Evaluation - Shannen Ashcroft

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

Our thriller Hamlin is a horror thriller with psychological attributes as we gained influence from our research on the film Seven (1995), where the audience gets caught into a twist. Our narrative was based around murder and present ordinary things into extreme conditions, similar to the narrative of Final Destination (2000), where going grocery shopping could lead to your death. In this case, a family moving house became the danger.

However, thriller’s can be associated with blood and gore like in Saw (2004) but we found that not all audiences can handle that specific theme so chose to only hint at death by showing shadows and using lighting to our advantage to enhance the drama of the scene.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We used six actors and actresses in total for Hamlin, most of which are of a British origin as the setting of the film is more suburban and it is British people that are atypically associated with that particular area. Only the antagonist of the film is of a Southeast Asian ethnicity which can lead to thoughts of discrimination, yet could be a link to the rest of the story. A similar idea is shown in the film Rush Hour 2 (2001), where the actor Chris Tucker tells Jackie Chan to “follow the rich white man,” and it turns out his theory is correct. Our antagonist is also male because he is the main character and our researched showed us that males were the more favourable leading roles. Stereotypical gender representations are used with females being damsels and males being the antagonists due to their stronger, more brutal attributes and the antagonist being intelligent and witty, putting on an act for the protagonist to believe. Yet he also has a typical disability as he has a bad leg and limps vigorously, just like Kevin Spacey’s character in The Usual Suspects (1995). However, we included a male protagonist to show the stereotypical hero of a male in a storyline.

We tried to use various P.O.V shots from high angles when shooting the chase seen to show the dominance within the antagonist and the inferiority of the female victim, giving her the stereotypical helpless, also seen in Sherlock Holmes (2009).

The family used seems like a relatively normal family - Father, mother and two children - that are quite young to try and show that they may be more naïve, shown by their casual working class clothing.

The estate agent looks very young as that is the key factor to our storyline with the sacrifices of children giving the villagers a younger appearance, so long as they continue to kidnap them and has more of an upper class status, shown by his appealing suit and clean cut features. His dialogue is formal and polite, echoing his welcoming demeanour and smile which we use to try and throw the protagonists off suspicion, yet again reflecting Kevin Spacey’s
character in The Usual Suspects (1995).

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product, and why?

I imagine an independent film company distributing our media, with only selected cinema’s screening it as it is quite low budget and the thriller genre seems to be limited to ideas as obscure ones could be completely unsuccessful, just like House of The Dead (2003), voted 2nd place in a list of the bottom 200 movie rankings on a popular global website www.everyonesacritic.net. As our film’s ratings accompanied by a positive audience feedback are what we wish to achieve, creating an adaptation movie, using ideas similar to any in the bottom 20, using forms and conventions opposing our production research or using completely immoral/explicit scenarios would be unwise. A quick DVD release would be suitable with funding from the UK Film Council and a private investment as it is only a small movie and primarily British. After thorough research a BBFC rating of 15 would be most appropriate as violence, nudity or bad language isn’t shown to any great degree. This fits well with our target audience mostly consisting of those 15 and above as our research led us to believe that it is young people that mostly see films in the cinema and get attracted to the thriller genre, so using an advertising media that is popular to them, such as internet advertisements would more likely attract them.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

This production is aimed largely at 15 to 35 year olds as our cast is of a wide age range and our primary research showed us that people within those age groups enjoyed both going to the cinema and watching thriller movies. It also showed us that people enjoy fast paced, suspense building action, gaining inspiration from the adrenaline filled sequences within The Matrix (1999). We used a constantly inter-cutting scene between the flashback of a chase and the current conversing of our main characters; together, with a suspense building soundtrack we hoped to achieve the attention and satisfaction of our chosen audience. Our emphasized characters take the attention away from the smaller roles in the movie allowing an opportunity for the smaller role to rise up unexpectedly; an example being Fight Club (1999), would hopefully attract those who enjoy a good twist.

5. How did you attract/address your particular audience?

We based most of our movie content from our primary research as that’s where we were most connected to the public, asking them questions and finding out what they enjoyed the most. Through this we tried to create an obvious link between the pursuer in the flashback and the estate agent in the current time by giving him a limp, that, through our audience feedback questionnaires, was clear to viewers. This key factor could be used to try and throw the audience off another character whom could later be revealed further into the story, surprising them. A classic example of a shock would be in the film The Sixth Sense (1999), which turned out to be the most popular film within our primary questionnaire when the audience was asked to name their favourite thriller. In one of our interviews we were told that too many twists could make a film confusing and lose the interest of the audience with the example of Vanilla Sky (2001) being used yet one or two cliffhangers are valued, although that usually introduces the assumption of a sequel which this movie isn’t exactly intended for. The strength of our female protagonist, the mother, opposes the stereotype although this is becoming more and more popular with movie making as it allows some viewers to be attracted to her and become encouraged by her will power whereas the strength of our male protagonist, the father, shows his authority and dominance, possibly sticking to the stereotypical hero.

