Evaluation

Description of plot beforehand,

Decipher at first begins with an interrogation scene which just has two characters appear. One character can be seen in very dark, stark lighting with his face not being shown amidst a shadow, he speaks with a slightly middle class accent and is wearing a smart suit, the other character in the room in contrast has very bright lighting towards his face which highlights a bandage that appears to have blood on it, he also speaks with a much more working class accent and is wearing a grey tracksuit. The scene carries on and through dialogue it can be understood that the character amidst the stark lighting is a detective or at least a superior lawful character in regards to the character amidst the bright lighting and that the character with very bright lighting, in Decipher’s case this character is called Ryan Taylor whilst the stark lighting character is called Nicolas Sharpe (although he is not referred to by his name in the project). The scene becomes clear that Ryan is being convicted of murdering a young girl of a roughly similar age, as the two characters begin discussing the events flashbacks are seen indicating exactly what happened on the previous night, throughout the flashbacks it is implied that Ryan is dating or is married to the young woman character, they start off in a domestic house, after they leave the start to walk down the streets until they get towards a small tunnel, as they walk in they begin to start arguing and bickering over a subject which is not identified, as they bicker a mysterious new character walks towards them armed with a large weapon that looks as though it has been cut off a section of furniture, he then strikes Ryan on the head knocking him out, then scenes begin tracing back and forth between the interrogation and the flashbacks, it can then be seen that the detective interviewing Ryan is actually the same person who knocked him out in the flashbacks, then the flashbacks scenes can be seen again in which the detective is clearly shown with a knife over the young woman’s dead body whilst Ryan is unconscious in the background, the scene then finishes.

How does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Considering Decipher is a crime drama/thriller it was very important for us to follow many of the typical conventions of the genre in order to both appeal to the audience and denote the fact that Decipher is an actual crime drama/thriller, if we strayed too far from typical conventions and decided to subvert a large amount of conventions then we may have risked being completely unrelated to the genre and may have created a project which would instead suit more with conventions of other genres, or become more of a surrealist genre. Therefore in order to communicate effectively with the audience that our genre was crime drama/thriller then we needed to follow a vast array of typical conventions to communicate and strengthen the authenticity of the genre in regards to Decipher.

Typical conventions of crime drama/thriller specifically involve the use of stark lighting as well as diegetic sound (usually through the use of dialogue), black and white imagery and also a use of canted angled shots. Canted angled shots are shots in which the camera is placed on a slight angle reflecting a disorienting but also very intriguing factor towards the audience, these types of shots are seen within many films which follow typical conventions of film noir, film noir is a genre which has many relations to crime drama/thriller I.E. the fact that many film noir films centre on some sort of crime that has taken place, very often the crime is murder but not as a rule, classic film noir films such as Citizen Kane utilizes both crime uses a vast number of canted shots and helped pioneer the film noir genre. Film noir is notably one of the major influences in crime dramas/thrillers as typical conventions such as canted shots have transpired into this genre, this can be seen in relatively recent films such as Casino Royale (below) which is clearly following the same method of canted shots in order to create a disorienting and intriguing concept to the audience. In Decipher canted shots were used multiple amount of times, this was done in order to convey the same aspect as film noir and thus exemplify our genre to the audience but also to create the same affect of a disorienting but also intriguing factor, in analytical terms the canted shots could also help highlight Ryan’s damaged and almost abstracted thoughts and memories of the night and therefore the canted angles signify how he cannot fully remember what happened which allows the audience to feel as though Ryan is more sympathetic and may not be a criminal despite the fact that no evidence to prove him innocent was shown at this point. Below the Casino Royale image there is also some examples of how Decipher used these same canted angled shots to create the same affect on the audience. The canted shots also resemble the typical conventions of crime drama/thriller which also indicates that Decipher is following typical camera work of this genre.

