Our media product ‘Kidnapped’ uses and develops different codes and conventions of other real media products by using continuity right the way through the scene, this includes the dialogue that we used. We took inspiration for our film from Pierre Morels hit film “Taken” and American TV drama “Dollhouse”. It is clear for the audience to see that we have drawn inspiration from the American TV Drama “Dollhouse” as we tried to recreate a particular scene in a bathroom from the first episode, using elements of a narrative similar to “Taken”. If you compare these three media products you can see that they all share a similar conventions, predominately suspense. I believe the main convention from the thriller genre that is obvious to all in “Kidnapped” is suspense through the use of a vast amount of close ups (see fig 1) and the non-diegetic score music that plays right through the scene from the beginning to end with a low volume that subliminally increases the suspense of the scene.
Figure 1
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
When studying the thriller genre, we found that a common theme of most films protagonists is the way they stereotypically cast people into gender roles such as the protagonist usually being a young to middle-aged male, as are most of the antagonists, with the victim usually being an innocent female. We chose males to be in our film as they are widely seen, not just within the thriller genre, but in general society as the stronger, more dominant gender (see fig 2). This is seen in our film “Kidnapped” where the main protagonist (Michael) is willing to go to any lengths in order to get his daughter back from her kidnappers. Another way in which we have typecast the males is because they are seen as more protective of their family and in this case Michael is willing to kill to see his family reunited. This clearly shows that the characters have been created in a stereotypical way so the audience can identify with them a lot easier whereas the females’ classic stereotype is of a weak, fragile disposition so the mostly male audience will accept this notion as perfectly normal and therefore be further drawn into our film. Our target audience mostly consists of teenagers aged 15 and onwards and are mostly males, we made it this because we knew that it will be mostly men who will want to see thrillers and this theory was backed up by the results of our questionnaire. When asked “Was the story plausible” and “Was the storyline easy to understand”, 100% of the people who answered the both questions said yes.
Figure 2
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I feel our media product definitely has the potential to be produced by a major Hollywood studio such as Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) or Universal as it exhibits all the classic elements of a great thriller and would (according to my feedback) definitely make money at the box office. The only draw back is that something very similar has been made before, the film we drew a majority of our ideas from, “Taken”. Although our exact idea has never been made before, it definitely contains a lot of the elements seen in “Taken” which has been successfully produced and screened in cinemas across the world. Our film, should it be made, would hopefully be shown in every local cinema nationwide, it would also be shown inside our college during a ‘special screening’ event to mark the fact that great filmmakers once went to the college. Our film, as it attracts a large, possibly global, audience offers great opportunities for franchising and merchandising as it would be able to sell a hefty amount of products including character models, replica props, posters and video games for the younger side of our audience.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
As I have previously mentioned the target audience for our media product consists of mostly males aged 15 and over, this is because the British Board Of Film Classification (BBFC) have rules stipulating that “There may be frequent use of strong language” but “Continued aggressive use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable” and “Violence may be strong but may not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury”. However, despite the fact we cannot target a younger audience I personally believe that our efforts would be better used if we were to focus more on a group such as 15-20 year olds. Our research, such as our questionnaires, helped us in finding that the most suitable age and gender group to target as when we asked questions like “What age bracket do you fit in” 60% were in the 15-17 age category. Our audience are also likely to be enticed into watching the rest of our film due to the fact that they might feel sympathy for Michael and although they might disagree with his means they are very likely to agree with his motives which would make the audience engage more with the narrative and keep them hooked on the film.
5. How did you attract / address your audience?
During the filming of both our preliminary task and “Kidnapped” the audience were the first people we thought about before we done anything in terms of producing the film. A good example of this we tried not break the 180 degree rule as it would disorientate the audience when they view it and would quickly turn them off watching it. Another factor that made us think about the audience was how to kill Dan as we were afraid it might scare some viewers. In the end we decided to show a white flash when the bullet exits the barrel of Michael’s gun and only show Dan falling onto the sink as opposed to showing the bullet itself pass through Dan as that may have been distressing to some viewers, particularly those of a younger age. We attracted our audience to our thriller by using stereotypical props such as guns (see fig 3) and cars that you would find in almost all thriller movies. This iconography will allow us to attract the usual thriller genre watchers as they know what to expect even before they’ve read a review when they see props like that. This theory is also backed by our research as when we asked people “What are the typical props you expect to see in a thriller movie” both guns and cars rated highly although this question did not make it into the final cut of our blog questionnaire.
Figure 3
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
From the process of constructing our media project I have learnt a number of different things such as how to obey the 180 degree rule, techniques such as shot-reverse-shot and how to direct a crew whilst doing a short film. The 180 degree rule in particular was hard to obey not so much in the preliminary but more so in the making of “Kidnapped” as it was such a small space to film in it was hard to get all the shots we needed without breaking the rule although we did somehow managed to escape it and not break the rule. Some of the shots that we had to capture in “Kidnapped” were quite tricky to do so without breaking the aforementioned 180 degree rule. As director for the production I decided with the cameraman where would be the best place to shoot from and most of the shots where filmed without a hitch but some shots such as when Michael presses the gun to the back of Dan’s head and we just see it touching him was difficult because of working the camera around the room and not catching other peoples shadows in the shot, this was avoided however because of the skill from the cameraman. Once we had finished filming and had all our footage we simply needed to edit the footage. We used the editing software (Final Cut Pro 6) to improve our work but giving it a more gritty film look (see fig 4) and using Soundtrack Pro we was able to extract the necessary sound effects and lay them onto our piece mostly without problems. Creating the film look did take along time however and it was a tedious process but the editor done it well. The technology as a whole I believe helped us create a better product more than hindered us in our efforts, because of the sheer amount of options it opened up to us and as the director I made myself as deeply involved in all the processes of the film making from choosing actors positioning to having the final say on what made the final cut of the film.
Figure 4
7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The making of our preliminary task has allowed me to learn that you must always do extensive planning before shooting a movie. I have also learnt how position actors and get the best out of them in my time as director as well learning how not to break the 180 degree and why it shouldn’t be broken. Leading up to the production our group did some deep planning by doing tasks such as brainstorms which allowed to choose our main prop, occupation of the protagonist, the setting and the plot itself. After watching a few thrillers ourselves and making notes on the techniques used and the codes and conventions of a thriller, we handed out questionnaires to both students and teachers alike with some involved in media studies and some not and we even handed them out to people in our target audience and some not, this was done so we could have a deeper insight into how people viewed the thriller genre which would in turn help us sculpt our film. After doing the obvious necessities of writing the script and synopsis for our production we had to draw the storyboard, as none of our group were particularly good artists we chose to take picture of the location and convert on Photoshop which took a little longer than we expected but gave us a better result. Then once we had done the cast and score notes without forgetting the shot list we were able to create our masterful two minute introduction to a thriller movie.
Unfortuntely the upload tool from blogspot did not allow the full quality of these pictures to upload onto the blog.
Dan Lawrence
