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

Task 3 What kind of media institution might distribute your media product?

The media institution that we used to distribute our thriller (doppelganger) is Lionsgate. We did this because Lionsgate produces both small and big budget movies which also coincides with how well recognized they are. Lionsgate has produced films such as Harry Brown (2009) 300 (2006) and American Psycho (2000). We used Lionsgate as our thriller has themes that most films that are produced by Lionsgate all seem to carry, such as murder, action and an intricate plot all of which our thriller has. We were also unsure as to how big our thriller would end up being, so using Lionsgate was a convenient escape goat.We as a team believe Lionsgate would be interested in Doppleganger as it reflects the the type of production values, budget and themes that are presented in a Lionsgate production. Using Lionsgate is also a well known company and using its popularity we believe would help give the film more recognition.

Task 2 How does your product represent particular social groups?

How does Your product represent particular social groups?The killer in our thriller wears a hoody and not only this uses a knife to kill his victim. This relates heavily to the idea of knife crime that england suffers from at the moment. The killer is also representative of britains youth culture as many teenagers today are involved in crime and those teenagers have a tendency to wear hoodys and stab their victims. This kind of social group is similar to the ones portrayed in Kidulthood (2006), Bullet Boy (2004) and Adulthood (2008). These movies all portray Youths living in inner city areas of london who are involved in crime. These are the types of social groups portrayed in our thriller. The other subgroup our thriller demonstrates is that of the victim. The victim could be anything from the victims of knife crime, to the victims of drug abuse to the victims of burglary, nevertheless our thriller represents this through the victim of our film. The fact that both the stabber and the victim are the same person expands on the metaphor of how we as a nation have become frightened of ourselves as we are more and more made aware of how crime is taking of the country. We are afraid to go out in case we get stabbed, we are afraid we might get raped, mugged etc. but most of all we are afraid of what we potentially could do to someone else if the situation arose. This is what the victim in our thriller symbolises.

Task 1 In what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Task 1
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our Thriller develops and challenges forms and conventions through the following ways. Firstly our thriller is fairly original as it is about a man being chased through the woods by an unknown person after he has been stabbed. The thriller then ends with the man looking face to face with the killer who turns out to be a doppleganger of the man who was stabbed. The way in which this takes a simple idea (being chased by a psycho) and then subverts it (The hunter is also the hunted) challenges the idea of a typical psycho thriller. Our Thriller took inspiration from several movies such as The Tenant (1976) The Saw Franchise and Scream (1996). Our movie draws Inspiration from The Tenant as that is about a man who is thrown out of a hotel window by an unknown person. The movie then comes to explain that it was actually himself. This gave our Thriller a nice orignal twist to the plot which would not be typically seen in movies today. Another way in which our thriller challenges the conventions of film today is that it takes a rather unoriginal idea (Someone being stabbed and chased) and flips it over with the twist at the end.

Post Production

Since the preliminary task we (the group) have learnt a lot about the filming and editing process, and particularly the editing process. When we first started editing during the preliminary task our group was very unsure as to how to go about the whole process, however with time and effort we managed to learn how to use it very well. When we filmed the preliminary task it was very basic as we only filmed it in one location (a studio). With our thriller however we filmed it on location outdoors. The number of shots we used when filming were far greater when we filmed the preliminary which involved about 6 -10 shots, as opposed to our thriller which has well over 100. Not only this but in terms of editing we have learnt far more whilst working on our thrillers as opposed to our preliminary tasks.

Once again coming back to editing the differences between our preliminary and thriller are huge. The preliminary task used a much slower set of cuts, as the mood of it was much more slowly paced, the thriller however is a far more erratic and frantic piece of work as the mood of it is meant to capture the panic that dan is meant to be feeling when running from someone who has just stabbed him. With the preliminary however it is simply a conversation set within a simple room with two people. There is nothing particularly exceptional about the preliminary's mood of tone as it does not need to have one. There are no erratic cuts, there is no stabbing, and the characters are not in a hugely obvious amount of danger (whilst it is slightly hinted at it is never seen as bad enough to be shown).

Since Post Production has begun we have begun the editing process. During this process we have deleted clips that we no longer want, and edited and spliced the stuff which we want into the finished product. we have found that there is actually a lot of material that we no longer wanted and therefore got rid of it. Our film is generally one long chase sequence so cutting down a lot of material is necessary as the film would be too long. We filmed roughly forty minutes of footage.
This is a shame as there is a lot of good footage we had to cut out as a result, but this was a neccesary evil as to get this movie to play within three minutes we had to cut down all the extra footage.

When it comes to sound we are using a combination of diegetic and non diegetic sound. The diegetic sound that we used are the rustling through the bushes, and Dan's ( the guy who was stabbed,and the guy who is pursuing the guy getting stabbed) panting and sounds of physical exhaustion. In terms of non diegetic sound we are currently working on the sound and we are using sounds from soundtrack pro. The muscic we are using sounds a bit like an electronic organ which will be used to build tension and give the audience watching it an ominous feeling. This combined with the sound of the leaves rustling as Dan walks through the woods and the music we have added using soundtrack pro should end up giving the audience an idea of what is about to happen as both sounds have ominous qualities to them. These sounds are also combined with Dan sounding out of breath as he runs and the sounds of the wind as the camera follows him whilst he runs.

