Completed thriller opening

Media thriller opening evaluation - Ryan

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge and forms convention of a real media product? 

Our media product uses a popular convention of thrillers - an enigma, a puzzle or challenge which must be solved by our protagonist, in our case our protagonist 'Alex' is challenged by a mysterious figure, who isn't shown in our opening to raise the audience's suspense and ask questions which wouldn't be answered until much later in the piece. The opening of our thriller also challenges the conventions of fast paced action by using slow and mundane sequences to gain a more realistic and believable reaction from the audience by placing the viewers in Alex's shoes, thus asking how the audience would react to the goings-on in Alex's home and work place. Using a domestic and workplace setting rather than our protagonist being a member of the police force or the FBI, Alex is an average 'normal' human being, just like our audience we use this to connect with our audience, and bring more realistic actions. By watching popular thrillers such as Se7en, Fight Club and Inception to gain a deeper knowledge of thrillers and what their audience's expect when viewing. What the majority of the fans expect from good thrillers are two things; suspense and intriguing questions, one of the reasons Fight Club is so popular is the questions raised about society and the lives we live. Our opening sequence asks questions early on which would continue throughout the entire product, including 'How safe are we in our own homes?' challenging the audience's opinions.

'The art of the title' 9 frame sequence

1. The title is the actor's name over the main character (whose name is also Alex), a convention of thriller's is to use creative titling and focus on keeping the action going by simply placing the titles over the action, as you can see this continues throughout the entire opening, using the same font and style.
2. Another example of titling - this time giving the location of Alex's work, Gatwick Airport, and the time of day in which the sequence is. This Continues in .4
3. The title 'Home' is in quotation marks to show this could be anyone's home (although the character lives here) and this challenges the viewer's perception of safety in later events of the Home sequence
4. The titling from 2. is used again here, using the same font for consistency, which the time and location mentioned again, including the date, which is vital.
5. This shot is part for the first half of the opening, where Alex arrives at work, this shot uses the banister of the stairs to black some of the frame and details, this shot is a part of a larger walking sequence.
6. Is again a shot blocking the frame - this time using Alex to block off the frame and you see a figure in the background slowly creep through the darkness, creating a sense of atmosphere and suspense.
7. Here is the title of the piece cleverly worked into the action, with the titles fading over the mirror revealing the title '12 days' (.9), this is used in many thriller's where the title is a phrase or action in the film, for example Inception.
8. This is one of many repetitive shots of the phone showing missed calls and messages that Alex receives during his daily routine - The suspense and questions raised by this are used to intrigue the audience and complements the conventions of a thriller.
9. This is the title of the piece - shown in the same font and style as the others - this time in red to match the lipstick used by the mysterious figure.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

With positive connotation's concerning social groups, but with only one character being shown, a middle class worker, a representation of the audiences which would watch our piece with Alex (the character) being 20-24 years old this is the perfect way to capture our audience - to use someone from their age group as the protagonist. This also challenges a major convention of thrillers - the protagonist is usually a police officer or an government agent of some kind. With the idea of our piece to never show the antagonist with the idea that no-one could be offended by our choices of actor for the character, but all the audience does know is that the antagonist is a female - the lipstick on the mirror is a large hint and one of the only hints in the entire sequence.

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

Our product would be certified 12A this way we can still have adult themes but we keep our piece open for younger audiences to enjoy as well. Our piece would be played at the Duke of York cinema and also played on Youtube and Facebook - with our audience preferring to watch films and television digitally rather than physically viewing the piece at the cinema. With costs of putting a film through a cinema being taken away from the equation we could save a large amount of money and use more to advertise the digital copies of our piece. Our film would be shown all week with two showings on the weekends to increase the chance of our audience being able to see the film.  

Who would be the audience for your media product and why?

Our target audience would be 16-30 year-olds with these being the most loyal fans, buying merch' and supporting the product, with our target audience also preferring online distribution this gives us the prefect marketing tool, they would advertise for us.

How did you attract or address your audience?

