Evaluation of Coursework - "Shadows Present"

(1) How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?

For our project, our group decided to film the opening of a mystery thriller involving murder and revenge, in a noir-style.

Researching film noirs, our group decided to use music over the opening credits as in the film Fargo. We searched for some music that would reflect a mystery thriller eventually deciding on a song written and composed by Jan Hammer. Aware of copyright laws permission was asked for and granted by the PRS (MCP-Music Clearance) to use this music in the opening sequence of our film.

Our group particularly liked the use of shadows in The Maltese Falcon so for our indoor scenes we used wide shots and medium shots with the light filtering through venetian blinds (Gobo) and using the harsh light from a desk lamp to create the effect of a mystery thriller.

As most noir films use first person voiceover to narrate the story with flashbacks, our film opening also used these elements. The paranoia and fear was shown in the outdoor scene of our film when Peter runs and hides behind trees when he thinks he is being followed.

The murder that takes place in our film reflects the fact that noir films do not have hopeful themes or happy endings, and the murder in our sequence is the enigma (enigmas are stereotypical of the Noir genre).

(2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

There are three characters in Shadows Present, two having major parts and one minor. The two main characters are Peter (played by me) and The Shadow (played by Josh Payne).

We wanted to show that Peter was a young male adult between the ages of 18-21 and so we made deliberate choices about how he should be dressed and how he should act. A leather jacket, woolly hat, black jeans and trainers were chosen. The cold, wintry weather added to the dark, sinister mood of the film.

Noir films often contain a scene where one character thinks he is being followed. This sense of paranoia is reflected in our film when Peter is followed by The Shadow through the woods and tries to hide behind the trees.

We decided that Peter should act in a stereotypical manner for this age group - unsmiling, moody and serious. This also reflects the mood of a typical Noir thriller.

The second character of “The Shadow” is deliberately not seen but we did want to show that he “existed” and so for the outdoor scene we filmed shots of his feet. For the indoor scene his voice is heard but again his feet are the only part of him to be seen.

We wanted to show that the two young male should confront each other after a brief meeting and decided this should take place indoors - where there was no escape. Noir films often take place in dark rooms with very little lighting to create a sinister and gloomy atmosphere so we decided to set the confrontation in a room with a desk lamp for low level lighting. The Shadow’s character is serious and also threatening. He is determined to have a fight with Peter. Our film wanted to show that this is a typical reaction of two males in this age group when sorting out a
disagreement. Peter even has a gun, which is fired off-camera, but the outcome is not clear.

The final, more minor character is played by Chloe Atkins whose hand is seen in the opening sequence holding the package in the woods. The dead character is not described as male or female and the gender and identity is left for the audience to decide.

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

If we were to make the whole film based on the opening sequence, its popularity would depend on the popularity of film noir and the demand for difference and choice. As teenagers are always looking for a choice of entertainment there will always be a market for films aimed at teenagers. For this reason, if we aimed our film at teenagers nationally and possibly globally, then we would be aiming for a big major company to distribute our film, like United International Pictures or Buena Vista as they would have the money to distribute our film. However, the opening sequence to our film Shadows Present did not take up too much time to produce and there was hardly any money involved during production so it might appeal to smaller, independent film companies. An independent film would need only a small budget for producing, marketing and distribution. Hopefully our film would make it to the big screen nationally but is unlikely to get as big a cinema audience as a film like The Dark Knight or even smaller films like Hot Fuzz or The Boat That Rocked. If it made it to film festivals then this would serve as the promotion of our media product.

If we were really lucky, we might sell our product for screening on a TV Channel. FilmFour or other similar film channels would be nice, and there are also 20+ independent movie channels that can be received through the BSkyB service, including “movies4men”, “True Movies” and “movies24”. I would like to have it screened on any of these channels because it would fit-in well with other small-budget films that were produced in a similar sort of fashion. But if our audience (teenagers) watch programmes like Hollyoaks on Channel 4, then this could be the channel most suited to our project.

(4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

The typical audience for our film is our own age group - teenagers and young adults, between the ages 15-24. The reason we have chosen this age range is because not only is it easier to know what people of our age are interested in, but we can add our knowledge of film noir, plus all the skills we have acquired through the Preliminary and Exchange Exercises, and combine these with our ideas and creativity skills to complete a film that teenagers are not going to get bored with after the first few seconds. Also, the kind of people who are possibly going to know something about noir films, or can at least understand the concept of a Noir film and not lose the plot half-way through, are not likely to be younger than ‘15’.

The content of the film, as set out in the task, was to make the film a BBFC rating of either ’15’ or ’18’. I think our film would be more a ‘15’ rating than an ‘18’ rating, as a lot more gore, drugs, violence, suicidal references, nudity, and possibly some exposed indecent [sexual] behaviour or sexual violence would have to be used to push the rating up to an ‘18’.

We carried out a questionnaire before going ahead with the production of Shadows Present, and since Emily Swager (Emily is our Art Director) had produced a simple questionnaire and asked several people already (about 10-15 people), including her friends and family, we took the results, analysed them and used them to produce what people were asking for. Black & white films were out of the question, as many people said they wouldn’t continue watching a black & white film after the first few minutes, and would prefer to watch a colour film.

