Final Evaluation

The Crime Scene

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of media products?

As the title suggests, the media product is a crime thriller. In the opening scene the audience is given many clues as to the convention. The use of the music, which is initially dark and heinous, creates an expectation of mystery. This is then developed by the site of the ‘crime tape’. Along with the ‘voice over’ leaves the audience no doubt as to the fact the film is a murder mystery and that the murder has already taken place.

Our film develops these conventions as the audience are introduced to new leads exploring the crime, such as ‘flash backs’, reminding the audience of these leads, helping them to assimilate their own conclusion. Also the dialect during the phone call leads the audience to another predicament.

We chose this convention as we are all interested in films of this nature. I particularly enjoy the dark but humorous side of Quentin Tarantino and how his films have a tendency to leave the audience in the dark right up to the bitter end with usually a final twist, which sometimes is where the film started. For example, Reservoir Dogs; the opening scene in the café indicates the team of criminals will be successful in the robbery as opposed to each of them getting killed or killing one another. Films like this influenced us because of the unpredictable ending and how each twist leads you to another suspect. We tried to recreate this convention using’ flash backs’ to get the audience thinking about other possible suspects instead of leading them straight to an expected end.

‘The Crime Scene’ opening sequence equates closely with a popular crime drama ‘CSI - Crime Scene Investigation’. The drama sometimes opens with the murder having already taken, indicated by the ‘tape’ and the CSI team at the scene. Our production compares with this drama in the use of ‘flash backs’, i.e. CSI often show the audience figments of the teams imagination whilst they re-create the crime scene as they believe it could have happened. Our production shows similar ‘flash backs’ of our investigators thoughts, i.e. one of the detectives suggests a possible hit and run and this idea is then shown to the audience. This is a good persuasive technique which helps build in twists as it may not be an actual event.


IMAGES OF TAPE FROM CSI AND OUR CRIME SCENE


2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents ‘justice’. A crime has taken place and must be solved and criminals punished. The social groups could be either gender, both capable of solving crime. Our production is multi-racial and has no class distinction. ‘The Crime Scene’ target audience is sixteen plus non gender specific.

IMAGES OF OUR CHARACTERS OPENING SCENE AND CSI

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

Our film would most likely be associated with lower budget distributors such as warp films and Film4 in contrast to big Hollywood studios such as Warner Bros. pictures. Directors like Shane Meadow create films not only with an entertainment value but an influence on the audience. ‘This is England’ dealt around the racist struggles England were under at that time, and like Shane Meadow we try to capture a growing problem in today’s society, and feed this message to the audience.

Although we see our film as a small production, ‘The Crime Scene’ is definitely something that could be produced by major Hollywood studios. We relate our product closely around the hit drama ‘CSI’, who are distributed by big production companies like Arc Entertainment. Our production is more likely to be a TV movie/drama series as opposed to a big Hollywood blockbuster. A crime drama like a good crime book is something you are in for the long haul. It has a developing; twisting plot which will unfold and grasp people’s interest over a number of weeks to a remarkable finale.

As with any organisation/production its success will offer opportunities for franchise and merchandising. Our film has certain advantages for merchandising as the genre is crime/thriller which introduces a wide range of products to market such as action figures, whereas a comedy would struggle in selling this type of brand. Marketed and advertised correctly, our product can make money merchandising with posters, books, magazines, DVD’s, toys, t-shirts etc. Today, even low budget films have advantages for advertising through the internet where they can upload trailers and pictures on different networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. This is where the word of mouth becomes a major credit in selling your product. In our film, we focused a lot around the mise-en-scene to capture a sense of real life crime. In terms of marketing, we have opened a lot of doors and can be specific in our merchandising, e.g. selling board games relating to crime and mystery, crime solving console games and crime novels.

IMAGE OF FILM DISTRIBUTION COMPANY

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience our media product aims at is sixteen plus non gender specific. Our film relates to real life, including knife crime and the distort it brings to the families of those involved. People from the age of sixteen plus can understand the message more than a younger audience. Our film is strongly influenced by other similar crime/thrillers such as ‘Seven’, ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Harry Brown’ and we relate our audiences to those of these films. Our product will also appeal more to those who have a real passion for solving mysteries and forensic science. In our research we found that more people between the ages of 20-40 watch crime genre films and shows and that 60%of these are women. Sixteen plus would be the most appropriate classification for our film as they are scenes of violence and crime which a younger audience may find disturbing. The film deals with social matters which don’t apply to an audience under sixteen.

