Evaluation Question 3

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

There are many distributing institutions that would be good for promoting and distributing our media product. As our film opening fits into the genre of mystery, crime and thriller, it was important that we found institutions that have previously promoted this genre. We also discussed that our media product would be a low-budget film as we did not need nor use any expensive things such as props, costumes or settings that had to be paid for. 

The inspiration of our media product came from the real life story of Fred and Rose Wests' as well as the opening of the TV series 'Dexter'. This meant that we had to take into consideration the directors and distributors these had. The story about the West's 'Adult Appropriate' was an award winning series directed by Julian Jarrold.  He has directed a number of films, 'Red Riding' being one that is most like ours (with IFC Films as its distributors), which is about child abductions and police trying to solve it. This films genres are thriller, crime and drama; very similar to what our media products genres are. 

All of the films and TV series that I have so far talked about, although have similar plots or types of genres; are all high-budget with high-end distributors so we decided to look at something more low-budget and more similar to our media product. 

Deadman's Shoes was distributed by an independent distributor, Warp Films Production, with similar genres to our media product of; psychological thriller, crime and drama. The director of Deadman's shoes is Shane Meadows, who also directed 'This is England'.  Most of the films that Shane Meadows makes are low-budget British films, which is exactly what we are looking for our product to be as a conclusion. 
Overall, we decided that Warp Films Production was the best choice for our product to be distributed by because of the low-budget as well as the British effect the films distributed by Warp Films Production have. 

As our media product is a low-budget British film, we decided  that it would be most suitable for it to be simultaneously released in cinemas as well as pay-per-view, meaning that viewers will be required to pay a fee in order to the watch the film on TV or online. We also thought that our product would be most suitable for BAFTA's instead of the OSCARS.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The particular social group that our media product would represent is mainly elderly people and young females as our main characters are an old couple as well as a female victim who is present in our product. The age vaguely, of the elderly characters would be between 50-60 and the young females around 12-18. This old couple represent a white middle-class living with strong gender roles.

The film opening that we made was inspired by a real life story of Fred and Rose West, who now have a documentary about them. Fred and Rose West were also a couple, now known for their psychotic murders and rapes of young female victims. In comparison Fred and Rose West are similar to the characters of our media product because of fact that they are both seen as being a normal elderly couple but have dark secrets. This is shown in our media product through the way in which the victim is presented in the film opening, she is shown in a fast shot and doesn't have a big role other than flashes to her being tied up and having tape over her mouth. This was inspired by the story of Fred and Rose West as when they kidnapped or raped a female, they would cover their mouths and usually whole faces with tape as well as tie them up so they are unable to move or scream for help.

Fred and Rose West

Fred West meet Rose after he moved to Gloucester, Rose was 16 when she got married and became pregnant with Fred's first child. Rose committed her first murder while Fred was in prison for theft, she had murdered Fred's daughter from his ex-wife and his step-daughter who she then buried in a field. Rose also became a prostitute because Fred wanted her to and was several times raped by her own father after the permission of Fred to sleep with his daughter. This carried on for years, as well as them both murdering and raping a number of girls they picked up from bus stops and their own daughters. Bodies of these girls were found in cut up pieces in the couples house cellar and buried under the patio of their house. I believe that this is the type of background story that our characters have and if the opening was to be made into a full film, then this story-line would fit in perfectly.

Similarities and differences: 

In terms of appearance, the characters in our media product were not very similar to Fred and Rose West because of the fact that we had to use makeup to make a young boy and girl into elderly looking people which was tough on its own. However, i believe that we were able to very well make the young boy and girl look elderly enough for the audience to believe it. Costumes wise, Rose and the female character of our product wore reasonably similar clothing, such as floral dresses. On the other hand Fred West and the Male character of our product did not have similar clothing because we wanted to make our character look more careless and rough than Fred West himself. The female and male characters of our media product both don't have the usual symbolic values that a normal elderly couple would have, this is because of the fact that they are both psychotic murderers and rapists and the audience would never suspect that unless they were given hints about it. 

