Sunday, 17 February 2013
Q1
In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
After watching many thriller openings, I found there were very strong similarities within them, these conventions are used in every opening hoping to create a tense, thrilling emotion.
The movies I chose to look at were:
Seven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2gsEI34CE
Butterfly Effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8_dgqfPXFg
Shutter Island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iaYLCiq5RM
Quantum of Solace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYC_CBNtiM
These are the main conventions of a thriller; I have chosen to show this through a mindmap:
Within the first few minutes of a thriller, you want to be taken in by the film enough to watch the rest of it; this can be created easily by certain 5 simple factors;
· Titles
· Narrative
· Camera Shots
· Sound
· Mise En Scène
Titles are a huge part of a movie, they can hint at what the movie will be like with different fonts, transitions, titles can show the name of the film and also the name of the people who have worked on it, such as the editor, director and the actors, this will give a hint as to how good the quality of the movie will be, a good example of this is The Terminator, they have done their titles showing people in the film or people working on it in a very computerised style and done the main title in a very robotic, bold font, this mirrors the characteristics of the main character, the terminator.
The Narrative within the first couple of minutes will be what the audience will be most intrigued to see, as that is what will set up the rest of the film and will determine whether people want to carry on watching it, the director needs to be able to meet the needs of the audience, which is excitement, suspense, mystery and action, this is done through the use of different styles of narrative, such as the flashback, showing what has gone on in the past and showing how he/she has got to the point he/she has got to where they are now, or a dual narrative, this allows the director to tell a story with two different perspectives, giving the audience more interaction to see both sides of the story, this can also be done to show contrast between lives and events or similarities.
Camera shots can help present characters and locations within the opening of a thriller, it can also help create mood and emotion, such as close ups, these help the director show the audience something critically important within a scene, or use it to hide what else is going on and focus on one point, creating mystery, reactions shot, these help the audience to see how a character has reacted to a certain event, this helps set the mood, being that the character is sad or happy and a establishing shot, this helps to set up location, giving the audience a feel or surroundings and environment.
Sound is one of the most important factors of a thriller opening, non-diegetic sound can be used, such as dramatic soundtracks to create emotion and feeling, however diegetic sound can be left on from the raw footage, such as screams, doors slamming and heavy breathing, though these can be put on through non-diegetic sound, most films like to keep a natural sound to enhance the suspense and tension.
Mise en scène is a huge aspect you need to look into when making a movie, as it basically means, everything in the shot, so this is everything the camera picks up when filming, this can be used for an advantage if planned properly, allowing you to cut out certain people or props from the view, this can help create mystery or build tension.
In the movie Seven for example, music is played in the background throughout the opening credits of the movie, this music helps set out what the movie will be like, it uses very dramatic, eerie music, along with distant, high pitched screams, the song doesn’t follow a conventional style, as they have used an instrumental, this allows the audience to place all their focus on what is going on, creating the feel that certain sections of the film will be not quite as they seem, or not particularly ‘conventional’.
The titles of this movie are done is a very strange and eerie way, they over lay clips during the opening of the film, the style of the writing is shown to be in a handwriting style, however they are in a very old style and seem to be worn away or scratched at, this use of titles has worked extremely well because the use of the over laying of clips helps keep the suspense high yet not revealing a lot of information, so it is very mysterious as to what he is doing and why he is doing it.
The camera shots within the opening credits of Seven are very unstable and sharp, they consist of mainly close up shots or even extreme close ups, this helps holds the audiences’ focus to what the director wants, enabling them to hide certain aspects from you, such as when the character is writing in his journal, you always see him writing in it in deep lengths, however, you are never able to read anything he has written, you are only given short, sudden cuts of certain words, this creates mystery and leads the audience to feel uncomfortable. As well as the credits being layed over shots they have altered the opacity of some shots, making two shots overlap; this technique is well used here as it helps show the audience that time is going by and adds to the effect that certain things will be hidden from you.
The storyline of the opening credits is left very open to thought, it creates certain idea paths, such as him being a detective, or a killer, or a robber, this is quite unconventional of a thriller, normally, you are given a clip of a certain character or event that the movie will then mainly focus upon, however the director of this movie clearly wanted to keep his storyline very mysterious, this works really well for this movie as you are instantly drawn into the storyline and you want to find out why the person is doing what he is doing.
Conventions are used by directors to simply hook their target audience, however some directors choose to change or subvert conventions when making their thrillers, this can create suspense as the audience will not be expecting what is to come, this can help keep an audience watching. The Butterfly Effect use this option of staying away from conventions by having the antagonist finding his diary and reading through it, the movie then shows how he got there through certain events in his life, this is done through frequent flashbacks as he reads deeper into his diary.
Luc Besson, the director of the 1994 movie Leon stays clear of most conventions of a thriller opening, though you start with a very simple location shot, taking you around the city, it then cuts to extreme close ups of two men talking, however the lighting is extremely dark, the combination of dark lighting and extreme close ups helps mask the identity of both characters, this use of staying away from conventions helps create a very effective mysterious feel, you are also not immediately introduced to the antagonist, like in most movies, which in turn makes it harder to figure out who is the bad guy and the good guy.
