Fixation

  

This is our two minute opening sequence for our film Fixation. This is our final product of all the blog work so far. My main responsibility was to edit this film. 

Evaluation

Media
Evaluation
 
1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products?
Our film, Fixation, is a psychological horror with a stalker sub-genre. It uses quite a lot of the generic stalker film iconography and key themes. When watching similar films such as, 'Cape Fear' and 'The Loved Ones.' I noticed that they all share similar ideas about what it means to be a stalker. They both show obviously disturbed individuals right from the beginning. However, our film challenges this as it begins by showing what seems to be an ordinary man. It is not until later on in the opening title sequence that it reveals he has a more sinister agenda. The majority of our opening scene is close-ups to show the man beginning his morning routine. This is another unconventional aspect as he is at first portrayed as a normal member of society. Our plot is linear as it follows the story chronologically. Some of the normal iconography used in stalker films is included in our short film; these include things such as knives, dark shadows and a vulnerable character. We took inspiration from the film, ‘The Loved Ones’ in this aspect.

We used the same music throughout the opening sequence. We did rhythmic editing so every time we cut the music hit a beat, this can be seen very well on the end credits. It's very classical, with instruments such as the violin and piano. This is supposed to show our main character as an intellectual. This is also revealed in the mise-en-scene; the man neatly combed his hair and wore a shirt and tie. He looks smart and professional, almost like he is getting ready for a day at the office. However, he is not; instead he is preparing to visit the girl he is holding captive in his basement. This challenges the usual stalker characters seen in psychological horrors, as at times they mean seem unkempt. We took inspiration from Robin William’s characters in One Hour Photo. They both have a similar disposition and outfit.








The majority of camera shots we chose to do where close-ups apart from a few. Close-ups where an integral part of our film as we didn’t want the identity of the stalker to be known, we wanted it to be a mystery. Close-ups enabled us to show what he was doing, but not his face.

Other shots we used in our film where long-shots. These helped establish the scene; it also showed many of the shadows and creates a fear within the audience because they don’t know where the girl is.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Fixation does represent the stereotypical female character. This is because the main female character is seen on the screen in a very stereotypical 'damsel in distress' sort of way. This situation is commonly seen in sub-genre stalker films as it is usually the female who is being stalked other than in such films as, 'Fatal Attraction.' It is usually the male who is stalking as he is seen as the dominant and possessive character. The female is usually always helpless and in need of saving, which is why her brother is the one to eventually rescue her. The main male character is also generally shown in low-angle shots to show dominance and power which is a common stereotype of men. The female is also always shown in a dark room, filled with shadows to represent her fear and vulnerability. It is common in psychological horrors for the female to be in the vulnerable position.

This idea is shown in such films as 'Psycho.' The female character is portrayed as helpless and vulnerable while the male always has the upper hand. I believe that our film will attract an audience of 15-45 as this is what the characters range from. We are confident that it will appeal to both men and women as these characters are all used. The age of the audience is also reflected in our rating which is a 15.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I feel that the distribution company most suited to our film would be, 'Soda Pictures.' They have distributed many psychological horror films and are a small company that works with mainly low budget films such as ours. Many of the audiences who generally watch Soda Pictures films would most likely also be interested in our film too. Also the majority of their films have moderately sized cinema releases and I feel that ours would too. They also offer a wide range of radio and TV adverts and trailers that I feel our film could widely benefit from.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience is both men and woman from the ages of 15 to 45 plus. I feel that our film would be successful in targeting this audience as all of the characters are similar ages and the plot lines is usually very popular among this age group as seen in recent films. In our questionnaire everyone who was in the age range said they would watch our film. It also fits with the age certificate of 15, viewers who are any younger than this may find the content too scary.

We did a questionnaire for viewers of the film using Google Questionnaire and found that the majority of people willing to watch a film such as the one we created where in the age range of 15-45 which is what we where aiming for. They also suggested that a lot of their favourite genres of film where psychological horrors. Most of the comments that we received from this specific audience where that our idea sounds good and that the story-line seemed interesting and unique to them. It was a mash-up of the film Brick and One Hour Photo so there an element of mystery and action as well as the sub-stalker genre. A lot of the audience that didn't really like the scary aspect did like action films. So by adding the element of action we reached out to a new type of audience.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?
We have attracted our target audience by making one of the main characters, Sky, the same age group. We also included generic psychological horror and stalker iconography and music to attract fans of the same genre. The opening builds a lot of tension as it is quite slow and the face of the stalker is never actually revealed. He could be anybody, it's a mystery. There is also a lot of low-lighting, which fills the shots with shadows and fear. This is more apparent in the basement scene, all the light is on the girl so it is quite difficult to see any details about the room. The audience, like the girl have no idea where she is or who is holding her captive. When the girl is first introduced the camera pans very slowly to build tension and create suspense. The darkness and unsteady, blurred shot creates fear and confusion. The end of the shot shows the stalker slowly walking toward the girl, it has a very creepy feel. He walks into the camera to show all black so the titles can start. It is unknown what he was going to do next.