(5) How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract an audience in our opening sequence, we cleverly used enigmas and mysterious circumstances, all of which would be revealed later in the full movie, yet the viewer would have to keep watching until the end of the film when all loose ends are tied up in the concluding stages of the movie.

Originally we had created a fast-paced opening, which was more like a trailer or an action sequence from the middle of a film. We, of course, had to edit this so that it became more like an opening to a film, by replacing the heavy fast-paced music with a much slower paced music track which added a more noir-style effect to the project than the previous one had. Plus, to slow the pace down even more, we placed the interior shots first, then the exterior shots come in as a series of flashbacks, set-off when Peter browses photographs taken of him walking down the street. This slowed the pace down a lot, much more than expected, then it was up to our editor (and our creativity) to edit the project even more to make it more suitable for our audience.

I wanted to use Dutch Tilts on shots of Peter’s feet when he runs, and of The Shadow’s feet when he follows Peter, only walking at a slower pace. I’m happy that the group agreed with my suggestion of using Dutch Tilts, because I hope these shots can be used to attract an audience, similar to how I attracted my audience in the Exchange Exercise (to grab attention).

We kept the background noise of the park, like birds singing and leaves rustling, to attract even more people to the realistic setting of the exterior shots. We made the music volume fade down to a lower level when the voiceovers came into use. This is so that my voice and what I was saying was much clearer than the previous “in your face” sound, where everything seemed to be on the loud setting. But this was a previous mistake that we quickly resolved.


(6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? (You could also mention the significance of using these technologies).

Prior to this course, I had been the IT Director in a small business in the national Young Enterprise scheme. I was asked to produce a company website, but found that the costs involved were too much for our small business. During this Media Studies course I have learnt a more simple and easier way to put yourself or your project on the internet, through blogging. I also had to create a YouTube account where I could upload our coursework project and preliminary exercise videos, for use with our own individual Blogs.

During the planning stage, we were asked to produce an animatic. I had not done this before, and have had knowledge of them from behind the scenes footage of Toy Story, and have made failed attempts in my past. I helped to produce the animatic with our editor Chloe, and together we produced it with music, images scanned in from storyboards, and sound effects - the gunshots. Making and then viewing our animatic gave me a rough idea of how the finished coursework project was going to look like, and any errors that could be pointed out in the animatic could then be resolved for the final product. I now know why storyboards and animatics can become incredibly useful in the production of any film or sequence.

During production, I used a DV-tape Camcorder. Prior to this course, I had only used a HDD Camcorder (handheld and with a tripod) in my personal life. I have been used to using more complex, modern technologies so using an old-fashioned DV-cassette tape Camcorder was a step down in technology for me.

The editing software we used was “Adobe Premiere Pro”. It was the more complicated version of what I had previously used at home, called “Windows Movie Maker”. This was a simplified editing program for the home user. By observing the progress as a team member I have learnt how to edit using the more sophisticated software, creating a group-animatic and helping with decisions and final touches on the whole piece.

(7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? (You can make reference to The Exchange too).

For our Preliminary Exercise, it was just Josh and I. We had a problem with [successfully] capturing the footage of the establishing shot of a person walking down a corridor and opening a door. This was a minor issue with operating the camera. I quickly resolved this. Our badly-written dialogue and females instead of our [preferred] male characters led to a disaster. What was intended as a two-man meeting after a murder about drugs and revenge, in the style of a gangster movie, ended up as two prostitutes talking to each other about whether one of them was “clean or not” after committing adultery with a man. We learnt that the interpretations of a sequence can be much different to a storyboard drawing. We kept this in mind, and our next use of dialogue in our next project will not contain any difficult-to-understand wording or situations.

We were set another task, to polish up our skills, where two characters were to exchange an item without talking. An easy to understand plot and a location that was best-suited to this type of story meant we had understood the interpretations of different actions within a sequence. Quick cuts between shots maintained rhythm and pace set by the chosen music. However, we still needed to polish up on editing sound, and to use only one typeface or font and not all different types. A Ghostbusters-style title was the better typeface, and I understood that the continuity of the fonts was not there, and it should have been.

When comparing the Preliminary Exercise with our final coursework piece (Josh, Emily, Chloe and myself), a few mishaps and errors have been made along the way, but I have managed to learn from them. Planning for the coursework took much longer as everything needed to be in more detail so that, on entering production, everything was clear to us, in terms of what we were doing and how we were going to do it. We organised our time effectively so that each task, including the Group Treatment, was completed in the right manner and changes made as necessary.

We delegated various jobs in equal amounts, yet I had not realised that I had taken up the most difficult role in the whole group. I was the Director, Lead Cameraman, and an Actor. Plus I had promised to complete some of the pre-production work including storyboards, a synopsis and treatment for cinematography (as part of the Group Treatment), and the animatic.

My SMART targets were to improve my use of a DV-tape camcorder, to be a more convincing actor, to be an effective team leader and Director, and to add more depth and detail to the treatment for Editing, Cinematography, Mise-en-scene and Sound (ECMS). I feel I have managed to add more depth and detail to all of my work, and not just the treatments. I have improved my camera skills and have experienced what it is like to be a team leader and to overlook the whole production process.