We attracted our audience by using a younger protagonist and by using digital distribution to attract younger audiences. With the 16-30 age range being more technological orientated and more likely to prefer digital distribution. On top of using digital distribution to our advantage having the action taking place in a domestic setting, with most of the audience either living with parents or alone, this scares the audience and gives them a thriller a normal thriller setting wouldn't, with much of the audience looking for a thrill.

What have you learned about technology from the precess of constructing this product?

With our preliminary task we used iMovie, which was a mistake, with Final Cut being a industry standard, we decided to use that. With me taking the reins when editing our final piece, I found at first that using Final Cut was harder but nearer the end I found the program easier to use, have more advance features and made editing and titling a lot easier. Also using a blog for the first time was a new experience for me and my group this made it harder to adapt to 'blog' everything we did, from editing progress to problems on set. We also learnt to save our work regularly otherwise you can lose anything from a single edit or an entire lessons work.

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

In our final product we realised one of our fatal errors in our preliminary tasks is that we used members of our groups as actors instead of going outside of our group and using someone with some acting skills, rather than next to none. Another problem with our preliminary piece is that we left everything to the last minute - and to be honest, we did leave a lot of our final task to the last minute, this was mainly due to lack of communication and organisation between members of our group, we also had a member of our group leave college permanently so this really disrupted our group's motivation. We also learnt how to use advance editing which helped a lot when trying to make our product look more professional and give it a higher production value. By learning the different types of camera shots and angles - this improved the creativity and diversity of our camera shots and framing.

'Art of the title' 9 frame sequence comparing our preliminary and our final piece

  

(from left to right)

1. This is an obstructive shot, showing only the protagonist's feet and legs walking up the stairs, this creates suspense, where you can't see who it is instantly
2. This is another example of a hand held shot, this time rather than 3rd person, we used a POV shot to mix up the stair scene in our final piece
3. A shot of Alex walking up stairs, similar to 4. with the viewer able to see Alex instantly this gives him his protagonist status, where a antagonist would have been hidden with obstructive framing, Alex is not
4. A similar shot to 3. but in the narrative of our preliminary - this was a suspect of being our antagonist, she was not, the framing is very similar to 3. I personally like these types of shots, especially as 4. is used with 9. for the full effect of a movement sequence
5. The titling for our preliminary piece, we used a swipe effect on our title which isn't present in the screen grab - but it was there, this wasn't my choice, I want our title to go down matching the title, instead we had a swipe effect
6. Our titling approach changed from our preliminary - we used this in conjunction with the lipstick on the mirror to fade to the title.
7. This is an example of one the long shots used in our preliminary - this was a pan showing me, the protagonist, moving through a walkway
8. This is an improved long shot we got at Gatwick Airport - this actually showed where you were - an airport, rather than a mysterious urban air as in our preliminary.
9. This is the one and only two shot used in our preliminary, obviously with our final piece only including one visible character this was impossible to improve on, but the way the shot blocks the frame is repeated and worked on in the first 9 frame sequence (number 6, question one)

If we were to do this again, there would have been more organised meetings, booking equipment on time and getting the filming done by the deadline and having plenty of time to edit, rather than leaving it to the last minute.

Roughcut of film (rebekah)

This is the roughcut of the film that we have made at the moment, it is not in the order that it needs to be in and there are some things that need to be taken out of it. After loosing the footage that we had we had to restart some of it, this meant changing a bit of the things that we were planning on doing to make it more easier and quicker for us as we were falling behind. However we did find the footage after reshooting everything that we needed, this was good because we didnt have to worry about falling behind so much as we did everything we needed and we just had to edit it all together from there.

When looking at the footage again some of the things that were shoot was not on there after looking several times we decided that we would have to redo that bit again, however it was not a big part of it so we could edit together what we had and then add it on later.

When we were at Gatwick we didn't film the shots on the phone so that is what we decided to do while ryan edited some of it, however in some of the shots the camera is show but this can not be changed as there is no other way that we can do it so that the camera is not showing. 