When it comes to the titles we are going to put the distributor first and then the production company. The reason we are putting the distributor (Lionsgate Films) first is because the sequence will be shown in terms of money. Lionsgate who are the biggest influence on the film i.e. the film wouldnt exist without them, have the most money to donate towards the film and therefore make it what it is. The production company will then come next as they have the next biggest influence on the film and also largely help make it what it is. In terms of how fast the titles will be shown, they will only be shown for a second maximum as if they were displayed for any longer then they would slow down the pace of the film which is itself a fast paced piece of film. If the titles were displayed for any longer they would also destroy the tension of the film as a lot attention would directed from the speed of the actual film to the titles and therefore cause the audience to not only lack the feeling of tension required to make the film what it is, but they would also be distracted to the point as to not notice a lot of the things on screen.

In conclusion all the elements outlined above have helped make the experience of our thriller as visceral and realistic as possible.

Account of the shooting day

Today we shot our film and to the pride of our group it went very well and as planned. Infact it actually went better than planned and exceeded our expectations. Whilst we went in today not knowing exactly how we were going to execute the film, it soon came to fruition when we were filming it as we could see the location before us which gave us an idea of how to map out what we were doing on our terrain. When compared to the storyboards, whilst not being completely the same what we filmed yesterday very much resembles what was written on the storyboard. This means that there is still a victim being chased by an attacker which is himself. The only thing that changed was the ending and how that worked out. This will explained towards the end of this post.

The main shot choices that we used were fast tracking shots and close ups. The main tracking shots we had were towards the beginning of the film we follow Dan running through the forest. The close up is seen at the end in which we had evil Dan about to stab good Dan. The final shot we used, which as team believe to be the best one is a POV shot which shows the camera running through the woods as if to be Dan running away from Evil Dan. This was the hardest to execute as there were many twigs in the way which ended up tripping us up (we all had a turn at doing it). Whilst it was difficult we believe they will truly show off the film when they are edited together.

In terms of location we filmed it in the nearby woods. Whilst there are many woodland areas in the surrounding areas of surrey, we used the woods nearest as that would take us the least amount of time to travel towards, and would therefore allow us to film as much as possible with it still being light. It turns out that the forest we used was a good location as it wasnt too enclosed and gave us a lot of room to move about in, this was good for being able to film and for Dan when he was being filmed. The mise en scene of the particular woods was good as well as they made it look like Dan was very much on his own, lost and hunted. People often tend to think of more rural settings as well when thinking of such themes like being hunted and primal fear which is what the main themes of our movie were about.

Unfortunately megan knowles had to cancel at the last minute (literally being yesterday), so we had to substitute for her with Dan Ash. This turned out to be a bit of a blessing as dan has done a lot of acting before over various different student projects. This benefitted our film hugely as having a good actor does wonders for its look.
We were given a large amount of fake blood which was used to full effect as Dan put a large amount in his mouth and then spat it out to make it look as if he was suffering from profuse internal bleeding. We also dabbed a large amount below his chest to make it look as if he had been stabbed.

In terms of lighting it was all natural and was purely created from the sun shining down on the forest. This gave it an eerie quality that we would not have been able to attain if we had used the fake lighting that we were originally offered. Once again like was mentioned before the main theme of this film is being hunted, and fear which is a very natural emotion. The whole film is about instinct which is something which occurs naturally, so we thought adding light to this could end up ruining this idea.

We did not use any sounds on the day but they will be edited in later on during the editing process.

My role on the day was not huge as i am the sound engineer. I did however help out with the camera work and filmed several sequences. We all had our fair share of filming the piece however this all helped add to the constructivity of the piece. We all get on as a team and therefore found it easy to work together and managed to give each other ideas on what to day with the camera nad how we could film it. An example of this is charlotte who came up with the idea to shoot dan coming up to victor whilst wearing a hoody. This will be expanded on later.

As said before we all get on very well which hugely helps the equilibrium of the team and helped bring the idea to reality. We all came up with individual ideas that helped add to the piece and this all helped mould the finished product that we will soon have.

Like was said before we were still having trouble trying to decide how we were going to edit the film as we were still not 100% sure about the idea. Before we decided on the ending it was orginally going to be a POV shot of dan being stabbed by himself. On the day however we got victor to wear a hoody and dan to wear a hoody so that it looked like the killer is about to stab the victim again. We then got dan to pull down his hoody to reveal that he was the killer all along. During the editing phase we will then cut to the titles when the audience realise that the killer and victim are the same person.

Account of props and costumes required and where these will be sourced from.

We only use two props in this film, which is a knife and the clothes which the characters wear. This is because the film itself is fairly simplistic and the main 'prop' that we use is the environment in which we are filming. The environment in which we are filming is the forest.
The forest itself could be called a character as it helps hilight the evil which is shown within the killer chasing our victim, which has now changed to megan knowles. The forest does this by casting a shadow over them and creating a menacing and foreboding atmosphere.

The knife as a prop is used for stabbing the victim with and could also have connotations of rape as the victim is female, and the attacker we assume is male, which could make for an interesting twist in the end when we realise they are both the same person. This gave us the idea for the name. The name we ended up choosing for our film is doppleganger.
In terms of the clothes our characters are wearing, Megan and her body double will be wearing black jeans and a black hoody