Pyscle: The Evaluation

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

A thriller is a type of film that uses suspense to thrill based on plot that reflects a real life situation; this can be seen in genres such as supernatural, action, horror, psychological and espionage. All openings are made to interest the audience into continuing to watch the rest of the film, the traditional way to open a film was through a series of establishing shots that lead the audience through the location, the setting and then to the main character, this worked because it clearly introduced information that the audience needed to know about the film and character straight away.

Most thriller openings begin with a title sequence to set the tone through title and credits, a flashback, to allow the audience to question what has happened or an instant arousal that immediately brings the audience into a situation that often leads to a shocking impact, all raising questions about the film. To make an opening successful, not all these questions should be answered at first, if too much is given away then there is no need to watch the rest of the film as you would have revealed the best parts already.

Arlington Road begins in a ordinary day setting with a boy walking down the street, it only becomes clear to the audience that something is not quite right as gradually elements, like unsteady walking, sweaty forehead and dripping blood, reveals that he is badly hurt, he is then rushed to the hospital by a passerby and then disappears behind closed doors of a room. This opening is successful because at first it leads the audience into a sense of false security when the boy is walking down the road, because everything seems to be normal but as his injury is revealed it shocks the audience and makes them question what has happened and when he is taken into a hospital room, it has a cliff-hanger effect on the audience as they are left to wonder what is going to happen next. Following the conventions of real film openings and influenced Arlington road we created Pyscle.

Pyscle is a cycle of a psychopathic person’s vengeance towards people; the character captures the victim and tortures them until they voluntarily give up their lives, leaving a recording as a warning for the person who finds their body, who will then become the next victim. Our thriller opening begins with a girl hanging from a tree by her neck this gets an instant shock from the audience, another girl approaches and screams in fear but then she notices the a recorder with a note attached lying beside the body and picks it up. At first glance is says ‘pyscle’ as a hint of danger but when she blinks it just says ‘play’ so she follows the instructions. As she listens to the recording of reason behind the body, a flashback is played of the dead girl escaping and killing herself, this evokes the audience attention to question what had psychopath done to her and who is he. The recording ends with “...your the next player.” as the girl runs away and then the title comes up and like a cliff-hanger the audience is left to wonder what is going to happen next.

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

When we created ideas for the for the final film opening we were more creative and had a lot more ideas than when we brainstormed over the preliminary, this was probably because we did not decide on a single genre as we did ‘a dramatic comedy’ argument so I don’t think it was clear whether the we were being serious or not, however when making Pyscle we decided that it would be a psychological thriller so we needed spend a lot more time on deciding on plot as it would need to have a motive behind issue, however I do feel that we also learnt that when we did spend more time on the ideas we ended up over complicating things.

We also learnt that in the preliminary film the dialogue need to be better and more effective because the argument that we filmed before didn’t have a subject matter so the conversation was quite random but this time for the final film opening, more effort was made to get the right emotion and story in the narrative so it would add tone. When planning to film the preliminary task we used a shot list rather than a storyboard this was a quicker way of producing ideas for different of shots however we found that it also less detailed then a storyboard.

When filming the preliminary task we learnt that when choosing a location we need to make sure that it is one that we won’t get interrupted by other people because it wastes a lot of time and can be frustrating. Lighting is important because some shots we did were hard to see because the classroom lights and the sun coming through the blinds and that when tracking we may need and object with wheels attached to assist us when tracking to get a smooth shot instead of dragging the camera on a jumper.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Pyscle is aimed towards a teen-twenties audience and would be certified as an 18, this is because of the subject matter themed in the plot, in our opening the character who is dead voiceover mentions, “He toys with your mind, makes you think things, even worse, he make you do things”, suggesting to the audience that later on within the film they may witness scenes that show the next victim going through psychological and physical torture, however the opening that we made is a mild version of what is yet to come and be classified as a certificate 15.

Based on statistics on cinema audiences from 2007, males are more likely to watch thrillers than females but I think that Pyscle will attract a mixed gender audience, because the main character is a woman. Females will feel that the film targeted towards them as they can indentify themselves as being the character as she is a regular average person and males may watch the film because the actors involved or because of the thriller genre, thus our film has a general appeal, which is what the production company aim for because then the film will make more money. Our typical audience viewer would be, Zack, aged 19, studying psychology in university, he spends most of his time doing assignments for his coursework and aspires to have a good job and earn lots of money but when he has time free he goes out to clubs and to the cinema with his friends to watch films mainly in from a thriller/horror/action category, his favourite film is Saw.

How will you attract/address your audience?

To attract a mainstream audience some of the main characters would have to be big Hollywood actors that are internationally well-known, so there is already an interest due fans and attention from the media because of the actor’s celebrity status, promoting the film. The choice of actors can also depend on the genre of the film, Jennifer Aniston regularly stars in romantic comedies, and because of this she is used as a target to attract a mainly female audience for a film. Johnny Depp plays unusual, peculiar characters in his films this is non-gender specific and so he attracts a wider amount of ‘general’ audience, Jim Carrey is known for having a frenzied comedic performance when he acts, so by starring in the film, he lets them know that the public know that film is most likely a comedy , for our film Pyscle, the main female character who is left as the next victim could be played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, because she has been in several thrilling films and is most known for starring in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a supernatural thriller TV show.