A canted shot taken from Casino Royale

Both these images are taken from Decipher and are both canted shots resembling a similar fashion to the shot seen in Casino Royale

Stark lighting is another convention of typical crime dramas/thrillers, considering stark lighting is obviously very dark it is often used to convey a character as very mystical and mysterious as usually a characters face is either not seen completely or only aspects are shown to make them appear either very villainous as though they’re keeping their heads in the shadows in a similar fashion to a predatory-type figure, however it can also indicate a mysterious factor on the basis that the audience will not be able to see the characters face for the most part, subsequently the audience start to ponder who the character is and the reason why his face appears distorted. Discovering that stark lighting was a typical convention links back to a lot of research we conducted such as The Departed which used stark lighting in order to hide a characters face, in The Departed’s case the character was a villainous mafia boss symbolising how the dark imagery can help convey a very villainous character (see image BELOW). Decipher used this most notably in the interrogation scene, this appears on both of the side shots and close ups of the two characters. Firstly, the use of the side shot is useful as it indicates the intensity of both characters and the stark lighting emphasizes the mysterious aspect of the characters with Ryan being brightly lit it makes him appear slightly more heroic as heroes are often casted in bright heroic lighting, take Sherlock for example which in an interrogation scene in the opening of series 1, episode 3 the heroic protagonist Sherlock is seen in very bright lighting (BELOW) whilst the (current) antagonist of the sequence is seen in notably much more darker, stark lighting, this was used in Decipher (BELOW) in order to convey a similar aspect with the villainous, mystery character in stark, dark lighting whilst Ryan as the protagonist is seen in much brighter and more heroic lighting, it also allowed audiences again to feel mildly sympathetic towards Ryan’s character whilst the audience also become intrigued and mystified by the detective character.





Black and white imagery is another convention of typical film noir films, this is mainly due to the fact that many film noir films E.G. Citizen Kane, The Fallen Idol, etc were all made in the 1940s, at a time when colour technology in film was not developed enough for the quality to be considered effective. Therefore film noir relied heavily on being very atmospheric and stylistic in order to appeal even more intriguing and mysterious. The use of black and white imagery became synonymous with stylistic, atmospheric dramatic films. Even films many years after the 1940s which were not related to crime such as Raging Bull utilized black and white imagery in order to indicate more dramatic intensity. However black and white is still very synonymous with film noir and therefore to crime dramas/thrillers, examples of this can be seen in relatively recent crime films such as 2005 film Casino Royale which used black and white throughout the opening sequence in order to be very stylistic and dramatic. Decipher overall utilized black and white imagery within the flashbacks to indicate the past as the character Ryan is reminiscing the events of the previous night, using black and white therefore links with the past with the 1940s indicating that Ryan is delving into his memories and also creates dramatic intensity towards the audience as they will be curious as to what Ryan has done to end up in a prison-type-of environment.

Diegetic sound can be heard in a variety of sequences such as Casino Royale which at first uses simple sounds such as car doors opening and closing, footsteps etc but then once another character (James Bond) is introduced then suddenly the two characters start exchanging dialogue, this is also seen in Sherlock series 1, episode 3 opening sequence as the whole sequence is literally just 2 characters talking about a murder. Therefore Decipher utilized this convention also in order to highlight that they match the typical conventions of crime drama/thriller. This overall allowed the audience to understand that Decipher was a crime drama/thriller by using and following typical conventions of many previous classic crime drama/thriller films. Decipher expanded and utilized all these conventions not only to achieve this but also add dramatic intensity and angst towards the characters and towards their motivations and goals.

There is also titles which followed the typical conventions of the genre, The Dark Knight is notable for using a black background with bold, simple white texts and has the title of the film appear after the opening sequence, Decipher follows this in exactly the same fashion using very similar texts to The Dark Knight in order to conform to the genre more effectively (see BELOW). There is also a use of inter-titles in Decipher, this does not conform to The Dark Knight specifically however it does conform to films such as Lucky Number Slevin which also uses intertitles.

Representation

In Decipher, there are two main types of representation in terms of social groups; the first is the representation of women which follows closely to typical conforms of the genre. In the sequence there is only one woman character shown and she does not have any dialogue or an actual referenced name. This is a similar concept to the woman mentioned in Sherlock who was murdered but never is she seen or called by a name, just discussed amongst 2 men indicating a superiority factor of men over women. Film noir can possibly be argued as a misogynist genre, this is due to many film noir films having women die or become a very ‘damsel in distress’ image in the films, although not necessarily a film noir film, Psycho is a very famous example of a film in which a woman is murdered by a superior male character, there are also films like Swordfish in which a character states “the blonde gets it” in reference to stereotypically idiotic blonde women being killed and not having any emotion towards referencing it. The Departed also utilizes a female character that is in debt to a mafia boss and is taken to a beach and killed by another supposedly superior male character. In Casino Royale is also notable that in the opening sequence there is just male characters featured with no women at all, this indicates how death, politics and governance is essentially ‘mans business’ as though men are the only ones that have the capability of handling issues regarding governmental issues. All of this highlights that typically in crime drama/thrillers women are seen as inferior to a superior and dominant male character. Decipher conforms to this typical representation by having only one female character in the whole sequence, by not giving the woman character any dialogue it emphasized the theory that women are essentially meaningless and irrelevant. The male characters also appear to be fighting over her indicating which could imply the woman character to be like a sexual figure as the detectives motivations are most likely to revolve around his relation with the woman character, this indicates men being superior to women whilst women are also considered sexual objects towards the male characters. This conforms and follows the typical conventions and representation of crime dramas/thrillers in regards to the social group of women.

