Infatuation

Evaluation of “INFATUATION”

Part one: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

The inspiration for my groups thriller “INFATUATION” was a take on the characters and voice over featured in layer cake, the brutal nature of the film inspired the enigma faced within our thriller namely how to remain a free man. Layer cake along with the third man also inspired our costume choices generating the image of a sophisticated man whilst simultaneously portraying him as an unsavoury character, our female characters costume is loosely based on female characters seen in the third man portraying her as not a classic femme fatale but perhaps more as a heroine or anti-heroine depending on how you look at her current situation. Our film was named “INFATUATION” because it fits in with the story of the film, infatuation means a temporary love, or foolish love. The main character is made to look foolish and like a child through the title. The sound track to our piece is very slow and methodical, it adds atmosphere to the video and is supposed to be very dreamy and surreal, its desired effect is to show the main character is in a world that he doesn’t quite believe and suggest that he is afraid of it, we acquired the idea from the opening of the third man which features upbeat music not fitting with the conventions of the genre. The camera shots used in our thriller opening have been inspired by the camera shots from red road, a good example of this is our use of an over the head shot / crane shot, (although we didn’t have a crane) as in red road this shot is designed to make the occupant of the shot feel small and weak. Another camera shot we have used in conjunction with red road is our over the shoulder shot tracking the occupant through a train station, as in red road this shot is designed to make the occupant look like she is being followed and a victim. Finally our location, a train station, was an idea that we picked up from the third man. Train stations are a place of movement and travel a continually changing environment in which any one person bares no significant to the whole, we wished to capture this feeling of insignificance and place it on top of our main character (the murderer) showing how the world does not care about him in any way. Our thriller goes along with many of the conventions of a mainstream thriller, however it does not feature a strong hero of any sort much like many independent thrillers and it challenges the perception of the upper classes of society as the decent people whilst simultaneously challenging the convention of lower classes of society as the indecent people.

Part two: How does your media product represent particular social groups

Our Thriller opening was catered to the results of our initial research, the research suggested that people would like to see a male character in need of saving instead of the conventional female character, the results also showed that they would like a female hero but in keeping with conventions we decided to stick with a male character however he is in need of saving and he is haunted by the memory of his wife which would feature throughout the film representing the women perhaps as a symbol of happiness through love not the conventional femme fatal or heroine. The representation of the lower classes could be called typical but it does in fact show them as being caring and helpful in their own way, the piece also represents the upper-class as unstable and untrustworthy against usual social etiquette. In all, our piece represents aspects of social standings and conventions that would be typically found in main stream thrillers whilst also containing aspects more commonly found in that of independent thrillers and perhaps moving towards other genres entirely.

Part three: what kind of media institution might distribute your product and why

To begin we would try and gain coverage of our media item by entering it into short film competitions such as the virgin media short film competition (http://www.virginmediashorts.co.uk/), this competition is designed to find amateur film makers with talent and give them a helping hand into bigger movies, the winner gains 30 thousand pounds for their next production as well as their film being shown on 214 cinema screens nationwide; this is a great competition because it suits the amateur nature of our film entirely. Our film could also be distributed via internet services such as I-Tunes, distributing by these means is far cheaper than distributing to cinemas, this makes them perfect for us as we are on a limited budget. We could also try getting a larger company to distribute our film for a percentage of the profits, this would be the easiest way to distribute the film quickly and effectively. Companies such as working title and possibly warp would be ideal, these companies have the recourses to put the film out there whilst maintaining the link to upcoming film makers that larger companies have lost. Finally we would try to broadcast the film through other media platforms such as radio, the station that the advertisement should be broadcast on would be based on our target audience, which will be covered in the next section, it is beneficial for us to utilise as many media platforms as possible to cover all the possible market opportunities that are available for us use.

Part four: Who would be the audience for your media product

Infatuation has a target audience of the age range of 28-40 of no particular sex, this is due to the complex narrative structure that will take place in the finished thriller, requiring attention to detail to understand the end result. To add to this the Characters present in the thriller are all of around that age (actors ages are decidedly different) making them more identifiable to our target audience, the film also does not have the modern standard of entertainment value which seems to be senseless violence but should be more identifiable to people who enjoy a deep and compelling story line. We have also selected this audience with reference to our research which concluded that younger generations have lost touch with the classic style of thriller and prefer modernisations of it, this did not suit our thrillers makeup so it was decided that it would be aimed at a higher demographic.

Part five: How did you attract/address your audience

We have incorporated many aspects of classical thrillers into our piece to comply with our target audience of 28-40 year olds who enjoy classical thriller styling. The voice over is used as an identifier to the main character, it is a hook for the audience and was designed to create mixed emotions for the character and keep the audience in the dark about his true nature; the speech expresses deep sorrow for the mans lost love obviously making the audience feel pity towards the man, but they should also be conflicted due to the fact that it was the man who had taken her life in the firs place. This is a classical enigma posed to thriller audiences and complies with our target audiences demand. The incorporation of flash backs keeps the story interesting and was an idea based on the outstanding thriller “London to Brighton”, this recognisable attribute in some thrillers is hopefully addressing our target audience due to its keeping with the convention of classical thrillers. “Good things wait for those who come” is the soundtrack used in our thriller, it is piano based and then built upon in a blues like manner, although it does keep with some conventions of classical thrillers it was chosen because of its link to the third man using an uncharacteristic style of music to unsettle the audience and will be key throughout the film, keeping audiences in mind we hope this style of music will not be identifiable with the audience, hopefully continuing to unsettle them and add too the overall appeal of the film. Finally the locations featured in our film were all chosen due to their familiarity with the target audience and their references to classical thriller styling. For instance the train station is a place which most people can identify with, whilst it is also a reference to the third man.

Part six: what have you learnt from technologies from the process of constructing this product



Part seven: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product

The preliminary task was a small a small and simple piece compared to the full product. The most obvious difference between the two is the planning, our preliminary task was relatively easy to plan because we knew exactly what the parameters of the task had to contain and we were limited in space and time so decisions were made on the fly. In contrast our thriller opening was extensively planned, we had a lot of ground to cover from the first task. To begin we needed to think of a plot to our thriller opening something we hadn’t really encountered in the preliminary task. We also had to plan out locations, actors, and transport which was another progression from the preliminary task due to the fact that it was shot in school using us as actors.

We were already quite good at working in groups and had a basic knowledge of the cameras so the next challenge after planning was actually shooting the scenes, this proved extremely difficult as we had to negotiate when all the actors could meet up at the locations to film, a practical problem that was unknown in the first task.

The title of the piece was not a great pitfall, although we were not experienced in generating unique titles it seemed obvious to use “infatuation” or something based around that because it fitted in with the nature of our thriller perfectly.

Our plot did cause trouble, we were ill prepared do deal with the complexity of a proper narrative structure and as a result the quality of our thriller opening suffered, we did not capture proper audio for scenes that would have greatly benefited the end result and we had to make many compromises on important decision whilst filming because of the lack of knowledge and preparation.

Are preliminary task did require us to edit the footage shot, but it did not force us to use some of the more advanced features within the program. This meant that we had a steep learning curb to contend with whilst editing our thriller, they key aspects to this were the controlling of effects and the layer system used to generate some of them.

The preliminary task did teach us the value of time and cooperation within a group structure to achieve the best results, unfortunately unforeseen delays meant that time quickly became an issue once more.