Shameelah Iqbal: Question 1

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

The title of the film i feel fitted perfectly with the narrative, as it didnt give the narrative away completely but still gave an element of a hint as to what to the narrative may be. We also thought of the name duplicity however, that was already taken therefore we changed the name to Domestic Duplicity as we felt that as Duplicity was already a major hit we would use the name and add a word that reflected the storyline in our thriller. We also took inspiration from a news article in 2009 about a paranoid schizophrenic killing a police officer...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1164439/NHS-blunders-left-cannabis-crazed-schizophrenic-free-stab-policeman-death.html

The setting of the thriller is in the bungalo, to create a house atmosphere where the mother does her typical domestic chores, our inspiration for the location was drawn from an episode of desperate housewives.




We encountered many problems with the bungalo's availability,after asking permission we were restricted to using the bungalo for filming to only three days a week. however we felt that the bunglao was the only appropriate location to hold our thriller therefore we made sure we made up for the extra time after school.

The costumes and props we tried to use were typical housewife clothes this included apron and wellingtons. We also used classic housewife props such as a kitchen, kitchen knife and gardening tools etc... The house wife clothing caused us to make a lot of continuity errors such as the female housewife not having her apron with her when needed or not having the same t-shirt on in all her shots. This was mainly caused because the actress forgot the clothing she was meant to wear on the appropriate days.


While filming our thriller we tried to use a range of shots, i feel we did this to the best of our ability the shots we did use were close ups, panning shots and tracking shots. Each of these shots were done to empahsise a key aspect in the narrative, the tracking shots were done to create a sense of suspense and mystery.the close ups were done to create an emphasis on the emotion on the characters face and sometimes on a particular object like the certificate, and the panning shot was done to create an emphasis on a particular object.

We drew inspiration from the titles of transformers as we felt this gave a sense of suspense and was an effective way of drawing the audience in. We also noticed that the transformers credits broke up the scenes in order to give the audience a sense of anticipation. We also looked at the credits of jurassic park and found them to be similiar, they also created the same sort of mystery.

Final Product

This was our original storyboard for our thriller:

Working copy of evaluation-unfinished version

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
While filming our thriller we tried to use a range of shots, i feel we did this to the best of our ability the shots we did use were close ups, panning shots and tracking shots. Each of these shots were done to empahsise a key aspect in the narrative, the tracking shots were done to create a sense of suspense and mystery.the close ups were done to create an emphasis on the emotion on the characters face and sometimes on a particular object like the frame (like signs)and the panning shot was done to create an emphasis on a particular object which in this cast was the frame.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our thriller displays the darker side of a person suffering from the disease of schitzophrenia, the portrayal of a schitzophrenic was very important to us therefore we took it upon ourselves to re-search on the disease to make sure we got an accurate portrayal of one (drawing inspiration from fightclub).We also,subverted the typical schitzophrenic as we made them the mother in our thriller showing our audience that it can happen to anyone.We also made the daughter the police officer in the thriller to try and create a narrative of the daughter going on a discovery to try and find out whos murdering people when its in fact her own mother.

3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
We feel as though our thriller would attract a more mainstream audience, due to the fact that it contains a typical convention of a psychological thriller which is the narrative of a mother being a schitzophrenic. Therefore i feel that teenagers above the age of 15 to adults of around 30 would want to see this film, it would also attract minorities such as movie lovers in general and people who love watching thrillers. Overall i think the movie distributor would be along the lines of 20th century fox because it has a history of releasing thrillers such as fightclub,kiss of death and man on fire.

4.Who would be the audience for your media product?
i think our target audience would be between l5 to late 20's as i think that young teen would find the psychlogical aspect of it quite intriguing as well as normal thriller lovers who would enjoy the sense of suspence. I think that people in their late 20's would want to watch something that would possibly scare them and kept in suspense till the end. This opinion was also shared by the audience re-search we conducted as the majority of students in our school would perfer being left in suspense till the end.

5.How did you attract/address your audience?
in the begining of our opening we did a panning shot of the diffrent objects on the shelf then went to a closeup of the police certificate to suggest a link between that and the daughter. We also didn't emphasise on the certificate to leave the audience intrigued. The tracking shot was done for a similar purpose as we included it to try and create a sense of suspense and wonder, these shots were constantly flshed back with the mother walking suggesting a link in the narrative. And lastly the mirror shot towards the end gave an accurate portrayal of a hidden identity of some sort we tried to portray this in the form of the mother looking into the mirror looking at possibly her alter ego.

