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

Our media product genre can be categorized as a psychological thriller with the story focused on a little girl. We got the idea of focusing on a little girl from films like Knowing and Orphan. They are real media products which also base their story on a little girl. We took both genres of the films and looked at which we could use to make our media product stand out and give it its own meaning. In terms of structure, we decided to start differently compared to the films we have researched. You will find that our film opening starts with the main character walking into a graveyard. As the media product has to be 2 minutes long, we decided to really get into our storyline and engage the audience. Therefore, we started with a graveyard to create the eerie mood. All the way to the end, the story focuses on this character which differs from the other films we researched in terms of how many characters are introduced to at the beginning.

In Knowing, the opening of the film takes place in a school showing the involvement of the character with the rest of the characters. However, our film opening isolates the character and we try to put her in the centre of the story plot. The camerawork we used represents the genre of the film. The high angle shot from the tree shows someone else watching the girl. That shot was an important part to our media product because it produces the sense of someone watching her which intensifies the genre of our media product.

At the end of our opening film, we zoom in to the characters face which is very effective ending to the opening because that invites the audience into the character's life.

An important prop in our media product is a small doll Emily holds near the end of the opening. We used a close up to show this doll because it has a significant meaning here but the audience at this stagee will now know how this doll ties in with the plot of the story. We thought the close up was vital to include because close ups on props really does give clues to the audience of what to expect later in the film.




In terms of sound, we found it confusing as to whether we should use music or not. The quality of diegetic sound we captured was very good so we really wanted that to stand out for example the wind you hear when watching our media product really captures the mood. However, we thought a lack of non diegetic sound would not create the atmosphere we wanted. We did at the end decide to use sound suitable for the genre of the film.

The mise en scene in our media product is very simple but it could be said that the costume of the character reallt stands out. Emily is wearing a school uniform which can make the audience associate her with tenderness and innocence. However, this girl is far from this as she is has more to her that meets the eye which ofcourse is not so obvious in the beginning. Nevertheless, this is an assumption the audience can make.

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

In the process of constructing our product, our group learnt about different technologies, in particular when using the camera and editing software. We learnt how to use new elements of the camera, such as a variety of interesting shots that will be suitable for the mood of the film. Gradually, we became more comfortable with filming and produced more creative shots. Knowing how to use the camera and editing software meant that we could be adventurous and daring with what footage we had to film. For example in the graveyard scene one member of the group climbed up a tree in order to create a low angle shot, making Emily look more inferior to her surroundings.
In our original plan we decided to have a scene at the beginning where Emily was on the swings in the park. However, while editing we realised and came to the conclusion that this scene didn’t fit in as it was too lengthy and it didn’t flow seamlessly into the next scene. So we deleted it so our film opening can run smoothly.
Another device that we used was the sound track for the film. Because it was raining one day when we were filming we put the diegetic raining sound high so we could get a feeling of the atmosphere and it gives the film more tension. Also we realised that the weather is an important part of our film, therefore when we captured our piece we realised that the lighting wasn’t continuous. To tackle this problem we toned down the lighting of some parts of the film. This increased the continuity to make the film appear as it was filmed in the same day.
Furthermore there have been a lot of times where we filmed something and when we edited it, it did not fit in with the rest of the film. Therefore we learnt to film as many times as we could to use different angles so that when it comes to editing it we have enough footage to rely on.
In conclusion, this experience taught us how technology (editing software) can be used to create a specific effect that we want such as the sound, lighting etc. Learning how to use the technology and software’s really helped us in the process of construction for our final project and made us aware of the errors we made and helped us realise what to do if we use the software’s again.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film opening introduces a young girl who is the main protagonist. The opening of the film revolves around her dark life and problems that she is facing. To approach this matter, we used a character of the age of 11 and a female to create a vulnerable character but with a deep underlying psychological traumatic past. However, it is not clear to the audience as to why she is experiencing these supernatural events. Another reason why we chose a young girl to be the main character is to create the effect that is similarly done in ‘Orphan’ and ‘Knowing’ where the whole film plot is affected by a young girl’s actions thus we try emphasise her significance. Coming back to the point about vulnerability, we amplified the vulnerability of this girl through school uniform. The school uniform symbolises the tender age of the character and therefore we associate her with innocence. This is an influential contrast between the dark past of the character and how she is portrayed with the school uniform. Therefore, if you bring two contradictory aspects together, it can challenge how people are seen in society especially a young girl. Furthermore, our film opening opens with a graveyard scene. This scene has great importance to the ways the character is portrayed. A school girl entering a graveyard and having a strange connection to a grave represents her in a different light because the visit to the graveyard connects to her dark past. The audience won’t know that at this point but in some ways it illustrates that she is autonomous and capable to tackle her own problems. At the age of 11, this is unexpected meaning that our media product challenges the stereotypes that people may have about young people. In addition, the opening of a film could be regarded as the most important part of the film as it shapes the plot of the rest of the film. In our opening production, we focused only on the character meaning that there is no involvement from other characters. This is vital as it demonstrates the importance of the character because the whole opening focuses on her. Immediately, we understand her significance to the story and how the rest of the story plot depends on her behaviour. The title of our film opening is Emily. We used the character’s name as a title to make it clear that she is the lead character which again showing her importance. In conclusion, our media product represents a young girl in a positive light even though the story plot revolves around her mysterious life. Even though it is not clear from watching our film opening that the character has great importance in the rest of the film, we have challenged a lot of stereotypical views regarding the age of someone. Our film opening explores a traumatic past of a young girl who is haunted by a memory from her past and we approached this subject in a very subtle way. This is because we did not want to overcomplicate the situation thus meaning that we left hints all the way through the opening of the film so that the audience themselves can figure it out.

