How does your media product represent particular social groups?
For our main character Lucy we wanted her to have a mysterious, dark and isolated look, in order to follow through with the thriller genre. We combined two looks together, a gothic style and of a lonley school girl. The two images on the right and left of the middle image, were the look we were going for, dark hair and black clothing giving them the stereotypical gothic image.
For the character of the teacher Mr Collinson, we decided to have a more formal look to reflect his personality. Sartorial codes such as a shirt and formal trousers would fit the look perfectly.
The appearance of Mr Collinson is a stereotypical look of how teachers are presented in films reflecting thier maturity and innocence.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The opening of our psychological thriller film ‘Education to die for’ adapted the conventions of a real media product, rather than challenging them. We decided to do this in order to emphasise the genre of our film, giving the audience a clear indication on what to expect from our film.
Title of our film
The title of our film is 'Education to die for', we thought it would be appropriate for a thriller film as it subtly hints to what the film might be about but also creates a sense of mystery, a common convention used in various thrillers.
The contrast of the black background and white font again indicates a sense of mystery and is similar to other thriller titles that i researched, such asThe Prestige.
We purposely made the font style of the title formal and in bold letters reflecting the genre of the thriller.
Conventions
Our narrative plot was similar to a film called 'Cracks' which is set in school through lighting , editing and music we were able to adapt a innocent setting such as a school to fit into the thriller genre.
Thehall scene in our opening sequence creates an atmosphere of isloation and obbsession. As we slowly zoomed into Lucy putting up the picture of Mr Collinson in her locker. The lighting in the hall is very dim and gloomy, thrillers often use lighting as a way to convey thier generic convention.
when editing the film, we used the computer program I-Movie. it enabled us to drag and drop our clips into the timeline and the bottom to make our final piece. we could also add our soundtrack over the top thst we got from www.freesound.com/ which we edited slightly so it would last through the openning.
when filming, we had alot of issues with the sound. we used the boom microphone so we could hear the sound of the laugh, as well as in other scenes that we didnt put in the final cut. we tried using about 4 different cameras but each time there was no sound when it was replayed. so eventually the scenes where the was to be dialouge, we cut out from the final opening.
because we were using different cameras to fix the sound issues, we had poor continuity with the quality of the shots, which can be noticable in some of the scenes in the final shot. this screen capture is an example of one of the poorer quality cameras we used.
as the age of digitisation has progressed through the internet, we thought we could attract our audience advertising our film on sites such as Youtube, Facebook and MySpace, the 3 highest populated websites that teenagers go on.
the genre of a thriller stereotypically inovloves murder, death and violence, but as it is a pyschogical thriller, it had to involve mind tricks and twists and turns in the story line.
in terms of narrative, our film is simiar to the film "Cracks", directied by Jordan Scott, Daughter of established director Ridley Scott. the film focuses on the estranged relationship between a students infatuation with her teacher, and the teacher's infatuation with another student. another similarity is between the production of the film to ours. both is in an independant film, focusing on the directorial skills of the film to sell it.
in terms of who are film is targeted at, we wanted the audience to be interested in the genre of thrillers, and of films with twists and unexpected turns in the plot. as the narrative is fairly explicit in terms of it being a "taboo" subject, love and obsession in a teacher-student relationship. so the audience had to be of an age that would not become infuluenced or impressioned by the story line. we decided on an age bracket form 16-25, as the character could be portrayed to be in that age gap.
our film is is produced by MAD Production. the name came form all of our surnames initials, Minhas, Ali and DuMay, we also felt it connoted the genre of a thriller by creating the word "mad". we felt it would be an independant film as the narrative of the film is rather controvertial for a main stream audience. we chose this to be our logo and font for our production company. the variation of the heights and messiness of the font connotes "madness " as a genre.
during the opening credits, we chose to have the the directors name before the cast. this is because most indevidual films are framed for their directorial skills rather than the popularity of the actors in the film.
to create the feeling that Lucy was a mysterious character in the film, we felt that the use of black clothing and long dark hair could show this. when choosing an actress, we wanted her to already have a look that would connote an "emo" or "goth" stereotype. such as stereotype already has this persona in terms of their apperance and sense of lonliness inpression.
for the Mr Collinson, we wanted him to have a prefessional, respectable and formal look about him in terms of his clothing. the teacher we chose was from our own school, Mr Graham. as the story line of the film was that the student was serverly infatuated with him, we wanted the teacher to have an apperance of a friendly personality. we felt that Mr Graham had a happy and friendly persona that would work for the role.
