Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms or conventions of media products?

Title

Our title frame for our film ‘Concrete Garden’, we aimed to challenge the normal conventions of a film title screen as with most the use of a plain and usually black background is usually employed behind the film text, however with our title we wanted a more interesting concept for our audience to focus on and therefore stand out from other films. 

The textured background has been used to give a concrete feeling to the screen to link with a key feature in our film, with the locations mainly being urban areas. The concrete in the background has been eroded also and is not smooth and this is used to show that the film and the film characters all have rough edges and also that the main characters mind is being slowly eroded away by the antagonist who wants her to join his cult, this texture is used throughout the trailer apart from the final billing block. 

The positioning of the text in the shot is also kept constant throughout the trailer to keep the audience focused in the same area and to make sure it is clear what the text is stating, also for the final text slate being the title of the film we made the font larger than the rest of the slates to make it stand out from the other slates so it is the text that it most likely to be remembered by the audience.

Narrative

 When it comes to thriller and horror films it is increasingly difficult to have an original narrative but for ours we have developed and mixed different narratives into one, for example we have used biblical aspects alike ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and also typical horror conventions from classic films such as ‘Friday the 13^th’ and ‘Halloween’ due to the use of a mask for the main antagonist character to create more of a machine rather than a human due to the lack of expressions visible, making the audience have less of a connection with this character but also create an atmosphere of unpredictability. 

We wanted people to question and doubt the different aspects of the film and after seeing the trailer wanting them feel confused and curious so it would lead to watch the film as a whole, points in the film where the narrative switches help do this for example the introduction of the masked character with no previous mentions can be shown to be very confusing. To challenge the normal conventions of a horror/thriller trailer successfully would be very difficult and hard to pull off whilst developing the conventions of is likely to have a more positive outcome and therefore we decided to do develop. 

Character

In terms of our characters we have used conventions of horror/thriller such as the female lead role figure that is vulnerable such as the horror film ‘Carrie’ as this is a very key in way in gaining an emotional attraction between the audience and the main character. 

The convention of the antagonist also Mark Francis/Masked Figure also follow conventions of horror/thriller films, Mark is the creepy stalker type such as Anthony Perkins’ character in ‘Psycho’ whilst the masked characters resembles Jason in ‘Friday the 13^th’ or Leather face in ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ due to the mask and also the violent nature of the character. These conventions in the trailer/film have been used to make it obvious and clear that the film is being sold as a horror/thriller and therefore will gain the correct target audience and therefore good word of mouth. 

It is also important to have obvious main characters in the film which are shown in the trailer so that the audience are able to enter the cinema having a vague idea of who is in the film and therefore potentially adding the want to see the particular film. 

Genre

 For our film the genre we were aiming for was a hybrid between a horror/thriller as both are similar in the ways of their narrative and filming and can be both developed and mixed greatly to create a new type of film which has symmetry. Conventions of this genre include violence, mystery, suspense and drama, our film aimed to include all of these themes to make sure the audience knew what film they were going to see. Violence is shown at the end scenes in car park and this particular shot with our protagonist is taped up and her expression shows her stress and fear for what is happening and therefore the audience are made to reflect this emotion. For the film there would be little violence until the end segment of the film as for the first two segments there would mainly be a psychological aspect to the film whilst the antagonist messes with the head of the main character Emma, this convention can be related to the film 'Silence of the Lambs' where the psychotic serial killer played by Anthony Hopkins  with the amateur cop Jodie Foster until the very last segment where the film climax's in a series of murders and killings caused by this one man. 

Other conventions used to show that it is part horror is the use of mask which has been used many times before in previous horror films, by using a mask the person is made to look less human by being unable to express emotion and made more like to be a machine, which as a consequence makes the character more threatening and volatile in there actions to the audience. The use of dark gritty lighting can also be used to give the right tone to coincide with the genre of horror as the audience would relate this tone and graphic to a particular genre.

Graphics

For our graphics such as our titling and overall ‘style’ of our film we wanted to mix and develop common conventions of a horror/thriller trailer with biblical elements due to our narrative being linked with the bible. Therefore for our font on our titles we took inspiration from biblical text such as the font in the shot of the bible in our trailer which we found using various font websites as hopefully the font will be recognisable to many and they will be able to make that link. 

The beginning of our film shots such as the shot of the estate block is used as the foundation for the graphics of our trailer; the shots have been filtered such as de-saturation and flow nicely into the text slates which have a grey texturised background. For the text also the use of glows for the text is linked to the ambient sepia shot of the main character walking in an urban area which has a yellowy tinge. Graphics have always been linked to the type of shots and tone used and therefore we are using a previous convention.

 

    Setting/Location

In ‘concrete garden’ we have three strong shots that establish location immediately, an urban, British and gritty backdrop for a Psychological thriller. We purposefully chose a day with bad weather in order to depict these landscapes in a more rugged light. We chose a shot of ‘Emma’ in central London walking by her self, this was on purpose so that the location could be recognised by people who don’t work and live in the city, and this showed juxtaposition to the south London tower blocks.