Due to new technologies the different ways to advertise a film is always increasing, depending the budget of our film we this could be used effectively. The most common way is to produce posters, this works well because they can be placed anywhere for people to see, like on billboards, in newspapers/magazines, on and inside public transport. Trailers also can be advertised as sound recordings on the radio or between programmes on the television after watershed time as that when the audience Pyscle is most like to be watching shows and on film screens, however more newer ways involve large 14 foot TV screens on the wall of train platforms for people to view whilst waiting for their train and also smaller screen line up around the station.

Pyscle’s target audience are 16+ people, therefore viral advertising would be the most effective because of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are used by teenagers to all ages who are the age group that would pay to watch our film. These sites can provide pages about fictional characters, the fans views and groups can be created based on the film that allow the public to discuss, comment and be informed about the plot, actors and release dates, promoting awareness. Also by working to together with other companies that our target audience is fond of, such as mobile network operators, by working together with the cinema Pyscle would be showed in, the mobile company can send texts to phones to inform customers about special offers to do with the film.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our opening represents women as being weak and defenceless, the main characters are a dead girl that was the last target and another girl that is becomes the next target. The dead character is represented as a victim who has been tortured by the psycho. Her age is not portrayed through her character but it is not significant, because from looking at her we can tell she is around the age of the target market. The only information we know about her is that from the voice over and her actions. The tone of her voice tells us that she is desperate, long shots of her approaching the tree but stumbling around it show that she is weak and tired, she is wearing casual clothes but with no shoes which shows the audience that she is unprotected which makes her more vulnerable.

The other girl is rather different as she doing everyday actions and walking normally and their characters show no similarity however the one thing they do have in common is, they are both females and both targets of the psycho, this stereotypes girls as being the weaker gender because their both victim’s are female and although the psycho is only mentioned and not seen, he is still referred to as being a male, superior character that people should be afraid of.

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

I think with the right companies, our film could be a Hollywood Blockbuster. Pyscle could be highly popular with the European and American audience if it was disturbed by Universal Pictures, Lionsgate Entertainment, the company who introduced the successful Saw film series and Working titles because our film is British, however the storyline itself doesn’t require a lot of funding to produce and may have a middle budget which means it probably would not be released worldwide. After screening at cinemas, Pyscle would most likely be put onto DVD.

What have you learnt from the technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the process of making our opening I have learnt about how to use a camera effectively, like knowing what different shots should be taken into consideration to make a scene look ‘thrilling’, knowing that to get successful angles for match cuts, scenes need to filmed repeatedly and exactly the same, which means making sure the lighting hasn’t changed, you can’t hear unwanted sound in the background or something in the mise-en-scene hasn’t moved, so then it will be easier to edit things on the Mac’s, I experience that filming is harder than it seems, because when I was filming the ‘thrilling read’ task, the tripod was wobbly and uneven, the zoom wasn’t as smooth as it could of been and we got frustrated easily with camera, so I think I’ve also learnt with filming the larger the group, the more is people and help there is to get good footage. I learnt how to use the Mac’s because I never been on them before and what software we needed to use to edit our footage. Final Cut Pro, using it to upload clips and how to it edit them to fit the storyboard we’d drawn. Sound Track Pro, knowing what sounds was available and what suited our opening and how to use them and layer them effectively to create atmosphere or just to use as sound effects. Live Type, I learnt what fonts, effects and backgrounds we could use to make are titles/credits look good.

I learnt how it is useful to blog, so you can reflect on how the process is going so far and think about what you need to improve on and write down your ideas for the next time and then use this information to help you with your next filming or editing. It also allows you read back about when you first began the process and see far your work had developed. I know how Blogger, Vimeo and other video sharing website can be used to widen the potential audience for our product, as they allow people to comment their own thoughts about our video which we could then take in consideration to maybe to another final cut of the opening to improve it.

How effective do you feel you have been in creating an opening thriller genre film that attracts a specific type of audience?

I feel that the creation of our thriller opening was quite good, watching it in the cinema we were able to witness an actual audience reaction and feedback towards our product. We got a quite a good applause at end and some of their praise included; “ The narration creates a good cliff-hanger”, “Music is used well to create tension and suspense” and “ I like the flashback moment…how it went from colour to black and white and back again”. This was good to know because our target audience was them and to know that they liked it showed that we had done well. However we did listen to their constructive criticism too like, “some discontinuation’ which I would agreed too as well, but with the time we had we didn’t have the time to go back and re-shoot scenes, for example, in the flashback and the girl is climbing the tree with her shoes on but when she drops down off the tree her feet is are bare, but these were all just minor things that went unnoticed my most people so I still think we did well in creating a opening thriller. I think that our actual product was better then our match cut exercise because we had more time to spend on it so the script was better quality, we had sound and titles/credits so it looked more like an real film opening on the other hand because we only spent one day filming the match cut exercise the continuity was much better because there wasn’t a week gaps between filming where we would come back and be looking different to when we first filmed and I think we used more of a range of camera transitions when filming shots for match cut exercise, which made it more interesting to watch. To compare our thriller opening to a real film opening, ours is not at high quality but has the potential to be.