Evaluation

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

Our piece of media coursework challenges the traditions of most thriller openings by it starting the open in a public place unlike most thrillers which usaully start in an out of the way place such as an old abandoned building after a crime has already been committed which shrouds everything in mystery.

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

The main group that is portrayed in our work is the teen/young people of todat as they are the people acting out their respective places in the video. The second group that it could be said that are portrayed are people around the south-eastern area of London due to this area being the main place that the media project takes place.

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

The media institute that might distribute our media would be a group like Film four or United artists due to it being a low budget, British film with a British cast. There isn't much chance of another company over seas taking on the film project because most over seas because it either doesn't meet the standards that hollywood block bustres dish out on a regular basis and that most other countries don't speak English so if they were to go to other countries a dubbing process would be in order meaning that our work still isn't complete.

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

The target audience on a greneral level is those that like the thriller genre while a more in depth target would be someone who likes or would like to see into the mind of a person growing up in an urban area now days, and what phsycotic ideas litter their mind, e.g. crime, murder etc.

5.How did you attract/addressyour audience?

The way we addressed the audience and attracted them was by setting the film locally so most of the areas in the film seem familliar to local people so we would atleast have support from the community around Essex aswell as that of the fans of the genre would regularly go to see it.

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

I have learnt that the technologies used in creating a film wasn't as complicated and hard as it was the first time we used it in the preliminary exercise so the work was done a little quicker this time but we added extra stuff such as transitions once we figured out where they were and how to use them.

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

Looking back at the preliminary exercise I see that I learned to take more time and patience doing the editting. Though a point must be made that the shots in that weren't as good as the could of been because we were missing a member of our group so we had to make do with just a tripod to hold the camera.

Our finished Product

Questionnaire results

Yes we done a questionnaire, and yes I forgot to post the results so yeah kudos to me.the results are that the majority of more people asked were between 10-16 (except one person who was apperantly between 26-30 and didn't know the concept behind circling an answer). The majority of people asked were also female and most of the favourate genres chosen was romance and comedy, is stereotyping of womens' likes and dislikes true? (and feminism marches on). Thirdly people mostly go to the cinema 1-3 times a month. Lastly was that most said the thing that they liked most about films was story line. This draws to the conclusion that a genre that dominates a lot of movie studios in america is a mostly enjoyed genre of film. (sorry for no fancy bar charts or tables like Carla but the information is here).

Final part of the editting process.

The last thing to do now was to find a piece of music that could be played over the video because there really isn't dialogue and the 'actions speak louder than words as the old phrase goes as we tried to incorporate into our video, trying to walk in the foot steps of Cassherns long scenes that contained no dialogue what so ever (go see my look at Casshern which was written a fair while ago now). The piece of music that I have chosen is a song from one of the sites which I put up for the other people in my class to use, www.newgrounds.com . Its easy, quick to use and is full of free, legal songs to use. (shameless plug, I know). the song I have chosen that will play through the video is called 'silence before the hurricane' created by Luuk Meijssen (Saikuya), obviously someone whose very talented so credit to him and his song that I found not to many minutes ago now.

We went, We filmed, We kicked ass!

Last wednesday we finally managed to get the group together and the person we needed to actaully film our thriller "YAY" ( note sarcasm). Jordan from my group chose the location for where to film and because of this we deviated a lot from the story board we had originally made but thanks to his initiative we managed to come up with something that was a lot better than what we he had planned, he also starred in it because I couldn't seem to run fast enough away when being chased so Kudos to him and his great choice in location. Tireni was in charge of the camera work and in my opinion done quite a good job, deciding about where to film in the location and what sort of shots should be used (The establishing shot of the area was great and was supposed to go straight into the next scene but because it wasn't done right it had to be cut in a different way). Today I done the editting of the video where I chopped up the video in a manner of ways. First thing that I did was as each cut occurred I lengthened the transition with a cut to a black background and each of our names appearing as though they were intro credits on a film, as this is supposed to be the opening of a thriller so it seems to fit well. A second thing to add is that the second half of the video is shot from a first person perspective (again a good choice on Tireni's behalf) so in a sense it does put the viewer in the shoes of the victim in a way, (and yes I was the one filming the second half because Tireni needed to be in the frame and so I was the only one left to use the camera). At the last part when the title of the film appears then fades off, the picture changes to black and white as to show that the murderer has got the victim in some way shape or form. This is left up to the viewer to decide how he was killed due to there being no eveidence of a weapon, the screen then flashed out to white after the sun passes in the frame to suggest the victims death, a way to show that the victim has fell but could also be seen as a metaphore for the phrase 'my life flashed before my eyes' as it could be seen that the sun actaully had moved on and it was now night, a representation of the end of life.