For the meeting of the two characters, we chose the outside of train station so that the audience could understand the link of them going to the same college, subtly we included a red phone box in this shot to again show it was London- an iconic global image. The other locations for Act 1 and 2 were based around a nice, modern flat in London in private residential area; this was because we wanted the audience to feel like this home was a safe normal environment whilst evil also interfered.

The areas were fairly normal as the character of ‘Mark’ stalked ‘Emma’ to her home, this was to draw more attention to the actions occurring rather than the background and what was happening. This choice was to add the idea that evil people can come into contact with you anywhere, this slightly pastiches the film ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ in which pagan rituals occur in a Manhattan flat.

The use of a regular modern flat allowed ease of filming and lighting, it created a realistic setting for the start of a trailer. For the end of Act 2 and the rest of Act 3 we needed a location that would provoke horror and mystery, we used an abandoned underground concrete car park in order for our montage of chase scenes, violence and ritual to happen. This space we believe is completely unique and unused by any film, this really added to the mystery element to our genre.


 We played up to the conventions of our genre by picking a empty, isolated space that at the same time was completely contained. This major location had a range of places we used to film, the slowly descending ramps, stair case and a ventilation room provided us with a perfect place to film a face paced montage sequence with strange and curious events occurring with in them.

Special Effects

Our film genre is not overly effect heavy typically, although a number of techniques and special effects are used in order to establish the genre. We didn’t choose to develop on the fact of showing blood and gore in our trailer as many trailers chose to, we believe this was not needed for our trailer as we wanted to create more of an air of mystery to leave the audience slightly confused about the narrative.

One of the main effects we used was to de- saturate and colour some of our frames, in order to have a stylistic aesthetic to our trailer, this idea was taken from ‘The Machinist’ a film the pioneered our genre in 2006. This effect we used for the opening three shots of the estate blocks, we toned down the colour to flatten the image, and we made the colour of the sky match on all three shots, this effect was employed to make the original shots even more gloomy and eerie. This technique we used for the build up to the montage to maintain fluidity and consistency in our lighting.

The sound effects we used we recorded on a micro-track, and we later added them in at the appropriate times in our trailer, we used this convention as it’s used in pretty much all Psychological thrillers and is almost imperative to have in such high intensity situations.  For our soundtracks we wanted to our two very different tracks in order to separate a real and a dream world, we had to use music editing software to change the speed and pitch of the tracks in order for them to work effectively to the narrative.

For many of the shots in the car park we change the colouring to a murky green, this idea of giving our film a familiar filter is used in many of the films that inspired us, it also creates a mask of reality that layers of the narrative.

In order for our trailer to appear more technical and advanced we use a few effects to some of our shots, for example the POV stairs scene we added a distort effect, to give you an idea of what that main character sees. We didn't want to over do the effects as they are simple to use and often look tacky and lazy.



 

Camerawork and Editing

Psychological thrillers trailers differ hugely in the way editing is done and camerawork, some products in our genre have a few slow pace of editing and many are incredibly fast even sometimes resembling that of an action film. We decided to have a fairly normal pace of shot in Act 1 and 2, to ease the audience into the essence of our film. Typically we wanted a fast paced intense montage in Act 3, with an element of brainwashing with flashing images of our antagonist, this allowed us to show the two different sides and worlds within our film.

We used 1080p photography of a concrete wall for the background for our text which interjected between the shots in our film, having text to explain and suggest plot was incredibly typical but to use a layer of graphics is not, this challenged our genre.

For our editing we occasionally used stylistic transitions, most of the time we just jump cuts as a standard. To show a slow process of time moving on we fade in some shots in act 1 of ‘Emma’ to show her boredom and isolation. We used zoom in pull and burst from one shot of a bible to a close up, this really showed intensity and promoted the element of mystery in our media product, this is used in similar media products such as ‘The Ring’. Again we kept the preset effects and features to a minimum and tried to create our own to show originality in our trailer.

For establishing location shots we used long and wide shots in order to give the audience a full perspective of the scale, this is used not as much in our genre but it was interesting to challenge this. In Act 1 we used 3 shots that we continuous to show continuity, mostly in trailers this doesn’t happen more that once so we decided to keep to that guideline. Any shot of ‘Mark’ talking we decided to go closer up than ‘Emma’ this was to show the intensity of his character, to practically have him ‘in your face’. For the masked villain we used a blacked out room, to show no location and have a dream like vibe about it. In many of the shot we used a straight fixed shot to have a well set up shot, but for some action scenes we hand held the camera to give a POV experience personal to the audience, this is incredibly common in our genre that we researched into.

Costume and props

Our iconic prop is our Venetian Bauta Mask, we chose this as it hides the face and expressions of the people behind them, this presents a feeling of the unknown and allows the audience to constantly question who is behind them- this is directly link with the thriller element as they force the audience to make assumptions in the narrative. This sort of mask has been used in Kubrick’s ‘Eyes wide shut’ where this is also the theme of sexual violence and satanic ritual. We clothed the characters with hoods and entirely black clothing; this was to take away the human from the characters. Having a masked or strangely dressed villain in our genre is fairly typical but we felt it necessary to add to the horror elements we encorperated.