LINK TO THE BBFC

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Our media product engages with a mixed audience from the ages of 16 +. We knew whilst planning and researching our product that we would attract our audience more if we could make particular sequences personal to them. From our wide ranged audience, those interested in murder mystery, and forensic science would have a great interest in our product, as each murder is scientifically looked into and from our opening sequence you can see Detective Lodge carefully taking blood samples and other peculiar substances. We also attract our audience looking into real life issues such as knife crime. As our audience varies from the ages of 16+ we knew that tackling this everyday crisis would engage a lot with this age group. We understand that a majority of our audience will or would have been involved in these terrors at some time and representing it in our film really addresses them individually.

Using different camera techniques, we were able to involve our audience more, as if they were part of the film. We used different shots such as point of view and over the shoulder allowing the audience to feel a part of the investigation. Flash backs also engaged our audience as it gave them a brief vision of the crime, without giving away too much information as we want the viewers to make their own minds up as different murders take place.


6. What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?

Throughout the duration of filming and editing our media product, myself and the team have learnt a lot about the technology we used. The camera was our first challenge as none of us had ever used one of them before but with practise we all became associated with how it worked. Our good practise benefited as we found out how to film in ‘night vision’ which we used in our opening sequence as flashbacks to portray a dark, grunge feel. Although we had our strengths with the camerawork we also had our weaknesses, such as keeping the camera steady as the stand would sometimes give way. Also the batteries we were supplied with kept dying, which pushed back our filming, and in the end we had to have our camera attached to an extension lead.

During our filming process, everything that could have gone wrong did. We had a six week plan (find on blog), of how we would have liked our project to run. Unfortunately we were pushed back due to the illness of one of our actors and extreme weather conditions. To overcome this problem a lot of previous planning and preparation had to be forgotten and a new script was written. This was a radical decision we made but we managed to overcome this obstacle down to our dedication for each other and the film. We set a day and time to film and didn’t go back on our word, even though the weather turned out to be breezy and raining, although the conditions did add a particular mood to the sequence. We also owe many thanks to our friend, Jeremy who took time out to help us film as arranged actor Oliver Nielson was still ill.

When we came to editing, we used new equipment to enhance our film like the microphone system, used for the voice over and the software final cut. This again was an obstacle for us as we were all used to using imovie, but we become very familiar with final cut and prefer using that software. There were many different effects we found useful such as simply cutting and rendering scenes together, making them more precise for a smoother flow. We also incorporated sound within our movie like the ‘voice over’, and the music which creates suspense.

INCLUDE SCREEN GRABS ILLUSTARTING THE EQUIPMENT AND SOFTWARE YOU HAVE USED OR TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE EQUIPMENT.

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back over the duration of our preliminary task I have learnt how important planning and research is in the progression to the full product. We all individually began researching into different genres which we would enjoy tackling and what would challenge our creative ideas. We looked into many different types of genre such as, horror, comedy, action, adventure, sci-fi, romance, etc but we all agreed that crime/thriller was the perfect genre for us as we were all interested in crime films/shows therefore this was a good genre for us to develop our creative ideas.
We looked into many different crime/thriller films/shows like reservoir dogs, seven, lord of war and CSI which influenced us massively and helped us begin to present our ideas together into a story board and script. When watching different crime films for our research we payed particular attention to the camera shots so we had a good idea what shots we needed to capture our audience like those films captured their audience. We also payed attention to the lighting, props, outfits, dialect, music, and scene editing so we would have a good idea how to create a certain mood which is specific to the genre crime.

After writing a script we all thought was original and entertaining we began to look for locations, somewhere which would really capture the tension of our product. We came across many different locations which would suit our script but settled for an old Victorian house. From putting in this research and planning it helped us when we came to filming and editing as we knew exactly what to do, step after step. Our organisation made our filming and editing smooth and didn’t have to worry about certain shots as they fitted to our surroundings. We used many technical shots like, long shot, close up, medium shot, establishing long shot, point of view, etc which all blended together and created a smooth, enjoyable sequence.

After having extremely good practise with the equipment like the camera and different editing software’s, I am proud to say that I am confident in its use. Using the equipment became more than just a task to me but a joy, and I look forward to using the equipment again. I am also very confident in the success of our final end product. We did face a lot of unfortunate events but tackled them all thanks to our planning and commitment. I believe that our film is a great success, especially taking into consideration the difficulties we faced. Although our full product task has been challenging and at times frustrating, I have enjoyed it thoroughly. I am very proud and positive in our full product.

INCLUDE STILL IMAGES FROM EACH PROJECT