Evaluation of "The Mother"

G321 Coursework:

Evaluation of “The Mother”

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

My thriller “The Mother” gets its inspiration from various elements within thrillers such as “Essex Boys” for example the dark, dingy environment of which connotes aspects of the thriller genre. The location I filmed my short thriller film in get its inspiration from such British Films such as “London to Brighton”, looking at the more lower social class areas and suburbs. Through this, I wanted to achieve a mise-en-scene which would grab the audience and send shivers up their spine.
One of my proudest achievements in the making of my thriller film is the music I use within the film. The soundtrack intensifies the mood towards the audience, with its creepy “psycho” like sounds and evokes the mise-en-scene and really ends the film with a bang. At the start of my film, I used the sound of the rain, at the making of my film I had no intention of using the sound, but when I came to edit the rain just bought out a sense of darkness and nightmare.
The location of my shooting was inspired by British Films, from watching films such as “Essex Boys”, “London to Brighton” and one of my all time favorites “Layer Cake” really made me want to find the perfect location and setting which could bring out the definition of the word “Thriller”. I have managed to achieve this through the cobble stones, old run down houses and the pouring rain. These aspects have really manage to bring out this dark sense of loneliness feeling, making the audience themselves feel scared which is what I want my thriller to achieve. The tilted camera angles and the use of the rain hitting the cobble stones, really bring out this intense gripping feeling which captures the audience attention. The final shot of my film takes place in an alley way, this unglamorous, claustrophobic setting makes the victim in my film feel trapped and insignificant. If we look at the scene in London to Brighton where the poor girl gets locked into the toilet it connotes a sense of claustrophobia to the audience and the feeling of trapped, similar to my film.
The purpose of my characters names in my film was to resemble a marriage, I want the audience to know just by eye and not the word of mouth, that they can immediately see that Louise White and Darren White are married, I achieved this not only through the use of the same surnames but the mystery photography which is the cliffhanger of my thriller film.
Both characters in my film come as a completely anonymous, mysterious people towards the audience, we know little about them. Throughout the opening, my goal was to keep the audience questioning, trying to understand what is happening. Once the audience feels they have grip and control over the film, a new sudden clue pops up. For example, the photograph which is completely out of the blue, no one expects it to happen and it leaves the viewers going “ahh, what’s going on here”. In a sense, I end my opening with a cliff hanger, the photograph is the glue that holds my project together, its what leaves the audience wanting more.
One of the most important factors I had to take in to consideration whilst making my film is the title. The title is what resembles the feel of the thriller genre and is what most importantly catches the audience eye. So I’ve gone with yet a simple name but the name that gives a secret hint in the film, for this I chose “The Mother”. This title, The Mother, portrays an image inside the audience head, they can put together piece by piece a story of what’s happening. Just from the title the audience can make out that female victim character “Louise White” in the film is obviously The Mother, so we can therefore work out that there our children involved. Not only that, if we look at the photography scene at the end we can work out that male character “Darren White” is the husband and the father of the children, so the audience can piece a story together. This is important as I just don’t want the mise-en-scene of the thriller genre, I want to achieve most importantly the storyline of the thriller genre.
Casting was one of the many important factors In creating a “thriller opening sequence” I didn’t want to use friends or people from school as it’s hard to try and make them menacing and I didn’t want to end up making my film a laughing matter. Therefore I decided to go along with my parents, this was a lot better than I had expected. My father, manage to look incredibly menacing and really put your teeth on edge, whilst at the same time my mother manage to play the victim role perfect, with her a good acting skills.
In order to give my film that thriller outcome and feel I needed to add in factors such setting, props and costumes. The costumes I have used in my film and yet simple but give a very good thriller genre outcome towards the film. For the villain I used all black to give of that menacing factor and for the victim I used a simple dress which makes the female character come across weak and innocent.