I believe we have used a wide variety of shots such as close-ups, over-the-shoulder shots, medium-shots, low-angle and high-angle shots. We displaced 180 degree rule and the editing was very smooth making for a pleasant watch. We used a lot of fading to slow down the speed and make it a lot smoother. Also, at two parts a character walks into the camera to show black so we could cut to the next shot. This proved to make the flow of the film a lot more crisp and flowing.

After we acquired some of the audience feedback through comments and interviews we decided what was less and successful and what we could have done to make this better. A lot of the feedback suggested that we didn't include dialogue such as, "whose there?" as they thought that this decreased the level of suspense and fear within the shot. If we could re-do the film I would have not put in this speech and relied on the use of facial expressions and mise-en-scene to convey the confusion and fear within the girl.


6. What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?
A lot of our scenes, especially in the basement, required dark contrasting light to give the appearance of an ulterior motive as the shadows create fear. We took inspiration from the film genre, film noir in the sense of the lighting. To do this we took lights from college and used the TV broadcasting room in the new building of college to do the basement scenes. This made it a lot easier as you could attach the lights to the ceiling, something that you can't do at home. It made the basement, hanging old light look more believable.

At each stage of the production of our film we use several different technologies to aid the process. These included Google search engine, You tube to look at different opening sequences for inspiration, DVD's and Seltex to write our script easily as it was the first time we where making one. The DVD's where especially useful for me as the extras helped give a lot of extra needed help and ideas when it came to creating our film.

Google blogger is what we used to chronicle the process of making our film. This was very useful as it allowed us to use questionnaires to get quick feedback we could make into pie charts. The software, Final Cut Express was also useful as this is what we used to edit our final film and add sound. We found it very easy to use and our editing looked smooth in the end.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your full product?
In our first task we learned all of the techniques necessary to add continuity to our film. These included, 180 degree rule, eye line match, match on action and shot reverse shot. We didn't use lighting in this task we used in our final coursework. The techniques learnt did come in useful though as we knew what to check for so the continuity was right. Also, we found our camera, editing and basic knowledge of filming has improved a lot. This was especially apparent in the use of the camera, it was a lot easier to know what shot to use and when to use it. I felt that a lot of the work came slightly more naturally and it took a lot less time to film shots.

Evaluation

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

Our linear plot initially developed into a thriller, and used a range of conventions common within the genre. The conventions that applied to our ideas were the 'stronger, more intelligent male protagonist', elements of 'stalking', 'obsession', 'mind games', and 'kidnapping'. We challenged the common order of events within a thriller by telling the film's narrative through the protagonist, though the rest of the film would actually be told through another main character. In doing this, the protagonist is given a sense of power and control from the very beginning. There are many sub-genres that can apply to the thriller genre, and we chose to create a psychological thriller which would allow us to bring the element of 'mind games' to the film. Our film uses the typical character conventions of the thriller genre, centralised around the 'psychotic individual' who happens to be the male protagonist, who finds himself involved in a 'twisted relationship' with one of his vulnerable female patients. We wanted to challenge the stereotype of the psychotic individual, and so decided to make our villain a doctor - something that isn't stereotypical or seen as 'the norm'.    

The first two screenshots show the similarity between our film and Dexter. In both, the identity of the dominant male protagonist is not revealed to make the character appear dangerous and mysterious. Our shot is a low angle shot intended to give the character a sense of superiority.

Using knives as props is a typical thriller convention. It helps to create the element of 'mind games' that a psychological thriller brings to the screen. It also brings an element of danger to the film.

    

The image on the left shows the 'kidnapping' element of our film, which is a typical theme of the thriller genre, and the image from 'Dexter' on the right shows a man preparing for a normal day even though something sinister will happen as the plot develops. Again, this is similar to our film (e.g. top left image).

