Finished Thriller Opening!

How does the Skins promo trailer represent young people?

The Skins promo trailer shows young people in many different ways. The promo begins with someone in a bear suit bouncing on a bed. There are lots of different things happening in the promo, such as drug taking, drinking, partial nudity, and sexual promiscuity and the use of many quick cuts between clips keeps it fast-paced and exciting. The soundtrack is The Gossip - Standing in the way of Control. This fits in well with the fast paced nature of the clip. The only sound in the promo is the non digetic soundtrack from The Gossip. This has the effect of making the viewer feel like they are not actually there which fosters a sense of voyeuristic fantasy.

The first half of the clip shows young people as very happy and enjoying themselves. They are dancing around the house, playing with toys, getting off with each other and taking various drugs. This represents youngsters as quite hyper and happy because of all dancing and running around you can see. It shows teenagers as being very promiscuous as nearly every other shot includes teenagers removing clothes, dancing sexually or making-out.

Up until 45 seconds or so into the trailer, everything is happy and everyone having fun, drug taking, dancing and laughing. However, the second half of the promo shows the characters arguing, breaking things, vommiting and generally making a mess of the place. It begins to show the nasty side of drug and alcohol use which balances out the video and shows that not everything at the party is still going well. People begin to start throwing up, pushing each other, breaking vases and other things... This shows the bad side of alcohol and drugs and represents the effects they have on teenagers. This represents teenagers as the kind of people who are easily affected by alcohol and become out of control while under the effects. This shows the different side to teenagers when they have been ingesting alcohol and drugs.

The camera shots are mostly close ups and mid-shots. This is done so as to capture all the different characters and their reactions to the party. The main themes of the promo are sex, drugs, alcohol and then towards the end, violence, figting and arguments. The colours used are mostly bright, vivid colours. This, along with the use of bright flashing lights helps give a feeling of being high on drugs and at the party. This is also enhanced with the use of slow motion on some of the clips, distorting your perceptions of time - as if you are high.

Overall this promo represents young people as very promiscuous and fun-loving. It also represents teenagers as typically taking loads of drugs and drinking too much, then being sick everywhere and getting into fights as they are all drunk or high on various drugs. The music and editing in the promo shows young people as very energetic and upbeat as they are all dancing around having fun. From this promo, you would expect the whole series to be all about parties, sex and drugs.

Explain, using specific examples, how the expansion of digital media has been and improvement for audiences.

Digital media has improved over the last decade by the way in which audienced view media and where they can view it... Before the internet, you could only watch films and shows on TV or at the cinema but now audiences can watch almost anything on a computer and access things through smartphones and games consoles too.
When it comes to movies, you used to have to go to the video shop and buy or rent a movie before being able to watch it... Then came DVDs and people were able to view movies much more quickly and easily, in much better quality. Blu-ray disks came next, again improving on picture and sound quality. This, along with the advances in home cinema systems means watching movies at home is almost as good as seeing it at the cinema
Because more people can watch films now, producers are making more films and spanning more genres, even creating some. These sub-genres are liked by audiences and a lot of people enjoy cult films more than the big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. Films such as Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project were huge hits and cost little to make.
The expansion of digital media has also turned consumers into producers... Films like the Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield both give the effect of a cheap handheld camera, reflecting what is really happening in society. Websites such as youtube make it simple for anyone with a webcam to become a producer. Uncomplicated film editing software such as Windows Movie Maker mean that it is also easy to cut up your clips, add transitions and effects and a soundtrack and almost anyone can make a short film.

Narrative Theories

Propp
Came up with the theory that characters in a story take on specific roles or functions. Propp came up with 7 character types usually found in a narrative (a character could adopt 1 or more of these roles); the Hero (restores narrative equilibrium by embarking on a quest), the Villain (creates the destruction/chaos), the Donor (gives the Hero something to help restore balance), the Helper (aids the Hero in some way), the Princess (usually has to be saved), the Dispatcher (sends the Hero on their task) and the False Hero (appears to be good but turns out to be evil).

