Our Finished Product

Evaluation Task 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the finished product?

Evaluation Task 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Task 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

Our genre is a mix of Action and Thriller, inspired by this style of Guy Ritchie's ‘Snatch (2000)’. Our thriller is a heist/bank robbery that has gone wrong, which is a common theme throughout thrillers. Our thriller opening titles sequence takes the audience on a journey, through the style of editing. The fast paced cutting, quickly comes to a halt when there is the realization of the severity of one of the characters wounds. This pulls the audience into our piece, as they are being led into the story.  Additionally, at the end of the opening sequence we get a glimpse of a mysterious ‘Boss’ character that is standing in a power stance, this represents his dominance and confidence of his status. Although we get a small peek of this character, it leaves the audience in suspense, curiosity and will leave them questioning the character. Our film has a bunch of swearing, assuming that it will be rated 15+ or an 18. It also begins with a conversational voiceover with breaks in between the characters before the actual incident. We chose to not use any moving picture as it gives the chance for the audience to assume what is going on. This also allows the audience to believe it is not a day to day conversation because of the language they used, as well as the tone.

We have an aggressive female character because of the amount of power/dominance and superiority she reveals within herself. This subverts the stereotype of an average woman because of the aggression of her tone when talking, also she is part of a crew made up of middle aged men. The characters themselves would attract a male based audience. Expanding to the point of the female character, this may potentially expand the range of our audience within the age group. We also have a diversity of characters, we have our main male character (Adam), he is from Liverpool, we used the average Liverpudlian stereotype because of their high percentage rate of crime around the UK. We had a diverse group of people within the UK, such as Dave (Wounded) is Welsh/Portuguese. We believe it wouldn’t matter about the age of our characters, even if they were elderly robbers, our target audience would think to themselves that ‘Oh.. thats cool!’. A very recent example of this can be seen in the make-up of the Hatton Garden robbery gang.

Most of our sounds were non-diegetic and simply added during our editing process, such as the Sirens and the van’s engine, it might sound real, but in reality it was all but just an edit. We however did shake the van and made some indoor van noises with different props swinging around and bashing around the van. Dialogues were all natural, none were dubbed in, we also decided not to add anything during the James scene (basically the guy takes the briefcase), we instead left it and let the diegetic sound take over. The sound wasn’t the most significant area we had to work on, however it did make our thriller stand out much more. The heightened and aggressive tone of the argument between the robbers adds tension to the scene which again is a key element of thrillers which would appeal to our audience. 

We simply used LED lights for the indoor of the van, by hanging the light on to the side of the van. This was simple a practical necessity as without these lights we would not have been able to see anything. However, we realized that the lighting doesn’t fit the theme from outside the van, so we used color grading via Adobe Premier Pro CC.

Evaluation Task 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

I did a research task on what age group could potentially be my audience for the opening sequence of my thriller. By analyzing my findings, it is clear to say that the audience for my thriller would be an audience of people 17+. There is a clear correlation of woman liking comedies and romantic movies, whereas men find action and dramatic movies more as their kind of pick. My opening title sequence introduces action and suspense, as there are heated arguments and a shot person. Therefore I think that a older more mature audience would be the perfect audience for my media product.


Research into who would be the ideal audience to watch my thriller:

This is a clear candidate that would potentially be interested in watching our thriller. We assume this because he is interested in cinematography and loves to read and watch thrillers. Craig lives in London and finds it very interesting to explore different places around the world, he looks for adventures. He loves to observe the human nature and he works as a anthropologist, that is why Craig is so passionate about adventures and finding new information out. Below are a couple of screenshots of Craig's pinterest.

Evaluation Task 3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The overall outline of my thriller is that there has been a small-scale robbery that has been found out, as the main guy (Assassin) finds the amateur robbers and grabs the case. After this small action in the opening sequence, the movie would base on the lives of each of the individuals and their day to day problems that become minor once they see what they've got into isn't an easy way back. All of the actors are British and have a very minor identity when it comes to the real world, that is how they disguise themselves along the gorilla mask of course. 

On the other hand, there is potential for my media product to go into a more Hollywood based product. Obviously if we had a high budget for the movie and the amount of experience they have it could potentially be reinvented as a Hollywood based product. For example, Heat (1995) produced by Warner Brothers is a world phenomena and incorporates robberies as types of high stated missions that happen and have the hunting down of a professional criminal crew. Warner Brothers invested $60,000,000 into Heat. 