Our film opens with the CU of a clock to establish the time frame of the film. Following this shot, is a variety of shots that show the male protagonist methodically preparing for a normal day at work. The fact that we didn't use an establishing shot and instead shot most of these scenes in CU means that the audience is not given a detailed insight into his life, as he is intended to remain mysterious. None of the shots reveal his identity either, which creates suspense and tension for the audience. An over-the-shoulder shot of the wall of photographs is the introduction of suspicion, because it is the first instance which reveals that there is something more sinister to this character. After this, the camera pans left to reveal the female character Sky who is being held captive in a basement. We panned into this shot to suggest her regaining consciousness because she has been drugged by the man, Gilbert. It also gives the shot a dream-like quality that reflects her state of mind. The CU of Gilbert cleaning knives reiterates the element of danger in the film, and creates suspense for the audience because by juxtaposing the shot of the girl and the knives, the audience assumes the knives are being prepared to harm the girl. The CU of the man's feet as he descends the stairs into the basement represents the male character as physically more superior than the girl via height difference, as well as intellectually. Then the following shots of Sky illustrate her vulnerability, particularly the LS of her under a spotlight. Finally, the MS of the male as a dark silhouette approaching the camera instils a sense of panic in the audience, which made it a very good cliff-hanger.

The male protagonist is concealed in dark shadows, or shot either from the neck down or from behind to keep his identity a mystery. We used lighting in this way to make the character appear more foreboding and threatening. Similarly, we used lighting to spotlight the female character, which made her appear isolated and gave the impression that she wouldn't be able to escape the male.

We thought it was important to include classical music in our opening sequence to illustrate the immaculate, medical-type obsession our male protagonist has with ordering everything in a certain way. The character was intended to have very old-fashioned interests, which is therefore why we chose to use Black Narcissus. The juxtaposition of danger and imminent threat, and relaxing classical music adds a disturbing element to the film which is exactly what we were aiming for. In the image below, we lined up the 'stalker' images Gilbert has of his female victim, so that they were all in line in an 'OCD' style-layout - an idea influenced from the film One Hour Photo during our research, also shown in the image below.

Our wall of stalker photographs

Wall of stalker photos in One Hour Photo

Our choice of locations included the TV Studio in College which provided the perfect setting for a basement due to the darkness of the room, and an electrical box that was already on the wall. It also had a range of pre-fitted lighting that made it much easier for us to light the set when we were shooting. Our second location was a house which contained small, confined spaces and yet provided us with excellent filming conditions. It also had a basement which allowed us to film the male protagonist descending the stairs. Both locations are stereotypically used in thrillers, though we adapted them to create a unique, original setting for our film. Typically, thrillers are set during the night when locations are dark and eerie in appearance. We challenged this convention by setting our film in the morning, which again made the film foreboding because it suggests a day of danger ahead.

These are images of the TV Studio

These are images from the house

The Iconography of our film challenged the typical iconography used for thriller films. Instead of suggesting danger through use of red text or using text that usually depicts a film as scary; we opted for a typewriter font that hinted at the medical background of our male protagonist, and his obsession with being orderly, rather than the genre.

Font: Typewriter

Stereotypical red text for a thriller

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

We subverted the stereotype of the doctor by making him the protagonist, whereas a doctor would normally be someone to trust. Our protagonist is very smart and professional in appearance, to reflect his obsessive personality. It also gives him an aura of intelligence which makes him superior over his female captor Sky. We also represented this through low angle shots of Gilbert to reinstate his superiority.

Gilbert's costume is made up of a dark shirt,
dark tie, and dark trousers.

In the film Se7en, the character on the right who turns out
to be the bad character is dressed in dark clothing.

(Using dark costumes for bad characters is a typical convention of a thriller film, which is why we chose to do it).

Sky's costume is made up of a white vest,
black jeans, and black pumps.

We used the stereotypical image of a young person to create our female character Sky. She is a typical teenage girl, which is reflected through her costume. Even though her parents are absent in the film, they would be married, and typically caring and supportive. Sky's bedroom would also appear in the full film, and shed some light on her 'girly' personality. To draw on Sky's vulnerability, we filmed her in LS, and used make-up to give her a black eye. The fact that she has been drugged by Gilbert is highlighted by the fade out transitions between shots which creates a slow build up, and adds a dreamy quality to the film. Positioning Sky so that she appeared in a spotlight also made the expressionism of the character more isolated and helpless. The character's dialogue is also slightly drowned out by the music in the film, reiterating the idea that she really has no way out.
Our full film would have challenged the stereotypes of the Police, and their role in the law. The fact that the Police cannot help with the situation allows the character of Sky's brother, Ben to take control of the situation and prevent the ending of the film being too cliched.

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

Our chosen distributor was Soda Pictures, a UK based film distributor of independent films and world cinema. Soda is a well-known distributor, and has worked with many upcoming directors to create films such as 'Head-On by Faith' and 'After the Wedding'. The company has also represented a collection of films on DVD, from vintage to classic. Marketing of our film would include the release of posters, trailers and interviews on local television and radio stations, perhaps a cameo at the London Film Festival (who are involved with Soda Pictures), and a website which would provide trailers, downloads and a gallery.