For our thriller, we decided to take little sections we like from other movies and incorporate it within our thriller, I feel this has helped us create a very effective, bold thriller for our audience.
We took a major influence for our music from the film Insidious, they used a very old style song within one of their scenes, after watching this movie, this is a very effective way to build tension, as the older music has more of a past and is a lot more deep and eerie than a simple soundtrack, although this isn't very conventional in a thriller, we found it worked extremely well in ours as it linked to our old, war style theme and we found that the contrast between the happy music and the eerie, tense atmosphere enhances the suspense within out thriller opening.
Whilst watching the Shutter Island opening, we found the shot of the old lady extremely disturbing, we found that her face disfigurements, with the cuts on her neck and sunken eyes worked really well, it influenced us to look into more films and try to find more examples where the director has used makeup on a character to make them mutilated or strange, we looked at many films such as The Grudge and The Hills Have Eyes, however found that The Dark Knight rises was the best choice for us, we chose to use the idea of having severe burns on one of our character’s face, which immediately links to the history of our location, as it was burnt down, this is quite conventional of a thriller, using unnatural creatures or body disfigurements to scare the audience, however we wanted to keep our thriller as realistic as possible.
The Butterfly Effect also influenced out thriller opening due to their use of flashbacks and how they effectively created tension and suspense within the film, it also gave the film a large sense of mystery and confusion. We chose to use flashbacks in our thriller, not as a way to see what has previously happened, but as a way to show what is happening elsewhere, we could have just used a simple split screen idea, but we found changing the opacity of the clips and overlaying them in certain areas create a lot more suspense and mystery, though this is very unconventional within a thriller, we felt it helped hold the tension in our thriller and keep it growing, as you are not able to see quite what it is you are being shown, this also mirrors the fact things are very much hidden from you in our thriller.
How we used Conventions:
Our location has a very withered and old feel to it; I believe this is very conventional of a thriller, the building is withered and old, this type of building is usually used because it creates a creepy feel to the movie and lets the audience know that the main storyline will be set around this house and what has happened in it, however it’s not just the building that is conventional, we had our area set around a forest, this is used to create a sense of claustrophobia and leaves you to feel alone.
Jake is set as the protagonist in our thriller, his character is very conventional of a thriller, as he is also an innocent guy, this allows the audience to feel sorry for the character as they see what he is walking in to, he slowly starts to release something strange is happening inside the building. We had Jake dress in casual clothes, consisting of a hoody and jeans, this is to make Jake seem as down to earth as possible, enhancing his innocence.
After watching many thriller openings, I found there were very strong similarities within them, these conventions are used in every opening hoping to create a tense, thrilling emotion.
The movies I chose to look at were:
Seven: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2gsEI34CE
Butterfly Effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8_dgqfPXFg
Shutter Island: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iaYLCiq5RM
Quantum of Solace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYC_CBNtiM
These are the main conventions of a thriller; I have chosen to show this through a mindmap:
· Titles
· Narrative
· Camera Shots
· Sound
· Mise En Scène
Titles are a huge part of a movie, they can hint at what the movie will be like with different fonts, transitions, titles can show the name of the film and also the name of the people who have worked on it, such as the editor, director and the actors, this will give a hint as to how good the quality of the movie will be, a good example of this is The Terminator, they have done their titles showing people in the film or people working on it in a very computerised style and done the main title in a very robotic, bold font, this mirrors the characteristics of the main character, the terminator.
The Narrative within the first couple of minutes will be what the audience will be most intrigued to see, as that is what will set up the rest of the film and will determine whether people want to carry on watching it, the director needs to be able to meet the needs of the audience, which is excitement, suspense, mystery and action, this is done through the use of different styles of narrative, such as the flashback, showing what has gone on in the past and showing how he/she has got to the point he/she has got to where they are now, or a dual narrative, this allows the director to tell a story with two different perspectives, giving the audience more interaction to see both sides of the story, this can also be done to show contrast between lives and events or similarities.
Camera shots can help present characters and locations within the opening of a thriller, it can also help create mood and emotion, such as close ups, these help the director show the audience something critically important within a scene, or use it to hide what else is going on and focus on one point, creating mystery, reactions shot, these help the audience to see how a character has reacted to a certain event, this helps set the mood, being that the character is sad or happy and a establishing shot, this helps to set up location, giving the audience a feel or surroundings and environment.
Sound is one of the most important factors of a thriller opening, non-diegetic sound can be used, such as dramatic soundtracks to create emotion and feeling, however diegetic sound can be left on from the raw footage, such as screams, doors slamming and heavy breathing, though these can be put on through non-diegetic sound, most films like to keep a natural sound to enhance the suspense and tension.
Mise en scène is a huge aspect you need to look into when making a movie, as it basically means, everything in the shot, so this is everything the camera picks up when filming, this can be used for an advantage if planned properly, allowing you to cut out certain people or props from the view, this can help create mystery or build tension.
