Costume Drama

A costume drama is a period piece in which elaborate costumes, sets and properties are featured in order to capture the ambiance of a particular era. The most common type of costume drama is the historical costume drama, both on stage and in movies. This category includes Barry Lyndon, Braveheart, From Hell, and Robin Hood. Films that are set in the 1930s and 1940s, such as Last Man Standing, may also be placed in this category. Other examples include Marie Antoinette, Middlemarch, and Pride and Prejudice. Pride and prejudice is a good example of a costume drama, focusing on a group of young wealthy women. We first notice that the characters are all wearing very high class clothes and the home in which they live appears to suggest this. This suggests that the characters are going to be wealthy as there was such a large difference between rich and poor. They live in a stately home surrounded by rolling hills and English countryside. This symbolises that they are truly british and patriotic. Their elaborate clothing strongly suggests wealth as they are wearing silky, expensive materials typical of a wealthy family in victorian times.

Casualty evaluation

The scene starts with a presumably married couple laying in bed, back to back as far as way as possible to each other. The gloomy light infers that the relationship between the male and female is unstable, and they are not happy. As the scene progresses, you can see the couple don’t see eye to eye. You can tell the woman is determined to do things her way and for herself, as she rejects the man trying to help her. She is very passive towards him, using one or 2 word answers. The other family involved in the scene contrasts to the first couple. A family in the kitchen, enjoying their breakfast with children playing. The father then leaves for work, a happy family man. The next time we see him his personality has changed to a unstable, nervy man. He takes a meat cleaver out of his briefcase, and ascends a block of flats as if he knows exactly where he is going. At the same time as this happens, an elderly woman is hallucinating in her flat; she hears a disturbance and goes to check it out. This makes the audience think the father is breaking into the woman’s flat, however he is actually breaking into a black mans flat that we saw earlier in the scene. In effect, it is a red herring because it manipulates the audience into believing something that doesn’t really exist. The woman’s hallucination is controversial because the clown can be seen as diegetic, but also as non-diegetic because no-one else except the audience and old woman can see it. The black man is startled by the forced entrance of the estranged father who is holding a knife, and doesn’t have much time to react before the butchering begins. As this happens, the camera moves to the left, which leads it behind a glass door. This shot is extremely effective because the glass is translucent, and so the graphic nature of this attack is masked by the translucency of the glass, but still leaves enough transparency to see the movement of the father, and the blood dribbling down the glass. The attack scene was ‘censored’ because of the time casualty is shown. It is shown relatively early on during the night and so the brutality of the attacks can not be very high. Later on the scene goes back to the father and the black man. The black man is clearly very seriously hurt and is slumbering round his flat, to suggest this. As we saw earlier on, the father seemed extremely unstable and he still shows this, by realising his actions with a very scared expression upon his face as he drops the knife, and proceeds to pick up the phone; possibly to ring 999.

Eastenders analysis

Eastenders opens up to a typical house scene with typical characters in the scene. The woman is represented as a typical mum, by bossing about the children. Women are typically known as being quite authoritative, strict and protective over their children, and so this is represented in Eastenders on a micro level. The teenage children are also represented as a stereotypical teenage girl and boy, with a rough appearance and a moody attitude, which is usually associated with a teenager. On a macro level, the programme is set in a typical, everyday London town, with normal every day people going about their daily lives. It is based around the ‘Square’ and the ‘Vic’ pub. The pub was the setting for Archie’s death, and this is represented by the lighting within the Vic. It is very dark and gloomy, which could infer a passing. Roxie and Ronnie are cleaning the pub work surfaces, using props to make the scene as real to life as possible. The cleaning could also represent them moving on from their father’s death, and starting over again with a clean slate. Mid shots and close ups are used to see the emotions and the details of peoples expressions.

Production Report: The Evaluation

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

For our task, we had to produce a thriller opening for a new thriller movie, which had to last two minutes. Within these two minutes, we had to create something which would grab the reader’s attention, and make sure they wanted to watch on. I believe the first few minutes of the film are critical in grasping the audience and making them want to watch on.

