Evaluation Question 7

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

Looking back, I think I have vastly improved my filming skills. I have learnt to use camera angles to add atmosphere and emotion to the shots in my thriller.

My preliminary task consisted of mainly some bird's eye view shots, medium close up shot, tracking shot and shot-reverse shot, while my thriller consisted of all these previously mentioned shots but we added some long shots, handheld pan, low angled, handheld tracking, point of view and over the shoulder shots.

As i changed the software i was editing on from Adobe in our prelim task to iMovie on my personal computer, I gained a basic knowledge on how to work both of these softwares, but managed to deepen my knowledge and refine my ability on using iMovie.

I have also learnt a lot about differentiating between various target audiences and different ways of targeting these specific audiences, for example via the internet.  

Story Board final

Question 5

Question 5

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Evaluation Question 6

Question 6

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Question 4 Evaluation Rough draft

Question 4 evaluation media

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Question 3 Evaluation Rough draft

Question 3:

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

'Voyeur' is an independent low budget film, which is aimed to attract alternative, niche audiences, as it is not a four-quadrant mainstream blockbuster. 

I think that companies like, for example, Warp films would be the best company to distribute our film, because it handles the distribution of independent movies.

Audiences would be attracted by 'Voyeur''s suspenseful and bitter realistic storyline and the character's strong personalities rather than the use of special effects, expensive locations and high profile names in the film industry (famous actors, directors, producers etc).

Like Animal Kingdom, the hype for our thriller film could be heightened by advertising on main social networking websites such as Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter. This would be a cheap way of targeting a large amount of people as most teenagers have access to these websites, so this would be an easy and cheap way to catch their attention. Also, they can easily share trailers/teasers/images and so on, and spread the word. 

One could also pout adverts on youtube.com, various cinema websites like 'picture house cinemas' or online streaming websites.

I think Picture House, who operate a line of 18 independent theatres throughout the UK, would be a good line of of cinema's to show and advertise 'Voyeur' in. In Norwich, this would be 'Cinema City'.

I think 'Voyeur' would also gain attention and appreciation by our targeted fanbase by being released via various film festivals, like Sundance, Raindance or the London Independent Film Festival.

Various film rental companies, like LoveFilm and Studiocanal, could offer to stream 'Voyeur' to their audiences.

Or obviously, there is also the option of releasing the film straight to DVD, but I think this would not be the most effective distribution method for our film and it would not gather enough attention from viewers.

Thriller Opening "Voyeur"

Evaluation Question 2

Question 2:

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

Gender

Our thriller conforms to the stereotype that the man is the stalker and the woman is the sort of victim or the pray.

She isn't really a femme fatale and this is challenging the idea that women in thrillers tend to either only be a femme fatales or irrelevant characters, because thriller films and altogether the media nowadays are ruled by men mostly.

A good example for this is Eve in Once Upon a Time in America. She is the victim of the law when she is shot by the corrupt police officers who are actually seeking to kill/catch her gangster lover.

Another good example is Josh's girlfriend in Animal Kingdom, who is killed by Pope, J's uncle, who then carries out her corpse lays it down to rot in the garden, so as to hide her death. 

The stereotype of dominant men which is reflected upon in our thriller is originally influenced by Norman Bates in 'Pyscho'.

He is also shown in a predatory, animalistic role as he preys on Marion Crane, 'Crane' being a type of bird. 

Other than in all these examples, in our thriller, the girl is not objectified or glamourised because she is mainly completely covered, but she still seems unable to shake off the behaviour of her stalker, which means there must be some deeper reason for his obsession.

Social class 

The first time you see the girl, in the scene when she's walking along the beach, you could think that, based on her costume and the situation, she could be from the working class.

Maybe also because she's at the beach on a morning, meaning maybe she doesn't go to school?

or maybe she's on the beach thinking about/trying to run away from some criminal act he's done?

But then the second environment you see her in, she's well dressed and looks quite sophisticated walking into the library after which you then see her sitting at a computer in what the audience could suspect is either an ordinary library or a school/university library- either way, you can assume that she's in education. The location and the atmosphere reflect her in a slightly more middle class social situation. 

The region

Our thriller shows Norfolk's beautiful coast in quite a melancholic/mysterious atmosphere.

Mood of the time

I think our story taps into the Zeitgeist of contemporary Britain by showing how new technologies are influencing the youth's lives more and more. 