In the movie Seven for example, music is played in the background throughout the opening credits of the movie, this music helps set out what the movie will be like, it uses very dramatic, eerie music, along with distant, high pitched screams, the song doesn’t follow a conventional style, as they have used an instrumental, this allows the audience to place all their focus on what is going on, creating the feel that certain sections of the film will be not quite as they seem, or not particularly ‘conventional’.
The camera shots within the opening credits of Seven are very unstable and sharp, they consist of mainly close up shots or even extreme close ups, this helps holds the audiences’ focus to what the director wants, enabling them to hide certain aspects from you, such as when the character is writing in his journal, you always see him writing in it in deep lengths, however, you are never able to read anything he has written, you are only given short, sudden cuts of certain words, this creates mystery and leads the audience to feel uncomfortable. As well as the credits being layed over shots they have altered the opacity of some shots, making two shots overlap; this technique is well used here as it helps show the audience that time is going by and adds to the effect that certain things will be hidden from you.
The storyline of the opening credits is left very open to thought, it creates certain idea paths, such as him being a detective, or a killer, or a robber, this is quite unconventional of a thriller, normally, you are given a clip of a certain character or event that the movie will then mainly focus upon, however the director of this movie clearly wanted to keep his storyline very mysterious, this works really well for this movie as you are instantly drawn into the storyline and you want to find out why the person is doing what he is doing.
Conventions
of a thriller opening:
Luc Besson, the director of the 1994 movie Leon stays clear of most conventions of a thriller opening, though you start with a very simple location shot, taking you around the city, it then cuts to extreme close ups of two men talking, however the lighting is extremely dark, the combination of dark lighting and extreme close ups helps mask the identity of both characters, this use of staying away from conventions helps create a very effective mysterious feel, you are also not immediately introduced to the antagonist, like in most movies, which in turn makes it harder to figure out who is the bad guy and the good guy.
For our thriller, we decided to take little sections we like from other movies and incorporate it within our thriller, I feel this has helped us create a very effective, bold thriller for our audience.
We took a major influence for our music from the film Insidious, they used a very old style song within one of their scenes, after watching this movie, this is a very effective way to build tension, as the older music has more of a past and is a lot more deep and eerie than a simple soundtrack, although this isn't very conventional in a thriller, we found it worked extremely well in ours as it linked to our old, war style theme and we found that the contrast between the happy music and the eerie, tense atmosphere enhances the suspense within out thriller opening.
The Butterfly Effect also influenced out thriller opening due to their use of flashbacks and how they effectively created tension and suspense within the film, it also gave the film a large sense of mystery and confusion. We chose to use flashbacks in our thriller, not as a way to see what has previously happened, but as a way to show what is happening elsewhere, we could have just used a simple split screen idea, but we found changing the opacity of the clips and overlaying them in certain areas create a lot more suspense and mystery, though this is very unconventional within a thriller, we felt it helped hold the tension in our thriller and keep it growing, as you are not able to see quite what it is you are being shown, this also mirrors the fact things are very much hidden from you in our thriller.
How we used Conventions:
Our location has a very withered and old feel to it; I believe this is very conventional of a thriller, the building is withered and old, this type of building is usually used because it creates a creepy feel to the movie and lets the audience know that the main storyline will be set around this house and what has happened in it, however it’s not just the building that is conventional, we had our area set around a forest, this is used to create a sense of claustrophobia and leaves you to feel alone.
For our props we used a record player, this was used in our production as the thing Kieran uses to play the music off, this also mirrors the fact we chose to have very old style music, this is very unconventional, usually directors have set their movie to have new equipment for props, such as using a radio to play the music for an example, this will be to relate their audience to their movie, however, I feel our use of straying from conventions has really linked with our movie and made it very effective.
Our titles are very unconventional of a thriller, usually they are set to give a feel of the movie to the audience, such as titles with blood dripping down or creepy music playing behind them, however, we have chose to go for more of a bold approach with our titles, we just to have each line of the hashtag (#) to have a thud type sound and then have the lettering of the rest of the title and our names to come in very promptly afterwards, although this is unconventional, i feel we have created a bold and unique title sequence.
Q2 (Directors Cut Speech)
How
does your media product represent particular social groups?
We are going to be putting the following script over different scenes from our production:
In our thriller we wanted to have a young actor, this helps to portray the innocence of the character whilst he searches through the old building to find the mysterious music.
We wanted to have our character in casual clothes. I feel this casual style helps to enhance the tension of the location by contrasting the calm look of the character and the old, destroyed look of the building. We also chose to have this type of clothing so it can relate as much as possible to our younger audience, as it is simply clothes that they would wear out and about, such as the hoody and jeans.
Because we have chosen Batman as our main inspiration, we chose to compare Jake with Detective John Blake, one of the reasons for this is their adventurous nature, the way Jake investigates the building is much like how the detective investigates the areas he is sent to, he also looks extremely like him, with the black hair and young face.
However, a simple difference is the costumes, the detective is dressed relatively smart, though this is a smart look, it wouldn’t have suited our production.
