I believe our film, uses, challenges and slightly develops conventions of real media products, as firstly it is a thriller, which allowed us to take the concepts of a thriller, enigma, suspense, murders or hints of a murder and a villain/victim character scenario, and use these to structure a skeleton to our film ideas. With Pretence, immediately in the opening sequence there is a long shot of the tops of the woods, which allows the titles to be shown, but also, when partnered with the low bass and digging sound, it is an ideal way to build up enigma. What follows that is an almost subliminal close up of the masked man, where by because of the speed, you can only see the mask. This shot is again reinforced by sound and the reason it is interesting is, I took the sound of a chimp screaming and added a pitch changer on Garageband, and added reverb to create a sudden “shocking” noise.
Throughout Pretence, there is the execution of Vladimir Propp’s villain/victim character theory, with the young boy as the victim and the masked man as the murderer, and also the stereotypical psychological thriller chase scene.
Not only does our media piece use conventions of a real media product, it also develops the conventions of thriller, done by simply but slightly adapting a common thriller opening. In most cases you have a continuous attempt to build tension and suspense until the next scene is introduced, however in Pretence the tension is built up by the speed of the editing and cuts in sound, but then dropped to a lower level when the title appears (partnered by a crescendo of thunder), then a reverse of the digging and flashback scene then follows; and then you have the following scene where more tension is built up when the character is running.
Finally our film also challenges the conventions and more so the structure of a real media product as, it is not often you see the victim being buried and then the reverse of what happened before, all in one scene. However we executed our opening in this way, so we would, challenge the typical structure, and to also build up this character (the masked man) because, if we did carry on this film we would have this character who is known by the audience, as a result of his sound motif when he enters (high pitch scream) and his costume (mask, black coat, black trainers and jeans), using black as a sense of evil.
Pretence is a thriller that, in theory should usually be acted out by adult actors, however as our film challenges typical media conventions, we decided to keep the age of the victim young to symbolise innocence, which is shown throughout as you do not see the young character do anything “wrong”. Along with the innocence of the character, the other reason I chose to have a young character to play the victim was to create an opportunity for a sense of compassion towards him from the audience, especially the girls/woman who would view this, would see the victim as someone they can relate to. The best example of this is in the final take where the victim is sitting, hiding away from the masked man, (achieved by a verisimilitude point of view shot) but does not realise he is about to kill him. Also the victims costume allows the audience to relate to the character as I dressed the character in a blank white T shirt, and plain jogging bottoms and white trainers, which reflects the opposite to the villain; innocence.
The choice to have an older character as the villain and a younger to play the victim was also an attempt to capture our target audience, which would be 15 year olds to those in their late 30s, as it is a reflection of the dominance of age in society, the victim is characterised as an innocent, weak individual, who is isolated in the woods (long shots used too show no escape).
Were as the villain is portrayed as more of the adult figure, who acts steadier and in control (slower cuts, slower movement), which again reflects the bondage of adult domination over the youth of today.
As there is only male characters in this, the gender representation is not evident, however by using male characters, the representations can be said to be of mankind.
When deciding the genre of our media piece, the main choice suggested to us where film noir, however, at first we chose to create a 60s gangster piece, although we then came to our senses and eventually chose thriller. By doing this we also decided the style of production it would be and who would show our film. If Pretence was shown professionally it would be viewed in multiplex cinemas along side films such as Christopher Nolan’s ‘Batman The Dark Knight’, James Bond and Transformers, as they have similar qualities to ours that make them blockbusters, for example the scenes we call “the flash back scenes” are inspired from ‘James Bond Casino Royale’
Also the titles are more professional than independent.
I believe our film would be produced in a Hollywood studio as not only is it similar in ways to other Hollywood pictures, it also, like other successful films, offers chance for endorsements in merchandise, the mask and costume of the murderer may be turned into a figure or Halloween gimmick, just as the 1996 film ‘Scream’ did with its murder.
(Merchandise from scream)
(Merchandise from Pretence)The mise en scene in Pretence is successful mainly because of the setting. The costume (mentioned previously) is used to carry across the ideologies of status concerning age, however the visual style of our film is also successful because I changed the contrast and brightness when editing the clips, it appears to be at dusk however we filmed on an extremely sunny day.