We felt the title of the film was vital to keep the mystery behind the narrative, also didn't want to take it seem too cliche in terms of its genre. The title was established from the saying "to die for", meaning something is desirable. we felt that this was a clever play on the saying as well as giving the audience a brief idea on the genre.looking back since we made the opening, i discovered another film called "To Die For".
in the opening of our film. we wanted to portray this feeling of obsession over the teacher. the shot shown bellow of Lucy drawing such a detailed picture of him creates the sense of her infatuation.
another way we wanted to show her obsession was through the use of imagery and photography. from watching other films following a narrative of stalking etc, we felt that having photos of him inside her locker would show how far over the line she is prepared to go for him, furthering showing her obsession.
in terms of camera such as shots and composition, we felt that having the slow moving zooms could show the secrecy of what she's doing for example when she is sticking up the photos. it also shows that the audience is intruding into her life, into her routine almost.
the way that the opening credits fade in and out across the screen further creates the feeling of secrecy and hiding things from the audience and her surroundings in the way that the credits almost creep up onto screen.
our film begins with mug shots of Lucy, this connotes she could be dangerous, or that she has broken some sort of rules. this already suggests to the audience that she is a character to be worrisome over.
A the beginning of the production project we produced a short conversation between two people to get use to using the camera and be prepared for our main production work. This is our preliminary task
During this task we used simple camera movements and angles, i.e: low angle and close up shot. We then edited what we had recorded and deducted any parts we did not want.
Producing this psychological thriller opening has developed my understanding of media techniques and representations. The long shot of the corridor , show s Lucy's obsession as she is sticking pictures of , Mr Collinson, in her locker. The empty corridor represents , how lonely Lucy's character is.
Another element that was more developed then our preliminary task, was Mis en scene. We constructed our own Heigh chart for the mugshot scene, as well as the mugshot Placard.
Most of our locations for our films are in school, this was useful as we were only allowed to film with school grounds. One of the scenes that we had considered filming was a conversation between Lucy and Pheobe , however we descovered that the scene was too long , and we had filmed it without sound. we then attempted it three more times, but we soon decided to cut the scene out of our film.
These are the locations for the scenes we wanted to do.
Another difference between our preliminary task, and production task, is that we did not use any diegetic sound of the dialogue. In our opening the characters are speaking in mime , as there is music playing over it. however you can hear the teacher, Mr Collinson laughing. We had planned to use diegetic sound for the conversation between Lucy and her best friend Phoebe, but we decided that it would be too long as the time limit for our opening was 2 minutes. Also the sound was not successful, especially as we had recorded it more than 4 times.
This is our final opening.
This psychological project has expanded my understanding of producing a film, and allowed me to develop my skills and tecniques such as:
Camera- Shots Angles Composition Movement Editing Sound Mis en scene
This process of producing a psychological thriller has helped develop my filming skills, and allowed me to experiment with different filming technique and shots. Lucy often wears dark coloured clothing, which shows that she is not a very pen character,and prefers to be alone rather than people around her, as opposed to her friend Phoebe, who's popularity always surrounds her with people. I also learnt that different types of scary sound effects can create a scary atmosphere.
Our media product is aimed at teenagers. The use of teenagers in our psychological thriller, as the main characters. As this is aimed at teenagers we it will be released quickly. As digitalisation is increasing, this means new and more improved ways to watch films. Teenagers are likely to watch films on Youtube, Google videos etc.
We used characters that our audience could relate to. The main character in our film, Lucy Bentley, is a an example of a character that people can relate to, as many teenagers like rock music and like dressing in Black.
This is an example of an teenager. Our film would not be suitable for young children as it is a thriller and it would appear to be scary for them.
By having storylines that are similar to the types of dramas and soaps teenagers watch, i.e: Hollyoaks, Waterloo road etc. These dramas/soaps have some type of stroyline between a student and a teacher.
This is an example of a relationship between the teacher and student, from Hollyoaks.
Our Media product is aimed at teenagers. It is suitable for ages over 14, but our main aim is 17 to 18 year old teenagers. In our psychological thriller, we have characters and storylines that are suitable for teenagers and are the king of storylines , teenagers would watch, e.g: the main storyline of our media product is about a schoolgirl, who becomes obsessed by a new teacher. Her obsession causes her to shut out the people around her, including her best friend Phoebe. The image shows how obsessed Lucy is, which leads her to having images of the teacher. This is where Lucy is in class drawing the teacher, Mr Collinson.