We had two different costumes for ‘Emma’ one for Act 1 and Act 2 and another for Act 3; for the first two acts we dressed her in normal student like clothing in order to present her as one, for Act 3 she was more dressed down in order to show her vulnerability this is similarly done in many films to make the character look more attractive and heroic. The actor of ‘Mark’ originally didn’t wear classes but we felt it would add to the creepiness of his image, we dressed him smart casual to present him more as an outsider. ‘Mark’ is linked heavily to the mask characters’ and having him with classes on would further separate them, much like Peter Parker and Spiderman.

We used masking tape, a large knife and wire in our violence scenes to make the torture aspects seem as real as possible- these are typical objects of torture.

Film Magazine Cover




For our film magazine cover we played to the conventions of previous covers as we wanted the potential consumer to recognise the type of magazine it was at a glance, therefore the employment conventions included stills from films and the use of recognisable film related equipment such as the use of a film reel to portray shot of films. For our title we chose to call the magazine 'Reel Talk' as this can be shown to relate to film (film reel) and also show that the magazine is a film magazine which has a main focus on film such as reviews and previews. 


Another image convention of Film magazine covers is the use of a main image which is usually a block buster of some kind surrounded by smaller less significant puff pieces about various subjects such as previews, reviews or miscellaneous subjects. For Reel Talk we decided to do the same as we placed our main protagonist Emma played by Lily Bridger on the front cover as she will be a USP to our film and people will be able to recognise the character and create the link with Concrete Garden. For the image we decided to do a studio shot of Lily rather than lift a still from the film as therefore we can get a better quality photo and also have the character look directly into the camera lens which is a normal convention of central images on film magazine covers. The background of this image swell will be similar to the graphics used in the film trailer such as the colour, texturisation and graphics so the audience will also be able to link this to the film and create a more intricate media product.


We wanted to create a compromise between the styles of 'Empire' and 'Sight and sound' we did this by combining styles of both magazines. We did this in order to attract a larger audience, we also used a few common convention by using a central character on a large scale and intrusively on the page much like 'The wolverine' empire cover. Having an issue theme 'The cult issue' allowed us to present our issue of our magazine in a certain light much like 'The Gangster Issue' on 'Sight and Sound'. We created other films in order to provide the consumer with further information on new film. Using an array of fonts for different articles attracts people into different parts of the magazine we used this convention as it makes the cover seem for versatile and interesting.




Other conventions of film magazines included obvious additions such as price, barcode and a website address which is a common theme throughout major film magazines such Empire and Total Film. 
However, we did choose to develop conventions of normal film magazine covers by switching the colourisation of titles, our title font is called Cinerama a classic font used in 1950's/60's with a black/red/white colour scheme instead of a standard red and black title colour scheme which can be shown for Empire/Total Film. 


We also wanted to add and create a larger more linked product in relation to a magazine, we decided to create our own logo (RT) to make it more recognisable to a potential reading audience. For most magazines this method is not employed and therefore this magazine will stand out from the rest of film magazines.

Poster


We chose to not stay to the typical conventions a psychological thriller poster and chose to take more of a horror film poster approach as we felt it was more appropriate in relation to our film. To present a continuous theme throughout our media product we used a font that was common and ran throughout the magazine and film as well, similar graphics were also used such as the concrete texturised background used throughout our trailer. 


The layering of our poster was used specifically to give an eerie atmosphere, the layering included the use of the texturised background, a scanned page from the bible, a shadow of the antagonist and the main Bauta mask in the foreground. The use of layering each of these images led to a very eye catching  and interesting poster overall.


The colouring of the poster also used conventions of previous horror posters which mainly included red/black/white as there main colour scheme, therefore the poster would instantly be associated with this kind of horror/psychological film. We saw this technique used in 'The Box', as believed it to very effective and ties in with our genre.


We chose the central image of our mask as we its the 'iconic' image of our film and provides the consumer with consistant image that works almost in the same way as a logo would. We have used this image at the forefront with our other images adding texture to this, in order to make sure the image wasn't flat we added lighting and shadow effects, as most posters have the image jumping out at you.


Most posters have reviews and ratings, we chose to use this convential minimally as we didn't want our central image to loose its impact. We use a line from a review from a magazine in order to make it look authentic, we have this smaller in size to the actors name to draw attention to them. To create the billing block we found and used the standard billing font and made sure it was of appropraite size on our poster ( around 1/8), we integrated details of a website and companies that helped to produce our film. We had mini logos of sites such as twitter, Facebook and Youtube so show the audience where they could find further information about 'Concrete Jungle'.


For our title we wanted to have it larger than an other text on the page, we had the text slightly embossed in order for it to appear less flat so it jumps out at an onlooker, this font was similar as the rest used to present the theme of defying religion. Conventionally most posters have a memorable tag line, we used 'the mind is a dangerous device' as ours as very have previously used this in our trailer this helps to shape the marketing structure of our film. We also changed the colour of text so let the title appear first then the tagline to be read second. Our poster used many conventions in our genre but also directly challenged them in order to open up our market and come across unique and creative.