EVALUATION

For our AS media studies coursework, we were told we

would be making the first 2 minutes of a thriller film. We
could chose and design the storyline, sub genre etc, but
had to use the camera skills and our understanding of
what a thriller is meant to be to do so.

Our film was entitled “Mirror Image”. It was about a

mother who had lost their child in an accident, feeling that
it wasn’t their child’s time to go she finds another child,
similar to hers was when they were killed, they looked
partially the same and even had the same name. The
mother, who is grieving for her loss finds her comfort by
watching this child, Izzie, who she believes is her own. In
the first two minutes we are introduce to these 3
characters; the mother (who’s face we do not see, as to
keep the suspense and thrill of the film), the child she
believes is hers, Izzie; and we also see a picture of the
woman’s actual daughter Izzie who dies (on her order of
service). There is also another character Amber, Izzie’s
friend who is with Izzie when they are in the park. We see
the woman secretly watching the girl and even filming her,
until we are moved to her house, where we see the
woman watching her footage of the girls in the park. She
focuses on Izzie and repeatedly pauses and rewinds the
part where Izzie looks in her direction, as if in a loop.
During this we can hear the music of a child’s music box,
the music, which we want the audience to believe was
once Izzie’s gives a very eerie feel, yet showing that there
is a child’s presence within all of this.

There are 4 character’s in the opening, all of w

hich are female. One is only seen in a picture (the
bereaved Izzie), another is only seen from the back and at
times the front but the face is never seen (Izzie‘s grieving
mother); this is to hold the suspense and also keeps the
audience guessing about who it is. The other characters
are Izzie, the girl who is none the wiser to being watched
and being thought of as someone else’s child and the final
character is Amber, Izzie’s friend. Friend’s Amber and Izzie
are portrayed as partially stereotypical of what you would
expect a female teenager to be and to be doing but not
fully stereotypical. They are in the park gossiping with
Amber going off to meet her boyfriend, but the way they
are dressed and the setting of the scene (in a park) is not
very stereotypical. People expect pink and shopping when
they think of girls, but we didn’t want out characters to be
like this, this way the things they are able to be doing,
wearing, saying and settings they can be in are more
versatile (e.g they don’t have to always be wearing the
same colours all the time and the same types of clothes,
they can wear what they feel is their own style and is
comfortable for them, making the characters feel more
realistic). The mother, is portraying only one way in which
a parent could grieve for their child, there can be no set
stereotypical way to describe their feelings as every
person reacts in their own way when hit with such a
tragedy; but due to our storyline we chose to use this
version of actions. The characters can appeal to all ages of
our audience as the child/teenager can be related to any
youngster and the role of the mother can relate to any
parent or adult with children or niece’s and nephew’s who
may feel the same way if they were to lose a family
member.

Our product would most likely be an internet only release.

I feel the storyline and plot are good enough to make it in
Hollywood, it is a hard hitting story, but a story which
occurs everyday for some. Whenever a child dies, their
families and parents deal with it in different ways, this is
portraying one of those ways. With the right equipment,
budget and actors it could be a great worldwide success.
But because we are not well known film makers and have
no real previous experience of film making it is unlikely the
film will be bought by a big film company (e.g Fox, or
Warner Bros.) or a UK production company (e.g EMG,
Celadar or Film 4) . The film may be released on the
internet, then get brilliant reviews and then be taken to a
UK or international film festival, where it may then be seen
as potential to be a good enough film to release and then
be bought by one of the Film Companies. I feel what we
have produced does have the potential to be a well
conceived film, with the use of more and more
professional equipment we may be able to make the film
better and more suitable for better release pathways (e.g
TV film).

The audience/age rating for our film would be a 15. The

two main characters are of two very different ages and
two different people within a household. The mother will
appeal to any parent or older member of the audience
where as Izzie can appeal to any teenager. Granted both
these characters are female and you would normally
associate a film with female dominant characters to a
female audience, but this film is not stereotypical of
genders it is more stereotypical of the ages of the
characters, e.g typical teenager or parent. The reason that
the rating is a 15 though is due to the storyline being quite
deep and in some places dark, which may not be suitable
for those under the age of 15.
The film poster we have created is simple yet
sophisticated, which does appeal to our target audience.
The poster doesn’t give to much away and so keeps the
suspense of what is to come in the film. The colours used
are black, white and grey only showing that the film has
quite a deep storyline yet a sense of mystery to it too.

