Task 1 - In what ways does The Hostage use, develop and challenge forms or conventiopns of real media products?

1 - 2 - 3

4 - 5 - 6

7 - 8 - 9

1. The title: THE HOSTAGE hints on the subject of kidnapping, murder, torture that are all themes that conformt to the genre of thriller and horror.

2. Location: old, big mansion in the middle of nowhere is a stereotypical location where a horror film could take place. It enhances the scary feel of isolation and supposes a stranger breaking in to the house.

3. Daylight: The fact that we shot in the middle of the day subverts conventions because it doesn't provide the spooky atmosphere of darkness and night.

4. A POV-shot from an unknown point of view watching the vulnerable woman inside from the outside, suggesting that this person will be inside the house soon which is very likely to happen in horror films. It involves the conventions of raid, anonymity and mystery.

5. Location #2: bathrooms are popular used locations in a house in Horror movies to create a certain suspense with the features of a running shower (covering other sounds in the house when someone is breaking in for example) also saying that she will undress herself what makes her more vulnerable. It conforms to a convention, because a lot of female victims in older horror movies have been killed in bathrooms, bath tubs and showers.

E.g. Psycho

6. Props: The mirror is another part of the bathroom that emphasizes the mood of mystery and creates tension because we never know what could all of a sudden step into the mirror behind her. MIrrors are often used in thrillers/horror films and therefore conform to conventions.

In addititon, there was even a whole horror movie made based on mirrors!

7. Characters: The fact that we used a married couple and especially the young sexy blonde woman sticks to horror movie stereotypical features since a loving couple/a family is a popular target victim because they sympathize with the audience who in return increase hate for the antagonist. The attractive woman is a very common horror movie convention since she is a popular victim.

E.g. Sarah Michelle Gerrar as. Karen and Jason Behr as. Dough  in 'The Grudge'

8. Sound: The sound of a telephone ringing is also a horror film convention. It provides mystery since you never know who is on the other end. There are lots of horror movies based on telephones,

such as 'One Missed Call' or 'When A Stranger Calls' ...

 

9. The open door communicates raid, rubbery, and the uncertainty of not knowing 'Who's in my house???'.

This again conforms to conventions and enhances the thriller genre.

We also worked with the sound of a doorslam without showing the door to hint on something unusual going on.

Task 2 - How does The Hostage represent particular social groups?

In our Thriller, we are showing characters hinting on 'The Golddigger woman' marrying a rich older man who holds her like a 'trophy wife'.

We achieved this by using a very glamorous woman dressed in sexy red clothes, symbolising her dangerous temper and character, highlighting how she is a user and manipulater to reach her shameful goals of marrying for money. Some women in the audience may be able to relate to this situation. Therefore using the Ferrari and high fashion brands shows that the husband is probably intentionally very generous and is buying her love. Her love is probably not true since we can see her talking unfriendly to him on the phone being annoyed by his children.

There are several films and TV productions that involve this topic.
A very obvious one is Hugh Hefner, the inventor and publisher of THE PLAYBOY magazine and also is the part of the MTV Show 'The Girls Of The Playboy Mansion' where his, but actually the life of his three girlfriends, 'The Playgirls', is shown. He is one of the richest Americans and lives at an age of 84 an ostentatious life surrounded by very young, blonde and sexy women.

Task 3 - What film institution Would Make 'The Hostage'?

A possible film instution that would produce The Hostage is LIONSGATE.

ABOUT LIONSGATE: 

Founder: Frank Giustra

Headquaters: Santa Monica, CA, USA

Industry: Conglomerate, Motion pictures, television pictures, television programming, home video, family entertainment, video on demand, digital distribution.

It's a Canadian-American entertainment company. It is the most commercially successful independent film and television distribution company in North America.

Its first major box office success was American Psycho in 2000, which began a trend of producing and distributing films too controversial for the major American studios. Other notable films included Affliction, Gods and Monsters, Dogma, Saw and the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which became the studio's highest grossing film.

Due to the fact they specialise in Horror Movies and Thrillers and do very qualitative films, but also low budget movies we decided that Lionsgate are the best suiting company to make The Hostage.