Our thriller opening was aimed mainly at people aged twelve and above. This limited our range of people who we could show it to, but it was the category we are most familiar with. It left quite a large range of people who could watch it. We didn’t have a specific gender we were aiming at, we wanted ours to appeal to both males and females. Thrillers usually consist of a variety of elements, such as; suspense, tension, a climax, mystery and exciting scenes. Thrillers generally require some maturity to perhaps understand the concept of what they are trying to portray in their narrative and connotations.

We made the genre as clear to our viewers as we could, by using the elements that make up what a thriller is. As we only had two minutes, we couldn’t include every single aspect of a thriller, and so because of this we used a small range of elements to make our opening as realistic as possible. For example, we used a red herring which is typical in thrillers. This is to mislead the viewer, or in our case build up suspense only to end with an anti-climax, which will distract them from the narrative and lead them into a false sense of security. Our thriller is aimed more at a Drama thriller, or a Psychological thriller because it isn’t an intense, fast-paced thriller, it is more of a slow moving one, which builds momentum throughout the film.

In the first two minutes of our thriller opening, we also focused on the techniques to portray the thriller in the most realistic way possible. We achieved this through the way we portrayed the camera shots, editing, lighting and mise-en-scene. We used a variety of camera shots, such as low angle, high angle, pan, zoom, establishing shots and an OSS.

Here are some examples of the variety of camera shots we used

We made them look typical of a thriller by adding effects onto the shots, such as Romance on the Macs as well as bringing the lighting down for the attack scene, which adds more mystery and gives you a sense of insecurity. We used Fade to White transitions on the dream bit, and where we see her sleeping. This symbolises a dream and so makes it clearer to the audience. Also we refrained from using transitions that don’t look professional, for example; Ripple and Page curl do not look very professional in my eyes. We used Non-diegetic sound for the majority of our opening, by adding in eerie sound effects for the beginning, and tension building music for the dream. The only sound coming from our opening was speech, and a scream at the end of the dream. We chose our mise-en-scene very carefully, as we wanted a location that could provide us with a lot of cover, and room to make it as thriller-like as possible. The setting was very gloomy, and fitted our Victorian setting well as it was in Stamford, one of the oldest towns in Britain. This linked in well with the conventions of a thriller because the dark, old setting makes the mood tense and dark, a denotation that could suggest something is about to happen. We tried to make our editing quite technical to prove that we have a good understanding of Media and that we put a lot of time and effort into it. We used iMovie on the Apple Macs to edit our opening, which proved quite a nuisance at times due to freezing and closing of its own accord.

Before creating our opening we researched into different thriller films to study the conventions, and we noticed some that broke thriller conventions. For example, the film Memento follows a non-linear narrative, as the end of the story is actually the beginning of the film. This made it a unique film and made it stand out from a lot of other thrillers and greatly interested us. We like the sense of mystery that you felt when you watched the film because it was so hard to work out. The plot is extremely complex and twisted, and we wanted to incorporate this into our ideas. We also studied films such as No Country for Old Men, a crime thriller set in western Texas, directed by the Coen brothers. This films explores the themes of fate and circumstance which gave us inspiration for our opening because of the cleverly edited, well thought out narrative. We found Psycho very helpful in understanding the conventions of a thriller, especially the shower scene. As you can see below the editing and shots are very quick and sharp, which emphasizes quick adrenalin-filled action, compared to a scene where someone is just talking, where the editing is slow, and relaxed.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We learnt how to portray specific groups of people in thrillers, from watching thrillers, and studying TV drama. At the beginning of the opening you see a girl sleeping in a bed. We represented this by making her wear Pyjamas and she was in a bed with a dimmed light. This clearly showed that she was sleeping. Then when we enter the dream, we see a girl walking into an alleyway. We wanted to show that it was set in the early 1900’s, and we did this by dressing her in clothes typical of that period. She wore a black dress, with a cloth around her shoulders. We made her look innocent. Then we see Dan step out of the shadows. This already shows he is a shady character, as he was lurking in darkness. He follows the girl, and he is wearing a suit and a large coat over the top which also represents the 1900’s. We made him look like the villain, as he is following an innocent woman. This is quite typical of a thriller. Also, in a thriller, there is usually a hero. We did this by using Dan as the hero, as well as the bad guy, because you see him follow her like a bad guy, building suspense as you think he will attack her, but he stops her and returns her ring to her. Another thing that made Lidia represent “bait” was the fact she played a innocent Female. Females are generally speaking, the innocent people within a thriller. They are seen as the people that are vulnerable to attack, as males are seen as the powerful, deceitful villains. Lidia was also dressed like a lower class person, making her seem more innocent. Dan was dressed as a powerful, upper class business man. We made him look in control throughout, because he can see everything she’s doing from behind, and she is vulnerable because her back is turned on him. His dominance is seen throughout the dream, which leads the audience to believe he is going to attack her.