As you can see from the photos provided the main influence we have taken from The Dark Knight is Two Face’s makeup. I feel that the makeup turned out very well and gave the production an overall professional feel. The aim was to have Kieran looking as old as we could make him, we did his by getting him to grow a slight beard, we did this because the idea was that he had been abandoned in a fire by his farther many years ago. This is where he gained his facial burns and is now mentally challenged / scared.
In The Dark Knight, Two Face (Harvey Dent) is a good guy that unfortunately has half his face burnt off. He is a police offer that is trying to do the right thing. This is a slight comparison as in our production you have no reason to believe that Kieran is a bad character, until the very end of the production when he kills Jake.
A effective comparison is costume, because Havery Dent in the mayor or Gotham City, he is always seen in very smart clothing, such as a suit or just a smart shirt and as you can see from the photo, Kieran is wearing a smart, white shirt, this also links with our war theme as it was part of their costume, but the use of the white shirt also helps to contrast the purity of white compared to his burns and the blood from his wounds.
Kieran is represented in our thriller as a character with physical disturbances, this is displayed within the shots of him rocking back and forth in the chair, this simple motion creates a very disturbing essence around his character, leading him to be seen as the antagonist within the opening, we had to use ideas such as the burns and the rocking as we didn’t want to have any dialogue, this could have left people confused otherwise.
In the batman movie you see how Harvey Dent gains his injury; we decided that it would be better and more dramatic if there was no clear reason for the burns. Also in the batman movie Harvey Dent is in hospital, he is In the correct hands and being taken care of, whereas In our movie the intention is that Kieran still hasn’t left the house that was burnt down. He does not care and may not feel the pain. This could be because of the dramatic experiences that he has been through. As Kieran stands up behind Jake he also shows no emotion in what he is about to do, this could suggest that he just doesn’t feel anything anymore. This could be due to the dramatic experiences he went through as a younger person.
We are going to be putting the following script over different scenes from our production:
In our thriller we wanted to have a young actor, this helps to portray the innocence of the character whilst he searches through the old building to find the mysterious music.
We wanted to have our character in casual clothes. I feel this casual style helps to enhance the tension of the location by contrasting the calm look of the character and the old, destroyed look of the building. We also chose to have this type of clothing so it can relate as much as possible to our younger audience, as it is simply clothes that they would wear out and about, such as the hoody and jeans.
Because we have chosen Batman as our main inspiration, we chose to compare Jake with Detective John Blake, one of the reasons for this is their adventurous nature, the way Jake investigates the building is much like how the detective investigates the areas he is sent to, he also looks extremely like him, with the black hair and young face.
However, a simple difference is the costumes, the detective is dressed relatively smart, though this is a smart look, it wouldn’t have suited our production.
As you can see from the photos provided the main influence we have taken from The Dark Knight is Two Face’s makeup. I feel that the makeup turned out very well and gave the production an overall professional feel. The aim was to have Kieran looking as old as we could make him, we did his by getting him to grow a slight beard, we did this because the idea was that he had been abandoned in a fire by his farther many years ago. This is where he gained his facial burns and is now mentally challenged / scared.
In The Dark Knight, Two Face (Harvey Dent) is a good guy that unfortunately has half his face burnt off. He is a police offer that is trying to do the right thing. This is a slight comparison as in our production you have no reason to believe that Kieran is a bad character, until the very end of the production when he kills Jake.
Kieran is represented in our thriller as a character with physical disturbances, this is displayed within the shots of him rocking back and forth in the chair, this simple motion creates a very disturbing essence around his character, leading him to be seen as the antagonist within the opening, we had to use ideas such as the burns and the rocking as we didn’t want to have any dialogue, this could have left people confused otherwise.
In the batman movie you see how Harvey Dent gains his injury; we decided that it would be better and more dramatic if there was no clear reason for the burns. Also in the batman movie Harvey Dent is in hospital, he is In the correct hands and being taken care of, whereas In our movie the intention is that Kieran still hasn’t left the house that was burnt down. He does not care and may not feel the pain. This could be because of the dramatic experiences that he has been through. As Kieran stands up behind Jake he also shows no emotion in what he is about to do, this could suggest that he just doesn’t feel anything anymore. This could be due to the dramatic experiences he went through as a younger person.
Q3
What
kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I have picked Paramount Pictures to distribute my media product because I feel they are the most successful and knowledgeable film distributors of all time, its current 101 years in the film industry can’t go unnoticed.
In its long years in the film industry, it has created a very world famous name for itself; this is by having such a large range of film distribution, such as:
· Mission: Impossible ll
· Zoolander: Tom Raider
· Jackass: The Movie
· How to lose a guy in 10 days
· Ironman
· Watchmen
· Paranormal Activity
After working with hundreds of famous directors and successful thrillers, such as The Watchmen, Iron Man and Paranormal Activity 3, they can give us pointers and ideas that would perfect our thriller and will be thoroughly knowledgeable on the best ways to distribute and target the audience we will be aiming for with our thriller.