We wanted to use two different characters as Best friends , an outgoing social girl and a girl is not very social and doesn't have many friends around her. As well as making a different storyline we also wanted to this to puzzle our audience, as that is the aim of an psychological thriller. Our characters are similar to the characters from popular, a Tv series created in 1999, by Gina Mathews and Ryan Mathews. The difference between our character and the characters in popular are that the two girls used to be best friends until they 're social status separated them from each other.
Our aim was to approach the storyline that happen in real life. As the main characters in our psychological thriller, are teenagers, we are targeting this age group, as they will find it interesting and would be able to relate to it.
In our film , we used a teacher (Mr Graham) , to play the part of Lucy's teacher, Mr Collinson, who she obsesses about.
Lucy's obsessive behaviour leads her to stick computer printed images of Mr Collinson in her locker.
Here , Lucy is watching across the class in jealousy as, Mr Collinson makes a joke with two other students.
There are television Dramas that have similar storylines, e.g: Hollyoaks which is a teenage drama, that comes on channel 4. This has storylines with obsessive behaviour towards liking a teacher.
Our film is produced by MAD productions. We decided that we would be an idependent film as we have a teenage audience, therefore we wnated to construct a film that would suitable for out audience and something that they would enjoy. Most films that are often aimed at teenagers are mainstream and have more than one producer. The film Sority Row(2009), directed by Stewert Hendler and written by Josh stolbergand Peter Goldfinger, is produced by two production companies. These are Karz Entertainment and Summit entertainment. This is the Sority Row film (2009),which is one of the widely viewed films in cinema.
Our Media product is made to target a teenage audience. There are different social groups that are represented in our film. There are lots of teenagers who are Gothic and enjoy Rock music. There are also lots of teenagers who are the popular type, with a lively personality. There are lots of social groups.. For our psychological thriller we wanted use to opposite social groups, to get the audience's focus.To question them about the friendship between the two characters, and how others respond to them.
These are Genres ,that are associated with the type of films, Teenagers like to watch.
These Genres are not only about the types of film's teenagers like to watch, but these categories also demonstrate the different social groups and different ages,the audience belong to. Our film , is a psychological genre. Psychological thrillers, are not like horror, as they play with the audience's mind. Throughout the film, the audience feel as if they are solving a puzzle.
As there are adults in this film , an adult audience may also watch this psychological thriller, as the psychological genre is also targeted for and older audience. An exaple of this genre, is films by Alfred Hitchcock, who was an English filmmaker, who liked to create psychological thrillers with suspense.
Vetigo is one of Alfred Hitchcocks famous thriller films made in 1958, about a agoraphobic policeman, who is hired as an investigator to investigate an acquaintance's wife's abnormal behaviour.
Lucy Bently, looked like the average school girl, yet she has a mysterious personality, which isolated her from the world of the other people around her, including her popular best friend Phoebe Johnson. Her Dad left home when she was young leaving her with no male figure to protect her. She now seeks the affection she wants from her teacher Mr Collinson. Will this obsessive love drive someone to murder?
Our psychological thriller , Education to die for , is about one mysterious girl's obsessive behaviour upon a new teacher's arrival. Our plot was similar to a film called 'Cracks'(2009), which is about a female teacher and a new student who is also female, and the obsession between them. Our film title is not the same, as our character is different, as she feels the happiness in her life, only when coming to school, because of the new teacher. We also decided to have a different gender approach, as we decided to have a male for the teacher. We also did this to make our story different from the storyline in the movie, 'Cracks'. Our titles appear in a panning movement.
This is the film, ' Cracks'. the trailer clip is shown below.
For our production company name , we decided to come up with a name that had our intials in it. We came up with MAD productions, which has the initials of our group's surnames (Minhas, Ali, DuMay). This also the white font, look mysterious against the black background.
For our location, we used the school, as that it where the story takes place. Our location is similar to the movie, cracks, however ours is in a public school and the school location in the film takes place in a boarding school.
The two school scenes are different as the second image is a strict boarding school and the other image on the top is a average school. This is a long shot of our locker scene.
For our two main characters, the girl who is obsessed and her best friend, we decided to create a opposite friendship. In films, there is often a popular girl and a girl who is seen as an outcast. Te two characters don't get along. However we decided to make a different type of character representation, to make our story dramatic and to puzzle the audience. Our character representation is the opposite to the relationship, in the TV series 'Popular".
For our main character, Lucy Bently, her representation is a mysterious character who is gothic and into rock music. We wanted to do this to create an opposite character, to her best friend who is a more popular and bubbly type of person. Her dark clothing represents her dark personality, and reflects her being an outcast from other people around her, including her best friend Phoebe Johnson, who begins to worry about her friend's strange behaviour.