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

We chose Paramount Pictures for our distribution company, because they have a long history of distributing award winning films. They are based in Hollywood, California, and were founded in 1912. Paramount Pictures is the oldest film company in the world. We chose it because of the films it has distributed. Some of the films include Titanic, Star Wars, Saving Private Ryan, Mission Impossible trilogy, War of the Worlds, Get Rich or Die Trying and many other award winning films. They cover all genres, such as Comedy; Jackass and Nacho Libre. Action; Mission Impossible one, two and three, The Italian Job. Horror; Friday the 13th franchise. As you can see from above, Paramount has a very good record of film distribution/production, and that is why we chose them. Some of their films revenues, are astonishing and this is why we would trust them. Saw VI bought in a gross revenue of over $141,860,467. Paranormal Activity, which cost $15,000 to produce, saw a gross revenue of over $100,000,000.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for our thriller would mainly be teenagers aged 12-17, as it is rated a 12. We decided this because of two things. One being that it’s a 12 so people under 12 can’t watch, and two; we think people aged 18 or over would not find it as interesting as something with a larger certificate. We researched their needs by producing a questionnaire to get feedback from our audience. I also interviewed my sister, aged 14, and used her as our stereotypical viewer because she fits into our category of viewers. Her personal needs for a thriller film include the following factors; clever storyline, tension throughout, red herrings and slow building suspense. We took this into consideration when we made our opening. BBFC ratings affected our target audience because of the criteria involved with each rating. Our opening doesn’t contain any bad language, but we chose 12 because of the level of maturity we believe you need to understand ours. This is an example of a stereotypical viewer.
This is Lucy. She is a fourteen year old girl from the East Midlands. She attends the Robert Manning College in Bourne, and is currently in year nine. Her favourite subject is P.E, and she enjoys art with her friends. She likes to keep up to date with all the latest music, always keeping her eyes on the charts. Her favourite artists include Beyonce, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Cheryl Cole. She leads an active lifestyle, tending to her pony every day, and regularly taking part in sporting events within the college including X-country events. She loves watching the latest films, and has taken a liking to many films over the years, her favourite being Seabiscuit, and the Harry Potter franchise. She loves to watch thrillers, as she enjoys being kept on the edge of her seat throughout, with a clever, effective narrative which holds suspense for the duration of the film. She watches thrillers regularly with friends to create a tense atmosphere. She is quite a sociable person, spending the majority of her weekends out with friends or having friends stay over. She likes shopping in Peterborough when she has the money, and is interested in pursuing her love of films in the future. She is the ideal audience viewer as she fits into our bracket of target audience. She enjoys thrillers, as well as a clever plot that slowly unravels the narrative.
How did you attract/address your audience?
We used typical thriller conventions to gain the attention of our audience. Our narrative is appealing as it contains a lot of mystery at the end of the dream, and when she wakes up. The camera work has a lot of variety, which makes the opening less boring as it isn’t the same shot over and over again. The editing is slick and sharp, with a few very good details in it which aren’t that noticeable but make the whole production come together well. The effects on the dream will attract audiences because it looks very surreal and realistic. You can easily tell apart the dream from reality due to the eeriness. The narrative is quite clever in how it doesn’t give a lot away, but contains a lot of information e.g. the dream, the girl, the man, the ring and when she wakes up with the ring from her dream on. It would attract people who like to have to think to work the narrative out. The red herring would throw the audience off as they would be expecting something to happen, but they are then met with an anti-climax. Red Herrings are incorporated into films to lead the viewer away from the main narrative, and to manipulate them into thinking what could happen next. The audience would have to think for their selves instead of it being laid out in front of them. I would like the audience to be engaged in the narrative, and to be thinking ahead of the narrative throughout the opening. I would also like them to keep thinking about what could happen next after the opening has finished because it ends without explaining a lot of what just happened.