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

If I want to make my production company a successful company, I would need to be able to distribute my media product. As my film isn’t exactly a Hollywood blockbuster film I would start out on a smaller scale, there are social networking websites such as Facebook, twitter and Bebo which I could capture the interest of all different age groups and social groups. If I want to build a committed fan base around my film, I would need to put my film on a social website, where everyone can come together and talk about the film and I can keep my fans updated on further releases.
There are websites out there which I can use to gain recognition for my film such as UK Competitions, London short film Festivals there are many websites which I can use to boost up the popularity and spread the name of my film.
My production company, “Gilbody Productions” would be able to qualify for a specific short film competition. I manage to find this out through research background, I went onto the two days later short film competition website and found out, the film must be made independently and be under 10 minutes, although their genre doesn’t match my film as their theme is currently horror, other websites such as UK competitions match the needs and specifications I have.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

For my thriller film, The Mother I would have a wide variety of different social groups of audience, but I need a primary audience that I am targeting my film towards. My film would attract both of the demographic audience, both male and female as each gender in my film plays a vital, important role and the target age group for my film would be of 16-35 year olds. This age group may appear wide, but the ages in general share a common ground, of that which they are both young and can both in away to some extent, be more interested in my opening sequence.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Because of the personality and characteristics of my characters within my opening thriller sequence, it would be hard to identify any particular social groups to relate towards it. But to some extent there maybe sub genres in the social groups which my media product may particularly represent. For example, maybe to some extent married couples could pick out key elements, not necessarily the actual murder in the opening film, but other elements to relate to.
My media product attends to represent the more evil but yet to some degree a bit of a good. The beauty of my film is that you can’t judge it, it may come across as the man being evil and the woman being innocent, but once all the clues and hints are thrown into place the audience then begin to question the actual storyline to the film.

How did you attract/address your audience?

There are various ways of how I manage to attract my audience, for example one of my many key features for attracting the audience is my soundtrack. Instead of going for a more indie/techno, metal and dance, modern music approach I decided to use a more “old fashion” music. The music I used is similar to the music played in “Psycho” it really catches the attention of the audience, the screeching sounds and the confusion between the notes keep my audience glued to the film. The music builds up tension as my film plays which is vital in attracting an audience.
Once my films gets onto popular social websites such as You-tube I’ll be able to receive feedback from people on my film and with that develop my product to attract a wider audience. I will also be able to draw attention to my film as to some extent it can relate to today’s social issues and problems. For example, if we look at the issues that are on the media and news such as gun crime, knife crime and themes such as violence etc, these are all the aspects within my film. This would be able to gather in an audience.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

My knowledge on technologies has expanded throughout the process of constructing my media product, through the use of my blog to YouTube and websites such as IMBD to gain background information on my films and social network sites to get feedback and ideas on my product development.
My blog has allowed for me to upload any ideas and planning of my media product directly to a source where I can gain quick access to. It has allowed me to put up, storyboards, photo shots, case studies. With my blog, I can gain quick feedback from tutors and teachers to help develop my product further and a gain a better understanding of what objectives I need to achieve.
Websites such as YouTube have helped me in my background research for finding clips of thriller films to help give me ideas for my opening sequence as well as finding possible soundtracks and different generic aspects of the mise-en-scene.
One of the key websites that has helped me with my Thriller research is IMBD, this website has given me background information on all my films, it tells me the producers, cast and the UK release date as well as personal reviews from people about the film and demographic information on the film. This website has been supporting my research.
The most important technology I have learnt about is editing. The use of the editing software, Adobe Premier has helped me to put my film, piece by piece together with the use of special affects such as colour changing, tints the use of merging one clip to another by using the dissolve feature and adding titles and music to my film. Through the process of editing my film I have gained a better understanding on how to use the software and I will be able to confidently edited films in the future.

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

The preliminary task gave me great understanding on the wide range of camera angles and shots, from the 180-degree angle to long shots and close ups. Before we filmed our preliminary task we had to plan out what our ideas were, plan out what people we were going to use and the camera angles as well as the story line to our preliminary task. This helped to plan out my main thriller opening sequence, through the previous practice I’ve had, I could plan and developed all the thriller aspects of the mise-en-scene for my sequence. It gave an in depth detail to the sort of shots and angles I need to be using, most importantly the locations I need to shoot my film in.
When it came to producing our preliminary task, we required casting, at this time a cast wasn’t particularly important as we were more focused on the camera and editing. But when it came down to the final product, I decided to go for an older cast, e.g. my parents this was to give the film more creditability and a more realistic edge to it, instead of young kids running about.
Finding the appropriate soundtrack was the hardest task when it came down to editing the final piece because even if the music was good it had to be in sync with the film itself. I originally had an idea of the sort of music I wanted for my film, I wanted to have more noise than music, confused patterns of chords that don’t fit in right to make the audience feel confused, to give that sense of thriller!
The main important factor that the preliminary task had helped me with was understand and knowing how to use the editing software. If it wasn’t through the practice the outcome of my final product wouldn’t have been as good. I learnt how to use the special affects such as cross-dissolve and cutting out piece of the clip which isn’t relevant.