The storyline shows a young man stalking a teenage girl through the internet and he contacts her via e-mail, which is a very modern and new method, but for us teenagers by now completely habitual.

Pretty much every teenager in Britain has access to the internet nowadays and young people are expected to have an e-mail address or even a Facebook account, so this could happen to anyone.

It's amazing how much information any stranger can access about one specific person purely through their virtual internet existence on Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Email etc.

This is why i think our thriller would appeal to most teenagers, because it is such a easily possible situation.

Evaluation Question 1

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

The main character in our thriller is a seventeen year old girl named 'Rihannon Hayleys' (short Ree).

This name was inspired by the main character Hayley Stark in the 2005 canadian indie film 'Hard Candy'.

This film shows a 14-year old girl who meets a 32-year old man on the internet,  suspecting him to be pedophile. She therefore slips an anaesthetic into his drink, ties him up to a chair and when we awakes, starts to torture him. 

Rihannon's first name shortens to 'Ree'. This name is a reference to the lead girl character in Winter's Bone, also named Ree.

Our girl's costume was also inspired by the Ree in Winter's Bone, being slightly used up and dirty. Ree Dolly's clothes reflect her hard upbringing and broken family situation, she dresses not to impress but to survive, with clothes that keep her warm and protected by the cold, rather than make her look good. The costume our girl Ree Haileys is wearing beach scene in Voyeur is heavily influenced by this. However it is also a reflection of casual slightly american-urban-streetwear inspired casual teenage clothing.

One of the locations we used in our thriller is a beach very similar to that in "The Piano".

An important generic thriller convention we approached in our thriller is the scenes taking place in unglamorous locations and locations with wide open spaces. As my teacher explained to me, the brooding sky and sea references the pessimistic and threatening mood associated with the film noir. Personally, I think we have managed to mirror the dark atmosphere of the film noir times nicely in our thriller, mainly during the beach scene, using effects like the 'vignette' to blacken the edges of the shot and adjusting the saturation and contrast to create a perfect greyness.  

A shot from Jane Campion's 1993 'The Piano'

A shot from West Runton beach in our thriller

 Its mysterious atmosphere is set through the fog and clouds in the early hours of the january winter's day. The grey sky and gloomy surroundings helped add a quite sad, but dreamy effect to the scenes we shot out in West Runton beach.

A shot from the sea in West Runton from our thriller

A shot from the Essex marchers in Terry Windsor's 'Essex Boys'

A similar location which inspired us are the Essex Marchers in the 2000 thriller "Essex Boys", when Jason Lock leaves a man behind in the middle of nowhere in the marchers after having beaten him up and showering his face in acid. 

The West Runton beach we used alternates between areas of cold, wet sand, big, strong stones and hard concrete.

It is quite hard to walk on barefoot, like Ree is doing. This mirrors how hard the path is that lays in front of her int he next few days according to the rest of the plot, when she finds out the she is being stalked by someone very unexpected. 


Parallel to the fact that we live in Norfolk and we chose to film our thriller close to home, so if we needed to add some scenes (which we actually also ended up having to return to and film some more), we could easily access our filming location, we were also inspired by the 2009 film 'The Scouting Book for Boys', which also takes place on the Norfolk coast.

Another thriller in which a woman is alone, vulnerably seeking help on a beach is "Jeopardy",  which also helped inspire our initial idea of the girl in this particular location.

How Tarantino uses intertexuality in Kill Bill.

Quentin Tarantino is famous for using brilliant intertexual references in all of his films.

These may vary from obvious references like naming characters after influential artists (In Inglourious Basterds, the alias name Sgt. Donny Donowitz uses is named after cult Italian director "Antonio Margheriti". Also, the surname of the character Omar Ulmer is a reference to German Expressionist filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer) or the use of music from spaghetti westerns and 1950s noir thrillers, to very subtle references like the Calabash Meerschaum pipe, which the detective character Hans Landa smokes in Inglourious Basterds, being the exact same pipe that detective Sherlock Holmes is know to use.

1960 drama by Michelangelo Antonioni 

Tranatino's 2009 adventure war thriller 

Also, almost all of Tarantino's films display the copyright info in small roman numbers directly under the title of the film in the opening credits. This is an homage to many films produced in the 1960s and 70s, which Tarantino greatly admires.

Tarantino's use of the Ennio Morricone composed soundtrack in Kill Bill Vol. 2 when the bride escapes from being buried alive is a reference to the famous confrontational threeway shootout scene in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", a 1966 spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone (who also directed the crime thriller Once Upon A Time In America).  The location is another homage to this scene, as the Kill Bill Vol.2 scene also takes place in a graveyard.

