Evaluation - Distribution

Evaluation - Distribution

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

OUR ANSWER

Evaluation - Representation

Evaluation - Representation

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

As there are only two characters in this piece, very few social groups have been represented. Our opening involves a young adult Caucasian female and a Caucasian male in his mid-twenties. In terms of gender this is fairly representative of the general population, although it does not represent people who do not fit into the gender binary. In terms of race and age this is not very representative of the whole population as it pretty much only represents Caucasians in their early/mid-twenties.

     The spy

When deciding the character of the spy, we wanted to stick to genre conventions which generally involve a 30-something year old Caucasian man. This character is used because it represents the sort of person the film is targeted towards, as action/thrillers are generally targeted towards young men. This can be seen in a multitude of spy films, including very famous ones such as James Bond films, Mission: Impossible, and the Bourne series. We tried to make our character as close to this as we could, although we had a fairly limited selection of people to choose from. As a result we cast Oliver as a spy, even though he was slightly younger than the 'typical' spy.

     The assassin

For the assassin, we decided to cast Crystal. Our main debate about the assassin was about gender, as the gender of assassins in movies is quite varied. In the past, killers have almost always been male - however, in recent times there has been a huge influx in the number of female assassins, although there is still variation in gender. In films like the Bourne series, for example, assassins are male, whilst in others, such as Kill Bill, assassins are female. In the end we decided to go female, partly because we knew Crystal would be fantastic as the assassin and partly because female assassins often seem to have more of an edge of mystery and danger than male ones, mainly due to the fact that it is unconventional, which would make an action/thriller more exciting.

   Age and ethnicity

In terms of age and ethnicity, our film is not very representative. Both of the actors are young adults, and both are Caucasian. However, there are reasons for these choices. In terms of age, we decided that using fairly young actors made sense, as the jobs of both spies and assassins are quite active and dangerous, so require young people. Also, the level of risk means that older people are less likely to survive and their experience would make them more likely to have jobs in organisation or leadership. Therefore it made sense to use young adults.

In terms of ethnicity, we decided to stick to genre conventions in our choices. The genre conventions of action/thrillers is to have Caucasian actors as the main parts. Some examples of this would be James Bond and Jason Bourne in terms of spies and Mad Max, Die Hard and Taken in terms of action/thrillers generally. In all of these, the main protagonist(s) are white. As well as this, in the context of the film it makes sense to have Caucasian actors as the film is set in England where the majority of the population are white. Therefore it makes sense to use Caucasian actors in our opening.

Evaluation - Forms and Conventions

Evaluation - Forms and Conventions

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

Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes

Whilst we were filming our opening, I decided to film some footage for a behind the scenes video. Below is the video, which shows us preparing for the film, filming the scenes, fixing some problems we encountered, and how we felt about the shoot, plus a picture of a list of shots and takes which recorded our best shots and was quite useful in editing.

The Poster

The Poster

We decided to create a poster for our film.  Posters are important because they help potential customers understand what the film is and what it could be about. The poster has to represent our film, so I decided to look into posters for other action/thrillers. Below are some examples of posters from various action/thriller movies.

     Poster conventions

I can see from these posters that there are lots of conventions for action/thriller movie posters. Here are the things I noticed:

• Dark electric blue colours
• Dark colours
• Occasional dashes of red/orange
• Lots of shadows
• Includes pictures of main character(s)
• Title in red or white
• Action shots
• Often creates an idea of excitement and mystery
• Generally fairly simple (e.g. just a picture of one man)

     Ideas for posters

We decided to come up with a few ideas of what our poster could look like. The first one is a picture of one of the main characters with the symbol of Arc Death projected over the top of them. This could work because it would be dark and shadowy, and would create a sense of mystery. However, it may look quite horror-esque, which is not the feel that we are going for. The other idea is of a hooded figure with squares instead of a face, creating the idea of a hidden or concealed person. The squares are all some shade of black and white except for one, which is red with the symbol of Arc Diath inside of it.

We decided to go with the second idea, as it creates the idea of a 'veiled facade', a hidden and unrecognisable person. Below is a sketch of what our poster could look like:

Our Final Film

Our Final Film

The Title

The Title

I decided to look into different film titles to find ideas for what we could call our film. The name of our film is really important, as it needs to sum up the film, give a clue as to what sort of film it will be, and encourage people to watch it. Most action thriller movie titles fall into certain categories. Below are the categories, and examples of movies in those groups.

     Titles relating to character

• The Bourne Identity
• The Dark Knight
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• Sherlock Holmes

     Sophisticated words relating to plot

• Memento
• Inception
• Prisoners
• Psycho
• Taken

     Words relating to a place/organisation

• Casino Royale
• Spectre
• Everest
• Shutter Island
• Fight Club

     Ideas for our title

We decided to brainstorm ideas for titles for our film, focussing on the areas highlighted above. Since our story beyond the opening is very vague and unknown, we decided not to use a name for our title but instead focus on words. We thought of words that might relate to words in our film, used a thesaurus to find more complex synonyms for them, and even tried translating a few into different languages. Below is our brainstorm:

We decided to base our title around the word 'hidden' coming up with words such as 'veiled', 'private', and 'cover'. Crystal then took the best words and started trying out different variations of them to see what titles we could come up with. Below is the refined list of titles we have come up with:

     The title

After a discussion in our group and a small vote, we decided that the best, most intriguing and most suitable title for our film is 'Veiled Façade', as it has an air of mystery to it and creates a sense of suspense. It also sounds like a title for a professional action thriller film.