Click to go to: Soda Pictures website

Distributors such as 20th Century Fox and Summit Entertainment would not have been suitable for our project because they are large-scale Distributing companies that specialise in Hollywood Blockbusters. Our project was intended to be a small independent film targeted at local, niche audiences, and therefore requires a smaller, more focused Distributor to represent our film successfully.
Using a smaller Distributor means that the budget is limited, and allows the film to focus on the characters and locations to create a realistic story. If we had chosen to create a Hollywood Blockbuster aimed at a mainstream audience, the film would have focused more on the events if the story, and the twists of the plot. Even though the budget would have been larger for a mainstream film, there is a chance the content of our film would have to be adapted to meet the interests of a mainstream audience. The main idea would be less original, and the authentic style of the film would be lost to the high budget of production.

Paramount Pictures

'The Lovely Bones' does not have the same genre, but does have a similar storyline to our film. Paramount Pictures were the company that distributed the film, and have distributed the re-release of 'Titanic' in 3D, and the latest 'Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol'. They also distributed the psychological thriller 'Vertigo' which is the same genre as our film. 'One Hour Photo' is also a psychological thriller like our film, and has a similar storyline. It too is an independent film that was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, and aimed at a niche audience. Through our research into 'The Lovely Bones' and 'One Hour Photo', it is clear that the latter has the typically authentic feel of the independent film which is what we have aimed to capture in our project.

Click to go to: Paramount Pictures website
Click to go to: 20th Century Fox website

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

The target audience for our project is young adults and teenagers, both male and female. After researching our audience, we found that both male and female students enjoy watching a range of different film genres such as Action, Thriller/Suspense, Horror, Comedy, Crime and Gangster, Romance, and Adventure. The audience we received feedback from was made up of students, and people who were employed, and ranged from ages 13 to 71. Their media consumption entailed watching films at the cinema, at home on DVD, watching and downloading them online, or via games consoles. We chose our particular target audience with a certificate of 15 in mind for our end product.

Click to go to: Questionnaire results and analysis of results

In order to research into our target audience, we created a questionnaire. After posting the link to the questionnaire on Facebook, where we could easily access our audience, we received feedback via a spreadsheet. This allowed us to easily compare our results.

This is the audience research questionnaire we created

After analysing our results and understanding the feedback that we received from our research, we created a treatment for our film. This drew on the strong points we received in the results from our questionnaire, and also drew on the interests of our target audience. This meant that it was more likely we would end up creating a film that our target audience would like.

Click to go to: Treatment 1 (Full film)
Click to go to: Treatment 2 (First 2 minutes)

Some of the feedback we received from our questionnaire is that our film should have a lot of twists and unexpected events to create suspense. They also preferred to watch thrillers that have a realistic quality to them, and that have an interesting plot to keep the audience gripped.

After receiving our questionnaire feedback, we did some research using the British Board of Film Classification website (BBFC) and decided that our film would be certified a 15 because of violence, strong language, concept horror, imitable behaviour. Our film does not promote violence or obsession, though in order for us to involve this storyline in our plot, we had to give our film a certificate of at least a 15.

Click to go to: BBFC Website


5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I think that we have successfully reached our target audience by using medium like Facebook to target our audience through a research questionnaire. The majority of the feedback we received was from our target audience of teenagers and young adults which therefore showed that our research had been successful and that we had managed to target our preferred audience.

During planning, we developed the idea of a young female character of the same age as the audience with whom they would be more likely to connect. We found that most young people like watching thriller films, and used the typical conventions of a thriller by centralising the plot around a kidnapping scenario, depicting the threatening atmosphere through lighting, and using props such as knives, to ensure that we grasped the concepts of the genre which appealed most to our target audience.

Feedback quotes like "I like the dark, mysterious feel of the film" and "The music creates tension because it's not what you expect to hear" suggest that the conventions we used for our thriller film did in fact appeal to our target audience. According to some of the feedback we received - for example: "The film looks very technical and professional" and "the different shots are organised really well so that the audience know what's happening all the time", we successfully managed to capture the technical aspect of filming as well as providing a good narrative. Quite a few people commented on the theme of time in our film, and said that they liked the use of the alarm clock because it suggested that time was running out for the female character.