Quick update

I haven't been able to get to my blog for roughly a week now due to internet problems so here's a brief summary of what media work I have done over the past week. The first thing to say is that I have been doing homework for one media lesson which is to look at the british soaps that are currently on e.g. Coronation street, eastenders etc. though admittadley I've only really seen coronation street because it's the one my mum watches. Secondly, this weekend I watched the new three episode special of Red Drawf, a british comedy which hasn't had any new episodes or series since 16 years ago, the program is still as good as it's ever been and still grasps what makes a British comedy funny over, most american comedies, the device I'm talking about obviously being humour. Last little things to add is that the group will finally be filming on friday thanks to the help of one of my fellow group members whose persauded a bunch of his friends to act in our project that day also that because my E-mail wasn't working for so long I can finally send in homework that (at this point) is fairly overdue.

One of the biggest factor in a film is the use of music and sound. Give a film to much music or make it too loud, and it begins to get on peoples nerves, don’t give a film any or make it too silent and the film will feel dry and un-entertaining. I was watching a DVD of Cowboy Bebop and found a good example of the use of music (see above). The song ‘Rain’ plays from the beginning and runs parallel with what’s on screen as an organ is playing in the song and the area on screen is that of a cathedral and plays at just the right volume to stay in the viewers mind while not distracting the viewer from what’s being said between the people on screen. At 2:20 minutes in the action begins and all the music is drowned out and is instead replaced with just the sound effects of gunfire and explosions, at 4:33 minutes Spike is thrown out the stained glass of the cathedral as he throws a grenade in blowing up a man he once was partners with in crime, It is here that the song ‘Green bird’ starts playing as he is Vicious is killed, Spike is falling to the ground bleeding everywhere and flash backs are being viewed of when he and Vicious were both in crime together making this use of music contrapuntal.

The Animatic

This is the animatic story board for the thriller we are making.

preliminary exercise

Lateness Update

The reason I haven't posted recently is because of the facts that firstly our group was busy filming the preliminary exercise. Secondly we have had a number of discussions between ourselves which we have recorded of which will be posted soon, as well as another film analyses. One problem though is that I have been unable to get my hands on the film Old boy so the next film analyses will be Death note and Death note 2 the Last name, both of which precede the film L change the world.

Thriller conventions

• A crime at the core of the narrator (often murder, but not necessarily).
• A complex narrative structure with false paths, clues & resolutions.
• A narrative pattern of establishing enigmas which the viewer expects to be resolved.
• A protagonist who is systematically - empowered and drawn into a complex web of intrigue by the antagonist.
• Extraordinary events happening in ordinaty situations
• Themes of identity
• Themes of mirroring
• Themes of voyeurism
• Protagonist with a flair which is exploited by the antagonist
• Titles often reflect an aspect of the protagonists/antagonists psychological state
• there is oftenn a scene towards the end of the film in which the protagonist is in peril.
• Mise en scene which echoes/mirrors the protagonists plight.

Future analyses

The next film I hope to do an analyses of is a film which was created in south Korea called ‘Old boy’ like Casshern this is a live action movie based off a Japanese series of the same name that from what I’ve sticks closely to the original ploy unlike the previous film I analysed and its part of the thriller genre so I hope to get my hands on it soon. (Also it ranks 32nd in all-time national movie box-office records).

