Q7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Looking back to two months ago when we created a preliminary task I feel that I have improved my technical and production skills a lot since then. When doing my prelim we were getting a feel for using the media equipment that we hadn’t used before. Our planning before hand was very rough in comparison to our thriller, we did a very simple, six scene story board before going out to film and that was it. Whereas in conjunction with all the other planning our story board for ‘The Last Minute’ was a 22 scene, detailed walk through of our idea. 

At these points during our preliminary task we see very unsteady camera shots, although a tripod was used it unfortunately made no difference, we believe that this happened because whilst on the tripod we also tried to hold it securely at the same time. We made sure for our main product that this did not happen again and we let it be a lesson to us, which is visible, moreover when we became more confident after editing our prelim for the first time on imovie, we learnt how to stabilize our clips for the main thriller opening task which also helped us to gain steadier/smoother footage.

By becoming more confident we advanced with our equipment, for the preliminary, we shot our footage with a Sony Handycam yet for the full product we used a Cannon 550D DSLR HD camera, which not only improved the resolution and quality of our footage, but also meant we had the option to shoot incredibly detailed close ups and play with the manual focus, to focus on one thing, then another, within the one shot.

Although not seen in our final preliminary, we did have to reshoot a scene because of a continuity error, we had left a camera bag in the corner of one of the shots, then when we realised and removed it, suddenly it vanished into thin air when it came to editing. Before shooting any shots for our thriller we made sure that everything we wanted or, didn’t want in the scene was placed/removed and not messed with untill we were sure that we had got all the footage we needed. Including the photographs that had been strategically placed.

With our preliminary, our shot reverse shot is incredibly basic, whereas with our thriller opening it’s one of the climax’s, where we use it rapidly to show Harry’s panic and shock horror.

 

Q6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

When constructing this media product I used a variety of different technologies such as editing software, cameras and camera equipment, and the use of different media software’s to create an effective opening. 

I used blogger to post my information for the AS Media task. Blogger is a simple blogging website which helped me to organise and display my research in a variety of different forms, i.e. pictures, videos, text and audio files. Blogger also came in handy when came to planning as it meant all of our content was in one area which meant it was simple to go back and look at all of our work in dated order.

YouTube came in handy when researching thrillers and the genre itself. By being able to use YouTube we could view other peoples thriller openings; amature and professional, to get a real sense of what was needed of us. Furthermore not only YouTube, but search engines such as Google massively helped us when it came to gaining more research such as looking up age restrictions by the BBFC etc.

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter helped to promote our thriller opening and spread the word of it; it also helped to gain feedback from our target audience whom told us what worked well and what can be approved upon.

When it came to filming the footage for our thriller opening we used a Cannon 550D DSLR HD camera, by using a high definition camera it meant that we could get better quality camera shots to our opening by adding that extra detail with little things such as manually focusing onto things for atmospheric shots and also getting brilliantly detailed close up shots.

 

We used an Apple Mac along with the software IMoive to edit our footage and create the product. Through the process I have learnt many editing skills and they have been refined with the duration of the task. I have improved with cutting clips precisely so they’re sharp, smooth and have good continuity. I learnt how use some of the effects in the imovie package suchas the ‘ken burns effect’. We used the ken burns effect when shooting the footage of the pictures and newspaper clippings on the wall, this meant using another skill of taking stills from our footage and then using the ken burns effect to pan into a particular part of the still. With my media partner we both also became more knowledgeable in our choices of transitions between clips of our thriller opening (such as using a fade to white for a flashback). We made sure that they were suitable not only for the opening in general but also for where they would be appearing, so there wasn’t too many or too little.

 

I also have learnt how to make a piece of music loop through and match the scenes being played, so that the tension in the track, is building at the same time as the tension in the thriller itself. Although I also used AVS Audio Editor to help enhance the track and reverse it in parts so that the track sounded more eerie.

 

We had to deal with some problems when it came to our editing though, some of the shots we had taken were supposed to be in the dark and when looking at them through the camera they seemed to look great. Although, when we later uploaded our footage onto the Mac, the quality of the shots had been taken away, and left them looking grainy. We tried to edit the contrast, brightness, hue and saturation of our footage using the different options on imovie, but unfortunately it still didn’t look as quality as our other shots. With no time to re-film we decided to keep to the original quite grainy footage and hope with it being a short scene, it wouldn’t stick out too much ‘like a sore thumb’. This could have been resolved at the setting filming in the light and editing it darker.

