Evaluation Question 7 - Looking back at the Preliminary Task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from the full product?

This video is our group discussing and evaluating the overall preliminary task. It discusses how it has effected our actual media thriller and what mistakes we made take we tried not to incorporate into our thriller.

- David Huxford

Evaluation Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

- Bradley Hart, David Huxford, Tom Winn, Taylor Gladwin

Evaluation Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

- Thomas Winn, David Huxford, Bradley Hart, Taylor Gladwin

Evaluation Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Name: Arthur Woodbury
Age: 21
Arthur lives a laid back life style as he works full time in blockbuster and has a high interest in films. He is interested in all types of thrillers but his favourite sub genre is psychological thrillers.

Arthur is not fussy about where he shops but buys the majority of his clothes from Topman, he also shops in River Island and Blue inc. He is not very keen on designer clothing but occasionally wears lacoste.

Arthur watches adult cartoons such as Family Guy and The Cleveland show. He also watches comedy dramas like Scrubs and Skins.

Arthur listens to all types’ music. He is very keen on clubbing with his friends so his favourite music is techno. He also listens drum and bass as he likes to attend raves.


Name: Shelby Cox

Age: 17

Shelby has a hardworking life, studying her a-levels at a sixth form college, she’s finds it hard to make time to watch movies but is very interested going to the cinema to watch movies which are newly released. She says that her favourite movies to watch when she does go are either romantic comedies or action movies. But she also says that she also likes action thrillers which include Die Hard.

As an average teenage girl she likes to shop in shops such as Topshop, House of Fraser and Primark. She enjoys watching programmes like 90210 and Glee which are based around reality. She likes to listen to the new chart music.




These two people are our target audience because they are around the age of target audience and also they are both regular uses of the cinema meaning they both tend to watch films a lot, but Shelby is less likely to go and watch our thriller because she may not have the time or may be more interested in a romantic comedy which may also be at the cinema. There is still a chance she will see our thriller as she is partly interested in thrillers.

-Tom Winn-Bradley Hart

Evaluation Question 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

- David Huxford, Bradley Hart, Tom Winn, Taylor Gladwin

Evaluation Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

One particular character that influenced us greatly for our thriller was Trevor Reznik, played by Christian Bale, from ‘The Machinist’ (Dir. Brad Anderson, 2004). Many of Trevor’s mannerisms influenced us when we were thinking of characters for our film, and this film and character gave us many ideas on how to make the audience feel uneasy and make them ask many questions about the particular character.

In the film, Trevor is extremely thin, there is almost nothing of him, and throughout the film other characters tell him “if you were any thinner you wouldn’t exist.” He also has insomnia, and looks tired and beaten down at all times. He lives alone and his mind is weary from lack of sleep or some things that are troubling him. This is the kind of feel we want to give our main character. In the opening two minutes of our film, we want to create as many enigmas for the audience as possible. We want them to question everything, and one of the main talking points will be the main characters appearance and mannerisms.

One of the main aspects about our character will be the look of his face, and how it will look sleepy, almost as if it has given up. Trevor has a similar look throughout ’The Machinist.’ Because of his body, his face looks very thin as well. His cheek bones are easier to see than in most people’s faces. This gives him the look of someone that is struggling with life. His eyes also look very hollow, and there are large bags under them from lack of sleep. This makes him seem distant, as if he is barely there and barely alive at all. His facial expressions are usually of wonder, mystery and confusion. They make him seem like he doesn’t have anything figured out and that throughout his life he has always been searching for something. All these aspects of Trevor’s face make him a very interesting character, and the audience immediately wants to know more about him. This is the feeling we want to create with our main character. We want him to look exhausted, and make him seem troubled. The first shot of him is very important, and we want him to be covered in sweat, with obvious marks on his face, such as cuts, bruises or bags under his eyes, for example. This will automatically draw the audience in and make them wonder about him, before he has even said a word.

Another aspect of Trevor is his body. It is abnormally thin and shocks the audience straight away when they see him. This is the kind of reaction we want the audience to get from our character. We want him to look isolated, and make it seem that even in a world with billions of people, he feels more alone than anyone. Trevor also feels alone, and as if his life is going nowhere, working a dead-end job and wondering why he cannot sleep. His body is almost a metaphor of his mind itself. It is ragged and weary, and was not what it once was. His body conveys his state of psychological unease throughout the film, a trait that we want to emulate in a similar way with our character. We want our character’s body to seem beaten down and as if the character himself can barely work it anymore. We don’t want to be as thin as Trevor, as we don’t know whether our character has insomnia, or another kind of paranoia or phobia. Since we are only filming the opening two minutes, we want to create as many enigmas as possible and leave the audience thinking about everything that we have displayed on screen.