Message to anyone else in my media class who see's this

Because we cannot use copyrighted music in our projects I will be searching the internet for sites with music that should be okay to use so as I find these sites I shall post them here for people to use. (Keep in mind any music used must be credited respectfully).

http://www.ocremix.org/
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/

only two for the moment but I'll add more as I find them.

Casshern analyses

The film Casshern is a Japanese action film based from the anime series that was originally created over 30 years ago by the company Tatsunoko and since has been updated and this film reinvents what the series is about. The series is originally about a boy called Tetsuya Azuma who dons a suit that turns him into a neoroid so he can face the armies of the black king because of what it’s going to humanity. Now this live action feature does somewhat stick to this bases but it changes the bases of the protagonist and everyone around him to a degree and also adds a lot of characters that are main characters. Now at first I will admit I was sceptical as most movie adaptations of something that already exists almost never work especially when they change the plot so much as this one, for example the Transformers movie added a ton of human characters alongside the pre-existing characters and many of the fans now feel alienated. Back to Casshern now. Casshern this time round tells the story of the boy Tetsuya Azuma (played by Yusuke Iseya) whose father Kotaro Azuma (played by Akira Terao) is trying to create a cure for his wife Midori (played by Kanako Higuchi) who has a terminal illness. Through the use of a finding of his called neo cells which are very similar to stem cells of now days except these can be taken from a certain ethnicity of people from any time in their biological life. From an accident the antagonists are made. Now when I watched this film it was far from what I thought it would be like especially as I’m a big fan of the previous incarnations of the series, although this is stated to be a film of the action genre I would use the term action loosely to describe it as there are actually only 2 fight scenes in the entire 142 minute long film, instead it delves into some more philosophical matters such as, is getting what one wants after so many have lost something important to them right and whether one can be seen as good or the other as evil, especially when two enemies will think the same things about the other, also throughout the film there’s a big WW2 Nazi overtone to both protagonist and antagonist but that will be talked about in the mise en scene part.

Sound
The use of music in this film is of an excellent standard and does a great job setting the mood and tone of each scene, in the film there is actually hardly a moment where no music is playing but that doesn’t mean the music is intrusive in any respect, it usually plays out usually quietly in the background while people are talking and such, though when the action starts to pick up the music grows very loud from an orchestral piece to a very quick rock theme of sorts. In quite a few scenes through the film there is no dialogue spoken at all but instead the actors use body language and facial expressions to get the characters feelings across and the musical score will often give use a rather large clue to what is actually taking place. The film actually starts with a well known piece of music called moonlight sonata – 1st movement originally played by Ludwig van Beethoven, this song plays out for a rather long time as things taking place in the film go from bad to worse for the characters, this one song gives us a heads up of what’s really going on before it even happens in the film as the parents of Tetsuya find out that their son is dead and clips of Tetsuya in a war zone are played, it is here where this one song starts to play on a lower key and really symbolizes the anguish of the characters. During the fight scenes the music becomes either some kind of quick techno beat or rock music to show how quick the action is moving along and to across a feeling of intensity to the audience watching. During these scenes as people are fighting sound effects are used to great effect like in many other Japanese films, as people move sounds like whistles are heard to show how fast they are moving almost to show that their bodies are literally cutting through the air. As with most films sounds of things such as a fist making contact with someone’s face is greatly exaggerated with the sound used being made a lot louder.

Camera
Although this film is shot entirely in front of a green screen there is quite a lot of camera movement. The first notable one is where professor Azuma is giving a speech about his medical breakthrough, the camera takes on all kinds of angles going from panning across the audience listening to a close up of the lead chairman who is hooked up to a ventilator as he struggles to breathe, a long shot is then shown of professor Azuma as it pans slowly around him. The Camera shots in the fight scenes are quite short before going to another angle, much like a fight scene in one of the Matrix films. The camera will stay out of the action just enough so that it gives a clear shot of what’s going on but it wont show much of what is going on around the people very often unless what the actors are doing involves the scenery in any way. After these shots it will sometimes go into a an extreme close up of the peoples faces that are fighting when they either get hurt or they are the person dealing out the damage to show how they feel also close ups are used when the actors are doing some flashy looking stunts such as spinning swords around, doing high jumps and generally getting thrown around the room. During the second fight scene when Casshern fights an entire army of robots lots of long shots and crane shots are used to show just how many of these things the protagonist is actually fighting which gives a real sense of epic the scene at hand is. Often times in the film shots are taken from a distance where the frame is in deep focus and what actually takes up a lot of the frame is the surrounding environment so often times in this film the camera will either be in a close up or a long shot but hardly ever in just a normal shot. One reason why the film constantly has everything in focus is that the film is mostly filmed in front of a green screen so everything that’s edited in would look sharp.

