Will Price's Evaluation (not finshed, more will come!)

The Evaluation of Will Price Writer and Director of SEE ME









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

Real life film makers use many aspects of media at their disposal to ensure engaging and exciting narration so as to keep the attention of their audience.

One of these many aspects used is of course camera work, this is practically essential for engaging film making as you cant just film an entire film at the same angle for fear of the audience inevitably getting bored and drifting into a slumber. Our piece makes as much use of camera angles as we possibly could, trying to mix up the angles for dialogue so as not to keep on repeating ourselves with the same shots and using a wide variety of distances. One thing i am particularly proud of is that instead of most thriller films like ours are almost feverish in their attempts to try and throw in as many different ways of dying with different shots as possible. Our extract although it does contain a variation of camera angles, for the deaths themselves the positioning of the murderer is from exactly the same position throughout (behind the victim) but the camera works around them. This helps the audience not only understand the villain as a person but also allows them to observe how she works from several viewpoints and thus quelling any doubts about how the murder is performed. This is good as it mingles in rather well with seeing the persons reactions from each angle, almost like a motion replay of the murder for the audience only with different people, allowing the audience to compare the shocked reactions.

I would also like to point out how quick the murders themselves are performed, despite the lead up to the murders, the act itself takes less than one second, to me, we were trying to present the idea to the audience that life is incredibly easy to cut short and extinguish, you don’t even have to know who the person is who extinguishes it. A slightly depressing thought to build a film around but definitely a solid point of ideology to use. The best example of this to me is the final murder of the opening which is mostly taken up by a POV shot of the killer creeping up on the victim. You don’t even see the victims face, all you see is the back of her head then the quick and clean cut to a long shot of the murder itself which is barely a second.

Another way our work differs from mainstream work is in the sound work. There is very little non-diagetic sound in ours. There is hardly any background music apart from the beginning and end of the extract, we did this mainly to simply allow the audience to sink into what’s actually happening on the screen more, instead of filling it with music that would distract from the action.

Another way our piece seems to challenge conventional methods is how the villain is represented. In most mainstream thriller films the villain is portrayed and has some sort of motive or even a few clues. Our villain however is pretty much the exception to this. Hence the title ‘SEE ME’ implying that the villain wishes to be recognised but is concealed by the mask which he wears to murder his victims.

What Social groups are represented and how?

The number of social groups represented in our thriller are numerous. Ranging from sex to age and even class. The representation is as follows.

Age:

The age of the 2 main characters are obvious but they represent what we perceivewhen it comes to young people of around 19-25. On the one hand we have the costume of both characters, it is very modern and derives from the modern youth culture of bands such as N-Dubz and the modern day dress style of people such as John Rocha. There are certain labels featured throughout the thriller that reflect the modern world that is now even more a part of youth culture in that one of the cops is seen to be reading Nuts magazine, this represents the younger generation in that they are far more open about their sexuality nowadays and thus would not mind being seen with a porn magazine. Age is also represented by the first victim who is clearly the oldest character. The clothes that she wears are very buisness like and produce an aura of power, this exploits the stereotype of experience over youth however we quickly destroy this image when she is killed and is diminished to a shocked expression similar to the others.

Gender:

There are also representations of gender hidden within the thriller in the form of narrative and storyline. Namely, that all of the victims are female. This is a simple use of the stereotype of women being dependant on a man to keep them safe and that they a vunrable and weak when on their own, this is something regularly used in the media in general so we thought that it would be the best way to convey the helplessness of the victims if they were female so as to fully exploit the stereotype.

Class:

The representations of class are small but effective. The two cops are supposed to be from different backrounds, one from more of a middle class background and the other from a more working class background. The ways we represented this was in accent, one of the cops has a much more middle class accent and gives the impression that he is the more intellectual of the two, the other cop however has a more working class accent which exploits the stereotype of working class people perhaps being less educated than most. Another way class is represented is again in clothing. On the one hand we have the more buisness like shirt, tight jeans and smart jacket, on the other hand however we have the more working class loose jeans and hoody.