 

We have learnt from this that in the future, we ought to film in the light and edit them darker on the Macs, rather than the opposite way around like myself and Dan did do. Finally, once we had finished the editing we learnt how to process the film, add finishing touches such as a DVD menu and burn to a disk using iDVD. 

 

 

Q5: did you attract/address your audience?

To help attract our audience we posted our final product onto a number of different social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, by doing this we can promote our thriller opening for the public to see and comment and give us feedback.

 

We made sure we looked back over the questionnaires we had previously handed out to see what our peers had said would be effective and the most popular we incorporated this into it. Moreover when it came to putting in a non-diegetic track, we questioned our peers and asked for their opinions on five tracks we had short listed. This was recorded and documented. Going back to our previous research of thrillers we also looked at other well-known openings and incorporated the way similar films don’t give away too much to begin with, leaving it open to the audiences own interpretation and attracting them to continue watching the thriller to see how the rest of the film pans out.

Q4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

To begin researching the target audience for our thriller, we looked at recent thriller films to see who they had targeted their motion picture at, we also went to the British Board of Film Classification, this company provide a legal classification for every single film which is sold in the UK. We wanted to see the guidelines for each age range, this would help determine who’d be our audience and moreover, what content we would include into our thriller. With a brief idea of what we were going for we looked at the two most appropriate age ratings. Here is what we found:

 Furthermore, Dan & I also created a questionnaire to gain further research and evidence towards planning. We asked people about their preferences, different aspects of a thriller movie and also for their age to help determine what age group we would aim our thriller at.

 

 From all the information gathered through the questionnaires and other resources we felt that certificate 15 would be best appropriate because with this, it gives us free reign on using strong violence, language and sex references such as nudity without graphic detail. Although we didn’t plan to use any of these in our opening, we felt that for what would be a whole film, this would give us enough ease to do an effective whole film and also is a median which would get the largest amount of viewing.

 

The key demographic for our thriller is any gender from the age of 15+ that enjoy psychological thrillers.

 

 

 

 

 

Q3: kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I think that Warner Brothers Pictures would be best suited to produce and distribute our thriller. Warner Brothers is based in California and New York, America. The company is also a subsidiary of Time Warner who, as of 2010, was the world’s second largest media conglomerate in terms of revenue behind Walt Disney. This is one of the reasons I would choose this company as they’re a big, successful institute which are thought of highly in the film industry, people associate their films with being a high standard which would help promote our thriller- following the benchmark set by Warner Bros.

Moreover another reason I would choose Warner Brothers to distribute our thriller is for their resources. Being an established company since 1918 they have a lot of knowledge and experience which would help guide Dan & I who are inexperienced in the film industry. Having one of the largest revenues in the media conglomerate also means that we would have good quality resources available to us such as renown directors, actors, producers and the equipment to shoot and edit high quality footage. 

Our thriller is similar to the movie Taken in that they’re similar story lines with the protagonist on a mission of revenge, we also use diegetic, mysterious music to help build the tension where needed keeping a constant tempo, like Taken. With successful thriller films such as Gangster Squad, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Inception being released by Warner Bros I believe that they would mould our thriller into one as good as their own.

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Typically, thrillers have three main categories of characters; a protagonist, whom is the main character. An antagonist, the villain and a victim usually vulnerable from the antagonist.

We decided to stick to the conventional image of a protagonist and chose Harry Thornburn to be the main character in our thriller opening. One reason we decided Harry would be a good choice is from his appearance. In comparison to the other actors throughout the film opening he is oldest looking and most bulky/muscular looking, giving a more mature look to the thriller and therefore appealing to older generations also. Although our protagonist does not represent the hero normally seen in a thriller, in our opening we made Harry look more vulnerable we did this through our scripting and camera shots.

Throughout, the majority of shots taken of Harry are at eye level, Dan & I felt that this would be more effective on the audience as they would feel like they are on the same level as the protagonist and would engage and empathize with him more, therefore making them more interested in what will happen to him throughout the storyline.

A film which inspired us to go with the vulnerable protagonist idea was The Dark Knight Rises, sequel to The Dark Knight. The opening to this film shows Bruce Wayne looking a lot older and more worn than the last time the audience saw him in the previous movie. This is due to the loss of someone he loved dearly. Throughout the whole of the film we see the story of Batman becoming stronger and more powerful again to the hero which protagonist conventionally are. In our thriller, Harry has lost his girlfriend and is in the same fragile position as this. If our thriller was a whole movie, I believe that Harry would also get back to grips with reality and then seek revenge.