Mise en scene
The entire film is set very artistically and has a strong use of expressionism about it as the dominant colours through most of the film are white, red and black and the overall feel of the film is quite steam punk quite reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII in some parts. Often in scenes these are the only colours that can be distinguished. The characters costumes range from mostly people wearing black suits or coats, a main antagonist who wears nothing but a red cloak and has pure white hair, the main antagonist’s underlings who wear only black and red as well as the robot army that they have gained controlled of, and the protagonist Casshern who is in a suit of futuristic white armour. One thing that is really striking though is the costumes of the army that is supposedly the side the protagonist is on as they also only wear complete black but they have black leather masks around their face and goggles on around their eyes which are tinted black, this gives the look of gas masks or the look of them being as much machines as the antagonists army, creating a strong similarity between both the armies even though they are on opposing sides it shows how similar these two are as Casshern realises at the end. As mentioned in the introduction there is a large world war 2 Nazi overtone through this as many of the backgrounds are black and red, not to mention the laboratory that professor Azuma works in has something written in German on the walls, though the Nazi overtones are strongest when looking at the side of the antagonist. When the main antagonist Burai first takes a cloak he rips a flag off the top of a building, this could be metaphor for him soon to be trying to take down the country much like how Hitler changed most of the flags with Nazi ones in use of propaganda. Also when in the castle that the main antagonist finds it is decorated with symbols that ominously look similar to the swastika if it had only three points instead of four and on red banners no less, the place is decorated in black with many animals carved into furniture as well, the one which strikes out most being the eagle over the bed in which Midori is sleeping in. The robots of the antagonists army obviously were created by CG but one the way that they look is similar to storm troopers of the Nazi’s as they wear all dark colours, they all march in perfect sequence, and on top of their heads they have spikes pointing directly up much like the helmets German soldiers would wear. At one point in the movie the new leader of the humans begins giving a speech which is full of empty promises and lies that everyone begins to hear around the cities much like how Hitler used to get his messages across in his propaganda. The architecture in the film is odd as it looks very old in one sense because all the machines that are being used have big gears and cogs turning which make them look a lot older than newer as though they have come straight from the industrial revolution. One scene shown is of the robot army going through a city destroying everything and everyone in their paths and they are all shown marching in unison march like soldiers would, again the dominant colours portrayed are red, white and black, but the streets are all coloured in a deep blue colour and the sky is a jet black which although doesn’t look natural does make it seem more high-key in terms of lighting otherwise it would make it hard to see what going on in the city rather than what’s in the sky. Later on the characters Naito and the general’s son are in a battleship on the way to the stronghold where Burai’s army is the sky is set as an orange/brown sunset, this could be the day coming to an end, this could symbolize how this war is about to come to an end one way or another, with either the forces of the humans prevailing, or the dreams of Burai’s conquest becoming reality. The battle field that both armies fight on is baron and muddy much like how in the old wars trench warfare was dominant also both sides when moving don’t seem to move quickly at all, but they walk slowly towards each other much like how the war was fought back in world war 1 when the captain on either sides of the trenches blew their whistles and went over into what was called no mans land.