For the answer message and the calls we did 1 missed call 2 missed calls 3, 7 then 11 and 32 missed calls, this took a while but it is a big part of it as we already recorded the voice messages for it.

In this roughcut we noticed that the lighting is different as he is driving to work when it is dark so we thought that maybe he works from the night into the early morning as the sun is setting but it could look like the sun is rising.

This week ryan will be getting the last few shots done and then we can edit it all together before friday.

Evaluation - Rebecca walker

1) In what ways do your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?One of the first and perhaps more obvious things we used is an  enigma - a puzzle or riddle which is often solved throughout the movie by the characters and usually the audience is made to work it out before the characters do to create tension to whether they will figure it out in time.
Another very obvious shot we used to create a type of mood is the close up of the face of our character "Alex". This is used to show what he is feeling at that time and also shows his reactions to certain things, an example of this is shown in the screen grab below.

We also used things such as establishing shots of the scenery we were using and each new scenery we added a title that told you where about it was set. this created some sense of knowing and that the things Alex was doing were very routinely for him, until things start to happen a little differently and this becomes apparent by the way that Alex responds and his body language.

we had similarities in our opening and film as some other already released films, for example 44 inch chest has an enigma just like ours and they have a set time to work out things, in ours its a set time too as you see at the end of the opening "12 days Alex" meaning he has 12 days till something will happen and as he doesn't know what that something is he has to try stop whatever it is before it happens. 

2) How does Your media product represent particular social groups?

The beginning of our film is representing the more upper class, as he seems to have a well paying job and you can tell this by the things that he wears, such as wearing a suit to work shows he has to dress well to be respected. As the film progresses he kind of lets go of what he knows and steps out of the social class and goes downhill into maybe middle or working class because he isn't taking care of himself or his house so they begin to ware away as such.

typically dressed for what job he is doing, these are the clothes we chose...

3)What kind of Media institutions might distribute your media product and why?We want our film to be shown in the easiest places for our audience, so they can watch it from the comfort of their own homes instead of having to go to the cinema. So as well as showing it at the Duke of York cinema in Brighton we will be putting it on places such as youtube and facebook, mainly because these are well known and a lot of people use these sites daily so there is a higher chance of them watching it.
This is the url to the duke of york picture house we would want it to be shown at.

http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/Duke_Of_Yorks/

4)Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media production would be teenagers 16-24 age range as they are the ones that would most likely go see our film and they like the thriller genre. This age group are the most likely to go to the cinema anyway and the main users of sites such as facebook and youtube so they are more likely to come across it and i think with our title and opening scene it draws that age range in to want to know what happens and whats actually going on because its not particularly clear in the first scene and keeps you guess to whats going on.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?We attracted  our audience by posting a link to the film on facebook, this got a discussion going and people started to watch it. we Made it clear what age audience we wanted by using a younger main character and keeping it interesting.

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product-The thing i have learnt the hard way about doing in this type of thing is that you have to talk more than enough shots of everything and have a lot of back up files, as we discovered a lot of things can go missing!
- I also learnt that using imovie isn't always the best thing to use, we decided on using final cut because it has more features and generally worked better for what we needed. I also learnt that we needed to save our work as we did it, every time we made a big change basically, because this insured that even if something happened with the computer we would still have our work saved.

7) looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?I feel that we have learnt a lot in the time between our prelim and our actual film.
One of the main things we learnt and were able to explore more in the second film was the setting as the prelim had to be shot in college so we were confined to what we could do and where we could shoot. But in the actual film we were allowed to go wherever we wanted within reason, so we had a lot more of a chance to use our imagination.
Difference in setting...

- Our knowledge of actual camera shots had also come along a lot since the prelim, as from the small variety of shots shown it was clear we didn't want to explore too many at a risk of getting it wrong, where as in the actual film we used many different shots and they seem to have worked to our advantage.

Another thing we changed was the costume choices. in our prelim we didn't get too much choice as it was all filmed in college time and it was hard to make the actors and actresses wear the same clothes each time and keep continuity. Where as filming out of college makes it easier to let people know when your filming and have more of a chance to dress up as you are needed to look in the film.