These intertexual references serve as an homage to Sergio Leone and the spaghetti western genre. The soundtrack and location choice also hint towards the similarity of the three main characters in both films representing the good, the bad and the ugly. 

In the1966 film, the character named Blondie is 'the good', Sentenza "Angel Eyes" is 'the bad' and the bandit Tuco is 'the ugly'.

In Kill Bill Vol.2 these three types of characters are refered to by the blonde Bride taking Blondie's place as 'the Good', Bill being 'the Bad' and Bud serving as 'the Ugly'. 

In the original 1966 film, Blondie 'the Good' ends up killing 'the Bad' and leaving 'the Ugly' in a very awkward situation.

The purpose of this reference also foreshadows the final ending of the Kill Bill story.

It gives the Bride iconic status and foreshadows that she, like Blondie, is going to win over the Bad and the Ugly, like Blondie does in the1966 western.

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is also referred to in the opening scene of Kill Bill Vol.1, when the Bride "the Good" is lying on the floor when Bill "the Bad" shooting her, similar to the western scene in which Blondie "the Good" is lying on the floor near to death from dehydration when Tuco "the Ugly" points a gun at him. 

Opening Sequence of Once Upon A Time in America

Once Upon a Time in America is a 1984 crime thriller, directed by Sergio Leone.

After the title sequence, the film starts off with a sound bridge of the non-diegetic track “God Bless America” playing over the first close up shot. This is an important cultural signifier and the Italian director is making an ironic statement by using this track in the first shot also because the values represented in the song are so violently contradicted later in the film.

Eve, the first person the audience can see, appears out of the dark after diegetic sound of her footsteps and a door opening. She is obviously a femme fatale, a deviant woman. The first shot of her uses very little light, but she is still distinctively recognisable through the noir lighting.

Her emotions shown through her facial expression are emphasised by the use of many close up shots. Also, the viewer can identify with her so they are on her side, and also see this scene from her point of view.

This adds to the suspense of the scene, as the close ups and darkness mean that the audience can not see what is happening out side of the shots and so they cannot see the rest of the room. For all we know, a killer might be hiding in a corner.

Her beauty is shown even more distinctively when she turns on the ambient lighting of the lamp.

Her costume also connote a lot about her character. Her natural beauty is emphasised through the quite simple tone of colouring of her clothes and through her not wearing much make up. Her perfectionism is shown through the overall perfect impression and while her red nails foreshadow violence and blood, her pearl earrings and necklace connote her melancholy and stand for tears to show that, like for example Marion Crane in Psycho, she is a vulnerable character, but also simply to add sophistication and elegance to her style

The natural warmth of her character is also mirrored in the use of ambient, gold-toned lighting coming from the lamp covered by a beautiful lampshade. This lamp is the only source of lighting in the mise-en-scene.

The fact that she is introduced alone shows her as a isolated figure and character.

In this shot, Eve finds a silhouette of a body drawn onto the sheets of her bed, adding suspense by throwing the audience into a unexplained situation as one immediately questions what has happened.

This low angle shot is used to demonstrate her vulnerability, but also to show the audience an overview of the scene while still slightly keeping it similar to her perspective.

Suddenly, three gangsters enter, wearing generic 1940s trilby hats and jackets.Cut to low medium close up shot of Eve from behind, so the audience can see the scene how she is seeing it. One should particularly notice the notion of framing that is added in this shot with the arch in the ceiling/wall surrounding the action.A generic convention is the strong sense of claustrophobia adding to the tension making the viewers start to panic when they realise that Eve can't escape between the bed and the gangsters with the gun. Eve keeps her elegance even when she is shot by the gangsters as she gracefully twirls when she falls onto the bed.

Cut to low angle shot with Eve lying dead on the bed in the foreground out of focus, while the focus is on the three men standing authoritatively and dominantly in the background,

connoting their power. Despite being out of focus, Eve's shocked facial expression is still clearly recognisable, as her face is situated right close up to the camera.

When the gangsters leave the room after killing Eve, one of them turns the lamp off that Eve had previously turned on. This reflects how they have put her beautiful light out by killing her.

In a scene following the murder of Eve, the gangsters are brutally assaulting a fat middle aged man who is hanging by ropes from the ceiling. In this scene the director uses various close-up shots, applying the technique of shot reverse-shot and also importantly never breaking the 180-degree rule.