Editing

The film is mostly CG, parts of scenes are either all CG or they have the actors playing their parts inn front of a green screen before it goes into editing while some props are real. Through the entire film there are about two ways the camera is used to change and distort the picture, one being that in certain scenes everything white creates a blur on the camera lens so often times when Casshern is in the frame his armour is very distorted giving him the look of something holy and just almost like an angel or something else ethereal the second effect is that when shots of the outside world where there’s a war taking place, the frame starts to look very grainy and the colour is faded out to give it the appearance of an old war film. During the fight scenes of the film where Casshern battles the antagonists many special effects are used such as bullet time, which does seem a little over used in one fight scene but isn’t really used much afterwards, the second effect is slow motion when actors make contact during battle, as said before this is often followed by an extreme close up, thirdly a lot blurring is used on the backgrounds during these scenes to show how fast the people in the frame are moving during the first fight scene the tapestry on the walls is all a blur as the camera is moving all around the room following the actors, papers and documents are also flying up in the air to give the effect of the actors speed, it gives the impression that they were moving as fast as a tornado spin and after the fight has ended. The machine army in this film was created through the use of CGI; the robot army during one particular fight scene with Casshern are edited in to make them look like they are being fought by Casshern as he rips through them literally with his bare hands. A host of special effects are also used such as another green screen effect that shows Casshern running up alongside of the wall and an effect used when he jumps off the top of a building from atop of a building, also when Casshern jumps several feet in the air where he then lands on top of the tank Burai is standing on top of a tank that is also created through CGI. Towards the very end of the film as the final battle between the two armies is taking place montage is used to further build the feelings of war as black and white footage from the German side of the war dissolves in and out as the fighting continues of people killing and dying in the war to show that it doesn’t matter when, where or even who the war is between, war is always wrong and always has consequences.

Things to take away
One thing to take away is the art direction of the film, now I know when I create the 2 minute intro project I wont be able to afford the editing software or green screens to create the special effects of those that were in Casshern but one thing that could be done to give our film a certain art direction is the use of costumes, props and location also, things that could be used is that I could use specific colours and tones of lighting. A second thing to take away is the use of music that is used the entire way through, maybe when I come round to making my project I could use music the entire way through with little gaps of silence. One last thing to take away and probably the most important thing is how a good portion of the scenes are filmed with almost no dialogue but with the viewer understanding all that’s going on through the actors use of body language and facial expressions.

L change the world analyses

L change the world is a Japanese film based after the events of the 2 films that came before it Death note and Death note 2: The last name, both in the thriller genre among other things. A short overview of this film is that after catching Kira, the detective L has only 23 days left to live due to him writing his name and fate in the death note, he uses these last days to solve all his existing cases and take on one final case involving a group of bio-chemical terrorists and the daughter of the professor who created the only existing antidote.

Sound

One of the first things that can be noticed in this film is the use of music as there is a low ambient background noise that is thumping, possibly to create the idea of a heart beat, also a low metallic sound that adds more of a cold feel to it, this music is often used when the protagonist L is doing something, this is a good use of music as it seems to fit the character perfectly as he is very anti-social and distant from people seeing as he has never actually grown up along side anyone and it makes him hard to communicate with, the music also has a mysterious feel which as said goes with L as not much is known about him, it is only at the start of this film that the viewer actually learns his last name so after 2, 2 hour long films does make him quite a mysterious character.
Towards the start a town in Thailand is destroyed by a bomb explosion, as the people look up at the quickly descending object the sound of possibly a cello or violin begins to grow louder to build tension to the inevitable explosion. Towards the end L chases a plain in a van as he tries to get on the plain to stop the antagonists, here the music picks up speed, drums play in a quick regular rhythm and cello’s and violins play and the single notes get extended as he gets closer to getting in the plain. Overall for the sound it all matches perfectly with what’s going on in the film with all the music being ambient and such, but the soundtrack is actually used quite sparingly through the film.
The dialogue of the characters is also quite well done due to two things, one being that it is well written to begin with because the actors say their lines very convincingly and sincerely. The actor who plays L (Kenichi Matsuyama) says all his lines in a way that makes him seem as though he’s constantly deep in thought and analysing everything that’s going on around him, making him seem distant and almost in human though complaint that is to be said about this is that when he speaks languages other than Japanese such as English and French his voice seems to seem distorted and hard to understand, this also destroys the viewers immersion in the film world as it becomes blatantly obvious that the actor can’t actually speak the language and is doing a fairly bad job of mimicking the languages.