Evaluation (Rebekah)

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

the conventions of a thriller are to create a thrill for the audience so that means using parallel editing and cross cutting as well as close up shots to create distortion and make the audience ask question our thriller does this as it makes the audience ask questions about what is going to happen and why is he doing this and why is he doing that. 

1. This screen grab creates conventions of a thriller as it is a close up shot of the character to make the audience question and look at his facial expression to make out what is happening with him.

2.This is an establishing shot so it lets the audience see where it is happening without them actually knowing where it is.

3. This is a high angle shot of the character coming up the stairs this lets the audience see him clearly and see his body language and approach to work.

4. This is an over the shoulder shot of the character this makes the audience confused and wary of what is going to happen.

5. This is a close up shot of the character working and this lets the audience see the facial expression on his face to know what is happening with him.

6. This is a close up shot of the phone this shows the audience what is happening to him as he keeps on getting phone calls from unknown numbers.

7. This is a low angle shot to make the audience question what is going on and what is the character doing

8. This is a high angle shot this lets the audience realise what is going on  from the low angle shot.

9. This is a long shot as well as a slight low angle shot of the door and the post on the floor this makes the audience think what is going on and what just happened.

From looking at 44 inch chest we took the idea of creating a sense of enigma.

2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The type of social group that the character in my film belongs to is a sort of posh rich type but going towards the end is more tramp type as he keeps on the same clothes and does that same thing everyday.

  

3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
We think that our film would be certificated 12A and would be show in the Duke of York and on YouTube as well as on Facebook as a digital format. We think that it should be screened on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday as this is when the audience are most free to watch a film.  
http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/Duke_Of_Yorks/About_Us/Venue_Info/History/
http://dukeofyorkscinema.co.uk/

  



4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for our media production would be teenagers 16-24 age range as they are the ones that would most likely go see our film and they like the thriller genre.16 to 24 years old are most common to visit the cinemas so that is why it appeals to them the most. When posting the media production on my Twitter and Facebook i got a few comments from people explaining what was good and bad about it and they asked questions this is good because a thriller is meant to thrill the audience and make them ask questions about what is happening in the film. As you can see below this is a screen shot of the comment that was left when someone viewed our media production. Some of the text is missing due to not big enough screen to print screen.

The bit before it said that he was slightly confused at it because this was just the rough-cut a lot of things that didn't need to be in it were.

Although I did put it on YouTube hoping to get people to comment on it and say what they liked and disliked about it, this link to the video I posted on my window to get more people into watching it and comment about it however it only got 18 views. The gender that this film more suits to is males as they are the ones that mostly watch thrillers.
 Other thrillers which the audience of the age and gender have enjoyed are: Fight Club and The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo.

 

 

5.How did you attract/address your audiences?

I think the reason the audience would enjoy our film as it is not like other thrillers its different, the audience don't know what is going to happen until the very end, however because this is only two minutes the audience do not get to see the whole of the film however if it was longer the audience would enjoy it more because of the fact that is not the same and it doesn't have the same story and plot that other thrillers would have.  The story that the film is telling is about a guy that is getting threatening messages and calls and can not deal with the outside world because of everything that is happening to him, the audience can see him getting weaker and weaker everyday. This is enjoyable to the audience as they want to know what this person is doing that is so bad that the character can not deal with life itself and wants to hear all the messages texts and emails that they have been sending.

6.What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this products?

7.Looking back at your prelim task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product.

 

When looking back at the prelim and at the work that has been complete I think that we have improved in the techniques that have been used. The prelim task was not straight and not as light as it could be because no lighting kit was used, the 180 degree rule was also broken and then when we started out main task we made sure that everything was set up correctly for us to start filming. for example if you look at 1 compared to 3 the framing is different as 1 the character is in the middle but on 3 the characters are right at the side of the frame. scene 3,4,5 and 9 are all from the prelim task that we done, if you look in 4 the frame is canted in a way this is a good thing as well as a bad thing because it was not meant to be like that. With shot 6 the framing is meant to be like that for many reason such as it avoids the audience seeing the camera in the screen and it lets the audience establish what is going on without getting to far away so that the audience cannot see anything. 

