Evaluation (Hunting for Matt)

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

 

Hunting for Matt is an 'Action-Crime-Thriller' due to the specific content of the film.

Generally an action film would have fighting, weapons, explosions, fast pace editing, slow motion shots, upbeat and fast pace non-diagetic music, violent scenes, gun fire, etc. Hunting for Matt contains some of these attributes which is the reason it is classed as partly action; Noah holds a gun in his title sequence, Matt opens fire on his victim, the non-diagetic music that accompanies the character's title sequences is fast and upbeat and Noah and Sarah walk down the street when the shot is in slow motion.

An average crime film would contain crime scene investigations, weapons, bodies, criminals, etc.  Our film contains some of these attributes which gives our film the partial application of it being a crime film; Again Noah holds a gun in his sequence, Matt shoots his victim, Matt's killing room becomes a crime scene, there is a dead body (the victim) and Matt is a killing criminal. Also the main characters, Noah and Sarah, are both police detectives which is established by their costumes and their location of the scene containing the establishing shot of a police station.

 

In a thriller film you would expect to see suspense, mysteries,  camera movement that would play with your mind, close up shots to catch expressions, a threat of danger, jumpy music, unpredictable plots, etc. The project contains some of these attributes too; suspense and a mystery is created when Noah says his closing line, the camera movement when Matt shoots his victim is point of view, when Matt shoots there is a sudden jump in the music, a rising threat of danger is presented throughout the opening extract and a close up shot of Sarah when she turns her head to Noah in the final scene shows her true emotion of fear.

The mixture of these generic conventions indicates that it is a hybrid genre of action, crime and thriller. Weapons, locations, camera angles and shots, editing pace and rhythmic editing, costumes and props all show parts of each sub-genre. In the full plot of the film there is a small hint of romance because towards the end after the climax of the plot, Noah thinks he's lost Sarah when she returns they become a romantic partnership which is a predictable part of the plot in my opinion. 

Our film has been influenced by many films that are similar in style, plot and genre. We were influenced by Spooks, Snatch, Sherlock Holmes and Die Hard 4.0 because these films were appropriate to take ideas from. For example, the general plot of Die Hard 4.0 is that the main character (John McClane) is picking off the villains one by one in search of his daughter who has been taken hostage by these people. Our film is quite similar to this except with a slight difference in the fact that our main character is a man who does not want to kill but is searching for one man who is a murderous serial killer who at one point kidnaps Noah's partner.

With Snatch, for example, the opening sequence is a clip of the character doing what they would normally be doing then it follows on with a freeze frame of that same clip with the name of the character beside the still image. We took this film's idea for our opening title sequence has a clip of each character playing which pauses and then a freeze frame from that same clip is presented at one side of the frame whilst the character and actor's names are displayed, however, we added a small screen containing some more action of the character which was an idea taken from Spooks. Spooks had small screens of action establishing what the characters do and what that are like which we particularly liked the idea of.

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

The only noticeable social group in Hunting for Matt was the representation of gender. The representation of gender in our film project is quite equal actually because the two main good characters are of mixed gender (one male, one female) which subverts the typical stereotype of male dominance in, say, an action film or a crime film. However, despite their equality, Noah is still considered to be the one in a higher authority which portrays Sarah as his 'assistant' in his hunt for Matt Morgan. In the scene where Noah and Sarah walk down the street in slow motion, Sarah and Noah are established as the two main good characters because them walking together in slow motion shows their partnership and their authority which again subverts the typical stereotype of male dominance. Another important reason of why Sarah is a main character working with Noah is because they are the romance story and without the mixed gender in the partnership it wouldn't work. Noah is established as the main character at the very beginning of the film because he is the first person on screen, Sarah is established as the partner of Noah in the scene that is in slow motion and Matt is established as the villain in his opening title screen because of his mercyless aggression and his observation of the blade he holds plus the way in which he is arrogantly sat.

This can link into the target audience because it has a wide range of genres that would broaden the interest for people's choice of film and an example of this is the romance part. Not many action films contain a romance story within it, however, one of the unique selling points for our film, if it was to be made, would be the feature of having something for all.

If we were to produce our film fully we would need a company to distribute it. I would personally choose AOL Time Warner because the genre of our film being a Hollywood blockbuster style action film and due to the complex shots it would require.