A further interesting aspect about Trevor is his clothing. Throughout the film, the clothes he wears seem to be much too big for him. This gives the audience the impression that he has had these clothes every since he was in better shape, and as he has got thinner, they have obviously become too big for him. They also look very old and battered, as if he has owned them for a long time. We want to create a similar look with the use of our chosen clothing. We want our main character’s clothes to look unwashed, dirty, old and rough. They will probably have many holes in and will either be too big or too small for our character. We have chosen to use this kind of clothing to create more enigmas for the audience, and to also make our character look unique. But mostly, we have chosen to use these types of clothes because they fit our characters state of mind, and make him seem very lonely and perhaps poor. This will hopefully make the audience feel for him and attach themselves to him, and want to watch more to find out why his life is in such a mess. We want our character’s clothing to look different to Trevor’s however. We want the clothes to look cheap, and having wrong sizes will make it look like he cannot afford anything else, or that he doesn’t care what clothes he wears, as long as they keep him warm.

To conclude, Trevor Reznik is a great character to study and analyse for our film because he has many interesting aspects about him, and was a big influence on us when we began creating the characters for our film. We feel that our character will create many enigmas for the audience, and make them want to watch the rest of the film to figure out why he is so different to other, simpler characters that are usually seen in films.

- Taylor Gladwin

This is Jack Nicholson in Batman (1989) directed by Tim Burton. He plays the joker and has been a big influence to the character that I play in our thriller. He has a boystorous attitude which is very contrapuntal to the situations he is in. In this release of Batman the joker looks very well dressed and smart which is not shown in the 2008 The Dark Knight where the Joker portrays an image he does not care about his appearance which implies his insanity. We have chosen to use the dress code like this but the character in the suit does not portray an image of insanity but shows a contrapuntal image to the other character who is pretty messed up. This shows signs of light for the character and how he could improve his life by turning over a new leave, as this is the first 2 minutes of the film we will not see all the other characters. Other characters could consist of being in a suit but dirty, grubby suit that another character may wear to show an evil side of Taylor’s characters hallucinations. This would take after the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

The character in the suit will be living up to the dominant ideology as he is a white, male, able bodied, Christian, heterosexual but we do not look into the characters family as this is not an aspect of our thriller movie.

The Jokers suit is also very vibrant which stands out in the low key lighting in the film. This has had an influence on our character in a suit but we do not have enough money to buy a suit and it will also destroy the impact we are trying to create on the character of a smart intelligent person. It would also not fit in with the room that we are using and we are trying to create a gloomy affect by using low key lighting.

- Brad Hart

The character that Brad play’s in our thriller is going to be based on the idea of a man wearing a suit who is unknown to the viewing audience. To get idea’s towards what type of character that Brad will be based around each of us have looked at past characters in other movies.


In the movie Constantine, the character of ‘Satan’ is played by the actor Pete Storemare. In the movie the character is wearing a plain white suit which is a contrast to the normal stereotype of the devil. Satan’s outfit is a mix between a smart suit but also the director has tried to make the character look evil by making him not wear any shoes. In out thriller we want to create an enigma by making one of the main character’s wear a suit. This will make the audience suspicious of the character because it is not normal for a man wearing a suit to be in the location where out thriller is set.

- Tom Winn

In our thriller, Bradley Hart plays an imaginary character that wears a suit throughout his role in the opening two minutes. This immediately is supposed to speak to the audience as contrapuntal and confusing showing the state of the house and the state of mind of Taylor Gladwin’s character in the thriller. Characters wearing suits in films has become popular in some thrillers of the modern day, this to which influenced us in our thriller. In four different films, the use of suits is used as a key part of the characters persona, as it is a contrast to what the audience would usually visualise what they would wear.

Hitman

(Xavier Gens, 2007) This film is about gun-for-hire "Hitman" is a genetically-engineered, elite assassin known only as Agent 47 hired by a group known only as 'The Organization' is ensnared in a political conspiracy, which finds him pursued by both Interpol and the Russian military as he treks across Eastern Europe. The character Agent 47 (Timothy Olyphant) is one of the influences for Bradley Hart’s character in our thriller. As he plays a hitman, audiences expect him to be dressed in black with ninja like equipment with him in secret compartments. In contrast to this however, he wears a back blazer, a white shirt and a distinctive red tie. This separates him from other forms of agent, as this not only make the audience take him more seriously, but it is how most audience would recognise this character (because he doesn’t take it off throughout the whole film), making his uniform just as important as he is. The way Agent 47 in this film behaves is similar to the James Bond films. Agent 007 is usually seen in a suit throughout his movies to symbolise upper class and social status, just like in the film Hitman.
































