6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
While constructing this product i found that working with the camera equipment is quite tricky, in order to get appropriate shot you have to adjust the camera accordingly. We also found although you do alot of filming there are many mistake that may occure whilst you begin to edit therefore re-shooting proved to be a constant task as we recurrently faced continuity problems and getting the location ready in the times located to us. We also found the task of getting fammiliar with the equipment a hard tast and quite time consuming as we had to practise for first time how to use equipment such as the tripod and trackers.

7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full task?
I feel our group did learn alot from the preliminary task as we noticed that the framing of the shots were completely wrong and therefore was ruining the narrative. We also learnt the difficulties of trying to get actresses available at the right time, therefore we used a girl that had the pretty much the same time table as ours which proved to be less time consuming. There were also shots we did that we now realised were unrealistic to the human eye such as the zooming, which we have now changed going straight into a panning shot. However we didnt include as many intresting shots as we would have liked, many of our shots consist of the same shots i think given more time we would have conetrated on getting a better location for our thriller and would have tried a few more angles on particular shots. Although i do feel as though we imprved greatly from our original preliminary task.

Synoptic day

during the course of the day we tried to vary our time in order to get as much filming done as possible. We had 7 periods overall this was our schedule for the day:

Wednesday 17th March

Period 1 and 2: in these two periods we looked at the footage we had already filmed, paying close attention to any continuity problems or any issues regarding the shots such as the framing. After doing so we then wrote on a piece of paper all the shots that had to be re-done.

Period 3 and 4: After break, we took the sheet and filmed according to what was available which was the flashback of the women walking in heels in the school corridoor. however we did have to be mindful of the fact that student would be let out of their classrooms between period 3 and 4.

period 5: during this period we again looked back at the footage we had filmed and noticed quite a few continuity problems aswell as the actress cast in our thriller was not readily available. therefore we used most of the shots on synoptic day as testing shots so we were ready to film the actual thing the next day.

Period 6 and 7: During the last two periods we felt it was necessary that we edit some of the footage we had shot becuase we did not have our actress available at that time.

We were not able to use the bungalo because we were given certain day in which it was available the days that we were able to use it were mondays.tuesdays and Fridays which limited our time in there. Overall we were able to do alot of filming althought due to not being able to use the bungalo and lots of continuity problems we were often held back. However all our footage was put to good use as we constantly used them as testing shots for our real thriller.

This is what we filmed on synoptic day. After editing the footage we reliesed that most of it had to be reshot. We used this as a way of seeing how we could improve it.

Synoptic Day

Our synoptic day was a full day of media, where our group planned to get all our filming done.
We made a plan for the day so our group aimed to get all our filing done.

Considering that the Bunglow, one of our main locations, was only in use after lunch we planned to get all our flashback scenes which were filmed in the DT corridor done before then. Our aim was to have all the flash back scenes filmed before lunch so we were able to film the scenes in the Bunglow in the afternoon.
We were sucessful in our plan and managed to stick to it, getting all our filming done.

This meant that we had to leave at school at around 5 in order to get all the fliming done. We were unable to get any editing done considering that we did not have enough time.

We filmed all our footage on synoptic meaning it was a useful day.
however when we editing the next day we saw that alot of the filming we done was wrong and could not be used. many issued accured such as lack of continuity as well as scenes not flowing and problems in the narrative.

I believe that Synoptic day was useful because it gave us a chance to see what we had to refilm and how to improve our film

The problems we encountered during this shot was the clutter in the background. Eventhough the female character was the centre focus the background seemed unrealistic as she began to Garden, there was also the fact that she was gardening in the middle of the garden whereas the more appropriate place for gardening would be on the side.




With both these shots we encountered the same problem, this was that the framing of both shots didnt seem to match up together. The normal evryday shot in comparison to the the flashback of that particular scene did not seem to match up together. Therefore we had to re-shoot once more, trying to capture the right frame in order for an effective flashback.



We felt we had to re-shoot this scene because the zooming in of the window was seen to be not natural to the eye, therefore we had to re-shoot by trying to avoid the zooming in shot.