We met our audience’s expectations by following the stereotypical elements of a thriller. First of all, we included a good guy and a bad guy/hero. This is what an audience would be looking out for in a thriller. Second; we included mystery into our opening. You don’t find out who the man is, which appeals to viewers because they can guess at who it could be and how the narrative will progress. You may find out later on into the film but until then you are left in the dark about it.

The BBFC ratings restrict the content we can include within our 12 rated opening. For example if we wanted to include mindless, gory violence, we couldn’t rate it a 12. It would have to be a 15 at least, and the same goes for drug abuse and sexual content. So we decided to leave them out of ours so we could rate it as a 12.
We then showed a group of people our opening. We got some mixed reactions, some good, some not so good. All of them liked the first part of the opening, where the camera ascends the stairs and flashes of the girl sleeping appear on screen. They like the way that it was edited, and the sound in the background makes it quite eerie as the wind-like sounds echo throughout the house. They also liked the surreal effects on the dream to make it very clear that it is a dream and not just a cut shot. There were also a few criticisms of our opening. One was that the lighting in the bedroom shots is too dark, and that the shots are grainy as a result of this. Also the scenes in the alleyway are extremely dark towards the end of the dream, which could not be helped because of the natural light. They pointed this out as another criticism which we took into account.

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

During the process of constructing my thriller opening, I have gained new skills with technologies I have never used before. As well as that, I have gained more camera skills, for example I have learnt how to pan a lot smoother. As for editing, I have learnt how to edit video clips from scratch. I had no skills before I started this Media course, but now I know how to edit clips to make a thriller opening successfully, and make them look professional. I have learnt how to crop clips, speed clips up, slow clips down, mute sound, edit lighting and many other skills that will help me out in the future.
All these skills have been acquired on devices I had no experience with before I started this task. For filming we used a Sony video camera. Our group managed to learn how to use it from filming our preliminary, and we took this experience with us when we filmed our thriller opening. Mr Collier gave us a briefing on how to use the video cameras, and then gave us a task to do, so that we could become comfortable with using it. After we became accustomed with the cameras, we had to learn how to use the Apple Macs, specifically iMovie. Once again, Mr Collier gave us a briefing on how to use it, and then gave us a lesson to use it for ourselves and gain some knowledge about it, learn how to crop, add transitions and everything else that was vital to our thriller opening. We encountered some problems during filming. We accidently filmed over some of our footage, and the battery on the camera ran out. We overcame this problem by filming the footage again and making sure the camera was fully charged before we started. Next time, we would definitely keep our work to a tight schedule, and not take it easy for the first few weeks and then rush into planning and how we are going to go about doing things.

iMovie was the most important piece of software we used, because it was responsible for letting us edit our thriller in a professional way. We found it very easy to use, but it was unreliable at times. At random intervals it would just freeze, and then close down meaning we had to start some of our editing again. This proved very annoying and irritating as we didn't need any more setbacks. Below is a screen shot of iMovie showing the simplistic layout.

We used a variety of websites and programmes during our planning/production;
- Blogger.com
- soundsnap.com
- Wikipedia.org
- iMovie
- Microsoft Word
Over half of these were new to us, so we had to learn how to use them as quickly as possible. However I feel that we met our own expectations and managed to become comfortable with using this new technology.