 

When it came to thinking of a victim, (Harry’s Girlfriend) we were stereotypical with our choices, the victim needed to be someone vulnerable, weak, possibly naïve and powerless. We decided to use myself as the victim as a petite female (which is the expected norm). Our story line shows a woman whom has been stalked, then kidnapped when she was out. Because of this we decided that the costume should be quite regular and casual, plain t-shirt and jeans, furthermore we used high angle camera shots  to look down on the victim to show her as powerless and looked belittled.

Another film that helped us with our decision was ‘I Spit on Your Grave’. In this we see the character Jenifer Hills retreat to a small town at her summer cabin by herself to concentrate on writing her novel. Until her presence became known to a few of the morally depraved locals. One night they break into her cabin to scare her and teach the ‘city girl’ a lesson, although it soon escalates into a night of physical abuse. The beginning of this film also uses the vulnerable girl cliché and moreover, uses the idea of setting the film within conventional reality.

With our antagonist, we decided to use Dan Harris, choosing an antagonist for our thriller was quite simple, as our task is to create a thriller opening, we didn’t want show his face. This was because if it’s only the opening two minutes, you don’t want to be giving everything away instantly, you need to keep the audience hooked in some way so by keeping the villains identity unkown you then want to know who it is. We still wanted Dans character to be known and stick out in some form though, so we did this through his costume. We dressed Dan in a suit, not only does he now appear different to the other characters being introduced in the opening of this thriller, but he is now also shown as a figure of authority, power and hierarchy. Films that inspired us to do this was ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘James Bond; From Russia with Love’.

In The Dark Knight we are introduced to the antagonist of the film called ‘The Joker’. The Jokers costume consists of an unusual suit and clown inspired make-up. The suit is cleverly used in that conveys power, but with it being out of the ordinary with green and purple so it looks like a bit of a joke furthermore we do not know his true identity because of his full-face of make-up, (which is on throughout the film). Although, Donald ‘Red’ Grant, in From Russia with Love also wears a suit, it’s concept is entirely different. Red looks smart, sharp and in power/control which is how we wanted to perceive Dan towards Beth for our audience, although at the same time we wanted to keep his identity hidden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

For AS media our task was to plan, shoot, produce and edit a 2 minute opening to a new thriller movie. A thriller is a villain driven plot whereby the antagonist presents obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. Thrillers tend to use suspense, tension and excitement as their main elements and they have a wide variety of sub-genres within the thriller genre such as what is displayed in the mind map below:

 

The first few minutes of a thriller are probably the most important. The audience need to be hooked so they are enticed to continue watching the rest of the movie, this is where they establish their initial views and opinions. The opening two minutes of a thriller should also include an establishing shot, title of the movie and also main credits such as main actors and director/producer. Furthermore the opening also has to fulfil the conventions of the thriller genre and the main conventions are as follows:

 

When researching thrillers I watched a number of openings and analysed how they successfully used conventions and hooked the audience. Conventions found in a thriller normally show an establishing shot of the setting, which typically gives the impression of being in a dangerous or a surreal location.

Opening Scene to Shutter Island

Although, The Butterfly Effect challenges this convention and sets the film in an everyday suburban neighbourhood. To help engage the audience thrillers normally have a range of camera shots, including extreme close ups and quick straight cuts which can make the viewer feel isolated, uncomfortable and scared for the characters wellbeing. This also demonstrates how the audience show an emotional connection and compassion for the protagonist in a thriller. This is why when we came to planning our own opening, we felt that challenging the conventions of a thriller and setting the scene in an everyday househould would not only be effective like The Butterfly Effect but would also relate back to the audience watching it making them feel like they have a connection with the characters and therefore wanting to watch more. We also were inspired by watching successful thriller productions such as The Bourne Identity/Supremacy and Shutter Island to incorporate the use of flashbacks.

 

Flashbacks are used as a device to show the audience visual information that they incorporate into screenplay any other way, it’s a technique that reveals information about the character and moves the story forward. The visual attributes of using flashbacks is impressive. Going back to The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne holds a gun to Nicky’s head and as he’s about to pull the trigger a flashback suddenly occurs, and we see a woman begging for her life in Russian –then back to present time. This blur of desperation, panic and fear is the style we tried to capture in our own thriller opening.

Here we see the establishing shot for our thriller, the tracking shot of the warehouse. The composition of the shot shows the golden mean and draws attention to the boxes and the vast expanse of empty floor. We also felt that this warehouse worked well, because of the red floor, which could be a representation of the bloodshed and danger here.

We continued on the tracking shot around the warehouse although it was not the main focus to reinforce the feeling of isolation. This shot is continuous until you see a low angle point of view shot of the bench and pictures/newspaper cuttings on the wall.