Evaluation:

Evaluation:

Our media product is a 2 minute opening scene for a thriller film. As a group we decided to make a psychological thriller, due to the very interesting and effective plot lines, and the fact we all really liked other film under this popular thriller sub genre. From our planning and research into the influences, we devised a narrative that incorporates our own individual ideas and the codes and conventions found in other psychological thrillers; this was so that our product reaches the standards of other similar media products as well as offering something uncommon and exciting to our demographic. Our film circles around a disturbed young girl, where her dreams and reality torment her endlessly, there's no escape. 

We decided to name our film Parallel it really suited the narrative and it sounded more appealing. The one word title idea was inspired By Alfred Hitchcock's titles like 'Psycho', 'Vertigo' and 'Frenzy', these create a quick striking tone that's very memorable, unique and has more impact on the audiences thoughts and imagination. The name parallel has deep meanings that link directly to the plot, and also suggest further ideas to the narrative. For example the title can represent both the dreams and reality within the film, showing how they may not be the same in ways, yet are very similar in other ways, like the idea that the girls dreams and reality are the same to her, living in her traumatic life, then repeating it in her dreams- both of which she just wants to desperately escape. However, parallel lines never meet and just go straight forward which can suggest that whichever world shes in- the real world or her mind, both will lead to the same thing. Plus, this title connotes the classic thriller convention of mirrors that reflect the true inner self of a character- we used this idea in our piece.

Here is a list of generics thriller conventions we met in our product, making it similar to real psychological thrillers:

• We used Low key lighting to reflect a dark mood in the nightmare that is in the girls mind (she has a deep dark mind) we tried to use the idea of pathetic fallacy in the dream sequence by shooting the scene as the sun is setting, letting the night sky fall into our natural lighting to have natural darkness, also bring up connotations of darkness and night time. 
• A dream to outline the psychological side, showing a broken mind, a corrupt and dark subconscious, full of strong feelings, fears and negativity- that makes the plot what it is.
• A chase scene highlights the girl’s inner feelings of wanting to escape the doctors grasp, because of what he might do to her and what she thinks of him.
• A Canted angle to show panic and a foreshadow for something bad about to occur as a result of hiding behind the tree in the dream. 
• We generically used Point of view shots to relate to the character, which allows the audience to understand their feelings. Psychological thrillers are big on feelings because they can be messed up, and can drive a characters actions, which can be very disturbing.
• Continuous use of Hidden identity of the doctor’s face, and the characters in the beginning of the plot, to intrigue the audience. His face is hidden throughout, suggesting he is truly hiding something, which then interests the audience further so they keep watching because they must know what his secret is.  
• A plot twist to create an unpredictable plot that shocks the audience and maintains their interest. She wakes up, showing the audience it was only a dream, when it looked so real, showing how her dreams and reality interlink so much- can't escape either.
• Hand held shots create chaos and immerse the audience in the chase scene.
• Close ups to emphasise feeling and ideas, like the knife acts as suggestive violence and danger. 
• A dark setting/location to form negative connotations and ideas about what happens there in the manor house and forest. 
• In the post production stage we tried to use Obtrusive editing as it creates a fast blurred pace to evoke emotions of stress and excitement, playing with the emotions of the audience and keeping them on the edge of their seat during the chase. 
• A Mirror to create the idea that they reflect the inner darkness and raw emotions of the girl as she looks up, she sees the doctor, this suggests he will always be a part of her, in her mind and life. 
• A Flash back of the dream to frighten and unsettle the audience one final time, reminding them of the terror for a recapping effect.

Real psychological thrillers would use these conventions in similar ways to us. These allow us to meet the genre, and satisfy the audience through it's well served purpose to entertain, excite and engage. However, our film has challenged and developed generic conventions of thrillers, which formed an element of originality and independence within it. 

• For example, usually in thrillers the protagonist is male, this can be due to the strong and fierce role they play within some plot lines, though in our film, we wanted to challenge this convention in the way that we cast a female this role. we also developed this idea because we needed her to be young and blonde, rather than much older and capable girl. We were mainly inspired by Sucker Punch (Dir. Zach Snyder 2011) to have a young female play as our protagonist; not only does this contradict a traditional convention of thriller protagonists, but also adds to the impact on the audience, as it can distressing to see young innocent girls battle their way through a life of psychological abuse and suggested physical abuse. A film that has a similar protagonist would be "Hanna" (Dir. Joe Wright 2011) however, she proves herself to be much more masculine in the stereotypical ways that she is capable and independent. The girl in our film is portrayed as weak, vulnerable and innocent at the beginning, which can then heighten the effects further because it appears she doesn't deserve this.
• The reverse dolly zoom, which we developed into a point of view shot of the girl, looking down the long path at the doctor. We hoped that this technique would create fear and tension in the audience as it creates the illusion that the doctors figures comes forward. 
• We also used bright high key lighting as the girl wakes up, as this creates a deceptive and contrasting feel to the audience. The lighting contributes to the false sense of security in the reality scene, which this then makes any shocks more emphasised, as the light does not reflect any bad upcoming events. It also helps outline the realism in this scene, as in reality, not all weird or disturbing things happen at night. 

