Questions 4&5- institutions+distribution/attract+adressing audience

Here is a student movie that has been uploaded onto the internet (through youtube) and has had quite a large amount of views (39,677 so far). The internet has been used to launch this short movie to a wider audience, and it is now an award-winning title; Youtube is a very popular website used to promote all sorts of videos. It is available to anyone in the world with internet access and it is therefore a very good place to upload videos if you want your movie to be noticed by a wider audience.

My movie is also a low budget student film, the production company for the movie is Candi Studios; a small independent institution which specialises  in low-budget student films, as it has good equipment but low production budgets. 

Distribution so far:

The film has already been released over the internet on Vimeo, and on blogger (through this blog) also it has been uploaded on to facebook in order to gain some audience feedback from our peers. My group and i also plan to upload it onto youtube in order to give people from other cities or countries a chance to see it; potentially our movie opening could reach a global audience!

My movie (opening) will have a cinema screening at a local independent cinema The Screen on the Green, also it will be released on DVD for my peers and family (also other members of the other media students' family etc.) to have a shared screening experience.

Who is the audience for my media product? Question 3.

Evie, 21, an English Literature student in university, loves going to the theatre to see musicals or the ballet, has a passion for vintage clothes, spends too much money on make-up and likes going out for a drink with friends.

 

Here are some of Evie's possessions; things she has lying around her room:

- Books (for studying and pleasure)

- her favourite perfume

-collection of make-up 

-ring binders

-jewelry and beauty products

 These are the things she would have in her bag on a typical day:

- purse

-postit notes

-keys

-make-up (vaseline, compact powder, lipstick)

-notes on lectures etc.

-theatre ticket

-buisness card

-glasses

Question 6- audience feedback.

We uploaded our video on to a few members of our group's facebook pages today as our teacher thought it would be a good way of hearing more feedback from a group of people who are not necessarily studying media themselves and might therefore give us less technical advice and be able to experience it as someone who has not gone through the process of making a movie themselves.

Question 2 - Representation of Social Groups

 Through all of our title sequence, there are some similarities and differences from different movies.
Most of them break the typical stereotypes.  
The close up of the child face is taken from the ' The "The Orphan. They both seems like a children, but there is something in their eyes and face which makes them look scary. They hide something behind this lovely and innocence face. 
There is a different mise-en-scene, however the idea of freaky and isolated character is carried through all of our movie. 
In both movies, there is broken stereotypes of cute and vulnerable child.

This two shots create the sense of normality. As a child our character is playing with the doll. In the real movie , the main character is playing piano. They both look innocent as a normal child.
However the mise-en-scene is different.
Our main character is wearing kind of white and ecrue colour while Esther from 'The Orphan' is wearing dark and brown clothes. This suggest more about her hidden agenda.
In our title sequence, we decide to keep her in 'white' colour to make it much more shocking that she has some mental problems.
Dark colour signifies the dager. It might suggest about low satisfaction from the life or some problems. The white signifies innocent and purity, however the grey and brown colour with a dim lighting suggest about lonliness and emptiness in the life.

 The ideas of lonliness in taken from the Black Swan. As in both films, the main characters are alone and trapped in their own mind. They both sit in the corner which signifies about feeling of being scared and not know what do do.
Also from the Black Swan we took the idea of a dance. They both love ballet dance. However in our movies the ballet dance is kind of a rescue for Victoria. She dance to forget about her problems, But she can not escape too far from it, after the dropped her memories goes back. In the Black Swan the ballet dance make the Nina loss herself. She tries and want to do so good , but it makes her loss awareness with the real world.
We wanted to break the false stereotype about ballet after Black Swan.
All ballet dancer have big passion and work really hard. However, it does not look that dark and sad as it is showed in the movie Black Swan.
That is why , we decide to show dance as a way of escapisem from the everyday life problem.

We again go against  the stereotypical colour. In Black Swan , Nina wears first white, grey and brown colour and then as she change she wears black. But we decide to do it other way round. As the film begins, Victoria wear black leotard and pink ballet shoes, and then when we go into her mind , she wears white and grey clothes.

Representation of social groups- Question 2.