We chose the characters we chose because of the genre conventions of our media product, such as thriller, crime and mystery. This idea of an elderly couple living a secret doing things that no one would expect them to do shows the convention of mystery and the idea of them murdering young female victims shows the conventions of a thriller film. This is shown in our media product through the way in which they come across as a normal couple making breakfast showing mystery as well as the flashes of the victim tied up crying showing conventions of a thriller. However there re not many conventions of crime in our product but similarly to what happened in the real story of Fred and Rose West, they are later on found out about and deal with police searching their house; which presents conventions of a crime film.

Documentary on Fred and Rose West: http://documentaryaddict.com/films/25-cromwell-street-murders-fred-and-rose-west

Evaluation Question 1

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

Our media product used, developed or might have challenge the opening of the series ‘Dexter’. The opening of this TV series involves the main character making breakfast in a disturbing way and has some extreme close ups of the food as well as close ups of his morning routine. This was inspiration for our media product as our product also is based around the making of a breakfast. Dexter was a help to our media product because we got most of the main ideas from the opening of it.
Examples of things that are similar between the opening of Dexter and our media product is the way in which both involve the making of breakfast as well as the extreme close ups that symbolises something about the storyline. In the opening of Dexter there is an extreme close up of the blood that is in the sink when the man shaves, similarly in our media product there is an extreme close up of blood red juice that we pour down the sink to make it look like blood and symbolise the fact that they are not a normal couple but are a sinister old couple with a secret life.

Our media product 

Dexter

The genre of Dexter is crime as well as mystery; this is also something our media product was inspired by as our media product is the genre of mystery, crime and thriller. The conventions of a typical mystery film are victims, hidden meanings which foreshadow what the future holds; there are also not many jump cuts or many jumpy scenes with quieter sounds instead of loud ones. An example of a mystery film is ‘The Forbidden Room’. The conventions of a typical thriller are slightly different to the conventions of a mystery film; this is because a thriller has more jump cuts with louder sounds and music that makes the audience ‘jump’. An example of a thriller film is ‘Shutter Island’. Lastly the conventions of a crime genre film are the use of weapons in most, appearance of the police with tense music use. An example of a crime film is 'Secret in Their Eyes'.

The aspects that we needed to consider across our nine frames are, firstly, the setting which in our media product was a house that the old couple lived in. Secondly, there are the props and costumes which included the 'old woman' wearing a floral skirt and the 'old man' wearing a creased over-sized shirt. As well as that, we also used make-up to make Ruby and Ollie look like reasonably old people.  As props we used the food that we cooked and all the utensils that were used to make the food as well as the glasses, a walking stick and hair-rollers. The camerawork included some extreme close-ups of the food that was being cooked, so egg, bacon, the juice that was poured into a glass, the sink, toast etc. We also had some mid-shots from where Ruby and Ollie are sitting in the car so that the audience can get a glance of who these people actually are. The editing is what put everything together in our media product, as our film opening is very confusing because of the twisted plot, editing was one of the key parts of our media product as that is what brought everything together to make sense. Following on from that the title and the fonts that were used in our media product were also very important as they symbolized what our film is all about and represented a huge part of our product. Our style and font was used from IMOVIE on the Macs that we edited our film together on. The font was very old fashioned and the writing had a shadow that made it look old. The story was the most important part of the opening, this meant that we had to take in consideration how we set out our opening. We became the film with the old lady coming down the stairs to then making breakfast with her husband. During this there are flashes of the victim they have captured in their basement struggling to get out of the tape and rope she has been tied down with. The opening finishes with the couple in their car with the victim in their car-boot. The introductions of the characters are written next to their role in the film opening, making it easy for the audience to know who is who. Lastly we chose to add a few dissolve effects at some points in our product to make it easier for one scene to dissolve into another. As well as this, we also fastened a lot of the scenes up majorly to give the effect of rapidity and bring confusion to the audience to whats happening.  

Filming and Editing

When we first started filming, I was unwell so I was not present for that filming day. On that day Georgia, Ruby and Olivia filmed the making of the breakfast, however we were unable to use that footage as we were not able to import it onto the computer. This made us decide to film everything all over again in one go on computer suitable cameras.