Paramount has an extremely large income, with a revenue of around $1.2 billion in 2011, this means they will fund all new and upcoming movies, and see them from the release date and much further. This money can also help the company to publicise the film, through television, the internet, billboards and the newspaper to help boost its popularity and attract its target audience.
Because Paramount Pictures is based in Hollywood, which is a very film orientated city, it means most films released will get watched by an audience of some kind and it means our film will get globally distributed.
In our production we chose to have our company name as ‘#ashtag productions’, this was a group choice, it initially started as just ‘Hashtag Productions’, however we wanted to make it more professional so in our thriller we chose to make the H a #, this turned out very well with each line appearing separately. We chose this name because the hash tag is used on Twitter as something important or topical, so we are saying that our production is something people need to be aware of.
A production company helps to create the film; they assist in the budgeting, scheduling, scripting, casting and more. The company usually looks over the film from start to finish. They are responsible for finding a director and the majority of the actors that will work well within the film. However they are also responsible if anything was to go wrong on the film, for example an actor being injured or property being lost or damaged.
A production company helps to create the film; they assist in the budgeting, scheduling, scripting, casting and more. The company usually looks over the film from start to finish. They are responsible for finding a director and the majority of the actors that will work well within the film. However they are also responsible if anything was to go wrong on the film, for example an actor being injured or property being lost or damaged.
I have picked Paramount Pictures to distribute my media product because I feel they are the most successful and knowledgeable film distributors of all time, its current 101 years in the film industry can’t go unnoticed.
In its long years in the film industry, it has created a very world famous name for itself; this is by having such a large range of film distribution, such as:
· Mission: Impossible ll
· Zoolander: Tom Raider
· Jackass: The Movie
· How to lose a guy in 10 days
· Ironman
· Watchmen
· Paranormal Activity
After working with hundreds of famous directors and successful thrillers, such as The Watchmen, Iron Man and Paranormal Activity 3, they can give us pointers and ideas that would perfect our thriller and will be thoroughly knowledgeable on the best ways to distribute and target the audience we will be aiming for with our thriller.
Paramount has an extremely large income, with a revenue of around $1.2 billion in 2011, this means they will fund all new and upcoming movies, and see them from the release date and much further. This money can also help the company to publicise the film, through television, the internet, billboards and the newspaper to help boost its popularity and attract its target audience.
Because Paramount Pictures is based in Hollywood, which is a very film orientated city, it means most films released will get watched by an audience of some kind and it means our film will get globally distributed.
Q4
Who
would be the audience for your media product?
We chose to create a questionnaire to research our audience’s expectations of a thriller film, we asked them their age, so we knew what kind of age range we were going to pick for our film, furthermore we asked them what things they typically look for in a thriller movie, this helped us to pick what kind of opening we were going to have, for example, action, mystery, psychological.
Once we had collected all our research from our questionnaires, we had found that a lot more people enjoyed psychological thrillers; we also decided that our film was going to be aimed at people of the age of 15 or over, it seemed to be the most realistic classification for our opening, in this type of classification:
· Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse.
· Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.
· Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) can be allowed provided the detail of such is low so that it cannot create too much of an impression of the viewer. Abuse of weapons which are easily obtained will not be tolerated.
· Nudity in a sexual content must be restricted however nudity in a non-sexual content does not.
· Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury.
· As long as the film is appropriate for 15 year olds, no certain themes are prohibited.
We chose this age classification because most people aged 15 up to 17 and even 18+ enjoy thrillers and so this classification will be well suited to them, we also feel it is suited to both genders, this means we have a very large audience range to be able to watch our thriller.
The BBFC rating did affect our target audience; this is due to the guidelines for the age limits, we had to consider what the rest of the film would include after our opening, consisting death/murder and whether it would have any offensive language further into the film, this could potentially push it to an 18, which would lower the amount of people who are able to see the thriller.
With our thriller we haven’t tried to target one specific audience, we want everyone above the age restriction to be able to watch it and enjoy it, so our main demographic for our film is a male or female, over the age of 15 of any ethnic background that enjoy thriller films, people who probably enjoy watching programs such as Silent Witness or Ripper Street, programmes about murder in areas they have probably heard of so they can feel more suspense and feel more related to the program.
Once we had collected all our research from our questionnaires, we had found that a lot more people enjoyed psychological thrillers; we also decided that our film was going to be aimed at people of the age of 15 or over, it seemed to be the most realistic classification for our opening, in this type of classification:
· Drug taking may be shown but the film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug misuse.
· Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic or sexualised.
· Dangerous behaviour (for example, hanging, suicide and self-harming) can be allowed provided the detail of such is low so that it cannot create too much of an impression of the viewer. Abuse of weapons which are easily obtained will not be tolerated.
· Nudity in a sexual content must be restricted however nudity in a non-sexual content does not.
· Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury.
· As long as the film is appropriate for 15 year olds, no certain themes are prohibited.
We chose this age classification because most people aged 15 up to 17 and even 18+ enjoy thrillers and so this classification will be well suited to them, we also feel it is suited to both genders, this means we have a very large audience range to be able to watch our thriller.