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

From our preliminary task we have learnt how to plan out what exactly we would need to film by planning in paper format. We wrote down what type of genre we were going to do which was for our main task a psychological thriller.

Locations were then discussed. We learnt what need to be in the scenes to convey that this is a psychological thriller therefore we used a scene in a graveyard to show this as graveyards look eerie and dark.
The Location was quite far so organising the days we would film was difficult we found out it would be hard to get all members together to film but managed through communication.










Long Shot of Graveyard.

We learnt how to fit the character to our films genre comparing to our preliminary task, we used a different genre. We had to research and learn a lot about the main tasks genre. Our character is inspired by the girl in “knowing”, we had to fit her more into the genre by using make up and her to wear school clothing.








Girl character from "Emily".









Girl character from "Knowing".


We found out that Psychological thrillers are a sub genre which contains some elements of horror.

Learning from our storyboard we had to change some scenes as there were problems to filming in the locations. An example of this is the swing scene, at the time many children would go to that park we filmed at, we found out this made the scene unconventional into our genre. We needed the park to look quite deserted but at a certain time because we did not want the recording to be too bright or dark. Comparing this to our preliminary task we filmed indoors. We did need to take the lighting into consideration as we did not want to use natural lighting because it made the room look too dark, we did not want to use natural lighting because we were new to filming and to keep the lighting constant we used artificial lighting. Diegetic and non- diegetic sounds were used in the main task. We learnt to make our own soundtrack with Garage Band; some of the sounds we found were very effective and were right for our film.

Deleted swing scene.

New opening scene.

During the filming process we discovered in both preliminary and main tasks that we added more camera shots. We used some of the camera shots from our preliminary task, we used the match cut from the close up of the hand in the first task and we used this when our character walks up the stairs and she puts her hand on the banister as she turns. We feel we have improved this shot, and we also experimented with other shots. From the preliminary we had to work with a written task where as in the main task we were free to use as many shots as we wanted but under a certain time. We tried camera shots we did not use and tried a high angle shot which worked well looking down at the character. From our preliminary task we were told to take note of the 180° rule. If the rule was not used the characters movement would look odd and this would make the footage not run smoothly.

Overall a lot of the skills we learnt from our preliminary task were very useful. We learnt how to use a variety of new camera shots and learnt a new genre of film, what the conventions in the genre were and how to find alternatives to problems we faced.

Analysis of the opening of Knowing

We chose this film to analyse its opening as it links to ours to an extend. It fits into the genre we are using in our opening sequence. Here, we will look at the credits and its title and how the film has used it. We will also be looking at what elements in the opening of this film shows its a thriller film. We will be using screenshots of the film in order to help us explain.

Knowing begins with the logo of the film studio that supports the film. Summit Entertainment is an independent American film studio.

This shot shows the directors name; Alex Proyas. He was also the producer and the screenwriter.








After the
director's
name, the main actor's name appears.








This is the title of the film. With the moon in the background, it shows the genre of the film (thriller) very clearly. You could also interpret that the film contains mysterious elements.






This shot is just after when the title appears. The camera zooms out of her face, showing her and her surrounding. The movie did well to show her lost and in her own thoughts while she is staring up at the sky. In our opening sequence, we showed the character looking mysterious too by beginning with a graveyard scene. The audience won't understand at the beginning what the character is doing there and that's the start of the mysterious.She is juxtaposed with the rest of the children in the background. She also looks hurt and mysterious which kicks off the start of the film because the beginning of the film connects to the other events happening after.

This screenshot is inside the class . You can see clearly the student's uniforms and that they are in a school. In our opening sequence, we put school uniform on the character to establish her vulnerability and young age.






Here is the opening of the film Knowing

Pictures of the locations

Whilst we were filmimg for our AS film production, we took pictures of the locations that we were using as our opening. The locations that we chose to film were important for the opening in terms of whether the audience would understand the genre of the film and also to the film opening itself.


Picture 1

Gate of the graveyard

This shot is the beginning of our film. We included the gates of the graveyard with the character standing in the middle, facing ahead. This single, wide shot shows the character wanting to open and go inside this deserted graveyard. From just watching this bit, it is not clear that it is a graveyard. It also looks like a park. There is no clue as to what she intends to do in this shot. This confusing is good result because we don't want the audience guessing what she is going to do right at the beginning.



Picture 2

long shot of the graveyard path



This is still in the graveyard. The character walks along this path. The reason we used this in our opening is because of surrounding. You can see the trees and the leaves on the floor. It creates a tense atmosphere because this scene leads to the part where she is visiting a grave.

Picture 3

inside the house

This third picture shows the living room of the charater. We included the living room in the opening of the film because it helps connect the graveyard and the character's bedroom. The graveyard scene is an important scene in the opening as it gives clues as to what the whole film could be about and the bedroom scene features significant key points about the character's story eventhough we approached it in a subtle way. In order for the character to get to her bedroom, she enters the living room.





Picture 4



bedroom


This picture was taken in the bedroom. The bedroom is important in our opening film like the graveyard. Here, the character looks at a doll which has connections with the graveyard. The connections are again not obvious as it is only the opening of the film. Also, it is at this scene that elements of the film's genre (thriller) can be noticed with the character hearing unexplainable voices. The picture also shows the contrast between the film and the character. As the story is meant to be dark, the picture shows a bedroom which could belong to any 11-year-old girl. We wanted to show that she is a normal girl but with problems.