Our piece represents different social groups in a number of ways, firstly the male and female characters of the young girl and male doctor can represent society’s hierarchy of gender- with the idea that the girl is made inferior by the doctor in ways, like the suggestive violence against her, thus making her afraid of him. The young female protagonist is portrayed as weak and vulnerable in the narratives events and mise en scene, for example her hospital nightwear highlights her illness and her nightmare points out how she is mentally ill and weak- representing mentally ill people like her. Within the composition-her small figure compared to the man's height indicates the dominance he has over her, for example when she runs into his chest in the dream, it clearly shows this idea. The fact this girl appears traumatised by the doctor in her dreams, suggests that he's doing something to make her feel that way, therefore keeping her weak and powerless against him.  Whereas the man’s costume shows his profession that he's a doctor, which connotes intelligence, authority and capability; qualities that makes him superior to the mentally ill girl, as he is mentally and physically stronger. 

Looking at their ages (within gender), the doctor is obviously much older, which can symbolise how men have been in power for much longer than women. The adolescent girl can represent how women's hunger for power and equality is growing in society, they no longer want to be treated as inferior or dominated; as the girl just wants her freedom, because both her dreams and reality are controlled almost to the point she is very uncomfortable and tries to escape it, yet fails.

 Alternatively, it can represent men as misunderstood, as the film sides more with the girl; we see what she sees in him, creating a bias in perspective. As he could actually be a good person despite all the hints that he is not, as it’s suggested that the girl is mentally ill, so her perceptions can be distorted. However, the audience could speculate why she is ill, maybe all the suggested violence and domestic abuse is true, therefore pushing her mental stability on a tilt. 

In addition, the representation of doctors challenges the audiences and societies views of them in the way that they are seen as good and trusting people who are there to treat ill people, yet this film portrays him as traumatising in the dream part, which is the first thing the audience learn about him, limiting other ways to view him. The breakfast scene shows him as nice at first, then suddenly creepy, creating the idea that mentally ill people don't trust doctors because they are deceiving. For example in "Shutter Island" (Dir. Martin Scorsese 2010) the doctor is trying to convince Teddy that he is mentally ill, and both the audience and Teddy don't know what to believe or trust, so this means our representation of doctors in our piece, meets a common convention of psychological thrillers.

Focusing on age alone, our film can represent teenagers and adults, similar to the ways it represents women to men- with the idea that the young is controlled by the old. Teenagers are represented as knowing what they want, but not always getting it; outlining elements of being weak as well as defiant towards adults, wanting to disobey the adults wishes. This can relate to the audience in ways that they too want to rebel and have more freedom, this link pull the audience close to her side, showing that she is the protagonist trying to overcome the obstacle the antagonist doctor places before her. If we could have produced the rest of the film, these ideas and representations of social groups would have been clearly defined, both meeting and challenging character conventions within psychological thrillers.

Although the group thought that an independent production companies like Warp and Film4 would distribute our film, But from the producing and editing of the main task, I thought that the narrative, effects and music have a more Hollywood style to it. Therefore I'd say an ideal Media institution would be 20th Century Fox, as they are a subsidiary of the extremely large and successful conglomerate, News Corporation. This means that through the use of horizontal and vertical integration, our film would be distributed globally through companies like 'The Times', 'Sky' and 'MySpace', appealing to a mass audience, therefore attracting a wider audience which means earning a higher revenue, allowing us to produce other films. 20th Century Fox has been around since 1935 which shows the amount of experience they have in a range of genres and types of films, and has a reliable image that the audience can trust to deliver what they want. However, we would I would have liked to use an institute that is more known for successful psychological thrillers like Shutter Island (Dir. Martin Scorsese 2010) and Inception (Dir. Christopher Nolan 2010), as the audience would see our film in the same way they did with those, suggesting our film is just as good and mind blowing, therefore attract and widen our demographic. Other ways we would market our film would be through the use of viral marketing, for example advertising it all over popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, not to mention YouTube and Vimeo, which would also reach out to our target audience of psychological thriller fans, and generate free user content. This idea works quickly and effectively to promote the film, which will pull in thousands of views, creating a start in word of mouth.