However it is also notable that there is also another representation of a social group highlighted in Decipher, this was the representation of both the working class and middle class with the working class being represented through Ryan’s character and the middle class through the detectives character. Decipher establishes that Ryan is a working class and the detective as a middle class character in multiple ways; one way is through Ryan’s accent, during Ryan’s dialogue his accent is notably more regional whilst the detectives middle class character has a less regional accent and more of a general English accent, typically the working class are depicted as having very regional accents such as in This is England, a film utilizing very working class characters who all have regional accents, therefore Decipher uses typical conventions of the working class in order to portray Ryan as a typical working class person. Ryan’s character’s mise en scene also shows him to be wearing a grey tracksuit, a trait which is typical imagery in terms of working class ‘chavs’. The detective in contrast wears a very sophisticated and smart suit, this allows the middle class to be seen as far superior to the working class as the middle class are wearing very sophisticated clothing and therefore resembles the middle class as far more sophisticated and subsequently superior, they also appear superior in the sense that the detective is actually the one in control of the situation as he is the interrogator and therefore has clear authority over Ryan. Typically, this is the representation which is conformed in crime dramas/thrillers with the most notable example being Sherlock which highlights the working class as very stupid and guilty criminals, with the criminal in the opening sequence admitting to the fact that he killed her as well as frequently having a vast amount of grammatical errors in his sentences thus showing the working class as idiotic and guilty criminals whilst the middle class (Sherlock) is very sophisticated, intelligent and superior to the working class character. However Decipher appears to follow this typical representation until the end of the sequence in which it is revealed that the working class character is being framed by the middle class character, this subverts the representation by indicating the middle class as the criminals whilst the working class are perceived to be criminals when in actuality they’re just being framed by the middle class.

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

In terms of media institutions, Decipher will be distributed by Warner Bros, the reason for this is because during research we discovered that a large variety of crime drama/thriller films were in fact distributed by Warner Bros, some of these examples included The Departed, Oceans 11, The Dark Knight and Swordfish. This symbolised to us that Decipher should be distributed by Warner Bros due to the fact that Warner Bros are very well known for creating films similar to Decipher in terms of the genre. Decipher will also utilize the use of an independent production company known as DynamiteKitty Studios, the reason Decipher will using an independent production company is because independent companies have been known for producing many films that have the crime drama/thriller genre such as Dead Man’s Shoes which uses Warp Films (a British independent production company) as they did not have a sufficient budget so the financial backing from Warp allowed the film to be made and launched to the public. The logo for DynamiteKitty is also black and white which allowed Decipher to link into the black and white imagery also used in the sequence within the flashbacks and titles. Decipher will also use Secession Studios, this studio will not help distribute the film however it will allow Decipher to work with a media conglomerate to produce music which can be used throughout the film within the background, this may allow Decipher to produce a soundtrack album in the future depending on how financially successful the film becomes. This will allow Decipher to follow in the success of films crime drama/thrillers like The Dark Knight which had a very successful film soundtrack.


