Evaluation of The Composer

The Evalutation of "The Composer"

1. In what ways does your media products use, develop or or challenege forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

This is an annotated version of the conventions used,developed and chalanged in The Composer as well as how the media product represents particular social groups.

Firstly, a typical convention that you will find in all films are the production company that made it and the institutional logo. For instance in the beginning of Danny Boyles film “127 hours” you see the production company “Fox searchlight pictures” and its institutional logo. Similarly, in our opening sequence this convention is also evident “Midnight wolf studios” which was created by me and my group.

Secondly, another convention that are present in a vast majority of films are the use of non-diegetic sound. For instance, in the opening sequence for “Lord of war” you will hear a score that establishes the mood of the atmosphere. Contrastingly in our opening sequence we also use non-diegetic sound to help establish the mood of the opening. A convention of psychological thrillers is the score to be eerie and this is evident in our psychological thriller.

In addition in films a convention of an opening sequence is to introduce characters and psychological thrillers someone who is shown in the opening sequence seems to be unstable. For instance, the opening of the psychological thriller “Sev7en” the antagonist is presented and is shown to be planning his victims’ murders. Likewise in our psychological thriller both the antagonist and protagonist are shown. This is a development of the convention because in a typical psychological thriller you don’t see both the protagonist and antagonist. Mise-en-scene, helps the audience understand a bit about the characters e.g. the props suggest the protagonist is a detective, this suggests she’s middle class, been university and to become a detective you need experience so she’s not young rather in her 30s. The establishing shot, dark lighting and costume suggests she’s working late night at home and she’s frustrated due to her neighbour listening to a music piece. The antagonist is shown to be a unstable character seeing as he is thinking he is a pianist in his mind while sleeping, but when he wakes up he realises he`s not. This foreshadows he may have some mental problems.

Furthermore, a typical convention that you would find in a psychological thriller is the protagonist to usually be a white male character. For example, in the well-known psychological thriller “Shutter Island” Leonardo Di Caprio is the leading protagonist. However, we have challenged this and instead used a white female protagonist who is a detective and this represents that she’s past her mid-20s and her social class is middle class.

Moreover, a typical convention for an opening of a psychological thriller is for the narrative to be restricted, from one perspective. For example, in the opening sequence of “Black Swan” (2010) it starts off with one character dancing in an isolated environment and so the narrative is unknown and limited. In comparison to our opening sequence we have challenged this convention by showing perspective from both the antagonist and protagonist because this acts as an action code to the establishing shot of the two houses next to each other.

In the majority of psychological thrillers a typical convention of the typography is to be bold and white and the use of fade for editing. This can be evident for from “Black Swan” where the titles fade in and out and the titles are white and bold. However, in our opening sequence of ‘The Composer’ we developed this by using alpha mat in our texts to create more enigma codes and to get the audience more into our opening sequence.

Lastly, a typical convention in films of psychological genres is the use of dark lighting. For instance, in the opening sequence of “Sev7en” dark lighting is used throughout the opening sequence to create tension and give an eerie feeling to the audience. However, we decided to develop this convention by using dark lighting as well as a greenish colour when the scene moved to the antagonist day dreaming and thinking into playing the Piano.

4. & 5: Who would be the audience for your media product? How would you attract or address your audience?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute our media product and why?

7. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the profession from it to the full product?

When looking back at my preliminary task which I did in the begging of the Media course there has been a drastic progression since, especially in the macro element section. We have used a wider variety of shots and filmed shots in interesting ways in our final piece. In our preliminary task we were restricted in terms of the locations, props and costumes which caused issues in the course of the preliminary task. However, for our final product we had autonomy and this allowed us to get the best out of our ability.

Areas of improvement: cinematography, mise-en-scene, sound and editting.

Cinematography:

Firstly, in terms of cinematography in our preliminary task you could see camera movements whilst recording because we didn’t use the tripod properly. Also, we had used less shots in the preliminary task and lacked in terms of focusing on the individuals. In addition, even though we used the 180 degree rule and shot reverse on the preliminary task it wasn’t very clear because we could not keep the camera still.

However, in our final product ‘The Composer’ we didn’t have any unwanted camera movements as we used a tripod properly, unlike in our preliminary task we had used a very basic flip camera, but in the final product we used a high standard SLR camera which enabled us to get high definition shots and deep focus on characters faces to create tension as well as using a photographic and cinematographic technique, shallow focus to incorporate a small depth of field in some shots. Furthermore, we were more creative with cinematography in our final piece as we used a variety of shots such as medium long shot, extreme close ups-shot types that weren’t used in the preliminary task.

