this we each believed that the shots we had used were okay and only the script and sound
may need improving. Therefore, we were able to focus more on camera angle choice and
timing of shots through planning the final project. This was extremely beneficial for the group
as we acquired this feedback fairly early on so were able to re-plan most of what we had for
our final project.
Another piece of learning we took
from the continuity task was learning
how to achieve match-on-action.
This is a fairly simple mechanic that
we use throughout our final cut,
however in the first drafts of the
continuity edit we were each
unaware of how important it is.
Therefore when filming the final
project we made sure to film shots
leading into one another, then we
had enough footage to smooth
continuous transitions.
12. One aim of this task was to ensure we did not break the 180 degree rule. We researched
this rule before shooting and did not break it once throughout the task, and reflected this in
out final project. However, we did discuss whether we should break this rule in our final
piece as it can be used to give a disturbing and distorted tone, similar to this dialogue scene
from the Shining:
However we eventually decided against this idea as we thought it would be unnecessary
and may possibly reduce our final mark. Therefore we looked at other conventions that
could represent Joseph as disturbed and creepy.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