Camera

In the first scene L is watching one of his agents perform an operation for him on a laptop, the footage is made to look as though it was created on a cheap kind of handheld camera as the frame is rather shaky and the image quality is poor. Also the agent is talking to the camera behind the camera probably to imply that this is just like a home video with the occasional close up, wobbly handling and the focus slightly going blurry. As this is going on shots of L watching this come up then goes back to what’s on screen, but in these shots the viewer isn’t actually shown the face of L which in itself is good for building tension if someone has come to this film without knowledge of the prior two in the series. The camera work through most of the film is quite standard with regular things such as panning, crane shots, tilt shots. At one point towards the end of the movie the tracking shot is used for the third time but in this scene there L is in a van chasing a plain that is about to take off here he jumps onto a set of stairs to get onto the plain. As he’s in the van the camera is level with his face but as he climbs up the steps the camera seems to show him from a low angle to show two things, 1 that he is empowered or that he is doing a selfless if not heroic act, much like in films that contain super heroes. 2 is that as he’s scaling the steps it shows how high up he is and that if he misses the jump onto the plain, when he falls it is almost certain the fall would be fatal.

Mise en scene

The film is centred in Japan and for the first half is specifically set in Tokyo which is a good choice of location as its very built up and the capital of Japan so anyone watching it will be able to recognise where its taking place. Props vary from stuffed bear that the girl called Maki Nakaido (played by Mayuko Fukuda) that contains a syringe with a fake antidote to the deadly virus also the van that L drives around in is disguised as an ice cream/cake truck.
The costumes are quite straight forward as the school girl Maki wears a girl’s school uniform and the FBI agent Hideaki Suruga (played by Kiyotaka Nanbara) wears a black suit with a collared shirt and tie. L though stands out as he is the greatest detective in the world he actually wears unassuming clothes as he wears a plain white long sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans, his hair is quite long, jet black and wild looking making it seem unkempt, this gives the idea that he doesn’t care much for his exterior, in terms of body language again everybody plays there parts as they should and again L stands out because he does not particularly show much emotion through the film at all also he stands and walks around with his back hunched over, he also has an odd way of sitting because unlike everybody else who sits normally he appears to crouch down with his legs right by his chest almost in a foetal position.
The lighting and colour through the entire film is high-key as everything looks natural and nothing in the frame looks as though its gradient doesn’t fit in with everything else in the film world.

Editing

The pace of the movie is quite slow at the start as nothing much happens to begin with so naturally each scene has long extended scenes to begin with but as the film goes on the speed of each edit picks up and evidently makes the pace of the film go quicker. Often in an action sequence the camera will keep swapping between the people as they talk and when actions are performed in close ups, fast editing such as this could make even the most boring conversations seem interesting, when there doesn’t seem to be much going on though the shot will be from further away to get everybody in the frame and the amount of time the frame stays like this will be extended. Through the entire film there are about two bits of montage, one being early on in the film as L goes through all his case files solving all his crimes and the second being when the professor is trying to create a new antidote for the deadly virus, in this montage it has the camera constantly panning right over the experiments the professor is performing with different types of equipment, and every time the image changes here it is through a dissolve.

Things to take away from this

Some things that were used in this thriller that we could use when creating our project is that we should make the character seem odd but interesting in just his appearance other than him being like everyone else as our project is only 2 minutes long also, to further illustrate a character that is different would be to use low-key lighting to make them stand out. A good idea for the music is that it could keep the same beat throughout the project but as action takes place increase the tempo and maybe bring in other instruments to increase the effect and impact it has on someone watching, One last thing is to not go over board with the amount of props that should be used in the film but instead just have a few that play essential roles or have actual purposes to what’s going on instead of some random stuff that happens to be in the background.

future updates

For this first blog entry I don't have anything much to add but, this is to say that for the first bit of work I will be making a 2 minute thriller, I will be analysing some other films in preperation and post them up in the following weeks. I think the first film I shall analyse is L change the world a japanese thriller and after that possibly Casshern a live action remake of a classic series depending on when I can get my hands on it. The L change the world analyses should be made within the week.