I have learnt that from doing the prelim task to the main task the main uses of a camera fully as said before in question 6 I have learnt several things from always using the white balance because if not the scene will be yellow or blue as some of our shots may be however I am not sure if that is how it is meant to be or if it is just because the white balance was not set. If you look in shot 7 and 8 the colour is yellow.

  

This is the Prelim that we done I can tell that from doing this that we have changed a lot when doing our final product.

Titling:                                        http://www.artofthetitle.com/

The top one is the final product as the audience can see there are 5 opening title scenes however in the prelim there is only one. I think we have change as we have learnt more about the art of the title.

 http://www.artofthetitle.com/
 Lighting: I think what we learnt from the lighting is that the white balance has to always be set other the colour will be wrong and off. We also learnt that to film the less important things first as if you film the important things first when it gets darker the less important things would be filmed and it wouldn't make sense and you would end up having to change a lot of things because the lighting is different to how it should be. 

Costume:

 

In the prelim we learnt that the costume is a key when making a film because we didn't really have a costume in the prelim so when it came to the final product we decided that we needed a costume because the actor could not just wear anything as it would not go with what his role is. For his role he worked in Gatwick Airport this meant him dressing smart so he had a shirt on. At home he didn't need to dress smart just normally so he was in his pyjamas. We have learnt that the costume has to be specific to what role the character is playing and must always be the same unless it is another day.

Camerawork: 

It was clear to see from when we did our prelim to our final production that our camera skills improved. We learnt from our mistakes that we done in the prelim for example the 180 degree rule.

Editing: To edit we used Imac and Final Cut Pro instead of Imovie we did that because we thought that it is better and has more features to wider our work and make it different to what it would be if we used Imovie. e did several cuts and fades so that to the audience it would look like time is passing as well as days. We have grown from doing our prelim as in the prelim we used Imovie and was not that sure what to do.

Location: 

In our prelim task we had to use college grounds so when filming our final production we got the chance to wider the area and find interesting places to use other then the college. The location that we used was Gatwick Airport we thought that this was a good idea because not a lot of people would have done it and because a member of our group had a member of family which would let us in and let us film this is where we used. The other location that we used for the actors and a member of the groups houses, however they look similar so the audience can not tell that they are two different houses.

Photo's of Gatwick (Rebekah)

These are the pictures that we took when we were filming at Gatwick.

This is the inside of the room that we used for our film looking outside as this is what we used.

This is the flight of stairs that we had to go up we also used this in the film having him walking up the stairs,

This is the main room where most of the filming was done it had the computers that were used and our actor was sat here trying to look like he is at work..

This is the outside which we used when it was lighter for an establishing shot to maybe use for the start of our film however due to our tape being used and all our footage gone we could not use this anymore.

This was also the outside of the sunset we did film this bit.

This was another flight of stairs that we went up and used this area in our film.

These pictures are of the inside and the outside of the control tower that we went into to film the one at the top left and right were the room in which we filmed. The set of stairs were the ones in which we had to walk up we used them in our film but as we lost our footage we decided to not use the Gatwick idea. We also used the outside of the control tower to get establishing shots.

Titles and Credits (Bekah)

For this i will be using the following three films:
Killers 2010 Robert Luketic
The Hole 2009 Joe Dante

The Orphanage Juan Antonio Bayona 2007

At the start of the titles and credits of this film, the little girls are playing when it stops and goes to a black screen this is effective as the audience want to know what has happened and what will happen to the girl after she has been told that she has a new home. Once it goes to black a little girls hand appears and seems to be peeling back something which underneath looks like wallpaper. It looks like the little girl who is pulling the wallpaper off is somewhat angry or mad because she is being taken away from her friends. There is cracks in the walls/fall which might suggests cracks in the relationship of this girl and her being taken away and what she is really like. The ripping of the wallpaper at the end from the pink to the black to the pink again to total blackness might suggest her mood.