Evaluation Task 1 - In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms of Conventions from Real Media Products?

Evaluation Task 1 - In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms of Conventions from Real Media Products?

Frame 1: Title

 

My first frame I want to analyse is my film title. I called my film, The Tunnel. I chose this because my film is connected with the underground/train lines which is fitting and conations of tunnels play off a sense of claustrophobia.  Tunnels create a passage from one place to another and are used to make travelling easier, tunnels make you go in a certain direction - maybe not the way you want to go – and a well-known saying is that "there's light at the end of the tunnel." Which could give false hope to the audience which is a stereotypical narrative device of the genre. When deciding on my title I looked at things like, Eden Lake and Se7en. They have very simple titles but give very broad conations and allow audiences to theorise for themselves about the film and the plot. My Title is never mentioned in my trailer but I have a selection of images and clips that allude to the meaning of the title. When looking at my Magazine Cover and Poster, train tracks were a crucial part that allowed the viewer to focus on the title and the basic narrative plot around it.

I used the Vinear Hand font across all 3 products on my title to synergize them. The font is in a sort of handwritten style which has connotations of the ghost storyline. Unlike many thriller films that have bold font titles such as Shutter Island, Nocturnal Animals or Sin City I decided to use a smaller font size like Orphan which in my opinion stands out more as a physiological thriller film. 

 

Frame 2: Cinematography

My second frame is focusing on cinematography. This is a still from the beginning of my trailer. It’s on a canted angle which automatically tells the audience that something isn’t right. It’s also a zooming shot which crossfades with David’s face which then goes onto narrow into his eyes. Clever shots like this in trailers like Jigsaw and Se7en are very intriguing as whilst you might understand what’s going on in the shot, until you watched the film you don’t understand the context and I used this to create confusion but also interest in the audience.  In the shot you can see blood draining out of the bottom of the bath in multiple places, I also made the colour more vibrant in post-production to signify that it wasn’t normal/ it had been meddled with by something supernatural. The combination of cinematography and Mise En-scene in my trailer was carefully planned out so that each shot had its own connotations. I had another moving shot of a city centre main road on a rainy day and then flipped the footage so it was backwards(which you can see on the road signs/markings,) to represent that life for David right now wasn’t go the direction he wanted it to. I had many other classic close/mid shots so the trailer wasn’t too abstract and difficult to follow.

 

 

Frame 3: Editing

In my trailer I used multiple editing effects as well as normal fades and cuts. One effect I used several times was the “Ghosting” effect. I used it on clips with the pov walking in the forest and the train approaching the platform and the final shot of the car screen. The effect distorts and slightly delays the frames to give the visual of confusion. I specifically used this effect on the trains because it is a crucial point to the plot and is meant to represent David’s confusion in the murder case and the image he keeps thinking about which is drawing him to go and investigate.  My ideas for my editing were original as nothing specifically stood out to me in other trailers except the pace and quick cuts.

On my poster and magazine I used different opacity’s and layers to compose the best final products. I took inspiration from the Nocturnal Animals poster when layering the images as it was the look I was going for. 

Frame 4: Sound

I used multiple bits of music in my trailer. The first piece was called Blow the Man Down, which I got from the YouTube Audio Library. It’s very unconventional for the thriller genre as it is a very old recording and slow. I used a Low Pass effect on this piece of music to show that it was diegetic and was coming out of a phone/radio; the lyrics also match the visuals, as the audience can infer someone is being killed because of the blood – even though we don’t see the person.  The other pieces are all non-diegetic and the second piece I used was typical music that creates suspense which then abruptly runs into a piece I made myself which is meant to represent a heartbeat and create tension and each sound makes an eerie vibrating atmosphere. The last piece I used was used to increase the pace of the trailer and engage the audience. Other trailers I looked at were Jigsaw which has an effective use of multiple music choices. And this was one of my main inspirations when creating my own trailer.

Frame 5: Mise En-scene

David’s costume for the film is smart, work appropriate clothes which connote a level of power as he is a detective. He also wears a wedding ring so we can infer that he is nice person.  Most of the trailer is shot in the day time but there’s also shots at night time and in darkly lit conditions too which juxta pose each other given the connotations.  Other trailers such as Eden Lake do similar things.

Frame 6: Poster

When I was researching thriller film posters, I specifically looked at Nocturnal Animals and Se7en. I liked how they layered images and textures together and when composing my own I knew this was something I wanted to do. I kept to a black/white and red colour scheme on my poster as these are stereotypical colours of the genre and will be recognisable. I had similar images to my magazine cover to help synergize my products. There’s an image of David’s face on a very low opacity –like the Nocturnal Animals poster- then the tunnel and ghost images. I adjusted the colour on the tunnel tracks to make them appear brighter and made the light at the end of the tunnel more vibrant so it creates a silhouette effect on the ghost. My poster also has real media elements such as the age ratings and production companies. There’s also ratings and quotes to make it look more professional. The billing block is quite unconventional as it isn’t in a line by line format, instead it all pieces together around the release date like a puzzle structure which connotes the enigmatic thriller genre.  

Frame 7: Narrative

The narrative of my film is quite complex because of this my target audience was 15-30 year olds as they are more likely to invest in a complex story. My film is set in London, and follows Detective David Barnes as he tries to work out who is killing all these people, he soon realises that the killer is supernatural and is a ghost from London underground bombings during the world war and the solution he has to find to stop her. My trailer relies heavily on inferences, for example in the still image Lucy says, “There’s another one around that corner.”  Which on the first viewing could be anything, but as the trailer progresses we learn that it was a dead body. As there are supernatural elements there are shots of stereotypical things such as flickering lights and candles and manipulation of images like the train shot. A thriller film that had a difficult plot was Se7en and having watched that and how the creators did that inspired me to do a similar thing in creating a multi-layered plot.

 

Frame 8: Introducing characters

My trailer only focuses on the main protagonist, David so we get to know him and trust him with the investigation. We can see he is determined to figure out the case. His character is very professional and we can see he is a family man as he is wearing a wedding ring which makes him more likeable and relatable.  His dialogue is what progresses the story along and although we don’t see the ghost until the end we can tell that he is brave and wants justice for the dead victims. Through the use of music, editing and cinematography the portrayal of David’s mental state is shown through a fast moving train with the blur and “ghosting effect” to show that he is stressed and confused by the case. The use of dramatic irony allows the audience to connect with him as we have sympathy for his situation.

 

Frame 9: Magazine Cover

My magazine cover has a front facing image of my main protagonist, David looking stern and focused. In the background there is an image of a tunnel with train tracks and the ghost in the middle. I used a iconography and symbols too to make the cover more appealing and eye-catching as from my research, magazines that included these stood out more and attractive. I also used a puff and stuck to a white and red colour scheme for my text. I looked at film magazines such as Empire, Total Film and Entertainment Weekly and took inspiration from them to try and make my own look as professional as possible. I called my magazine “Inside Movies” and I had the “Movies” in a bold elephant font as from research I found that titles tend to be in a bold font. I kept my tagline "follow the tracks" because it reminds the audience that the film is set around trains and also connects with the other cover lines - about inside the magazine. I have the barcode and other images from other films along/around the outside. I used Adobe Photoshop to adjust things like opacity and colour.