In parts of the film the audience is put into the shoes of a

character, to show what they can see and their point of
view. The character used is the mother, we use a few over
the shoulder shots, to show what she is looking at and how
she hiding when watching Izzie, but we also use a hot
where it seems as if the audience is the character. This is
where the mother is sitting on the bench and begins to
film Izzie on the swings, we go from watching the mother
lift up the character to a more blurry shot of that same
angle. We used a normal camera to film some footage of
Izzie on the swings, we uploaded the footage and saw the
quality of the shot wasn’t as clear and did seem as if you
were looking through the eyes of someone who had been
crying. Which when put together with the other shots
looks brilliant. This shot may appeal more to an adult but
is quite eerie for the younger members of the audience, as
it is of just Izzie swinging alone and being watched by this
mysterious figure. Another memorable point it where
Amber leaves the park and walks past the woman, when
they cross there is a sharp striking sound which only lasts
for a second but definitely gives the audience a bit of a
fright and sets the mood as to who this woman is and
what she wants.

When shooting the film to putting it all together in final cut

express we were all using some sort of equipment we had
never come across before. This was a bit of a challenge at
first, especially when editing and making the soundtrack
but as the days went on we became more familiar and
comfortable with the equipment.

We filmed some footage for our film but when we put it

together realised there was too much dialogue so we
decided to re-start out filming. The only problems we had
when it came to the equipment was that we all had to
share the camcorder. We had to book the days we wanted
it in advance, so we may use it one week and need to use
it again but have to wait another week. The only problem
was that the next week we may have been due to use the
camera the weather would be different to the first days
shoot, there for causing a continuity error. We managed to
work round this and it all worked out. A strength of using
the camcorder was that there was a small screen on the
side which let us play and watch back some the footage
we had just filmed, which was very useful as we did not
have to upload the footage first, realise we had made a
mistake then take the camera out again, we could just do
it straight away as we could see our mistakes there and
then. We got to use the iMac’s which had all the software
we needed to edit and put together our films as well as
make the soundtrack and the titles. For the editing we
used final cut express, this was a very hard concept to
master but as a group we feel we did out best and our
happy with our final result. I also learnt a lot of new
terminology from this and ways to make our film smoother
e.g film transitions and frames. The soundtrack was made
in Garageband, this programme was very useful. Not only
did it have ready made melodies which fit our film, but it
also had suitable sounds that fit with our film which we
could put together and make our own unique track. At the
end it was a mix between different parts of ready made
melodies and some of our own creations. Overall using the
new equipment was a challenge but we persevered and
managed to make our film as slick and smooth as we
could.

Before producing our final product we made a short film,

our preliminary task. The aim for this task was for us to
use the various camera shots and angles but to also have
a match on action shot. As we could chose the genre and
plot for the film we decided to do a comedy based on the
late Michael Jackson, knowing out final product would have
to be a thriller we wanted to experience creating another
genre. For this task we had to some background research
on comedy films, so we watched various clips of different
comedy videos, noting down what it is that makes the
audience laugh (i.e. the music can have and affect as well
as the acting). We also made a storyboard to know the
order in which our shots would be filmed, the type of shot
e.g close up and what would follow it. This would give us a
visual view of the picture we wanted to create. We also
needed to sort out the misc-en-scene: the setting, the
props, the costumes etc. Once we had filmed we had to
edit what we had filmed, add transitions to make the film
smoother and also make a soundtrack which was in time
with the visuals but also suited our genre. To do this we
used the iMac’s and the various programmes mentioned
before, e.g Garageband and Final cut Express. After
making our preliminary task, designing and grafting our
final product wasn’t as daunting as it would have been if
we never used the equipment or known what type of
research to do. It also saved on a lot of time, meaning that
we had more time to shoot than practices using the
equipment and taking a long time with our research. As
well as saving time it made the whole production time a
lot cleaner and smoother.

With all this practice I feel more confident with a lot of

things. I feel more confident with choosing the right type
of shot for a certain scène to create a certain mood (e.g a
point of view shot to show an object in the characters
point of view). I have also become a lot more confident
with using the programmes on the iMac, especially
Garageband and Live Type as well as Final Cut Express. I
enjoyed playing around with the different effects on Live
Type to create our titles but my favourite programme has
to now be Garageband. I enjoyed creating fitting music for
our film, as there was so much to chose from on the
programme, there were ready set melodies in place to be
used and there were also sounds available from all genres
of music and all types of musical instruments.

Overall I feel that our end product is a success and that we

have learnt ad used many new and useful skills. It was
tough at first and we did have our setbacks but as a group
we worked hard and our final product does show this. I am
happy with it and feel that with the equipment we were
able to use we have made a brilliant opening to a film with
a superior plot line.