The demographic for our film, in my opinion would be teenagers and adults aged 15 to 25 of both genders. Therefore, if the BBFC (British Broad of film Institute) was to give our film an age certificate, we would hope that it's a fifteen, rather than an eighteen at least; as this would keep it available to a wider audience that has great potential to be very interested in buying into the media product we have made for an audience of this kind. Expanding on the demographic, I would expect that they have an interest in exciting psychological thrillers such as Sucker Punch, Shutter Island, Inception, Black Swan and the Butterfly Effect, as these are all examples of some of my favourite films, and we produced a film opening influenced by these, which means the film would be of a similar appeal as these. I would also expect that the main bulk of the audience would be from the USA, the UK, and other English Speaking countries around the world, as our product would be distributed globally. 

Furthermore on the topic of our audience, from thinking about how the plot would unfold, if we were to produce the entire film, I'd quite like the girl to continue having disturbed dreams to the point it’s very difficult to sleep. Her sleep deprived state strengthens and develops her minor mental illness, until it takes over her life, showing symptoms of insomnia and schizophrenia, this causes the doctor to examine her too much. The voices tell her what the problem is, it's definitely him, if it's not him it's her, the only way she will ever be free, is if he’s gone, really gone... in a world she believes to be a dream, she wants to see how it feels to listen to them aching voices, obeying them, maybe they will go away, maybe everything finally will go away and leave her in peace. Little does she realise this world is real. She kills her step father, the doctor that only wanted to look after her, and help her get through the trauma that was her mothers sudden death. She began to think it was him who killed her, pushed her to her death in one of their many fights, but she will never know, and never be free from this insanity that is now her life. I think this idea is okay, but would the BBFC deem it to be too much for an audience of 15 year olds? I hope not, as the beginning of Sucker Punch, Baby doll accidently kills her sister, and that was rated a 15 certificate. Here's a link to their website, for further information http://www.bbfc.co.uk/. 

In our short opening, we used certain ideas and techniques in order to attract and address our target audience. Firstly I'd say the name Parallel is selling point, due to its many connotations and snappy sound, it will intrigue the audience. But from the opening scene, an example would be the young female protagonist, as she targets a young audience of teenagers, she is seen as a more relatable character, allowing them to empathise much easier as they can connect and perhaps understand how she feels, conveyed through camera shots, movement and mise en scene- e.g. the close up of her face in the dream scene strongly shows her primary emotions of fear, desperation and stress, some of which the audience can recognise and sympathise with. Not only does the protagonist relate the viewer, but also acts as USP (unique selling point) for the film, as it's uncommon in thrillers to have a female protagonist, this challenges the convention of main characters, making our film more unique in the way that it can offer a different plot line packed with interesting and engaging ideas, that perhaps some of the audience might not have seen before, also making our film more memorable and re watchable to the audience. As we used a dream chase scene, this immediately engages the audience into a new world, completely minimising any doubts and heightening their interests as they want to know exactly what is happening. This scene sets the tone for the film, outlining the psychologically disturbed side and places the audience in the girls perspective more than any other character. As everyone has dream, whether they are good or bad, the audience will have an idea just how far and extreme they can go, making the audience feel more focused on what will happen next rather than focusing on predicting what might happen, strengthening any shocks and twists. This opening scene also evokes lots of different emotions straight away which forms an emotional attachment to the plot, making the audience continue to watch and feel for the girl. Along with this, the paralleled music was on time with a lot of the visual beats, as they both went really well together, it was effective in maintaining their full attention, the fact they go together nicely, suggests to the audience that it is worth watching, therefore appeals to our audience and fulfils the purpose to entertain. When the girl is caught, it can be exciting and stressful for the audience already, so when she wakes up suddenly, it offers a slight plot twist, which then can foreshadow further events in the plot to suddenly change, catching the audience out with an element of surprise. We then drew them back in when the scary doctoshe was running from, makes her breakfast- utterly contrasting with her dream, the audience are then more intrigued, so they want to watch it even more. Finally at the very end when the girl sees the doctor in the mirror, it shows a last creepy portrayal of him, causing a flashback to the dream and s quick shot of the house, having one last unsettling effect, showing that her reality is not okay, but the audience will want to know even more. The mysterious doctor can also form another kind of USP, as he can lure the target audience, regarding what his motive and role is. The audience can speculate so much from an opening scene as there are too many unanswered questions, encouraging them to want to watch more so they can find out the answers. Moreover, psychological thrillers tend to be very confusing and difficult to understand, yet very interesting and dark, these qualities make our film something the audience will watch again.

