Essex Boys analysis

Essex Boys Opening

Q6 - What have you learnt about technologies in the process of constructing this product?

Q3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

Q5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

Q5

Thriller opening final cut

Q4 - Who would be the target audience for your thriller task?

This is Larry, a 28 year old living in the UK In Peterborough who works in a typical office job that he finds incredibly repetitive and mundane. He lives an incredibly simple life, surrounded by an urban setting and general greyness. Perhaps through his everyday experiences of a soulless surrounding, he has developed an appreciation for TV and film that explore the gritty and dark nature of Urban culture and society, and enjoys the slightly glamorised depictions of crime and violence in Media such as 'Breaking Bad' and 'Peaky Blinders', and the Concept that there is an underlying world of crime, violence, drama and death within any urban location as it is seemingly non-existent in his life and this gives him some form of escape from his day to day life, whilst also being relatable enough to stop His overwhelming sense of cynicism from taking away from the immersion of these texts. Larry has also developed a liking for Thrillers and story-driven texts and likes to think of his tastes in media as higher-brow than the average consumer. Furthermore he has an unnatural hatred for sequels and prequels, and believes that there is a lack of originality and variety within mainstream media, therefore he enjoys texts that tackle important topics such as morality and mortality and is more likely to watch a smaller budget, art-house film than any film considered to be 'mainstream'

       

Q2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your Media product represent particular social groups?

  Wendell 'Bud' White

Child like fit of rage

John Luther

Our opening is slightly limited in terms of representation, as we only portray a single male character, however arguably this marginalises both female characters and minorities within society. A term that could be used to describe this exclusion of certain social groups is representation by omission, which would suggest that by not representing these social groups, we have in fact created a representation of these groups through their marginalisation and unimportance throughout our opening. Furthermore it could be argued that our thriller reinforces concepts of male dominance in society, and also conveys a sense of male power through a formal and business like costume. We have portrayed the typical archetype of a hard-boiled detective, much like the character Wendell "Bud" White in LA Confidential, who is a brutal and ruthless detective, yet upholds some degree of a moral compass and the will to do good in the world. However we manipulated this archetype in order to present a more complex and 3 dimensional character, and to show the realistic and gritty potential for police officers to be massively affected by years of being exposed to the world of crime and violence, both psychologically and physically, a portrayal that is both heavily influenced by and similar to the character John Luther from the TV drama 'Luther'. Through this representation we wanted to convey the idea that rather than 'Furnace' being the highest authority of power throughout the opening, he loses this power towards the end and leaves the audience in a state of shock
and confusion, and rather than thinking he is powerful and controlling, we want the audience to feel
that although he holds great physical and mental power, he is incredibly unstable and volatile, making this power ultimately meaningless as he is likely to express his emotions in a child-like fit of rage which immediately removes any sense of formality and authority.

Example of formal costume used

It could be argued that our representation of crime and violence is glamourised through its positioning the audience with our character, as though we are expected to support and encourage his actions. However we strived to make our presentation and overall tone very gritty and realistic, and therefore wanted to convey the fact that the audience is supposed to come to the understanding that our characters actions are not morally good or condoned, but instead a dark reflection of his damaged psyche, and therefore incredibly difficult to judge in a binary way, therefore leaving his actions with a sense of ambiguity and spontaneity.     

Chosen Locations

                                  House

seeming as the majority of our opening takes place within a house, we had to make sure that the location we chose suited not only the genre but also the character and tone of our thriller, and also had a suburban and mundane feeling. Furthermore we felt that this location had a suitable colour palette and mise en scene in order to convey the contrast between suburban life and the life or our character "Furnace".

Alleyway

The alleyway we chose to film in is a largely secluded area, and connotes similar themes as the first location with its suburban setting, furthermore it emphasises the sense of isolation and claustrophobia we want to convey in the second part of our opening, and is a large alleyway, allowing for a wide variety of shots and angles. Additionally the lighting is incredibly dimmed, especially in the afternoon which will serve to emphasise the bleakness of the piece.

Q7 - Looking Back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Demands/requirements of the task

The 180 degree rule helped to
develop our understanding of creating
a coherent and fluid sequence.

In general, very little planning was needed for our preliminary task, and there was a significant step up in terms of effort in shaping the outline of our opening, however there was also more challenging aspects of the shoot itself. We were required to plan each day we would be able to shoot and take into account lighting, colour and sound, especially when dealing with outdoor areas. In contrast to our preliminary task, our mise en scene and plot had to be carefully chosen in order to reflect the themes and sub-genre of our thriller. Our preliminary task featured very simple camerawork, in order to establish the key skills needed to successfully capture a conversation using the 180 degree rule, and had very little focus on creative camerawork, mise en scene or sound editing. Therefore we faced much more complex techniques when shooting and editing our opening, which required more vision regarding the ways in which we could creatively present our character, themes and plot.