The film we would make would be most similar to Die Hard 4.0 due to the genre and narrative of it. Another unique selling point of our film would be that because it is very similar to Die Hard which, if it was advertised, would attract Die Hard fans to watching an alternative for their desired film choices.

AOL Time Warner is a huge vertically integrated conglomerate which covers three main areas of media; America online, the times and Warner brothers studios. Each part plays a role in production, distribution and exhibition. This is a huge advantage because it eliminates the need to employ separate distribution companies because AOL Time Warner would do it all within the company and all the revenue would go back to the Time Warner.

There is not much in the way of merchandise for Sherlock Holmes except for items like mugs, t-shirts, few toys (e.g. magnifying glass), posters, etc.
Creating merchandise options for Hunting for Matt if it was to ever be an option would be a great way to advertise it, attract a wider audience and rake in more money; A Hunting for Matt video game would be available to make due to the plot and style of the film, personalised items such as t-shirts, mugs, posters etc would advertise the film even without people buying them, trailers made by Warner Bros, online adverts made by AOL, newspaper articles made by the Times, etc. There are plenty of opportunities for the film to be advertised all around the world due to the cultural connections AOL Time Warner has.

4)   Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our film would be between the ages of 15 and 40 and generally more appealing to males rather than females because of the action content, however there is an element of a man trying to win a woman's heart which some females would find interesting. The film has been classified 15 because of the level of violence so no one under the age of 15 should watch it by law. Our most influential film is Die Hard which is also classified at a 15 due to the amount of violence in both films. As previously pointed out, the film being so similar to Die Hard gives a great opportunity to appeal to Die Hard fans and all action film fans which would lead to attracting a very wide range of people and a huge audience would be attached to the film giving the film, if it was a successive hit, a great platform to produce one, two maybe three sequels.

Here is a direct link to the British Broadcasting Film Cooperation (BBFC) website:

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

5)   How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by creating some unique selling points (USP's) which are throughout the film and parts that have not been produced which is in the summary of the whole film.

The genre of the film is a hybrid of three different sub-genres which can attract a wide range of people, for example, those who have no interest in crime films but like action movies can see it and yet it stays appealing to more than one group of people.

A lot of the film is viewed through character's point of view which gives a sense of being 'in the character's shoes' and creating an emotional connection between the film and the audience which is always effective because it creates suspense when a cliffhanger is made and causes anticipation within the audience. This would work well for us if we were ever to do a sequel because if we left the original film on a cliffhanger then the audience may feel frustrated and would long to see the next film which is where making it partly thriller comes in useful as a great unique selling point. Creating the feeling of self involvement makes the audience feel psychologically that they should do something.

The music throughout the film was coincidentally rhythmically edited to the visual action which was a great effect because it gives that little bit of edge that excites the audience and the upbeat music played through the opening title sequence reflects the mood of the film in a way that makes the audience feel like it is going to be a lively encounter.
With it being an action film that is mainly aimed at males, it grasps a reputation of it being a 'guy' film which can put many females off from watching it. We decided to create some features that would try and remove this reputation as much as what was possible to do so. Collectively, we came up with two main things that would make the film appeal to the females out there.
The first thing that we tried was to put a female character in a position of power and authority alongside the main character to give the audience a sense of equality in an action film, which became very vital because it lead on to giving us our second feature to make it more appealing to females.
It gave us an underlying romance story between the two main characters which would give every person a break from the main storyline. We realised by doing this it keeps the audience more entertained because it gives them a change of mood every now and then to stop them getting bored by the same repeating story all the way through.

6)   What have you learnt about technology from the process of constructing the product?

The strengths of using the 'HD Thousand' camera is that not only did it give us the ability to film footage in the first place, but it also gave us a good quality picture and great audio too. This is a good attribute because the film looks more realistic which is down to good quality video and audio footage. It also taught us how to film using only one camera and gave us a mini experience of what it is like on a film set for a real production. We learned that it is better to film scenes that you aren't confident with more than once so that you can make it work when it comes to the editing. It was a practical piece of equipment along with the tripod for it to stand upon which allowed us to film in any location. The scene where Noah cocks the gun and the camera zooms out at a high speed was solely down to the work of Joseph using the HD Thousand camera! It also taught put us through our paces with our motivation and organizational skills which is always considered useful!