Throughout the entire process of constructing this film opening, I have learnt things individually, and as a group, both really important in making a more successful and appealing film. In pre production, the importance of communication was highlighted as the group needed to discuss ideas a lot of the time, so we could develop them further into a concept we all liked. Sometimes this was easy, as lots of arguments occurred, however, once we established some grounding because of these debates, we felt more focused on what we aimed to produce. We formed three-way chats both on texts and Facebook, as this allowed us easier access to each other at the same time, this was better in watching our thought and idea processes progress, therefore when it came to the blog posts, we had a more shared idea of what we started with and what it changed into. Plus, this use of technologies in this way meant it was easy to send ideas in picture form, which inspired us more. and we could go back to our old chats for information and details we discussed. 

In the second stage of production, I felt I learnt a great deal in both the team work in a production team, showing just how vital it is to work closely and mutually, in order to produce quickly and effectively, and the camera equipment. We learnt how to use a Sony digital camcorder and tripod, as we experimented with different shots and movements, such as hand held shots, reverse dolly zooms and zooming, panning, the invisible camera and close ups, to capture the effects we wanted, even though I had not really used a digital camcorder before this project, so I feel that it was a good experience as I now felt much more confident in using one again. I felt that I learnt which shots are better and easier to use. I think one of the most important thing I learnt in this stage, is how to not underestimate the times things will be done, as we got it all filmed in one day, it meant we felt a bit rushed, which affected us in the way that we didn't get all the shots we wanted, and it could affect the acting. One last thing I learnt in filming, is how to use the camera more cleverly to achieve better continuity, for example in the conversation scene, we filmed it from both sides to get a smoother edit on this part. I knew it was essential to use the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and match on action, as these techniques make the scene appear more realistic and natural, therefore eases the audience into the scene and distracts them from an discontinuity. Not only did we use these for a smooth and flowing continuity, but also to convey ideas regarding perspectives, hidden identity and dominance, as these played a major part in the opening to create tones for the film and attract the audience more.

 In the last stage of post production, I felt it was the most enjoyable and most educational in using technologies. For example we learnt how to edit together selected shots using fades and dissolves to achieve certain effects, as well as using the time stretch to manipulate the timings and speed of the onscreen action, also fulfilling the match on action pace. I then learnt how to add titles and filter effects, altering them both to how we wanted-on the settings the Adobe premiere software provided. Whereas on the preliminary task we simply added the greyscale filter, compared to the main task dream scene, we included both colour and black and white; showing how we developed and experimented with the effects even more in this main task, extending our knowledge. Continuing on this task, we learnt how to add a soundtrack, where we manipulated both the video and audio slightly in order to achieve the right timings for the sound that really complimented the film, making it seem more professional. I feel that this stage and the filming stag were most importing in learning about how to use the available technology in the best ways we can.

Our two tasks of the preliminary and main task differ in a number of ways for different reasons. In our preliminary we stuck to our storyboard very much, which meant even though we planned out the scene; it still appeared quite robotic and unnatural, which I really disliked. So when it came to our main task, we agreed to not let ourselves and our ideas be limited by the story board sheet as we only used it as a guide for what shots and the narrative, still we changed shots in production to suit the narrative better, for example we planned to use a reverse dolly zoom, this was difficult and challenging to get it right, so we decided to make a pov too, adding to the effect of conveying the girls emotions of fear. It was very clear that we took a more ambitious route on the main task compared to the preliminary, as we were much more experimental with the shots and movement’s, these were somewhat more complex and advanced which created the idea that our film was ambitious and professional. We even included as soundtrack to our main task to strengthen these ideas, and make it more appealing, whereas the only major edit we made on the preliminary was the greyscale filter effect. Speaking of effects we manipulated one for the main task, made up of colour and colour-drain. However, one thing that we did take seriously on both tasks, was the importance of costumes, as they can paint a person in certain way, we carefully selected outfits that matched the criteria for each character, portraying them in the way we wanted to. Furthermore, we ventured out of our comfort zones in the main task, especially Lizzie, as she ran bare foot through the forest; this shows how we took the location into more consideration compared to the preliminary, where we used the schools editing suit- having only a small significance in the plot.  As you can see, our tasks differ in the ways that we aimed to create a much more realistic and professional film for our final piece.

Overall, I think this main task was a real success throughout all production stages, just like the preliminary and logo. I'd like to continue with Eden pictures to produce other films, knowing that they will be just as good as this one, our first production together. I know that our skills will continue to develop from production to production. Looking back on the entire project it has been stressful, and really long, as I think I wrote more than enough, but it has been a new and fun experience, and I’ll take that with me. Here's our final group photo to capture our first finish As media coursework in style- then caption is "22"

Thank you and I hope you enjoyed looking over my  journey and productions, I’m sorry it’s so long,

Daniel.