- David Huxford

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

Title of film: The title of our film itself ‘Allegiance’ use typical thriller conventions, but develops them slightly. We agreed to use the name as our title as we thought it immediately created enigmas just by hearing it, without the need for any trailers, posters or other marketing techniques. Thought there is no other film by the same name, similar films have gone down a similar path and used just one word to make the audience feel a certain way. The words used are not always to create enigmas, but sometimes to tell the audience what they can expect from the film. Some films that have used this technique are ‘Signs’ (Dir. M. Night Shyamalan, 2002), ‘Identity’ (Dir. James Mangold, 2003) and ‘Awake’ (Dir. Joby Harold, 2007). Not only do these films create enigmas for the audience, they also give them an idea of what kind of film to expect. This is exactly what we wanted to achieve with our name. It is a word that is not used commonly every day, and upon hearing it or reading it, people will instantly be intrigued, and want to find out more.

Setting/Location: The shot we used from behind the pill bottle as our main character approaches them was one of our favourite shots that we used, and we believed it challenged traditional thriller conventions. This is the first shot in our film where most of the room is visible, giving the audience an idea of the whereabouts of the character and what kind of state he lives in. To have the shot from the pill bottle itself, it gives the illusion that the pills are a big part of the characters life, and that perhaps everything else around him is meaningless unless he has those pills. The camera shot is almost from the bottle’s point of view, giving the audience the metaphor that it is almost willing the character over towards it.

Costumes and Props: This shot is an important part of the introduction of our film, and it the first shot where the suited character can be seen fully. The suited character develops typical thriller conventions, as when a character is usually seen in a suit in a thriller film, they are either a James Bond-like spy, or a villain that is very well off money wise. This is immediately obvious to the audience that this character is not similar to those characters as he is standing in a rundown home. Though the suit is a piece of clothing that many films use, we think that having a character wear it in this particular scenario makes the audience ask questions and wonder what may happen next.
Also viewable in this shot are newspaper and police tape, which the main character was using was a bed. This also develops typical thriller conventions as most films have a proper bed for characters, no matter how bad they are doing. By using newspaper as a bed, we immediately tell the viewer that this character is not like others, and is maybe the most depressed and psychologically scarred character they have seen in film.

Camerawork and Editing: Though it is hard to see from the picture, this shot used a handheld camera and our director used just his hands to follow the character after picking up the pill bottle. This develops thriller conventions as most directors would have used a tripod for this shot. While we did try this method, it did not give the effect we had in mind. We wanted the shot to reflect our characters mindset, and by using just bare hands for the shot, it gave the impression that the characters mind could fall apart at any point.

Title font and style: Our credits also challenge typical thriller conventions. Credits to almost any film are usually a font that is easy to read, and the words nicely spaced apart so that the audience can read them easily. We decided to go against this and make our font tough to read, and have the words in our credits shaking. This gave an immediate impression that the film will have a similar tone and may be unstable and hard to take in, much like the credits themselves. We are showing the audience early on what kind of film they have got themselves into.

Story and how the opening sets it up: The shot of the hooded man running away was a very important shot for the beginning of our film and uses typical thriller conventions. There are many similar images in other thriller films, and by using this we wanted the audience to know that this film may contain someone trying to escape from something or someone chasing someone or something else. These are typical storylines conceived for thrillers and that makes the audience have connotations of what kind of storylines to expect from thriller such as ours. While a man running is a simple shot, the camerawork used and the enigmas created draw the audience in and make them want to watch on.

Genre and how the opening suggests it: The shot of the hanging man that is used as the first shot in our film develops thriller conventions and tells the audience exactly what kind of genre this film will be. Though many films use people being hanged as part of the story, not many use it as their opening shot. By doing this we immediately set the tone of our film, and allow the viewer to have connotations and remind themselves of other thriller or horror films that contain similar images.

How characters are introduced: The shot of our main character waking up and staring straight into the camera challenges thriller conventions. Most viewers expect the main characters of the film to be introduced traditionally, and that they will be part of one of the main establishing shots in the opening of the film. We have gone in completely the opposite direction with the introducing of our characters, as the audience becomes shocked by seeing him wake up suddenly and stare straight into the camera, almost straight at them. This gives the illusion that the character may know that he is being watched, and it questions whether he is breaking the fourth wall or not. The use of this camera shot gives the audience many enigmas, and intrigues them as the film goes on.

- Taylor Gladwin