Q5
How
did you attract/address your audience?
Throughout our thriller opening, we have tried to incorporate effective clips, sound and editing to firstly attract our audience, and then create the right sort of effect and emotion to hold the audience’s interest, these are handful of shots I believe help show how we have done this.
This is one of our opening shots, we have found from watching other movies that having the first main shot as an establishing shot, which we have done here using a long shot, lets the audience have an instant feel of where they are and what kind of surroundings the film is set. This shot helps show how the building is very secluded from anyone else; this gives an eerie feel as of isolation. The way we have captured the house in the centre of the shot helps show how we want this to be the main focus, it is also portrayed as the main focus as the scenery is very green and living, however the house is a very old and tainted colour, also having the dark within the windows helps allow the building to look more deserted, I think the location is conventional of a thriller, as it’s an old building surrounded by woods.
This is a shot I am really happy with, within the shot you simply see the antagonist walking towards the old building, the shot was done as a low angle shot, looking up towards the building, even though the character is walking, the building is still shown to be the main focus, this is an interesting shot as the storyline up to here seems to be focused more towards the building rather than the antagonist, the use of having it lower also makes the building seem a lot bigger than the character walking towards it, giving it that sense of power and authority.
This shot, I feel, helps cut up the scene of the antagonist walking into the building, this helps hold the audience’s attention, the shot of the barbed wire shows how the character really shouldn't be going into this building and it foreshadows the danger that will come from him going inside. The sudden cut from a long shot to a close up could also startle the audience; we wanted sharp, straight cuts between shots to hold the tension within our thriller. The use of straight cuts also helps to keep everything in time, instead of a fade, which could seem as if a certain amount of time has passed between the two shots, this way makes everything seem more real.
I feel this shot is very effective, throughout our production we wanted to use more natural, darker lighting to portray a scary feel to the house and this shot is the best to show it, we chose that we wanted to have the outside of the house well lit and visible, however, then contrast that with the darkness inside the house, this create the feel that the house is withered and old, even dead, the use of the contrast also enhances this effect to work really well through our whole production.
We have also used this graffiti to our advantage, the secondary contrast of the gloomy essence of the building with the words ‘This is my happy place’ works extremely well and gives off an eerie feel, we then wanted to increase this effect by adding linked music over the top, we chose ‘Daddy, Daddy’ by Tiny Tim, this very much sounds like a child is singing this song, mirroring the idea of our plot of a boy being stuck within the fire and also mirroring the child style design of the graffiti, from the drawing of the sun in the top of the shot, from our audience research we found people enjoyed psychological thrillers that make you think, I feel this shot helps us show how we have taken this on board and made our thriller more than meets the eye, in turn, making it more enjoyable for our target audience.
This is one of the corridor shots; we wanted to add these types of shots in to give the audience a feel of the scale of the building and how much destruction it has faced from the fire, it also helps to hold the tension as you wonder why he is there and what he is walking towards, however when we watched over these we found them to be a bit long, so we decided to cut them up, we liked the idea of a flashback, but instead of having it to the past, we wanted to just show what the antagonist was walking towards, giving the audience a hint at what is to come. As we have overlayed the clips you are not fully able to see the other clips above it, this has worked effectively at increasing the tension, as you have glimpses of what he will find, however he is completely unaware, I feel this helps to bring the audience into the thriller more and make it more effective.
For this shot, we chose to use a close up, point of view shot, I feel this shot helps the audience feel more part of the movie, the use of the close up on the killers face really emphasises the shock effect we have, we have also made it so when you see the killer rocking back and forth, you only see the normal side of his face, however, when the antagonist turns off the music, you are suddenly able to see the burnt side of his face, I feel this was a really effective technique and was a very good way of hiding what was to come from the audience, holding a large amount of tension as it increases rapidly after the music is turned off and there is a second of complete silence.
This is also a good example of how we have used the rule of thirds to catch the audience’s attention, here, the top right focus is on the eye, how it is extreme wide, as if the character is angry, or demented, the bottom right however is on the face adornments, the burns in the characters skin, the other two points show how we have used depth of field to have the character in focus, whilst the background is completely out of focus, bringing all the audience’s focus towards the character.
This is our final shot; I feel this helps to explain the story of the thriller and the reveal the past entwined with it, we have again, added an overlay of two shots, this works well at you see the first establishing shot again, but this time, moving away from the house, as if, mirroring how the life has been taken away from the antagonist by the house, also the shot of the blood dripping on the photo of the father and the son, the son being the boy being the killer inside the house, the dripping blood hints at the fact the one of the characters was killed, however, you are not able see who this was, this cliff hanger type ending creates a second peak of tension, one that the audience will not expect, making the thriller more exciting to watch.
The long shot of the building as you get further away contrasts with the close up of the dad holding his son to have an effective last shot and also shows how the picture is within the house itself, we have added non-diegetic sound of droplets of water, this helps emphasise the blood being dripped onto the photo, we also merge in a demonic laugh, one that hints that they have took pleasure from killing the victim.