Click to go to: Audience Feedback

The less successful aspects of our film were that due to the fact that we set our film in the early morning, some people felt that they did not find the film quite as scary as they would have hoped. Some people also felt that the dialogue and music should not have been overlapped because it is important to hear what a character has to say. A few members of our audience also suggested that the very last shot of Gilbert walking toward the camera would have looked more effective if the shot had been slightly blurred, and if the camera had been angled because the shot was from Sky's perspective. They reasoned that this would have given the film a mysterious and intriguing cliff-hanger to make the audience want to see the rest of the film.

I think that our work could be improved if we took into consideration our audience feedback and altered parts of our film to meet those comments. They are valid points, and would improve the audience interest in our film. I think that if we could improve anything else, I would suggest that more shots could be used throughout our film to suggest danger and panic, which would be visually interesting for the audience.


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

Final Cut Express

Using Final Cut Express to edit our film meant that it would have a realistic yet professional quality, and allowed us to develop our editing experience. We were able to add fade in/fade out transitions in between shots to create a dreamy quality to the film, as well as to create suspense. We were able to make precise cuts between shots, and find an accurate balance when overlapping our music and dialogue so that it seemed almost as if the music was drowning the female character out. Final Cut was also a suitable program for us to use because it allows users to upload all possible shots to the library, so that you can compare shots easily and choose the best one.

Google Documents - New Form

Digital Video Camera

We chose to use a digital camera to film our project because we already had some experience in using one, and wanted to develop our knowledge. It meant that our footage was of a high quality, and made it easy to transfer our videos onto the computer for editing via USB. During production, we were also able to use Google Documents when creating our Audience Research Questionnaire. It was an appropriate way to create our questionnaire because it meant that by doing it electronically, we were able to post the link on Facebook without having to hand out paper-based copies to our target audience. It also meant that any feedback we received would be stored collectively in Google Documents as a spreadsheet, which would allow for easy comparison. I had used the program before and found it very useful which is why I decided to use it. I an experienced user of Facebook, and therefore found that posting the link was very easy. There was a fast response to our Questionnaire, which meant that the audience also found it easy to use.

When researching similar films and title sequences, we used YouTube to embed videos into our Blog. These videos complement our research, and broaden the medium in which our research can be viewed. It is also much easier for people to physically view the scenes and trailers that influenced the development of our project. However, the video I posted from season 3 of the Vampires Diaries titled 'Similar scene to our opening sequence' did not provide an embed code, and therefore can only be accessed via link.

We used Script Buddy to create our script, which allowed us to create a professional-looking document with all the correct features such as 'scene heading', 'action', 'character', 'dialogue', 'parenthetical', 'transition', 'shot' and 'text'. Using Script Buddy meant that we were given an opportunity to practise writing a script, and I felt that this was very beneficial. We did not encounter any problems with Script Buddy. During production, we did a lot of paper-based planning when brainstorming ideas for our storyline, which therefore meant that we had to scan those documents in, to add them to our blog.

Using Blogger throughout our project has meant that my experience of using the program has developed quite a lot. I have experienced a few problems with the program such as not being able to order posts chronologically unless the date and time is manually changed on all individual posts. Besides that, I haven't found Blogger problematic at all.

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

The production process for our preliminary task was much simpler and included allocating roles to members of the group (e.g. Director, Editor...), brainstorming and selecting a scenario for the conversation, finding an appropriate location, filling in all required paperwork documents, drafting a script, and creating a storyboard. Production for our final project included allocating roles to members of the group, brainstorming and selecting an idea for the plot, researching genre, similar genres, certificates, distributors, music, target audience, analysing title sequences, and more. The depth of research and production meant that we had a chance to understand how much work and time goes into Production, and meant that the end product was of a much higher, professional standard.

Example of match on action

Example of 180 degree rule

Requirements for the preliminary task were also much easier, including: a 60 second film with titles, obeying the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot/reverse shot. There had to be 2 characters - one had to open a door, cross the room and sit opposite another character with whom they exchanged some dialogue. The requirements for our final project were: the 2 minute opening sequence of a new fiction film, obeying the 180 degree rule, match on action, shot/reverse shot and titles. The final project involved a lot more independence and freedom, providing us with an opportunity to be creative. I feel that we met the requirements for both tasks very well.

Watch the videos above for examples of obeying match-on-action and the 180 degree rule.
I have improved in many areas of production, including camera work, research, time management, organising work on a Blog, using new technologies that I perhaps hadn't used before (e.g. Script Buddy). I feel that I now have a better knowledge of how different medium work, and how to develop initial ideas through in-depth research. I think that I have improved my place in the group by taking a more central role as Director, which involved making a lot of decisions and taking charge when shooting, whereas during the preliminary task, I took on the role of Editor, and was therefore much more involved in post-production.
During our final project, we have not done a lot of things differently, though we have managed our time much more efficiently to make sure that we finished filming early on to allow for a lot more time in post-production. In doing this, we have a more professional-looking product that meets all the requirements of the task, and effectively uses all the research we completed during pre-production.