We used a basement type hall painted black with limited lighting when shooting the “ritual like scene” to enhance the mystery and evil behind the sequence and the characters within it. Candles were used to create an atmosphere with a pull focus shot used to create dynamics and show perspective which worked as, after reading the audience feedback, we found out that the audience believed all of the props used were appropriate for each scene.

The actors’ dark clothes showed how sinister their characters were yet the casual Converse shoes on our main antagonist shows how normal they can be at the same time and our audience believed that the characters' clothing showed their personalities (shown in audience feedback). We tried not to show their faces as much as possible to allow the mystery behind their characters, only allowing one of them to later become identified as the estate agent. A classic point of view chase scene from the chasers view was used to try and gain sympathy from the audience for the young female being chased as well as fear from the dominance of the camera as it approaches the girl after she has fallen; yet another stereotype with a typical damsel. Initially, she wore a pink dress to suit the stereotype of a young girl, but the dress alone along with the pig tails clearly show her age and innocence. We used the non-diagetic sound of a heartbeat along with the ambience of a suspense building soundtrack to try and create tension between the intertwining scenes. After an eerie scream both heartbeat and soundtrack stop for the conversation scene between the family and estate agent to fade up with the diagetic sound of cars in the background. Because the previous soundtrack has built everything up to this moment, where the family meet the murderer, to then stop as he seems to lure them into a house, leaves a slight cliffhanger so the audience stay curious, just like the ending of The Descent (2005).

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

During our preliminary task, I discovered that filming wasn’t so easy as I had to do different takes of the same scene multiple times in consideration of the editor. This gives them a wider variety of continuity shots to experiment with and make effective. As we filmed the basement scene, the picture was coming out slightly grainy due to the dim light we tried to use so we spent valuable time fixing the lighting of the props rather than increasing the intensity of the floodlight as we feared it would be too bright against the actors in comparison to the darkness of the surroundings. When filming outside the sun would obviously travel across the sky, due to the change of time, which made the shadows and lighting slightly change on our subjects, effecting the white balance. In retrospect, the balance should have been readjusted to meet our needs as we were at a disadvantage, camera that wasn't exactly at Hollywood quality, when it would’ve been better to use a high quality camera like the one used to film The Collateral (2004), especially when filming in dark spaces.

When editing, we realised that transitions were complicated and continuity editing has to be precise. Titles and credits had to be precise and even, using the correct font to emphasize the genre of our film and match the mise-en-scene, just like the title font for the film Gothika (2003). The red symbolizes the blood that would’ve been made from the stabbing of the girl, but we wanted to restrict actual blood as it disturbs some viewers.

7. Looking back on your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When planning the preliminary task, I found working as a group rather helpful as different ideas could be discussed and creativity shared, however, deciding on which roles to undertake was rather difficult but quickly resolved as we compromised and delegated each others’ strengths and weaknesses, sharing the work fairly between the four of us. Due to the inexperience within the group we found it difficult to make sequences that flowed fluently and enhanced the atmosphere we were trying to create. Thinking about the mise-en-scene was challenging as we hadn’t done any primary research linking to audience preference. Editing took us longer than we initially thought as we didn’t realise how much thought had to go into it yet we learnt how to extend the timeline to edit in milliseconds and make everything more precise and accurate.When the real filming came around, we were a little more advanced in our knowledge and understanding but were given a different tripod which was a little less unstable, so handling the equipment took up slightly more of our time. We kept the roles from the preliminary but tried to extend our creative limit, gaining influence from different films with the same genre. The weather was unpredictable so we just had to rely on luck when choosing the day of filming and to our luck there was no rain, although it may have added on to the miserable atmosphere that reflected the genre of the film. We all contributed slightly to each role but made sure we played the main part of our own chosen one.The theory work of our thriller was most successful as our group could all do research at a high standard and hand in everything within deadline date, yet the practical work seemed slightly challenging as we had to re-edit our work three times which knocked the groups confidence slightly. But after hard teamwork, which I am sure many other professional film company’s have to undergo, we pulled through and created our final piece to which we were able to show our gradual improvement and development, understanding our roles and tasks to detailed extents and undergoing the task we were given. This resulted in a successful video as our audience never rated our movie lower than a rating of four out of five with 70% giving it a four and 30% giving it a five.