3. What would the audience be for your media product?

In our project we used a marketing segmentation in order to determine the audience for Decipher, this involves taking the whole entire market which is split into different segments I.E. age, gender, etc and then the ideal audience is combined together in order to create one target market. Whilst we were researching into the success of our genre we discovered that 2010 was a very successful year for our genre as there was a vast variety of different films that were part of our genre that were located within the top 25 highest grossing films of the year, however in 2011 there were very few, however we considered this was most likely due to the fact that in 2011 there were a large amount of highly anticipated films which were not related to crime drama/thriller most notable Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2, Transformers: Dark of The Moon and Pirates of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides all of which grossed more than $1 billion which is incredibly high. We know that however there is still a market for crime dramas/thrillers due to The Dark Knight, a film released 4 years ago which grossed more than $1 billion also. Also the upcoming sequel, The Dark Knight Rises trailer has amassed over 15,000,000 views on YouTube making it one of the highest anticipated films of all time thus indicating a clear audience for crime dramas/thrillers. We know that the audience will be generally located in the age range of 18-64, the reason for this is because there is clearly a murder within the opening sequence, although the murder is not actually shown there is still violence such as the detective knocking out Ryan which should certify the age limit at 18, therefore children and very young teenagers will not be permitted to see the film because of its clear violence and relatively complicated storyline which young viewers may find it hard to understand. Also male audiences are typically more attracted to crime films as opposed to women; this will be due to the representation that women are normally subjected to in crime dramas/thrillers which will obviously not appeal to females very well as very often they’re treated as second class in comparison to men. Decipher will also target primarily the lower middle class audiences, the reason for this is because the film may be considered too sophisticated and confusing for a stereotypical working or lower class family with the storyline being frequently changing whilst the lower middle and middle class tend to stereotypically prefer more sophisticated films. The only classes which are seen is the middle class and working class in the project, although the working class are overall innocent it will still be following the representation of them all being involved in crime in some way, even though the crime is not actually their fault, this may repel more working class audiences from the film as they may feel as though they’re are being stereotyped as is often the case with This is England, Shameless (TV Series), etc. However the lower middle and middle class may appreciate the film more for being more different and unique in regards to their social class as generally the middle class are seen as the ‘everyday’ men and women while the upper class are incredibly posh and the working class are criminals, the lower middle and middle class may therefore feel as though the film is very unique and different which may attract them more into watching the film.


4. How did you attract/address your audience? 

By following a variety of typical conventions of crime drama/thriller it allowed Decipher to attract their audience by using the typical conventions, as expressed before the conventions of stark lighting, black and white imagery, canted shots and diegetic sound will allow Decipher to appeal to their audicne by highlighting an intriguing but also atmospheric aspect towards the audience. By subverting the representation of social class it will allow Decipher to appear very unique in regards to other crime drama/thriller films as the representation is not typical it will allow the storyline to become more unpredictable which should intrigue and attract the audience as they will be unsure as to how Ryan is going to stop the detective. Also the detective’s character’s legacy and motivation is left completely unclear to the audience which will intrigue the audience as they will want to understand and discover exactly why the detective has done this to Ryan and what he plans to achieve from doing it, and also how will Ryan be able to do anything to stop the detective character as he is clearly in a prison environment so this will make the audience begin to think about why the detective has done this and how Ryan will stop the detective and highlight that he is in fact innocent. By using plot twists such as revealing that the detective is the murderer at the end of the sequence it presents a sophisticated notion towards the audience as the plot and storyline consistently changes resembling that the audience will need to constantly think about the story and what each character is doing at certain points.

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

I have learned a vast array about different technologies from constructing Decipher, the equipment used which did not include props included a steadicam which was created in order to achieve shots such as the revealing of the detective as the killer. This was a shot which panned up from beneath a table and thus revealed the detectives face with his arms around Ryan, the steadicam is a piece of technology which uses weights in specific areas to effectively counter-act the camera shaking vividly whilst its handheld, therefore for the pan up shot to work more effectively the steadicam was implemented to create more affect on the audience with the shot being very smooth as opposed to very shaky which would have happened if the steadicam was not used. The steadicam was made by Katie and her dad and used materials of plastic, wood, screws and gimbal’s (which were used as the weights) in order to make the camera steady when it was handheld. Unfortunately the steadicam was only involved in the interrogation scene due to the fact that the steadicam broke and was not able to use within the flashback as the interrogation scene was filmed approximately a week before the flashback sequence. There was also a tripod, a mechanism which is made to keep the camera steady so that the camera is not always handheld and therefore shaky. The tripod was used throughout the vast majority of the entire sequence, very rarely is a tripod not used, we knew that utilizing this technology was necessary as otherwise the footage would look very shaky and would distract the audience from the story. However we had to learn how to use the tripod effectively such as attaching the camera to the tripod, how to do a smooth pan shot, etc. The smooth pan shot specifically was relatively hard to achieve, this can be seen how we struggled to achieve an effective pan shot by the fact that at one point we used a pan shot in the rough cut of Decipher sequence which was not very effective as the camera stopped a bit too far whilst a character was talking, this meant that we had to change the shot in order to create more of an effect on the audience, thankfully we shot a vast amount footage which allowed us to change the shot very quickly. The editing software used was Adobe After Effects and Adobe Elements on Katie’s laptop. We needed to learn how to use both these software’s in order to make the sequence have more effect. Adobe After Effects was primarily used to create the titles such as “Decipher” and most notably the DynamiteKitty logo whilst Elements was used more to edit the footage together in the sequence. Considering Katie already knew how to use the software it meant that I and Barry used our free periods to learning how to use use the software, I learned about layers used in the software such as having one layer for sound such as music and another for dialogue in order to make the sequence flow better. Whilst editing we also learnt about altering the lighting and contrast of the picture as we changed the contrast of the picture to create a more dramatic, stark lighting effect. During the flashbacks we also slowed down the footage in order to emphasize a dreamlike quality towards them which would resemble Ryan’s thoughts and emotions of the night.