Pre-production

Between the production of our preliminary task and opening, we analysed multiple examples of the openings in real thrillers, developing our understanding of how to use various techniques, such as the connotations of a colour palette and choice of soundtrack in order to give our opening an overall more cohesive feeling. Furthermore we were influenced by various scenes that were analysed in class, for instance we adopted techniques used in the walking scene from 'Kill Bill' in our opening, in order to make the characters transition from outdoors to indoors more interesting. Another challenge we faced was trying to follow the conventions of a Thriller, and the fact that we had to work around 

this, whereas with our preliminary task there was very little restriction on the tone of the piece. We were also required to produce a shooting schedule and a plan for the location we would film on, as well as the creation of our character and his personality and also a storyboard to establish the outline of shots and narrative we would use.  

   

Production

The logistics of filming outside of school were inherently tougher than how we were restricted to the school sight in our preliminary task, however this gave us more freedom when it came to our ambition within the locations of our opening, and allowed us to choose a much more urban location, which contributed massively to the overall tone of the piece. We also had to take into account weather and lighting which restricted our filming times in some cases. Another thing we learnt from the preliminary task is that a large variety of shots keeps the sequence from becoming too repetitive or boring, and therefore we made sure to obtain a variety of shots when shooting, often filming the same action from 3 or 4 different angles. We also tried to make sure that all of our shots were centred well and had an interesting enough composition to keep the audiences attention. We knew that by getting a large variety of shots we would be making the editing process far easier, and also allowing for multiple possible edits to be made.

Post-production 

Throughout the editing process of our opening, we used far more complex editing techniques than in our preliminary task, as we wanted to present our story in a more visually interesting way rather than in simply a presentable state. Rather than having a focus solely on the continuity of the edit, we also had to overlay a soundtrack found on freesound.org and add things like the title card which were required to also fit the sub-genre of our opening. However the preliminary task did teach us the basic skills required to import and cut together footage and to a certain extent allowed us to look back at the mistakes we made during the editing of that piece and build on them in our thriller opening. The actual pace of the editing in our final piece was far faster than the preliminary task, conventionally in order to build the tension required in the opening of a thriller, this meant that although the opening looked more professionally made, there were far more cuts between footage and so more room for error in cutting too soon or late. however after our rough cut many of the edits that we felt looked unprofessional or unfinished were altered in order to smooth out the continuity of our opening.



Skillset


I feel that throughout our research and production of our opening, I have learnt how to produce and edit a basic piece of visual media, but more importantly how to tell a story through the medium of purely visuals and music, and therefore how to construct a sophisticated type of media and film in a more artistic and creative way. Furthermore I feel that our research on how to film someone walking/in a conversation taught me that there is an important difference between simply trying to get a specific shot in order to show an event and finding a creative way to portray a scene in order to not only give a more subtle tone to the piece, but also to keep the audience interested in the sequence. During editing the pace and rhythm of our opening was also modified hugely from the initial cut, as we realised that leaving any one shot on screen for too long resulted in a far less energetic and animated feeling scene, therefore we took a far more fast paced approach towards our editing and tried to speed up the pace of the opening as a whole.     

The clips we used to learn about filming walking/a conversation

Q1 - In what ways does your product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Thriller Rough cut

Font analysis

Storyboard

Pitch/Treatment

Extreme close up of the key in the door (to his house) and (guys name) walks up the stairs. Goes into room with a wall which pictures of suspects (mostly crossed off with red marker), newspaper cuttings/articles, maps etc with pins and string linking them. Whilst walking towards the wall he picks up a pen (red marker) and crosses off the last face. Looks at the wall and leaves to enter the bathroom, which has a cupboard (with a mirror on it) and opens it. He picks out some pills/medication and closes the cupboard. Then takes the pills with a glass of water. Stares into mirror/washes face. Gets angry and wipes desk clear/pulls down the wall. Walks down the stairs and leaves the house, when slams door shut, black screen fades to the shot of the outside. Walking down an alleyway with the locket in his hands/looking at it. He, whilst walking down an alleyway is bumped into by another man, and drops the locket. As the locket hits the floor it opens and the audience see the photo inside it for the first time (the man's wife). Shot reverse shot of the locket and the two characters faces. Main character flips and kills the other man. Camera follows the man down as he falls to the floor, and final shot becomes an over the shoulder from behind the man on the floor, with the main character walking away. Fades to black and Title is shown.

 Taking influence from Se7en, we are using a duffel bag as our McGuffin by having it placed on the floor (closed) with blood seeping through onto the floor. We are seeking to establish the character of Detective (???), a man who lost his wife to a kidnapping and murder. And so vows to find his wifes murderer and bring them to justice by any means.

Location Sheet

Characters,costumes and props

Thriller opening mood board