Warner Brothers might be interested in distributing our product because it has a similar concept of it being a hidden robbery to The Town (2010). It is well known that Warner Brothers is in the big six and therefore can pick and choose their movies up to their strengths because of their name. The Town has a clear connection to my thriller, as it has a hidden identity robbery scene and also focuses on the robbers life when they are out of their masks. This would mean that there would have to be a high budget to produce, market and distribute my media product. Warner Brothers are huge company that focuses on distributing and producing films for the mass market. As much as I see my thriller being for a niche market audience, there is potential for it to change by raising the budget, getting A list actors and etc.























There are other companies that could possibly work better for the distribution of my media product. One of these companies could be Lionsgate, as they distributed a movie called The Bank Job this movie is associated with a bank robbery in London. It is based on how a self-reformed criminal moves into London with his family and gets caught in with some nasty crimes. Lionsgate is a Canadian-American entertainment company that focuses on foreign and independent films and has distributed various commercially successful film series, The Twilight Saga, The Hunger Games and The Divergent Series. Lionsgate distribute across movies across the globe.

There are various different companies that could potentially represent a movie like the media product that my group and I produced. I see the movie going in a very British independent stylized movie that has a lot of action and dramatic events throughout it. A good example of a British independent company that produces movies like that is Big Talk Productions. Big Talk Productions is a British film and TV production company. They produced a movie called Hot Fuzz, the film follows two police officers attempting to solve a series of mysterious deaths in an English village.

Evaluation Task 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My thriller consists of various characters that represent the widely ranged society that we live in. The opening sequence gives us a chance to look back and notice the diverse roles that people play in today’s world. However, we rejected the stereotypical Hollywood formula and created a strong female lead that puts all of the characters into place. Throughout the piece my group and I have tried to show the variety of people and how they go through their current problem, we did this through the use of different techniques in camera, lighting, sound and of course visuals in the mise en scene.

Zell is the only female character in the whole sequence which we could argue stereotypes her to the usual role of a woman in a movie. However, since the whole sequence is actually about a robbery that has gone wrong and Zell plays the mouthy young girl that is in charge, could mean that the piece is actually subverting to the stereotype. She was wearing a minimal amount of face makeup, so that it wouldn’t seem like she is playing a girly girl and that she is actually a lot tougher than she looks. Despite Zell giving off such an aggressive side to herself, her plaits give her character a sense of innocence and comfort. We made sure that Zell had the plaits, as they symbolized her purity and also got her hair out of her face, we can even say that the plaits juxtaposition the whole image that she is portraying. The typical female character would have a very appealing look, when we were thinking about how we wanted the character to look it was to be the opposite. We wanted the female character to look quite dirty and almost like having a tomboy look, this is so that she could have others ways to attract the audience's sympathy and faith for the female protagonist. All of the characters, including Zell wore a blue boilersuit and a gorilla mask because it seemed like a fairly stereotypical outfit that a group of bank robbers would wear. The gorilla mask was an additional element to the whole costume, as we knew initially that we wanted a mask to make all of the robbers unidentifiable. The whole concept of them wearing identical clothes and masks represents the one minded thinking and the structure of the society being so exact and alienated. The fact that Zell wore the same exact thing as the men in the scene made it seem like she was one of them and it put all of the robbers on one level, except throughout the sequence we discover that the girl is the one in charge. All the characters in the scene are aware of Zell’s inferiority because of the way she stands over them and uses aggression and power to prove her status in the robbery. The mise en scene doesn’t particularly show a typical girl's setting, as it is a dark van with dirt and bit of rubbish lying around, this reinforces the fact that the girl in our sequence is fully subverting to the gender stereotype. There is a big age difference between Zell and all the other men in the van, it presents an idea that when all of them take their masks off, they look like completely normal people and so does she but they all have something in common, the reason why they did the robbery in the first place.

Adam is a middle aged man who seems to be frustrated and angry in the middle scene, where he is being taken over by a female. We can say that Adam represents the majority of men by showing his determinism and dominant personality, we could say that this is a clear vision of a male stereotype. On the other hand, in the scene he is being taken over by a female and it could mean that he is subverting to the traditional male stereotype.His regional identity and gender makes him conform to the role that he plays in the sequence. Through the variety of camera angles and positioning, we see how Adam is being dominated by Zell. There are a couple of shots taken from below that signify the status that Zell has over Adam. We get a sense of leadership from Adam, as we see that whilst he is arguing with Zell he is simultaneously trying to help Dave, who has been shot and is bleeding. Adam is quite an aggressive character and we captured this through the couple of mid-shots of his hand gestures and facial expressions that come along with them. There are a few close-ups that really define Adam’s facial expressions and it adds on to the intensity of the situation.