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

The most I feel I have learned is mostly due to the continuity project, although we learned a large amount about technology through the prisoner sequence such as editing software, tripods, etc. I still feel as though the continuity project taught us more in regards to actually producing and creating an effective sequence, the reason for this is because within the continuity project we simply tried to make the project incredibly quickly without caring much for efficiency or proper planning, although we made a script for the continuity task it still did not work as effectively as we’d like it to. We arranged to have a location within our school for the continuity project within mere days and we actually shot the whole sequence in the space of around 40 minutes using few takes and just trying to finish as soon as we could. However later on we discovered that certain shots in the sequence were missing and therefore could not be added to the sequence. This meant the quality in the sequence dramatically decreased by the time it was finished. To prevent this from happening again in Decipher we started to spend a very large amount of time on each shot, not only was each shot directly thought of and anticipated but we also took into account the lighting, the camera angles and so forth, subsequently the quality dramatically increased and we also had a variety of camera angles, I think when the interrogation scene was filmed we highlighted more of these aspects, considering the whole continuity project was finished in around 40 minutes we decided to spend far more time on each angle and actually filmed our all our dialogue in every shot we did almost like having multiple master shots, our main master shot ended up being 30 minutes long which is almost as much as the whole continuity sequence and that was just one shot in the whole sequence. By filming multiple variations of side shots, close ups, long shots it also allowed us to have a greater diversity in the editing stage, the most prominent example is through our rough cut we had a pan shot which did not transfer effectively as originally planned so due to our vast array or camera angles we were able to change the shot very quickly and produced a better effect on the audience. We also took a vast amount of time to review locations as opposed to the continuity sequence which we literally just tried to get any room which was remotely similar to an office. In Decipher multiple locations were considered and analysed on account of their availability, access, relevance to the project and so on. The mise en scene was also an aspect we learnt about to include in Decipher, the continuity project did not have much in terms of mise en scene other than the location, whilst in Decipher every single aspect was included from the location of a tunnel resembling a ‘bathroom tiled’ location similar to the murder scene in Psycho, also the characters clothing such as Ryan’s ‘chav’ clothes and the detectives very smart, sophisticated clothing. This allowed us to create more dramatic intensity and both intrigue and attract the audience more effectively as they will understand the characters social class, emotions, etc purely through their clothes and then the dialogue helps add to the narrative of the sequence, none of this was included in the continuity project which highlighted how we have learnt a vast array of techniques to use due to our unsuccessful continuity sequence.

As referred to in the stark lighting conventions, this is an image taken from The Departed highlighting a villainous antagonist character.

Here is an example of how Decipher used this within its sequence, clearly the stark lighting creates a clear mystical element to the character with his face being left unseen.

Here is an image again referred to in the stark lighting conventions. This is an image taken from Sherlock, in the image is the protagonist character Sherlock who is clearly shown in very bright lighting resembling an heroic, positive atmosphere around him,

Here is an image taken from Decipher, clearly the influence can be seen from Sherlock as the heroic protagonist is highlighted in very brightly lit lighting.

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Here are two images, one of which is the titles in The Dark Knight whilst the other is Decipher's, as referred to in the title conventions they're both very clearly bold, simple black and white texts and thus link with the genre more effectively.