Evaluation Activity One ☮ ☮ ☮

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

In my first chosen frame I have decided to use our opening establishing shot of the forest location where we filmed the most important scenes of our film, the murder scene. We felt that using this type of shot would set the suspicious and creepy mood, as we wanted to show some sense of conforming to stereotypes and so the slow paced wood setting would trigger the audience to start suspecting a chilling and grim scene to occur within this location, this is due to the dark and murky colours of green and brown that instantly portray a dismal, negative mood. Using this location shows to be apart of the thriller conventions, as many thriller films use locations that show a sense of ambiguity, as we are shown a girl, our protagonist Tara, walking her dog as it seems, but is really the location of her murder. With the main amount of our footage being located in the forest, it therefore allows the audience to reach the conclusion that these scenes are extremely important to the plot. We used a panning shot, as we wanted to take full advantage of the whole scenery as all around us we could see that the forest was completely hard featured, and with also the future scenes that were to be shot were going to be in shot within the establishing shot, we believed this would be good to show a sense of continuity and when our main character would be retracing this position.

For my second frame I’ve used again another shot from the beginning of our film, which introduces our main protagonist, Tara, who seems an average teenager walking her dog, As we later learn further into the film we can gather that perhaps Tara was not just this and could exceed an average member of the public’s expectations, due to our main antagonist having a vendetta against Tara large enough to kill her. We decided to do a low angle shot here as we wanted to give the effect that our camera was intact the audience almost lurking in the background upon Tara, With there being a ditch below the bridge of which she crosses, we though this made her seem preyed upon, matched with the soundtrack in the background it also makes Tara appear targeted, this is due to the high pitched and slow paced music,Tara being alone apart from her small and defenceless dog, and the already tension building and eerie location. The character also is showing a negative mood, due to her expressionless face, so we can also gather that her mood may impact the route of the scene, meaning if she had been happier maybe she would have not been giving off the right signals to the audience who we want to be picking up clues from every frame. The craning, skinny and caliginous trees that loom above Tara as she walks pasts, matched with the rusted green cage like bars beside her, portrays the effect of Tara being enclosed and intimidated the more she walks into the forest. The increasing tension arising with this shot of showing the victimised appearance of Tara being closed into the forest, fits into the thriller convention of having a victim that needs to be saved, or in this situation the victim that leads to having an attack to which serves as a plot to the film as of finding who has done this to her.

The third frame I show is of our protagonist and antagonist in a closeup medium shot of the characters below the waist, where our antagonist is dragging Tara backwards in a violent and sudden way, This shot appears on screen incredibly quickly and leaves screen almost as quickly, which makes the audience question what just happened and what to pay close attention as to not miss anything, we wanted to show the bottom part of our character’s bodies as to remain the sense of obscurity and anonymity with our antagonist character, this shot showed very little of our antagonist due to their mise en scene being what is shown to be completely black, which urges in with our protagonists black trousers also. This again is a clue that audiences may have to guess quickly as we can see hanging out of our antagonists pocket, is a plastic bag, to which shortly they will be suffocating Tara with. This frame fits with the thriller theme as within the genre a lot of fast paced and high tension buildups occur when someone death may arise. This being the first time our antagonist comes into contact with the protagonist, and with them taking an aggressive attitude towards them physically, sets the correct mood of both the scene being of a high tensity and dark, but also making the audience feel negative emotions towards the attacker. Continuing with the entrapment theme, Tara seems trapped physically by our antagonist, but also by the barbed wired fence that can be seen towards the outskirts of the screen, showing that she has not escape from her assaulter, which again fits with the conventions of thriller films due to the sense of power and a lack of morals, that the villains should have before they even come into shot, which is shown within the frame as they have gotten the better of the protagonist by grabbing her forcibly, but also sneaking up behind Tara and succeeding in this way by cheating of sorts.