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



Storyboard for our preliminary







I believe I have developed my skills at film making and editing, and that my strengths have become stronger over the task. Our preliminary task proves that we have improved our skills as it is very simplistic and rushed compared to our main task, which was well planned out even if nature did get the better of us. We learnt from our mistakes in our preliminary task, to ensure we didn’t make them again in our final production. We learnt to leave enough time for the camera to charge up fully before filming outside, as we encountered battery problems whilst outside without any chargers. We also learnt that we should give ourselves more than enough time to film, just in case something happens such as footage not being filmed, giving us enough time to go out and film it again. This is because we want to work as efficiently as possible and give ourselves time to change the plan or events if something were to go wrong. We learnt that planning is very important in making a good production. We did a lot of planning, more than for our preliminary. This gave us a very good idea of what we were going to do, even before we started. We gave ourselves a head start, and it worked because we managed to get it all done within the time we set ourselves too, without having to rush and fret over our time limit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoh0FLCLQPs

I have learnt a lot from this experience about film making, and I have learnt many new skills. If we were to do this again, I think I would make sure that we filmed a little earlier, because of it being winter the sun set whilst we were still filming, and this caused issues as we ran out of natural light, and so some shots are a lot darker than we intended them to be, and so we couldn’t acquire the quality we wanted in certain parts.

Our thriller production

Shot list

Shot 1 - Long shot. Establishing shot of the house.
Shot 2 - Mid/close shot. Perspective of walking through the door, up the stairs and in to the bedroom.
Shot 3 - Over head shot looking down at the girl sleeping, zooming in on girls face.
Shot 4 - Extreme close up zooming into girls eye until the screen is black.
Shot 5 - From the black screen it enters the dream. A still shot of the girl walking down a dark alley and a tall man stepping out behind her.
Shot 6 - Low shot. The girl walking towards the camera, when she realises there is someone behind her, she turns to look then starts to run.
Shot 7 - High shot of the girl running away with man following her, camera pans around the follow them.
Shot 8 - Side mid-shot when the man finaly grabs hold of the girl.
Shot 9 - Side mid-shot again, the girl swings around to see the man who then hands her a ring which she had forgotten.
Shot 10- Mid-shot of gril looking down at the ring and walking away.
Shot 11- Long-shot looking down the alley way, very dark and girl walking towards the camera, as she gets close the is pulled away and screams.
Shot 12- Over head shot of girl in bed when she wakes up suddenly.
Shot 13- Mid-shot looking down the bed as the girl sits up, panicked.
Shot 14- Perspective shot from the girl looking around the room.
Shot 15- Over-the-shoulder shot of girl leaning over to turn around the clock.
Shot 16- Low-shot of girl climbing out of bed and walking to the window.
Shot 17- Over-the-shoulder shot of girl looking through the blinds with the same ring on her finger.

stereotypical audience viewer

This is Lucy. She is a fourteen year old girl from the East Midlands. She attends the Robert Manning College in Bourne, and is currently in year nine. Her favorite subject is P.E, and she enjoys art with her friends. She likes to keep up to date with all the latest music, always keeping her eyes on the charts. Her favorite artists include Beyonce, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Cheryl Cole. She leads an active lifestyle, tending to her pony every day, and regularly taking part in sporting events within the college including X-country events. She loves watching the latest films, and has taken a liking to many films over the years, her favorite being Seabiscuit, and the Harry Potter franchise. She loves to watch thrillers, as she enjoys being kept on the edge of her seat throughout, with a clever, effective narrative which holds suspense for the duration of the film. She watches thrillers regularly with friends to create a tense atmosphere. She is quite a sociable person, spending the majority of her weekends out with friends or having friends stay over. She likes shopping in Peterborough when she has the money, and is interested in persuing her love of films in the future. She is the ideal audience viewer as she fits into our bracket of target audience. She enjoys thrillers, as well as a clever plot that slowly unravels the narrative.