TASK 2, How does your product represent particular social groups?

A social group I believe to be apparent in 'Aftermath' is the emotionally unstable, more commonly known in today's society as "Emo". The stereotype normally refers to people who have a negative perspective of the world and coincidently it is often found that they declare their unsettling hatred through the usage of video. These characteristics of the 'Emo' stereotype can be seen through Seb's performance, depicting some emotional instability through his depressed facial expressions, and through the dialogue of his video confession, fundamentally establishing the character's perspective as negative.Ultimately, we tried to represent Alex (played by Seb) as frustrated, disturbed and bordering on being mentally insane. Simialar to what Jack Nicholson is doing in the image above, of 'One flew over the Chuckoo's nest', we had Seb look directly into the camera for the majority of the screen time in order to intimadate the audience, making them believe his anger and frustration of the world is sincere and will be acted upon.

TASK 3, What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I would choose Vertigo to make and produce my film.  The main reason for this is because they support low budget films that promote raw talent often employing first time directors. Nick Love, a joint owner at Vertigo alongside producers James Richardson and Allan Niblo (who co-founded the outfit in 2002) and distribution head Rupert Preston, says the company ethos is simple: Keep budgets at the right level.

My film is a horror that would especially appeal to teenagers as they will most be able to associate with and recognise many of the underlying phenomena in the film.  The film would be targeting teenagers and marketed over the Internet extensively using many free sites such as Facebook and Twitter. 

A film produced by HBO called Elephant made in 2003 by the particular alternative and artistic director Gus van sant upholds our essential plot of a high school shooting which co-incidentally reflects similar themes of adolescent frustration with society.   Although HBO films fund their movies with a fundamentally higher budget thatnVertigo, they are prone to produce obscure plots.  An example would be Last Days which strangely possesses no dialogue and narration.   It is easily assumed that the films produced like the Last Days  would not be very successful in terms of “bums on seats”, however an audience was found and the film proved a viable business proposition due to the gross revenue of $2 456454.  

TASK 5, How did you attract/address your audience?

Aftermath I believe would appeal to a variety of age groups, with the minimum age for viewing I assume to be roughly 15 years of age. Taking into account major themes of adolescent confusion and depiction of different teenage perspectives enrolled in the production, it can easily be predicted that that the majority of our audiences would be teenagers who are in a current institution of learning (Secondary school or University). The other members of the audiences I believe would consist of parents with children the same age as our protagonist and members of staff from learning institutions that include teenagers. I believe that majority of our teenage targeted audience would be dominated by the female teens, as suppose to the males. This due to the fact Kate, played by Sabrina, possesses waif like characteristics which attracts essentially a lot of female sympathy, because it’s about a girl as suppose to the boy who did the crime, furthermore reflecting feministic beliefs that women pick up the pieces men leave behind. Arguably a female audience might also be apparent because of Seb’s physical appearance, which they may find attractive. Having said this with the genre being ‘Thriller’, it would appear more likely to attract a male dominated audience, due the assumption that men a more prone to seeking interest in the unexpected horrors of society, then females. However this an assumption made by analyzing common stereotype, and generalizing personalities of human beings by their physical differences to each other will almost certainly prove to be inaccurate. 

Account of shoot day

As a group we depicted and presented Kate (Sabrina) as vulnerable, captivated, distressed and imprisoned. The primary reason for our established choice in character was that our story was in want of an evidential bad result of what has happened, this being the essential thrilling side to our high school tale. We achieved this necessary film requirement through high camera angles, over the shoulder shot of the interrogator, set design of the tables being slanted to the corner of the room, the mixed spread of documents and images carelessly displayed on the desk to give an indication of the thoughts engrossing Kate’s mind, the lose tie enabling the audience to view skin giving hints of this vulnerability mentioned previously and also giving the connotations that, in comparison to a fixed tie, Kate is un-civilised and neglects this ordinary requirement. I believe this is her attempt to differentiate herself from this world, in which her boyfriend defines as a place which doesn’t consider the “individual”, and there by obtaining this aim for individualism.        

We set up the interview scene (with Kate and the interrogator) in the studio; however the filming of the Youtube confession was all shot in the Hurtwood House common room. For the studio we constructed an interview room, made of a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum is used for the relief surface to create the fake depiction of brick walls. With the assembling of the desk and the chairs, we rotated them to the corner of the room to gain the feel of imprisonment.

In terms of lighting, we attached ultra violet light string around the computer in the Youtube confession scene, to emphasize the automatic glow produced from a computer when it’s switched on. After a few takes of the scene, we came to the realization that the computer wasn’t necessary, if we were aiming to create a shot that looked as though it was being filmed by a web cam, the computer didn’t need to be in the frame. Although the glow we produced from these UV lights was visible in the shoots, we concluded that they were extremely exaggerated and could be considered to be un-realistic. However in order to make this point appear clear to the audience, an exaggerated effect was necessary, because dimmed UV lights will be too undetectable to our viewers.

My roles undertaken on the shoot day varied from being sound recorder, involving me to find appropriate angles of the room in which the microphone could pick up a clear resonance of the actor’s speech. This proved challenging, for the clearest recording was most obviously nearer to the actors then further away, however I had to take into consideration that the microphone cannot be captured in the take. A steadiness of the hand was required and also a clear sense of recognizing the right levels for recording. It was very much a multi-tasking job. I was also for a short while camera man, in which I undertook the responsibility of discovering the best angle in which to shoot the web cam scene. We made the discovery that the scene looked authentic if it was from just above the actors head height, to give an effect of isolation from the audience he’s talking to. This involved bubbling the tripod to reach the required level. We instructed the actor to reach up towards the right hand corner of the top of the camera, to create this allusion that he was switching on his webcam. The action looked realistic and proved to be a successful usage of camera trickery.

I also created the storyboard for the camera man to follow, which was mostly followed and abided by. However some of my initial ideas were scrapped in the process due to the time they would have taken to shoot, and how little a time we had to capture all the necessary requirements. One idea I had, that was abandoned just before the shoot day, was the ideas of the interview room having a see through mirror Kate’s right hand side.

In terms of the script, we played with the notion of narration. From Seb’s confession of what he believes to be the truth, to detective Ted’s accusing of ‘Kate’ being a liar, to Kate’s betrayal of being perplexed at the current circumstances which then ends with the anti climax, “No, let me tell you what really happened”. A tripod of perspectives becomes apparent to the audience, adding to the attractiveness of the film, being that it leaves the audience ravenous for the truth.  You instantaneously form an opinion on who you believe to be the innocent character, but yet the introduction provides you with some uncertainty of who to blame.

Seb, as an actor, possessed physical features which may have been appealing for the young girl members of the audience. His characterization of the role was played suitably, due to his straining of the eyes, fearsome tone of voice, lowering of eyebrows (indicating the extremities of his disapproval with the worlds) and his occasional direction of vision to look a way from the camera (highlighting insecurities the character possesses). All actions he made gave connotations of anger, instability, hatred and resentment towards everyone (except Kate).