Throughout our thriller opening, we have tried to incorporate effective clips, sound and editing to firstly attract our audience, and then create the right sort of effect and emotion to hold the audience’s interest, these are handful of shots I believe help show how we have done this.
This is one of the corridor shots; we wanted to add these types of shots in to give the audience a feel of the scale of the building and how much destruction it has faced from the fire, it also helps to hold the tension as you wonder why he is there and what he is walking towards, however when we watched over these we found them to be a bit long, so we decided to cut them up, we liked the idea of a flashback, but instead of having it to the past, we wanted to just show what the antagonist was walking towards, giving the audience a hint at what is to come. As we have overlayed the clips you are not fully able to see the other clips above it, this has worked effectively at increasing the tension, as you have glimpses of what he will find, however he is completely unaware, I feel this helps to bring the audience into the thriller more and make it more effective.
This is also a good example of how we have used the rule of thirds to catch the audience’s attention, here, the top right focus is on the eye, how it is extreme wide, as if the character is angry, or demented, the bottom right however is on the face adornments, the burns in the characters skin, the other two points show how we have used depth of field to have the character in focus, whilst the background is completely out of focus, bringing all the audience’s focus towards the character.
This is our final shot; I feel this helps to explain the story of the thriller and the reveal the past entwined with it, we have again, added an overlay of two shots, this works well at you see the first establishing shot again, but this time, moving away from the house, as if, mirroring how the life has been taken away from the antagonist by the house, also the shot of the blood dripping on the photo of the father and the son, the son being the boy being the killer inside the house, the dripping blood hints at the fact the one of the characters was killed, however, you are not able see who this was, this cliff hanger type ending creates a second peak of tension, one that the audience will not expect, making the thriller more exciting to watch.
The long shot of the building as you get further away contrasts with the close up of the dad holding his son to have an effective last shot and also shows how the picture is within the house itself, we have added non-diegetic sound of droplets of water, this helps emphasise the blood being dripped onto the photo, we also merge in a demonic laugh, one that hints that they have took pleasure from killing the victim.
Q6
What
have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this
product?
Throughout the whole time we have spent filming and editing, I have learnt so many little techniques that, when used correctly can really make your production stand out from others and make it look very professional.
I first learnt the simple technique of using a tripod, these allow you to have very steady, still shots, whilst you are still able to move the camera. I also found instead of moving with the camera in your hand, having it on the tripod and holding that creates an extremely steady moving shot, this technique is used a lot within our production. We also used a Glidecam, which allows you to run with the camera or track a moving person whilst still keeping the camera still, so we used this to create our tracking shots of Jake, following his movement around the house, however, mainly to follow him down the corridors.
Whilst shooting we used the Canon 550D’s standard 18-55mm kit lens, although this is quite a basic lens, we found it the most useful, we were able to get nice effective close ups and also get effective long shots, we found this was the best choice for us and allowed us to carry less because we were only using one type of lens.
I found that you should keep your lighting consistent within your film, this is to simply stop any confusion, also, the more well lit your production, the easier it will be to see people and see anything you want the audience to notice, this could be anything from a picture on the wall or a cut on the actors face, we used small lights, such as a handheld torch for some shots, this allowed us to pinpoint what we wanted to show.
Before I started filming, I looked into how important the composition of a shot is, I found out about the ‘Rule of Thirds’ this rule divides the frame into a 3 by 3 grid, and instead of having your main focus dead in the centre, you have the main subject on the points where the lines intersect.
Editing:
Though we haven’t used a lot of transitions in our actual production, this was because we wanted to use straight cuts, we felt it held the tension more and added more pace, rather than using fades between shots, however when we came to using transitions within our titles, we found them quite complicated to do at first, but after giving it a few tries, we were able to make out titles fade in and out, this helps them look a lot more smooth and professional.
In Final Cut Pro, you are able to layer sound clips up, we used this throughout our whole production, because we did not want just one soundtrack throughout, we wanted to add multiple sounds playing over the top of one another to help add some confusion, but most of all, it adds depth to our production, though this could have just made our production sound like we have just chucked sounds onto it, we have placed them in ways that sound the most effective, this took a lot of time, but I think it has gave our production a professional edge.
Blogger:
I learnt how to use Blogger effectively to put up all my planning and research, this helped me a lot because i could easily go back and look at all the work I had done to make sure I was following my planning when setting up and creating my thriller opening.
Youtube & Facebook:
After publishing our thriller opening onto youtube, we then uploaded it to Facebook, we learnt from friends and family what worked well and what didn’t, this useful feedback and constructive criticism will then go on to help us in our evaluation.
Final Cut Pro X:
I quickly understood the basics and developed my knowledge with the program over time, ending in me being able to produce a professional thriller opening.
iDVD:
I was able to learn how to add finishing features to the thriller opening such as a theme linked title screen.
Throughout the whole time we have spent filming and editing, I have learnt so many little techniques that, when used correctly can really make your production stand out from others and make it look very professional.