Mise-en-scene

Secondly, in the area of in our preliminary task this was restricted. For instance, we had to film in the school which had limited space and the only available room was pre occupied and there was a lot of background sound there. Also, in this location we were limited in lighting and had no control of it as we couldn’t do anything with it due to other people working in the class. In addition, the costume were very basic in the preliminary task for instance the actor who was playing the teacher in the task seemed like more of a student as he was wearing jeans, which isn’t very formal.Nevertheless, we rarely used any props in our preliminary task other than a sheet stating “gcse” on it (which cannot be seen clearly) and so the task relied on the dialogue to tell the story and the performance of the actor and actress in the preliminary was less professional and they stumbled in the dialogue.

On the other hand, in final product we chose our own locations to film and had the time and ability to look at certain places and then decided which will best suit our scenes. In the preliminary task we depended on more on the dialogue to tell the story, whereas in our final product it was props, cinematography and non-diegetic sound to give the audience an understanding of what was happening.

In addition, in the final product we were able to be more creative and freedom in lighting compared to the preliminary task. For instance, we in the final product we used dark lighting as a convention of the genre, developed lighting when we went to the scene of the antagonist and used low key lighting to fill some areas into shade. Furthermore, we used a variety of props in final product compared to our preliminary task. For example, we used small things such as a sheet of finger prints, case sheets and signs to the lead up of an investigation board as an action code to tell the audience the protagonist is a detective and the cereal bowl also illustrated what type of a character she is, someone who works late and doesn’t have time to eat dinner like normal people.

Moreover, costumes were massively developed in the final product to represent the characters for instance the actress wore formal clothes and the props gave away her job, a detective and it matched her costume. Similarly, the actor wore clothes dressed as a pianist while sleeping and acting as if he’s playing the piano, the costume he’s wearing just shows the extent of his issues that’ll be later revealed as he is dressed like a pianist, acting like he’s playing the piano but with no piano in front of him.Our preliminary task actor and actress were students, with no previous acting skills but in the final product we had an actress who has skills of acting and has an A-level in drama, nevertheless the actor was a student but with some acting skills and was able to use this to emphasis the antagonists issue such as when he wakes up and tries to off the cassette player.

Sound

Thirdly, in the aspect of sound in our preliminary task we used very few non-diegetic sound and were limited. For instance, in the preliminary task we didn’t have any silence due to the location of the scene there was a lot of unwanted ambient sounds, which effected the preliminary task.

However, in the final product there is no background noise occurring that we didn’t want as now due to knowledge on final cut pro we could just put the sound down if there was any unwanted ambient sounds and we had used silence in the beginning of the detective’s scene.Furthermore, as you can hear from the preliminary task there was no use of incidental music or score to set the atmosphere but in final product there is use of these non-diegetic sound to create a mood to the opening sequence. Nevertheless, in the preliminary task we depended on diegetic sound, dialogue to tell the story and create atmosphere but in the final product as well as props and cinematography it was non-diegetic sound such as Foley. For instance, to show the frustration of the detective she hits the wall three times and this tells the audience how she is feeling currently also little things such as the spoon being put down on the cereal bowl, these create a sense of reality unlike the preliminary task which lacked this. Unlike the preliminary task, we didn’t use a sound bridge but in the final product we used a diegetic sound bridge because both the audience and the detective can hear the incidental music, and it disturbs the detective and frustrates her and then the scene changes to where the real sound is coming from. This technique is a convention developed as you wouldn’t usually expect this from a film.

Editing

Lastly, there has been a huge improvement in from the preliminary task to the final product. In the post-production of the preliminary task we were limited in editing and hence used basic techniques. For instance, in the preliminary we had used basic cuts, simple typography and very few techniques such as match on action.

Nevertheless, in both the preliminary task and the final product we had used continuity editing to move the narrative along. However, in the final product we were able to use a variety of editing techniques. For instance, we used fade in and out for the titles and using adobe after effects we added ‘alpha matt’ to the text, this is a very advanced technique and now I am able to use it. also, we had used quick cross cut dissolve to move from the detectives room to the pianists and then the detectives room again, this was something not used in the preliminary task. In addition, we used a film transition called wipe where the shot of the detective leaning her head against the wall moved to the antagonist’s room. Furthermore, in the final product we had used long takes, which weren’t used in the preliminary task e.g. when the detective was facing the investigation board that was a long take.