My fourth frame illustrates an extreme close up of our protagonist’s mouth whilst she is being suffocated by our anonymous attacker and antagonist. Whilst this is occurring we cross cut between scenes and shots, where Ellie our second protagonist is shown impatiently waiting for Tara, who we cross cut to whilst she is waiting for her to answer her phone, we can also hear signing tones whilst Tara is seen dying, which I believe added to the scene by making tensity of the scene increase, therefore causing the audience to wait in anticipation desperately wanting Tara to access her phone in order to save her life, which fits to the exhilarating thriller conventions that make the audience involve themselves in the scene mentally. With seeing our prop of a clear plastic bag so that we can see our victims face made the scene even more believable, and also can visualise the expression of her mouth and she drastically inhales and exhales in order to keep breathing, with our editing causing us to cross cut back to Ellie shows ultimately that Tara has no hope even though the audience drastically doesn't want this to be the case. With this being an extreme close up shot we see only our protagonists lower face and our antagonists hand grasped around Tara’s neck, making the audience focusing on the creases in the bag leading into Tara’s mouth that is attempting to breath faster and faster. The background of which we see little of, is blurred due to the fact that we wanted all focus to be on Tara, as this is a very intense and important scene to the full plot of the film. Though the background of which we can see is very dark and can just about make out the same, almost empty dark green and brown leaves hanging from skinny branches, which follows with our theme of creepiness and death, as the trees that are in our shots appear to be dying, just like our main protagonist.

The fifth frame which is shown above is of our second protagonist, Ellie, holding a modern smart phone with her coffee cup being seen next to her, in an extreme close up shot. I value this shot as very important to our film, as with our cast being of a younger age it is without question that technology plays a big role within their life due to modern day society, and with Tara fighting for her life at this time, the phone call attaches Ellie to her, giving the audience hope of survival if Tara can get to her phone, but instead is shown as a failure with Tara shown to have been defeated, and to make matters worse Ellie makes it spoken that she doesn’t want anything to do with Tara anymore, making it seem as if she won’t attempt to find Tara, which we wanted the audience to feel anxious and suspicious about, as to who will find her. This shot very much focuses on props, the coffee cup being in shot, we thought, would stick to continuity, and as Ellie’s face isn’t shown in this shot we still wanted it to be known who was calling Tara, who’s name appears on the phone’s screen whilst the call is in process. This sticks with the thriller conventions as technology is usually pays a huge role within this specific genre and we wanted to show how technology in todays society plays such a large role within the lives of younger people. Technology also is shown as a life saving tool on multiple occasions, When Ellie calls Tara which, if it had been answered, could have been answered by Tara and warned people, and also when Ellie receives a text message from who the audience should presume is Tara, which our audience can hope leads Ellie to Tara. This was shot outside of a Costa Coffee, we though that filming inside the shop would show too much of a sense of a warmness and safety, which we believed wouldn’t set the correct tension for what was going to be simultaneously happening to Tara, as Ellie would be dragged into the situation towards the very end of the opening. The weather outside was very gloomy and dull, and we were extremely happy with this as we didn’t want to film at a time when the weather would be too bright, which would lead to the presumption that it would be a happier and more positive scene. This is where we added the sound effects of a ringing dial tone which overlapped the soundtrack, which we felt heavily built tension as we heard this over both scenes of Tara being suffocated and Ellie waiting for Tara to answer.

In the sixth frame displays an extreme close up shot of our second protagonist, Ellie, leaving a voice message on Tara’s voicemail, whilst she is at the coffee shop and whilst Tara is being suffocated. I saw this to be an effective shot that definitely portrayed the anger and seriousness of the situation, as this is where Ellie leaves a voice message to Tara stating that their friendship is over and that she never wants Tara to talk to her again, we wanted to use this shot as it would show the expression within our actress’ face and showing her anger and distress of being stood up when we can presume that Tara was supposed to be there and hasn’t turned up. This fits the thriller type conventions here as we aimed for a warning such as Liam nelson’s in the Taken franchise, where the closeup is used to show his anger and fear within his facial expressions, when warning his enemy/ antagonist that he will find him and kill him, With Ellie being angry and upset here we wanted her visual to be similar to this.Again this was set outside the coffee shop, which again sticks to continuity and allows the audience to see that she was indeed waiting for Tara and due to her anger has clearly been stood up. We can also see the title of cast and crew entering the screen, we decided to use white text to stand off the screen as our colour scheme on the screen throughout is very dark and dismal and our text being white shows both clearly on screen and that hope is within the cast with white showing the sense of innocence and purity. We used a simple fading in and out of the text on screen with our titles as we wanted to bind to conventions of thriller by using a formal and standard font in a sophisticated transition to portray the maturity that we wanted to give off. Ellie’s mise en scene shows a dark green, which we felt stood off the screen enough as her hair which we though due to it being very bright, again it might show more of a happier mood, so we matched it with both a dull and dark green to balance the colours onscreen.