The main character in the thriller will obviously be the little girl. Her character is largely influenced by the character of Nina in Black Swan. They are both portrayed as tortured artists (ballerinas) who express their feelings through dance; it is the only time they can truly be free.

Their characters are also similar in the sense that they are all alone in the world, which is clearly shown in these stills, with them being alone and isolated in an empty room or corner, and the camera is tilted slightly so that it seems as if they have a lower status; they are presented as being vulnerable, which which is similar to the usual stereotypes and generalisations of women in the media. The bland colours of brown and grey, as well as the dim lighting enhance the idea of them being lonely as these particular colours are usually associated with emptiness.

Only one character is shown in our thriller opening, however, two sides of this character are portrayed; in the beginning she is a tortured artist; bursting with talent and passion for dance, but in the second half, a more mean, mentally deranged side to the girl is brought out. This goes against the stereotype of girls being vulnerable and cute, and this change in personality is represented also in 'The Orphan' with the protagonist Esther rapidly changing her personality from a sweet little orphan girl to a deranged, sadistic 30-year-old woman. We wanted to have this psychotic element to our thriller also, and so the representations of our protagonist was largely influenced by Esther in The Orphan.

How a character is represented to the audience is largely based on visual cues for example through costume and mise en scene. In general, the colour black is associated with dark, evil things; when there is lots of dark colours in a particular scene of a movie, the audience can sense something bad will soon happen. In comparison, white has connotations for purity, innocence and peace. The Black Swan uses these colours as mental triggers for when something bad will happen, also to signify when the character will act good or evil. We went against these representations in our opening as we used a white rather than black night dress for when the girl is clearly show to be a bit psychotic, however we used a black tutu in the beginning in order to foreshadow that something bad will happen later, or circumstances will soon change.

Evaluation- Representation of Social groups: Question 2.

Representation:
-Deal in stereotypes
-Exaggerations and generalisations
-Useful for the audience to recognise

-All media representations are constructs

This shot has similarities and differences between them as we wanted our character o be isolated, freaky and have a hidden agenda. They are close close/mid shots of just the facial expression, however our shot has a bit of the mise-en-scene in the background. Both have fixed expressions to show something about the character, what they're hiding and what they're feeling.

This overlapping shot of Reems hand and my face shows the dominant character which is the abuser, as her hand has jewellery, bracelets and rings contrasting to the vulnerable child's face.

This shot shows the social group of dancers, performers and artists, however also our second half of the film attracts all audiences as she is an alone, mysterious girl who could be in danger. We have gone against the representation of colour as in the Black Swan she is dressed in black as she is evil, and white as she is innocent, but we have done it the other way around.

Our media teacher told us it would be a good idea to show our opening to people so that they can comment on it, and get audience feedback. This will help us know what we have done well and what we need to improve on, what people think of it and what they liked about it.


























Using a vintage old school camera effect i turned these normal photos into old loking ones which relate to our thriller 'Victoria'. Ballet collage:

Here is an animation i created from our shots to our professional shots from films:

Evaluation - Question 2

How does your media product represent the particular social groups?

Our protagonist is not the usual representation of a ballet dancer. Out main aim was to establish normality then convey her flaws through the old, abandoned mise en scene and dark setting. 

The drop indicates that all not is well and foreshadows what will happen in the film. The drop is also a metaphor for her life as after she drops things immediately begin to go wrong and thats when the scenes of her scars are revealed. 

We chose to challenge the usual stereotypical 'crazy person' as we thought it was effective if we had a normal person to show that you do not have to be visually abnormal. Similarly in Black Swan the main character is a dancer who looks normal. 

We used lighting on her face to emphasis her features and to also create shadows adding to the tension of the film. Her costume was very childish we chose this specifically to present her as immature mentally, however this is contrasted with the lipstick used as lipstick has connotations of sophistication and a mature look. This arouses the audiences curiosity and eagerness into watching more to reveal what happens. We ensure we did this successfully as the opening is what sets the bar for expectation and also ensures that the audience stays for the whole 90minutes if the film. 

Question 1: Forms and Convections of Thriller title sequence continue

I am going to compare some of the shots from our thriller opening with shots from The Black Swan.
Through this , I will show the intertexuality. I did very similar blog few weeks ago, but I am going to look in more detail.