The second time we filmed, we began with doing Ruby's and Ollie's (the actors) makeup, to turn them into old looking people. This required time and patience as because we are a low budget film, we didn't have a lot of the right equipment and props to do the make-up at a high quality.

After doing the makeup of our film actors, we started filming their scenes in the kitchen, coming down the stairs and in the car. This did not require a lot of time as the characters are not present a lot of the times during our film opening to create a sense of mystery for the audience. This links in well with our audience research as a lot of people liked a sense of mystery about the films they watched.
We tried to film everything so that it was in the right order, similarly to our storyboard so we didn't miss out anything or forget to film any scenes. This worked in our favor as we finished filming very well and had everything we needed just in one time of filming. Our filming included extreme close ups of the food that we cooked as breakfast as well as close ups of the man eating the food and close ups of the woman and man's mouth when they are in the car singing along to the music that the man turns up in order to fade out the banging of the boot because of the young girl (the victim) in the car-boot.

Carrying on from that we had finished our proper time filming and got everything we needed, that is when we began to put everything together on iMovie. We began editing by putting everything in the right order when on iMovie so that we knew what scenes needed to be shortened and what we needed to slow down. When we had put everything to how we liked it, we then decided to add the victim flashes onto our opening as we thought that, there was something missing. Me and Georgia then filmed me tied up and mouth taped in a dark room crying and screaming for help, to show the audience a quick flash of the victim and the type of things that the old couple actually gets up to. Using these new filmed scenes we then placed them in between the rest of our film opening, in random order so that the audience would be shocked to see a crying, screaming girl in the middle of a jolly breakfast. Before adding the flashes of the victim into the rest of the opening, we added the music. This music was a the original song 'How do you like your eggs?' by Dean Martin and Helen O'Connell.

layout of iMovie

However, as we thought that we were finished with our film opening, we found out that we had lost everything as the Mac computer that our product was on had been deleted or misplaced. We, therefore, were never able to find our first finished product so had to re-do everything. This included importing all the clips and scenes that we had surely saved onto iMovie again and putting it all together all over again. Although we were able to put all the clips together and perfect the scenes like the first time, we found out that we were not able to use the original song that we planned on using because the song was not copy right appropriate to be put onto our film opening so had to be taken out, which lead to us looking for a cover off of YouTube. This worked as we found a cover of a couple singing the song and asked to use their version of it, as a result we ended up using that cover.

Cover of 'How do you like your eggs?' : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlOQyDXpW4k&index=1&list=WL

Storyboard, plot & inspiration

To begin with we made a storyboard to help us out when we filmed our final media product. This meant that we had a rough guide of what scenes were to be filmed and also meant that we could be more organised with what needs to be filmed when, giving us a clear schedule.

Fred and Rose West

As well as the storyboard helping us, we were also inspired by real life events of Fred and Rose West's life, who were psychotic murderers and rapists of young females including their own daughters. This was an inspiration to our media product because our story-line includes an old couple who live a 'normal life', making breakfast as seen on our storyboard. However this old couple work together to kidnap and kill female victims. In addition, we also got our inspiration of making the breakfast from the TV series of 'Dexter', which also has the making of breakfast in its opening as well as extreme close ups of the male character participating in his normal morning routine, except with a sinister way, making it not so normal. These gifs are from the opening of 'Dexter' and show the extreme close ups of how the breakfast is filmed in it. On our mood board it is shown that we used these ideas, the cracking of the egg onto the pan and the slicing of the meat as well. This created a very weirdly disturbing breakfast being made and gave the suggestion of evil being done.

Dexter

Dexter

These are the storyboards that we made, although they are not too clear or very detailed, we believed that if we understood it and it helped us that is all that mattered, and everything turned out being okay.

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Questionnaire

For our audience research we did a questionnaire for people 15+, who had to answer 10 questions about films with the genre of mystery, crime and thriller. These questions then helped us decide what our film would most likely include and what our target audience would like to watch the most. As a result we got a range and variety of answers for the questions asked. Wee then summed up and summarised all of the questions using pie chart as well as just writing a short description of the results we got.