The seventh frame views a lifeless Tara laying eyes wide open on the ground after being suffocated by our antagonist, in a medium straight low angle shot. This shot shows the reveal of Tara as being defeated by the attacker, we used one of the plastic bags we used in the final shots to cover er face and have our antagonist abruptly tear off of Tara’s face showing her still and haunting as she looks into the camera, to make the audience feel as if she is looking directly at them. This fits to the thriller conventions of having a conventional character die after receiving enough camera time for the audience to take interest in them, leaving them in shock. Dead leaves surround our protagonist in this shot giving off a negative and unpleasant sight to the viewer, which is why we only leave this image on momentarily in order to show less connotations to horror than it would to thriller by still putting in some thrilling jumps.To show that a protagonist has died, we made sure to have our actress wear a brightly coloured piece of clothing, which is why we used a medium shot to show her bright coat overbalance the screen to show that ultimately good will overcome evil as always. The titles continue to roll over her dead body to show that life goes on even after her death within this film, for now. This again shows the thriller convention of frequent deaths and how certain lives that are taken and haven’t been given a lot of prevalence are quickly forgotten, or used as a source of plot for the remainder of the film.

The eighth frame shows our main protagonist, Tara, appearing dead on the floor whilst our main antagonist walks away pulling off her balaclava revealing her identity in a long shot. This is the shot we are fist introduced to our antagonist Rosemary, although not named within the film this is what she was casted as ( her name came due to meaning of being a devil child), her mise en scene immediately indicates that she is of a bad nature due to her wearing all black and showing me signs of red within her jacket which we wanted to indicate to blood, with the jacket having the red inside the jacket, it shows that she is hiding the blood that is on her hands. The characters mannerisms of simply flicking her hair back and continuing in the opposite direction to the lifeless body, with the character not seeming remorseful at all with her not looking back at all, which we wanted to do to show that she is a cold blooded character, who has no care for what she does, there was many directions we would have carried the character into, which we wanted to make the audience continuously wonder why she wanted to kill Tara. The difference we wanted to put in with this character is than usual thrillers, was that we give the audience her face as her identity is no weakness to her, but intact have to work out her personality and her vendetta against Tara and if she has one at all. The titles continue to roll on throughout our opening as we wanted to show breaks when she was being murdered as a sign of life goes on, which fits with the thriller conventions of multiple deaths within the typical thriller film. The setting of this shot was in the alley of which Tara is killed, this shot was mainly used as we wanted to show a full shot of the appearance of the murder location as the audience would not have seen the alley itself during the murder or when the camera focused on Tara’s face after she died. With the intimidating antagonist and setting gives off an overall chilling close to a scene and major plot point.

The final ninth frame shows an extreme close up of the hand of our main protagonist as it moves, again this i feel made a big impact on the source of plot that would have followed if we had carried on to make our film, our protagonist could have been revealed to have been many things such as a trained federal law agent, or even something inhumane, which may have resulted in a sic fi twist. Showing our protagonists hand would have made our audience wonder where this could have gone, in cases of who this girl is, what will she do, and does she know who done this to her and why. This fits to the thriller convention of mystery and the “whodunnit” theme that appears in many thriller film, even though the audience knows it would be a twist on a mystery style by trying to work our why they done it and if it was really them who wanted to do it. the setting was till in the alley due to the brown dead leaves that still surrounded her, the movement itself remained very weak which we wanted to gave the impression of her possibly making it but possibly not, which again fits with the mystery convention of thrillers. Her mise en scene here shows chipped nail varnish, which shows signs of stress due to chipping and a rough appearance, making her appear to have maybe been expecting this attack. The sound effects that came here was a boom sound effect to show that this was a major important part of the story and one of the many twists that would have happened if we had filmed a whole feature length movie.

Our title appears at the very end of our film after around 3 seconds on a black screen, where “THE ALLEY” comes in abruptly on a black background with white text, in a shaky font, that shows the mood of the entirety of the film which was meant to be thrills and jumps. The title of the film comes from the fact that what happens at the very beginning of the film is the main source of plot for the full length of the film, whether it would be starting at the end or working out why the antagonist killed Tara, and how they would go about solving this case. Our title was made to stick with the thriller conventions of simplicity, as many thriller films titles are this way in attempt to show the seriousness and focus on the feature itself rather than effects and giving too much away with this due to colours and their conventions.