The audience we are aiming for would range from 15 to late 30s, if it were produced professionally. As Pretence is a thriller, the certificate would be no lower than a 15 because it would not be scary enough to be a thriller. To prove to ourselves if our film was applicable to the right age group we set up a screening to analyse the effect of our film on a group of students from the ages of 15-19 (and also our teachers), we asked them to list on a questionnaire: gender, age, favourite films, what they thought the genre of our film was, would they watch the rest, what criticisms they had, did the sound accompany the action correctly and who they would say the audience was. Out of 12 students (4 girls and 8 boys) the conclusions was drawn unanimously that the age group of the audience should be 15-30, and in one case two of the girls had to cover their eyes because they did not enjoy scary films. These answers suggested to us that our films audience would be appealing to 15-30 year olds and mostly boys and men however this does not cancel out the female audience. A film that gave us inspiration was ‘Shallow Grave’ where a group of flat mates are burying a body (the excerpt we watched). The reason our film would appeal to this audience is because; firstly it would appear in cinemas, where 70% of tickets bought in Apollo cinema Paignton (based on a survey of a weeks listings) was for films 15 and 18 by 15-39 year olds. Secondly if a thriller is marketed successfully for example ‘Open water’, then it will attract the regular fans which according to our questionnaire is more so male, but 15-19 and then our teachers aged 25+, the fans of thriller (proved when we asked favourite films) thought this audience is appropriate.
The ways in which we attracted our audience was by using similar techniques to other films that have been successful, for example James Bond with the flashback scene where we added the extremely high contrast shots. Also again the fact we used a 15-year-old student to play the victim enables 15 and 16 year olds to relate to this character. However the way he acts is just as if an adult actor is playing the same character, which allows the older audience to share the same point of view. On a technical side, how we used camera levels and movement to reflect the characters point of view also allows the audience to ‘be in the action’.
One technique we used, although the shot did not make it into the film, was the camera movement tracking and mirroring the movement of the villain, this was when the villain entered the woods, we filmed a shot reverse shot and in the first shot the camera pans downwards as the villain kneels down slightly before. If this was appropriate to the storyline, we would have used this. The final technique we used to entice the audience, so they would like to watch more, was the way we built up the tension up to the title “Pretence”, but then started almost from scratch (in terms of the amount of tension) to build up suspense once more; we achieved this by keeping the high frequency sound effect (increasing in volume) going through out the chase sequence.
As our school media department was just refurbished and granted a bigger budget, our media studies group was privileged to have an iMac computer each to edit on, however as I already had an Apple Macbook, it was easier for me to edit our piece at home so I could put more thought into it. Also as I was already familiar with the iMovie software we used I could also experiment with different effects, such as the high contrasted flashback scene.
However if we were really producing our film for cinemas, we would not of been able to use the cameras we did (Sony ‘handy cams’) as the zoom function was too sensitive, by this I mean there was only a little toggle that was limiting towards the amount of zoom u could use without suddenly be shooting an extreme close up of the characters shoulder. Also the lighting and camera did not mix well together as in my opinion the camera took in too much light, possibly due to the lack of functions on the camera. However to overcome this, I decreased the brightness and decreased the contrast, specifically on the digging scenes, to create more of a dark and professional frame.
The only other criticism of the equipment was the tripods we had, again to achieve a professional look we were limited to more static shots as, in theory to gain the shots we could not, for example a track of the characters running, we would have had to use a harness or dolly, however this was not expected. The way I over came this was by filming shots that I could edit into shots that looked more successful than they should be, for example when I filmed two low angle shots of the victim sprinting past the camera, all I had to do was rest the camera on the floor facing slightly left and then flip the camera and rest it on the floor slightly facing the right.
Throughout the course of the year I did not use any equipment I had not used before, apart from a tripod, however this was not an issue as we had practise during our preliminary task.
The software we used was iMovie, which was good for us, as I had used this before. However I had not edited a set of clips that had to have continuity, this meant I had to learn three basic techniques, shot reverse shot, match on action and 180 degree rule, which then meant I could explore what ways I could develop these. Effects that were useful and really made our film successful was the “slow fast reverse” tool
Which allowed us to speed up the flashback fight scenes and also reverse the opening sequence before the title to create the sense of going back before the scene, to reinforce the “36 minutes earlier”. Also the brightness and contrast tool after changing the clips of the fighting into black and white allowed the uncomfortable atmosphere to be created.
In terms of sound, the programme we used was Garageband, which was even better for me than using iMovie as I had been using that programme for 3 years previously, this meant I could create a soundtrack quickly, however it was a struggle to get the sound into one track as it was impossible to draw up a sound plan that was perfect to every split second, this meant I had to cut and move the track on the audio bars on iMovie. This was also a set back as there is only two audio bars on iMovie which forced me to move audio excerpts without seeing where to move them precisely.
(You can see here the faint audio excerpt behind the other on the bottom bar)
Comparing this piece to my preliminary task, it is possible to argue I have not improved significantly, because of the standard of the preliminary task, however, technically, when watch and deconstructing the preliminary task and this, it is clear there is more complex shots, the sound mix is more creative and the effects are used more sensitively. I personally feel I have not learnt alot in terms of how to execute tasks, however i am defiantly faster at what i do (editing) . Where camera is concerned i have learnt alot in this area as before my prelimminary task i had never used a tripod before, and now i have taught myself how to keep a the camrea steady on a complex shot. On the theoretical side, i have learnt more camera angles and levels, also each of ther technical name, e.g establishing shot, point of view shot etc; but all of this adds up to the amount i have learnt since filming my preliminary task.
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