A low angle medium close up slightly tilted shot introduces the important gangster leader, who is calmly watching the assault, whilst sitting wearing a suit and suavely holding a cigarette in his hand.

This is a very interesting tilted upside down worm's eye view shot from later in the film. As well as being worm's eye view it is also a point of view shot seen from the perspective of a bleeding man lying shot on the floor looking up to the gangster.

In important generic convention from the entire film is that, even though there is a lot of violence and blood, nothing supernatural happens. This makes the film a crime thriller rather than an action or horror film.

 

Kill Bill Opening Sequence Analysis

Kill Bill Volume 1 Opening Scene

The film opens to a black screen, with a sound bridge of heavy breathing and footsteps rhythmically walking across a room on wooden floorboards.

Cut to a high angle close up shot of a beaten up woman's face. She is lying on the floor after most probably having been involved in a violent fight or attack.

The purpose of a a close up in this shot is to add emphasis on the bride's terrified facial expression, bringing the audience straight into the situation and making them sympathise with her emotions. The high angle camera shot looking down to her shows her in a vulnerable position making the audience instantly have pity for her and see her as the 'goodie'.

Quentin Tarantino decided to show this scene in black and white as a tribute to the old 1950s film noir of which he is a big fan. It also adds a sense of authenticity to the scene, also indicating that it is possibly a flashback.

The high contrast black and white colouring turns the red blood on the bride's face into black blood, foreshadowing the darkness and hate, bitterness of the bride's character in this film.

This is also backed up later on in the film when she says “It's mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack!” as a reply to Bill thinking she is irrational.

An important thriller convention is the use of many shadows in the lighting.

Opening the film with such a dramatic unexplained situation adds suspense and tension to the audience, who are immediately taken and sucked into the film, questioning what has happened to bring the bride into her dramatic situation.

Diegetic sound of her hyperventilating mirrors the tension in her panicking look.

She feels threatened.

The suspense and sensation of threat is augmented while the sound of the footsteps become increasingly loud as they are walking towards the bride.

Cut to slightly low angle tracking shot of the feet in black cowboy-style shoes.

Diegetic sound of the cracking floorboards and strong sound of heavy footsteps connoting the importance and strong character of the enigmatic figure.

Cut back to high angle close up of woman.

Cutting from the tracking low angle shot of feet to high angle close up of woman shows the difference in power between the bride and the anonymous figure.

The terror in the bride's eyes grow as they fixate the feet walking towards her.

The sound of the footstep comes to a heavy halt. The words “Do you find me sadistic?” come from a deep male voice, who's american accent serves as a cultural signifier, building a cliché and the audience instantly suspect the character is a villain.

The enigmatic figure's hand enters the frame as he wipes the blood off to reveal the bride's beautiful face, but he cannot wipe away the deep hate mixed with terror in her look as tears dramatically flow from her eyes.

The tension in the scene is strongly intensified when the name 'Bill', embroidered in the corner of the handkerchief the enigmatic character uses to wipe her face, becomes recognisable. This immediately reveals the importance of his character, validating the audience's initial suspicion that he is a villain, as this name is obviously a reference to the the title 'Kill Bill'.

Based on the wrinkles on his hand and the deepness, roughness of his voice, one would imagine Bill is around 50- 60 years old.

Bill talks to the bride quite patronisingly, calling her 'kiddo' with a tone like a father would talk to his child, teaching him the lessons of life. This makes it clear to the audience that the two characters are not strangers and their relationship has a history.

Surprise is added to the scene when, while Bill continues talking in a casual manner, diegetic sound is to be heard of him taking a gun out of his jacket and preparing to shoot. The terror in the bride's face drastically grows while she sees the gun and quickly slips the word “Bill, it's your baby” in before he shoot the gun and her blood is splattered all over the floorboards.

Immediately cutting to a black screen with white writing “The 4^th film by QUENTIN TARANTINO”.

Analysing this opening one and a half minutes of this film, a clear situation is already established.

Bill seems a patronising , ruthless character.

The big silver/gold bracelet he is wearing around his wrist and the silk handkerchief suggest he is quite pretentious, caring a lot about appearance and money, and manipulative, wanting to be in charge/ have the power all the time, which is also shown through the fact that he has impregnated a beautiful bride who is much younger than him, therefore expected to be obedient.

Bill is an enigma which is kept up throughout the whole film as Tarantino does not show the audience Bill's face.