Todorov
Todorov came up with 5 stages he thought would be found in the narrative of a text, and tend to be found in most mainstream ones. These stages are as follows;
1. a state of equilibrium at the beginning
2. the disruption of the equilibrium
3. a realisation that there has been a disruption
4. an attempt to repair the disruption
5. the restoration of the initial equilibrium or a new equilibrium

Barthes
Barthes came up with 5 codes which he thought were in any narrative. These 5 codes are as follows:
Enigma Code - Something the audience does not know.
Action Code - Something the audience knows and don't need explaining.
Symbolic Code - A structure which organizes meaning such as through the use of binary opposites (good/evil, war/peace).
Semic Code - Using hints to connote certain concepts such as a man wearing a suit in a mansion with classical music playing connotes wealth.
Referential Code - Looks at the audiences wider cultural knowledge, morality and ideology.

Levi-Strauss
Saw narrative structures in terms of binary oppositions; sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts. For example, earth/space, new/old, light/dark... He was not interested in the order events were arranged. Themes can contain a variety of oppositions; Sci-fi films may contain earth/space, good/evil, human/alien etc...

Game Show Convergence

Crazy Canoes

The gameshow will consist of 5 contestants, who all have to build a canoe/raft from various materials and then have to race to the finish down a river with obstacles... Sort of like Scrapheap Challenge. The prize is some sort of canoeing/white water rafting holiday for 2.

Convergence:

There would be many ways to interact with the game show...

• Iphone App (a simple version of the game you can play on your iPhone) downloadable from the app store.

• Flash version of the game on the website you can play to win prizes... The person who scores the highest per week could be invited to be a contestant on the show (contestants usually apply using the online form on the website)

• Clothing – a range of Crazy Canoe t-shirts, jumpers etc sold through the website's shop.

• Downloadable ringtone of the show's theme tune.

• Downloadable wallpapers/screensavers for your computer.

• Bet on the contestants using the red button on your sky remote or on the website.

• A Facebook page for fans to 'like' and comment about the show – with random prizes to give away such as Crazy Canoe clothing and backstage tours of the show.

Male Gaze

Mulvey said the cinema is in 'male gaze'. This means we project sex on female characters and see them as sexual objects. Darkened auditoriums foster a sense of 'voyeuristic fantasy'.

Thriller Evaluation Final Draft

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

  
  

In our thriller, we looked at many traditional conventions of existing thriller movies such as The Blair Witch Project, Donnie Darko and The Book Of Eli. We did not want to conform to all thriller conventions as our thriller falls into the psychological thriller sub-genre so challenging some conventions (such as gender roles) would enhance the overall feel.

The location we chose for the entire opening for our thriller film (above right), a forest, is a common convention of the thriller genre as the setting can give the audience a sense of abandonment, loneliness and desolation. This helps to convey the feelings of hoplessness and being lost that the main character would feel. Also, the vertical lines of the trees can represent bars in a cage and entrapment, another convention of thrillers. This can help to give the audience the feeling that the character is unable to escape. We looked at other films where a wood or forest is the setting such as The Blair Witch Project (above left), the opening of The Book Of Eli and Dog Soldiers.

Masks are another convention of the thriller genre. Our hallucination character, the woman in the gas mask, wears a mask in order to appear more mysterious and less human. We chose to do this as she is not actually real so does not need to appear normal. A mask is worn by the character in the opening scenes of The Book Of Eli (left) in order to make the character look more mysterious. We hope we have achieved a similar effect.

We tried to use a variety of different camera angles and shots in order to keep the audience's attention focused on the action. We used some POV shots where the character is looking around the forest, this links to the Blair Witch Project again as the same style shots are frequently used in it.

Our plot fits into the Psychological Thriller sub-genre as it is a bout mental illness. Our media product is, in many ways similar to Donnie Darko as in the film he has hallucinations of a big weird rabbit thing called Frank. We looked at this film in order to draw inspiration for our thriller opening. For exaple, the eerie music during the opening scenes of the film.

We decided to have our psychopathic hallucination as a woman and the victim as a man. We did this in order to challenge the conventional gender roles in movies and hope to have achieved the effect of amking the viewer challenge ordinary conventions in their heads... We have chosen to conform to many traditional conventions of the thriller genre; bars, entrapment, voyeurism, masks... We did this in order to make it easy for our audience to be able to recognise it as a thriller movie but hope that they do not become bored through seeing exactly what they expect to see in a thriller.