Mike isn’t featured as much as Adam and Zell are in the camera because whilst they are having as heightened argument, Mike is helping Dave to stay alive. His attire is the same as everyone else's in the van, as he is part of the robbery team. The whole idea that behind the mask is that it is supposed to represent aggressiveness and danger, we can argue that the mask juxtapositions Mike’s whole character’s personality, as he is such a gentle and quiet guy. Towards the end of the middle scene, there is a wide shot of Mike giving Zell and Adam a look of hopelessness. In most of the shots it could come across as if Mike is a very quiet character, because we see him towards the front of the van appearing as being quite small from some of the angles used.

Dave is a man in his mid-forties, he is a doctor and robbing people is just his side job. Unfortunately, Dave is the one who got shot and with the use of close-ups we see the blood on Mike’s hands and Dave shouting instructions of he should do to him.  We also see how he is shouting in pain and there is a particular mid-shot that really emphasizes on his the pain and distortion of his body. This suggests that he is subverting to the male stereotype, as he is squealing from the pain, whereas the stereotypical role of the man is to be strong. But, we see how he is trying to instruct Mike on what to do to him to keep him alive, therefore, this does show his stereotypical male behavior of manning up and dealing with the situation by doing the only thing he can at that moment.

Evaluation Task 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Evaluation task 1 from Dasha Koenig

Editing session 5

In our last session we were all a bit panicky, Ashen was going a bit nuts so we all had to just sit down in the editing suite for a couple of hours and get it done. When Ashen was editing he suggested to us that we cut out the part with the villain, as it wasn't that important and was just a waste of film time. We cut out the part, did the sound and played around with the brightness, and we were done. 

Below is a time lapse of our whole editing process:

Getting our voice overs

In the beginning of our title sequence we had the idea to do voice overs, in order for the audience to understand the narrative. We started off by writing a script and then proceeded to get the actual voice overs from our cast. 

Below is a video that briefly summarizes the process:  

Editing session 4

On Monday we had our most recent editing session and my group and I have come to conclusion that we need to come in and edit during our spare time, because we don't have a lot of time till we need to send off our coursework. There was something different about this editing session compared to others, this time we were actually quite productive with getting the last scene completed. Although, our editing process is slow, but it is definitely coming together and the final product will definitely be worth the time.

Ashen had a great idea of supposedly 'saving' our product, during our shoot we all had the idea of making the beginning of the sequence pitch black with a voice over. Since we shot our thriller quite a while ago, I had forgotten about the idea itself. Ashen proposed the thriller to still start off with a black out, voice overs and titles. This would be a good way of introducing the whole idea and it increases the levels of hysteria and panic at the beginning. After that we will have our shouting scene and the scene when the guy takes the brief case from the van. During the material that we shot, we will have a voice over from the guy who takes the brief case perspective. Haydon and I wrote the script for the voice over when its pitch black, and Haydon wrote the script for the single voice over during the whole sequence. We were also thinking of having freeze frames introducing each of there characters in the van, this could make the whole sequence a lot more interesting and bring a flavor to it. This is an adaptation from Snatch.


Below is an example of the freeze frames that we were thinking of recreating:

Editing session 3

In our third session we came across a few difficulties that slowed down our editing process. At the beginning, we looked through our exiting content that we had already put together and finish off the scenes that still need to be put together. Currently, we were working on the ending scene, when the main guy takes the brief case from the van. We need to get the ending scene done first in order for us to edit the shouting scene, as the length of the last scene depends on the length of the shouting scene.

The editing process itself has been difficult for my group because all of us have completely different expectations of the rough draft. At this stage we have two bits that we have been looking at in detail, but it is all still a rough draft. We established that my group has two very strong editors and they are the ones guiding the editing process. I have had a go at editing the product and I usually sit beside them and either watch what they do or put in ideas of what is missing in the scenes. A problem that my group and I have came across was that we were spending too much time focusing in on detail in the early stages, instead of getting a rough product together and then going through it and improving it in detail. Therefore, now we aren't as close as other groups to putting in our titles.

Referring back to the problem of us all having different expectations, it made it challenging for us to edit. This is because every time we came in for our session we looked back to what we did the last editing session, and one of my group members was disappointed and was trying to work on the same scene as we did the previous lesson, consequently our whole process was slowed down.