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

I think that we would be looking for an independant film distributor for our film, admittedly there are many to choose one but i think that we would benefit from a company such as Guerilla Films or Verve Pictures. It would then be down to them to establish a release date for the film and the negotiations to release it in cinemas as well as showing it to exhibitors.

What would the audience be for your media product

The audience for my product would be mainly in the demographic of teenagers and the younger generation, not so much the middle aged and elderly generations as the characters are far too young for them to truly relate to them. Our thriller is about 2 young cops trying to solve their first case, this i think is something that many of the young generation could relate to only in a different context as every one of us has had to complete their first assignment or first day at work. Other thrillers that are slightly similar to ours is Zodiac and Saw.

How did you attract/address your audience

The main attraction to our target audience is that the main characters themselves are young, this makes it far more easy for the audience to relate to the film and thus draws more and more of the younger generaion towards it. If it was just the traditional two seasoned detectives it wouldnt be as interesting to the younger generation as it would be if the two cops were around the same age as them.

Another point that would keep the audience interested and make them enjoy the film even more is how the plot is told. It doesnt mess around with too much backstory, it merely reveals the bare essentials such as the fact that they are hunting down a murderer, it does this through the use of flashbacks of the murders narrated by one of the main characters. Another way this film would entertain the audience is that the characters themselves would remind them of themselves slightly, especially the 2 main characters. One is very hardworking and down to earth where as the other is much more laid back and almost non-chalaunt in his wok, a clash of personality similar to that of the 2 main characters i Se7en.

There is also the fact that the serial killer in this film is so illusive, leaving behind literally not a scrap of evidence behind him, save for the body. This is something the audience could relate o also as we have all had problems and puzzles that seem to have no answer, thus the audience would find themsleves practically egging on the cops throughout the film.

The clothing worn by the 2 main characters would also get the audience on either of their sides as they are from totally opposite ends of the spectrum. On the one hand we have the rarer more extravogant and well set out smartness of a jacket with stylish John Rocha shirt and on the other hand we have the more common dress of a hoody and jeans.

I think that the music used in the opening would also help the audience enjoy the film, as the audience would be younger and the younger generation always enjoys the almost pop-culture greatness that is the generic eighties cop music. It presents them with the image of Starsky and Hutch.

If you watch the opening itself i beleive that it poses more than enough questions for the audience to want to keep o watching and get the answers. Questions like do they catch the killer? Who is the killer? Will he kill anyone else? What is the significance of those killed? These are all part of the Enigma code to try and lure in the audience to the rest of the film. This is a technique regularly used by normal crime TV series such as CSI.

Yet another way that a film draws the audience into the rest of the story is through the titles. Many of the thriller films of today have incredibly complex and visually stunning titles such as Old Boy, our titles however are'nt nearly as advanced. Ours are simply an easing into the cast list as they appear and a flash of the title of the film at the end with a sound effect. The title was intended to shock the audience as well as intrigue them as to the purpose of the sound and the relevance it bears to the film. Had we dedicated more thought to it however we could have possibly devised an entire new cene especially for the titles, maybe with the camera at a POV angle as it is attacked with the credits on what is attacking it. Upon reflection, this certainly would have made it a much more engaging sequence.

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

The main thing i have learnt is that the technology may be absolutely incredible but it is still only as good as the person weilding it. The technology we used is as follows.

Video Camera: The camera wasnt exactly much of a problem to operate it was trying to find which places would glean the best results for the angles of the shots.

Final Cut Pro: This was by far the trickiest part of the technology we had to master. Using it really did makeyou appreciate the seconds as we found ourselves watching the same second over and over again for a whole hour just to make sure we couldnt edit it any more. One thing we did note however when we watched it on the big screen for the first time was how many sounds the computer simply failed to produce.

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

When i compare the final product to the preliminary product i do feel a strange sense of pride in that i feel that we have definitely improved it. The camerawork in the preliminary was quite dull, it had far too many long shots with nothing happening and in some places was quite juddery. The final product however was far smoother with shorter cuts, more character establishment and far better lighting and continuity. In the preliminary task there was totally unpredictable background noise that wasnt edited out and the lighting changed regularly in the same scene and often juddered away from what was going on. All of these issues have been addressed in the final product and we actually have much more of story.