Evaluation

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

For our media product we developed a two minute opening sequence to a new fiction film called Fixation, which is a psychological thriller with a plot of a stalker and kidnapper, our whole film idea was to be a linear film. We got these ideas from films like the One Hour Photo and The Lovely Bones, the idea of the stalking came from the One Hour Photo and the investigation part of our film came from The Lovely Bones. 

Gilbert getting ready for a 'normal day'

Dexter title opening sequence

Our film challenges the stereotypical stalker film from the beginning as it doesn't go straight into finding out that he is a disturbed person, as he is shown as a normal man getting ready for a normal day.  The idea for this came from the television programme Dexter as the opening sequence is similar, normal daily activities but then it all changes. 


We didn't use the chronological order for a normal thriller, as we wanted ours to be different.  Our film starts by telling the story through Gilbert's life, then into the whole film we decided that it would be from Ben's point of view of him investigation is sisters disappearance.  Showing the story by Gilbert right at the beginning shows that he has to power and control. Although our film is different by the order of things done, we did have the typical characters for a stalker, kidnapping theme to a psychological thriller, with a vulnerable teenage girl, a psychotic individual. Although these are normal characters for a psychological thriller, we used the psychotic individual character and made him a doctor, to give the whole film a twist.

We used a clock right at the beginning of the final product to establish the time, also a clock was shown at the very end of our two minutes to show that the time is running out for Sky. We used close up of Sky's face to show that she had a black eye. We used make up to produce the black eye on Sky and a pale foundation so that she looked colourless, as if she had been there a few days. The time was established but the place wasn't, as the majority of the shots were filmed as close ups and no establishing shots meant that there was no detailed insight to Gilbert's life. Also none of the shots of Gilbert, show his face clearly which gives the mysteriousness and tension to the audience. We also used a spotlight to shine behind Sky so that you could see her but at first only an outline of her body, then as it got to the close ups, you could see her face but still no reveal of Gilbert's face.

We used a piece of music the whole way through the 2 minute opening sequence. When we edited the clip and the music together we made sure they fit and every time there was a cut it was to a beat in the music to give more tension. The piece of music is very different to what you would expect to hear in a thriller, as it was a classical piece of music with violins and a piano. This is supposed to show our character 'Gilbert' as an intellectual person which is also shown through the clips as he combs his hair and straightens his tie. 

The outfit we used for Sky was black jeans and pumps and a white vest top, we used these to show her as a normal teenage girl.The outfits used were dark and mysterious for Gilbert so you couldn't see anything other than his outline on some of the shots. This was because in our research we found that most villains wore dark clothing. 

The iconography used for our thriller also didn't match to other thrillers where they have red writing for danger, we used a typewriter font to hint towards Gilbert's medical career and is intellectual side. 

The setting of our film also challenged the stereo typical thriller as it was set in the morning and thrillers are usually based around dark nights. For our locations we used a TV and Radio studio in college for our basement as it had an electricity box that made it feel like a basement and we also used an house with small areas that we used which worked really well with our storyline.

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

We used the stereotypical image of a young female character to create our character Sky Harrison. Sky is a typical teenage girl, which is reflected through the costume as it is just an average female teenagers daily outfit. We decided that the parents of her and Ben (Sky's brother) would be married and typically supportive and caring. As Sky's bedroom would be shown in the whole film, we decided this to be a very girly bedroom to show her personality.

Sky's costume, Black jeans and
 pumps, white top.

To show Sky's vulnerability we filmed her in long shot and used make up to produce a black eye, we also decided that Gilbert would have drugged her and therefor she looks tired and a bit drowsy. We showed this more in the film by using the fade out transitions between shots which would create a slow build up. The positioning of our character Sky made her look more vulnerable and isolated, as we filmed the shots of Sky just in front of a spotlight to highlight on the make up and drowsiness. The only talking we have in our film is of Sky asking 'Who's There?' which was stuttered and slightly drowned out by the music in the film.




We imaged our stalker character, Gilbert Anderson, as a doctor that at first is just wakening up to an average day, then as the first part goes on we find out that Gilbert isn't the nice, kind, trusting Doctor we all expect to be seen by. In our project we image Gilbert in a dark shirt and trousers, with a slightly lighter tie. We used this costume for Gilbert as we found through our research in thrillers or horrors the villain is mainly dressed in dark clothing.

Villain is to the right, (dark jacket)
from se7en

Gilberts costume, dark shirt and
slighlty lighter coloured tie. 