• How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The main social group shown in our thriller is british youths as our main character is Rhys, a 19 year old schizophrnenic drug user. Our plot involves drug use and the rave culture. I believe that our thriller represents this social group well in that it shows how seemingly normal people can have serious underlying mental health issues...

Our thriller challenges gender roles as our 'victim' is male and the 'villain' is female. This contradicts the stereotypical gender roles in movies as it is usually a male who is the villain and the female is usually the damsel in distress.

Our thriller does conform to the theory of male gaze as the female character is dressed in tight jeans and therefore is slightly portrayed as a sexual object. However as this is combined with the challenges to gender roles, she is not seen as a useless woman in need of rescue.

• What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

There are many ways to distribute our thriller opening. The internet is a good place to start. Websites such as Youtube allow anyone to upload and view videos for free. This is good in a way as there is no cost to us for distribution, however this also means that it is very difficult to make any money from these kinds of websites. One very good thing about using websites such as Youtube is that you can target almost all audiences simultaneously.

Our thriller opening has a challenging plot in that when we screened our rough cut, a lot of the feedback that we got pointed to the fact that people thought there was more than one gas mask-wearing figure surrounding the character or Rhys. This was the effect we were going for so that it could be explained during the film that she is a hallucination. This could lead to our thriller receiving finding to be made into a feature film and then released in cinemas. This is, in my opinion, the best way for our thriller to be distributed as it would be a lot more well done with adequate funding and would also make a tidy profit at the box office.

• Who would be the audience for your media product?

Through our audience feedback sessions, we discovered that most people enjoy watching psychological thrillers. However, to be a little more specific - our thriller is mainly aimed at intellectual people who enjoy watching movies that make them think... Movies that you need to actively think about while watching in order to fully understand the complex plot. I believe people who would most enjoy our movie are people who enjoy other Psychological Thrillers such as Donnie Darko, Inception and Shutter Island.

• How did you attract/address your audience?

One way in which we attracted our audience was through our choice to have no dialogue in the opening of our thriller. We did this in order to keep the tension in the scenes. We hope this had the effect of making the audience want to watch the rest of the film and our feedback supported this.

Also, by having lots of action during the opening we capture the attention of the audience. The beginning of our film is what happens in the end of the film. This could have the effect of boring people through the rest of the film as they already know what will happen, but we intended for our audience to be fascinated by the events leading up to the attack in the opening and also we wanted them to wonder who these characters are and what their stories were. In our audience research, many people did not realise that the woman in the mask was in fact a figment of Rhys' imagination so hopefully the audience would be interested in finding out what is going on by watching the rest of the film.

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

From making the opening of the thriller movie, I have learned many thing. Firstly, I have found out how to navigate my way round a mac, as I have only ever previously used windows. I found this very difficult at first, but after lots of practice and learning the various keyboard shortcuts (which was quite confusing after being used to windows shortcuts).

Also, I have learned how to use the video cameras in the college and the various settings on them which is very useful. It would have been a lot more useful to know more about the cameras before filming though as we had a lot of trouble trying to import some of the video we filmed as we had accidentily filmed it in HD which Final Cut did not like at all. I also had some advantage with the editing software as I had previously used it to make a music video during activities week at the end of last year and from doing the music video for A2 media.

We also ran into a bit of trouble every time we opened our thriller in Final Cut because it would tell us that it had lost some of the files or that they were 'offline'. This meant that they needed reconnecting every time which was annoying to say the least. I also learned a bit more about transitions and effects such as hue and saturation (used to make some clips darker to make it appear as if it is evening/night) as I had only previously used simple transitions and not used the effects fully.

We also used Garage Band to create our music track, this also threw up a few problems but only minor ones and they were easily overcome.

• Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you think you have learned in the progression from it to the final product?

Our prelim task was a lot different from our thriller opening in that it had a much simpler storyline and was much shorter. Creating the prelim did help a lot in the making of the thriller opening as it taught us how to plan a shooting schedule effectively and showed us the importance of following a storyboard (although we did accidently forget it the first time we went to shoot some of the thriller so had to go back for a second session).

Another thing I have learned is the importance of working in a group. We were all assigned different jobs to do so if we were too slack, we would be letting the whole group down. Audience feedback is also very important, we did not do any form of audience feedback for our prelim task as it was really just a practice for using the cameras and the editing software. We found the feedback sessions very useful and got some good comments from it to help us improve our thriller.