These are other productions they made which could be compared to The Hostage:

Task 4 - Target Audience for 'The Hostage'

Who would be the audience for 'The Hostage' ?

The potential audience our thriller would probably attract would be a mass audience in the age of 15+.  Our movie would be quite commercial, with an uncomplicated storyline and easy to follow, but in an interesting way photographed to create lots of suspense.

MASS AUDIENCE

Because ‘The Hostage’ would be exhibited by large theatrical distributors, the primary 15-24y audience is in my view a Popcorn-audience, one that likes going to the cinema with a group of friends or boy-/girlfriend who buy lots of snacks there, and spend relaxed nights out with friends to see an entertaining movie.

 AGE 15 - 24 

The secondary audience (25-34) might like our film because it’s a basic thriller/horror storyline that promises to satisfy viewer’s expectations and won’t bore them, but at the same time it’s different made in terms of camera work, cast (only two people through whole film, including a psycho killer and a stunning young woman which could attract males) and the idea of using a slow pace to build tension which is not likely in thriller movies. I wouldn’t say the Hostage as film is really aiming for a specific gender. I think it’s quite equal, so the story provides entertainment for both. I reckon it’s also likely to be a boyfriend/girlfriend-cinema-night movie!

The gender thriller or horror in general rather aims to males, but more and more girls become very attracted  to these kind of movies. Especially as a girlfriend you go and see more scary movies. So probably the best way to promote and successfully sell a thriller movie is to get the boys/men taking their girls/women to the cinema!

 BOYFRIEND AND GIRLFRIEND ENJOY BEING SCARED TOGETHER

Task 5 - PowerPoint: TARGET AUDIENCE

Task 5 - How did we attract/address our audience?

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Task 6 - What I've learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product.

Task 7 - Looking back at preliminary task....

Task 7 - Looking back at my preliminary task, what do I feel I have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

          

Planning

Overall, I was much more passionate about the actual Thriller project and involved a lot more planning and organisation for. We started a couple of months before the shooting day thinking about an idea for the sequence whereas the preliminary task only took an hour to shoot and was basically a one lesson exercise. We didn't think of any characters, locations or storylines and the storyboard was given to us in contrast to the thriller where we came up with everything on our own. 

Preliminary task storyboards:

Our storyboards:

Film making skills - Camerawork

In the thriller shoot we used much more different, a little quirky angles and shots that communicate the genre of thriller and create a scary or mysterious atmosphere, such as canted or low angle shots.

                 


and also POVs to show how someone is watching our main character from outside of the house through a window.


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or showing a cut-in of only her feet taking off her shoes helping to build tension and highlighting that time that was passing as she was getting undressed.

In the prelim we were pretty much just straight forward and only had normal close-ups, over the shoulder, and wide shots.


         

Sound

Firstly I have learnt how to add music to a piece of film and help draw attention to a particular character through the use of music. In my preliminary I didn't use any music and diegetic sounds. Especially in the beginning of my thriller, I used music to set the scene and to create an impression of the bad character. Whereas we used the tense silence to communicate a dangerous situation in our prelim. (But actually we just didn't really have time to add music as an aftereffect...) 

(She turns when hearing someone enter the room, while music slowly increases again!)

At last, now in know how to add credits into a filmed sequence. In the post-production of the prelim we completely ignored this aspect. 

              

(He's about to leave the room but turns again to tell his accomplice something important, no music no sound, the suspense is low.) 

  

Aftereffects

I have also learnt how to make a scene brighter and to keep the continuity of the brightness through out the sequence. As in one of my prelim shots its very dark and there is a shadow against the wall, making it look very low budget and unprofessional. Whereas in my thriller, the lighting is much brighter and the light is continually bright throughout the film, making the scenes better within terms of continuity and visually more appealing.

Shadows:

Continuity of lighting:

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Warner Bros and Vertigo Film Companies

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A british film production

and distribution company,

•founded in 2002.

•They create and distribute commercially driven independent cinema. Their productions are low budget.

•Current target is to produce and distribute four films per year!

American production and distribution company of film and television entertainment.

•One of the leading companies in the business and one of major film studios

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•and distributing 18-22 films each year .

Warner Bros is a subsidiary of Time Warner.