Our whole film would have used more stereotypes of a caring older brother (Ben Harrison) to Sky, as he goes searching for her because he believes there is something wrong with the situation in hand. Ben also has to take control of the situation more once he contacts the Police and they cannot find Sky in the house he as stated.

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

 After looking at a few distributors we decided on Soda Pictures, a UK based film distributor of art house, independant and world cinema. Soda Pictures started in 2002 and has established an impressive catalogue of world cinema and independant films working with upcoming directors.
Soda Pictures is made up of a small team that consists of 6 people, the most successful films over the last few years distributed by Soda Pictures have been 'Head-On by faith' and 'After the Wedding.' Soda Pictures have also represented a collection of films on DVD, from vintage to classic.


  Soda Pictures is our chosen distributing company because they distribute small independent British films, and for our film we are aiming it at British film lovers, so having Soda Pictures as our distributor will help to promote our film to the right people, and show the film in the right places.


Film distributors such as 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers would not have been suitable to distribute our film as they are large-scale distributing film companies that specializes in Hollywood Blockbusters.  If we chose one of these distributing companies for our film we would have had to change the audience of our film and focus more on the events in the story. Although the budget would be higher we would have to change the events in the story to aim it at a different audience.

The similar film we researched was 'The Lovely Bones' this film had a similar story line not a similar genre, but The Lovely Bones was distributed by Paramount Pictures. Paramount Pictures also distributed the re-release of 'Titanic' in 3D. Paramount Pictures have distributed a lot of films over many years, but 'Vertigo' which was distributed by Paramount Pictures is a psychological thriller, the same genre as our film.


'One Hour Photo' which is the same genre as our film and a similar storyline was distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Fox Searchlight Pictures is a film division of Fox Filmed Entertainment alongside the larger Fox studio 20th Century Fox. It specialized in independent and British films, alongside dramedy and horror and non-English-language films.


Through out the research into these two films we found that they both have an authentic feel of independent films which is what we have hoped to captured in our project Fixation.

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

We decided on a 15 certificate for our film because of strong language, concept horror, imitable behavior, and the whole theme of the film is appropriate for 15 years old. Also our project is aimed towards teenagers and young adults. We found more out about what this age range would like out of a film with our research, as both men and women like large range of genres such as Action, Romance, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Thriller, Western.

 The certificate also came from our research into our target area and what they thought so we created an online questionnaire for them to fill in. We posted the link to the questionnaire on social network site, Facebook. We found this to be the easiest way to access our audience as we are in that age range. Doing the questionnaire online made it easy to compare the results at the end as we received the feedback via a spreadsheet.


The audience we received feedback from were mainly students, and then the employed, who were age ranged from 13 to 71, although we didn't want to aim the film at this large of a gap or so young we took into consideration what they would like to see also, as for the younger ones they may be watching films like this in a few years time. Their media consumption's entailed watching films at the cinema, on the TV or on DVD at home, watching online and downloading the films or via games consoles.


After receiving the feedback, and comparing the results we then created two treatments, one for the two minutes that we were filming and the other for the whole film. These treatments drew on the strong points that we received in the results from our questionnaire. We realized by doing this research and using the research that we where then end up with a finished product that our target audience would like and enjoy.


The feedback showed us that we should have a lot of twists and to create unexpected events to create the suspense needed for a thriller. Although, they audience would prefer a realistic story outline but with an interesting plot to keep them watching it.


Questionnaire Link

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Using Facebook to get our questionnaire out to our audience was probably the best way we could, as it made it easier to reach our target audience, of teenagers and young adults. During the pre-production stage of the project we developed the idea for our film and realized it would be best to aim at teenagers and young adults as they will be able to relate to the film more, with one of the main characters being a similar age. We did find through the questionnaire that most young people like watching thrillers, and used a kidnapping scenario as our plot. To get this effect we needed to use certain lighting, props, and costumes otherwise it wouldn't look like a thriller.  

Dark effect to create tension.

Once we received feedback, we then noticed that the film did attract our target audience. The feedback comments reassured the whole group that we did achieve as we wanted, with comments like 'I like the dark, mysterious feel of the film' and 'The music creates tension because it's not what you expect to hear.'  We did successfully manage to fit the film together to give tension also by the camera shots as well as the storyline being as we wanted, comments such as 'The film looks very technical and professional' and 'The film as good suspense.' The effect of the clock showing at the beginning and the end of our two minute project shows the time is running out for our female character, Sky. 


Not all comments were good like these ones, some of the other comments were, 'The music should stop when there's dialogue, so we can clearly hear what the characters are saying' and 'To get a more spooky effect maybe it would be better to film late at night?' We didn't film late at night as this would ruin the whole getting ready for a normal day, to find out that he's a bit creepy. 