The weaknesses of using the camera was that it was rather difficult to stand it up in the crime scene room because of its size and the small space there was to film in, bearing in mind however that there was four people in the room at the same time. It was also very difficult to transport without having a car to move it around in because of the weight and awkward shape. Also it became a danger when it began to rain and because of health and safety reasons we had to stop filming at one point which was hard to work with because we were limited with time.

The editing software that we used to make Hunting for Matt was called 'Final Cut Express' which was a special software used on an iMac.

The main thing I have learned about editing is the concept and the skill of continuity editing which is what most films have because they must play back continuously.
We split up the whole continuous footage on the tape in Final Cut Express and then used each clip accordingly to what was needed and we trimmed and edited each shot to create shot reverse shot, match on action, rhythmic editing, title sequence, opening  storyline, etc.
I also learned how to split audio from different video clips and basically 'plaster' scattered bits of media to work together and produce a brushed up export.
I feel that I will definitely use Final Cut Express in the future for my own use again.
We had one problem in which one scene was far too long and we could find no possible way to cut it down in the editing process so we resolved this problem by re filming the scene again and we changed the script, shooting script and the whole way of the scene to also add more shots in it (e.g. close ups).

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

Our planning stages began with one extra member of our group who decided to drop the subject very early on so we only had two of us in our group. We had previously been interested in producing a comedy for a few reasons, one, being the fact that we enjoy comedies, two, it was different from all the previous work we were shown by A level students gone before us. However, we were advised that making a comedy was very hard and after a while we ourselves experienced this too. Our previous research for the comedy idea is still on the blog under one post which is the first one posted.
We later decided that we would keep some of the same ideas but turn them into something that would work in an action-crime-thriller, for example, in our previous ideas we had Sarah Jenkins as Noah's secretary (previously named Sandra and Larry) but we developed that to making her Noah's partner which became an appealing feature for the female audience.
We wrote a shooting script, floor plans, a storyboard, a photo storyboard and a script to help us know what the vision was whilst filming because I learned that your knowledge of what you are doing in filming is hard because you can't edit whilst you're there so you have to try and create a vision of what you're essentially doing whilst filming so having a list of every shot and where people maneuvered themselves and camera equipment was helpful. Also having a storyboard and a photo one was helpful because we could visually see the story whilst the film had not yet been created. Having the script gave us the ability to read our lines so we knew what we were saying which is the basic point of any script, there's no complex thing that a script does.
Having this pre-planning for our film helped us greatly in filming and editing what we needed to do which eliminated many potential problems that could have arose.

Some of the shots that we tried in our preliminary task improved whilst filming and editing Hunting for Matt. One of them was match on action. We used match on action when I entered the room in our preliminary task and we were taught how to do that on the edit software by our tutor. This time it is used on the door at the beginning of the film when Noah closes it and it cuts to a close up shot on his hand closing the door. This shot was not aided by our tutor this time but was carefully cut together by us without help which is an improvement from the preliminary task. Also we improved on shot reverse shot because, again, in our preliminary task our tutor helped us compose the shot reverse shot on our characters using special techniques that we did not know about. This time we used it clearly without any help again and achieved it successfully which, again, is a great improvement. Another shot we did was the jump cutting in Matt's opening clip which came about due to the film being too long so we had little help from our tutor except from showing us how to do it in the first place and from my point of view I think that it worked rather well. That shot was particularly tricky with working with the audio track to parallel with the visual footage on screen which became a large challenge but was resolved which proved to us the effectiveness of editing. One more feature we used in the filming was part of the audience involvement by filming a few point of view shots which was only done through filming. This was not so much of a challenge for me because I filmed as the hostage's point of view which sometimes a moved the camera incorrectly but other than that there was not much to it.

I am very confident now with using a large camera and a fairly complex editing software in the production of films because of the challenges we overcame and the finished product of our work. I would happily use the cameras again and the editing software.

I feel that the end product was very successful because it looks professional to a certain extent and it fulfills all the requirements we had for it. We created a 2 minute film opening that established the start of a story and introduced the genre, characters and storyline from the opening sequence which was our exact task so I feel we met this very successfully. Also it gave me and my friend some fun in producing it because of the outtakes we had so not only was it a successful experience, it was very fun to do!