Shooting:
In our production, we learnt that we could use manual focus to our advantage, we found that we could use it to hide unwanted information, this helped us when we had both characters in the shot, we manually kept the focus on Jake, keeping the identity of the other character hidden, holding the suspense effectively.
Whilst I was filming, I found each type of shot had a different purpose, such as close ups are used to show a certain piece of information, such as a light switch being turned on or an emotion on someone’s face, and long shots are used to either show location or to get across the size of an area, or a building.
Editing:
For our production, we used Final Cut Pro X, this is a great video editing program and was a huge step up from iMovie. Because I had never used this before, I found it quite hard to get the hang of, but I watched many tutorials on YouTube and found that helped me get the confidence to try things and learn about it all a lot faster.
After putting all our production onto Final Cut Pro X and sorting it into the places we wanted it to go, we found it was a bit plain and some sections just needed something to give them a boost. We found that colour correction helped us change our basic clips to feel a lot more tense and eerie, we were able to alter the contrast of the colours and make them more intense, this helped make each colour picked up on the camera more punchy to the viewer, we also darkened the shadows, allowing shots such as the corridor shot to be darker than we had already filmed them in, adding to the tension, though this took a lot of playing with, it worked extremely well and also it’s something we knew that you couldn't do as well on iMovie, giving us the edge.
When watching through some of our opening, I found that some of the corridor shots were quite boring and simple, we were debating interlinking shots within the walking to make it more interesting, but we thought it would be very effective if we could overlay two shots. I have previously worked with changing the opacity of photos on Photoshop, after changing the opacity of the two shots and layering them, they were, as we thought, very effective. 
Blogger:
I learnt how to use Blogger effectively to put up all my planning and research, this helped me a lot because i could easily go back and look at all the work I had done to make sure I was following my planning when setting up and creating my thriller opening.
After publishing our thriller opening onto youtube, we then uploaded it to Facebook, we learnt from friends and family what worked well and what didn’t, this useful feedback and constructive criticism will then go on to help us in our evaluation.
We used HD cameras to film our production with, and because of the HD quality, we had to work out different lighting and composition to get as much out of the quality of the camera as possible. We also used cameras with manual focus, which allowed us to get the atmospheric shots where the focus changes, along with getting incredible detail on the close up shots.
Final Cut Pro X:
I quickly understood the basics and developed my knowledge with the program over time, ending in me being able to produce a professional thriller opening.
I was able to learn how to add finishing features to the thriller opening such as a theme linked title screen.
Q7
I also feel we were a bit too eager to create our preliminary and rushed our planning for it, only going off a quick storyboard, however with this task, we planned the location a long time in advance and visited it to get location photos and pick the rooms we were use and the route we were going to take with the camera to get to it, these were planned with the ideas of getting the most thrilling scenery whilst having the safest route, this, and the use of storyboards and shot lists helped us plan the shots we were going to use and also helped us to keep continuity.
For our preliminary, we used very simple shots using the tripod, mainly consisting of still shots; however we found that when we created a shot of walking with the tripod it created a nice tracking shot, however, it wasn’t as smooth as we wanted it.
For our thriller opening we were able to get hold of a Glidecam, this allowed us to be a lot more free to move the camera around using a tracking shot and increase or decrease the pace of the movement and angle of the shot without having any bounce of footsteps, this has lead our production to have a very professional, smooth feel to our shots we have used.
I think one of the main strengths we have to our thriller is the way we have weaved our clips to relate to the music, such as the scene in our thriller when Jake is walking to the door, the music is loud and tense leading up to him grabbing the door, however, the music then suddenly cuts down for our shot of him opening the door, this false tension we have used really holds the tension throughout our production, instead of it simply being in one place and having a large amount of tension very quickly.Overall I strongly believe we have created a very effective and professional thriller opening, we have shown a confident use of shots and a creative flare with our editing, also where we have come into trouble, we have put in hard work to figure out how we can alter this to make it as good as possible, this attention to detail has, I feel, helped our production pushed through the boundaries set for us.
Try Out Shots
Our first try out shot was Jake starting to walk down the corridor, past the graffiti, though this is a well placed shot, having Jake walk past the lettering, however, we felt we wanted a more dramatic shot, so we chose to film him walking past the graffiti, as he did before, however, in the corner of the shot, have glass, from the broken window, this indicates the danger within the house.
Our second try out shot was of Kieran rocking back and forth whilst the camera panned up towards his face, this was an effective shot, however, we wanted to go off our storyline and not reveal the burns on the characters face until right at the end, so this shot would not have worked at holding the tension as it would have gave away the facial injuries.
The third try out shot consisted of Jake walking into the room and turning off the record player and then Kieran standing up, this shot didn't work as Jake was too central in the shot, stopping you from seeing Kieran stand up behind him, we then filmed this a few times to get it perfect.
The last try out shot was a point of view shot of Jake turning off the record player, this is an effective shot because the audience is then allowed to become part of the thriller, however, as you can here from the audio of this shot, we realised straight away that Kieran had to be much close to Jake to create a startling effect when played back as he will then be right up at the camera.
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