The project we have done could be improved if we took what our audience gave us as feedback and used this to make the work better.

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

We used Google blogger throughout our whole project to upload all our work to keep it all together. The only problem I found with Google Blogger is that as we didn’t post our work from the beginning, the work wasn't in order and we could find out how to put the posts in chronological order, eventually we did find out how to do this and that is the only problem I have found with using Google Blogger. My skills of blogging by using Google Blogger have increased dramatically as this was the first time I have used it. 

 In the pre-production stage of our work we used many types of technology's. During the research of our film we used Google to find out about similar films, genres, and the certificates we were thinking about. Although using Google is very common for us, we had to make sure the websites we got the information from was reliable sources of information so that we weren't finding information that was incorrect. As we wanted reliable internet web pages we were told not to use Wikipedia as information can be uploaded and changed by anyone and could be wrong, but I did use websites such as Internet Movie Database (IMDb) Link. Also to research films similar to ours we used YouTube to find video clips that we could embed onto our blog, but we did have a problem with one of the videos as there was no embed code so this video had to be shown on the blog as a link.

To create our questionnaire for our audience research we used Google Forms, as it was easy to use. As we had used Google forms before to create a questionnaire we didn’t have any problems what so ever. It was also the best way to create our questionnaire as it meant we could easily send it out to people to fill in as it was electronically. Once the questionnaire was finished we sent it out via a social networking site, Facebook, so it reached the audience we wanted it to. We posted the link to our questionnaire easily onto Facebook because we were all knowledgeable of that social networking site.  As people filled in the questionnaire we received the results in a spread sheet which made it easy to analyse. 

During the production of our film we used Photoshop to create the production company logo. As Emma was experienced for using Photoshop, she created the production company logo so it was done quicker as she wouldn’t have problems doing so.  The class was advised to use Celtx to create the script but as Celtx is only available on apple computers I decided not to use that so I had more time to create the script. I found a website to create scripts on which were available on all computers, this website was Scriptbuddy. Scriptbuddy allowed me to create a professional looking script with all the correct features such as ‘Character’, ‘Dialogue’ and ’Action’.  During pre-production we did a few paper based plans for the script and then it was just typed up onto Scriptbuddy. Using Scriptbuddy for the first time I did have a few problems such as not knowing how to add Dialogue and Actions but I soon learnt how to do so.  We used a scanner to put some paper based documents onto the blog.

Also during the production of our film we used a Digital Video Camera to film the whole project. We used this type of camera as we had used one before and because it was really easy to upload the filming onto a computer ready to edit. Although we had used one of these cameras before, we did have a problem as who was using the camera kept clicking the camera button and not the record button, this was soon sorted once we realized what was happening. 

For our post production part of the project we used Final Cut Express to edit the clips into a film so that it would have a realistic yet professional quality. Using this software allowed us to develop our editing experience. We were able to use fade in and out transitions in between shots to create the dreamy effect we wanted. Final cut was suitable for us to use because it allows users to upload all possible shots to the library, so that you can compare shots easily and choose the best one.

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

180 Degree rule

The preliminary task was a much easier task than our main task, as we weren't experienced with the equipment we would have to use for our main task. The preliminary task was a continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing room, sitting down in a chair opposite another character and having a conversation to the other character.This task had to demonstrate 180-degree rule, shot/reverse shot and match on action. During the pre-production of this task we had to allocate job roles to each member of group, such as director, editor, and camera. We also had to brainstorm ideas for the short conversation, producing a script and storyboard and filling in all required documents, such as risk assessment and location recce.



This is an example i found on YouTube of shot/reverse shot, continuity, obeys the 180 degree rule and has a match on action.


The above were also needed to complete the pre-production of the main task although we had to go into more depth with the research so we had to find similar films to the idea we came up with. This helped us to recognize how much time and effort would have to go into producing a quality project. The main task consisted of filming the titles and opening sequence to a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes.


This proved to be a lot harder than expected once we got further into the project as we had to share all work out equally between the group as for the preliminary task this wasn't needed as much. Although the preliminary task was given to us directly and the main task was decided by us, just had to be an opening to a new fiction film, I felt that as the preliminary task was our first practical task and this made us feel more free than the main task did.


The fact that in the preliminary task we learnt how to use the equipment, in the main task we all felt more confident using the equipment and the skills for using them soon progressed during both projects, mainly during the main task as we had longer to finish this task. We decided to attempt to manage our time better so that the filming would be done a while before the deadline as then we had longer to edit and re-film if need be.