Title openings

Thriller opening

Evaluation - James Garbis

QUESTION 1- In what was does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our thriller opening includes multiple techniques and themes as some proper hollywood high end thriller moves. It follows the conventional way of a thriller in ways such as...

• From feedback from people who watched the clip they said that it was edgy and exciting which left them wanting more -  this shows it worked and came out exactly how we wanted it to. In mainstream thrillers you always find yourself wanting to quickly know more and find out whats going to happen next creating an enigma.

• Our thriller storyline isn't too typical because we give quite a big portion of information to the audience straight away with things like the box that includes photos of multiple people which the antagonist had murdered and so could suggest what else could happen in the rest of the film. However the theme of 'stalking' is used in many thrillers as it sets such a good bench mark and allows you to experiment with so many different types of camera angles such as canting as well as different types of lighting to portray the antagonist and protagonist.

For example from this screenshot above we can see that the area for the very first shot of the sequence is in an unusual location, lots of machinery and blunt hard objects which could be used as weapons, a place you wouldn't like to be by yourself.. especially during the night. We chose this location to bring across the spooky odd presence we wanted which you'd see in other thrillers.

 Other thrillers such as The Cabin In The Woods illustrated here above, is taken from the opening scene where we can see it is kind of similar to the shot we have of the surroundings, all though i find ours looks a bit more sinister because of the low lighting and effects we used such as desaturation.

 This medium shot where we panned around the location also gives another perspective. Again it gives a weird vibe to it due to the nature of the surroundings, more blunt objects and machinery. Also we edited  in the name of our company which is Take 2 productions, the animation faded in and zoomed in towards the screen as it became bigger which could simulate something suddenly, scarily coming at you.

 We can see from the screenshot above which is also from The Cabin In The Woods, that they have also done a shot of the surroundings, yes it is an extreme long shot from a very high angle but it gives the same affect as what we tried to achieve, giving you a feeling that theres nothing else around, no where to go for safety.

In this shot above we can see the protagonist at a long shot from an above eye level. We decided to give her normal clothing because she is meant to be portrayed as just a normal girl who is simply taking her doing for a walk, she is unaware that she would be followed, obviously is that was the case she would try and blend in with the surroundings as much as possible. 

From the screenshot above from the same thriller as discussed previously we can see that they have also given the characters normal clothing because similar to are story, they are thinking they are just going for a friendly camping trip and are unaware of the circumstances that unfold. 

From this screenshot above from  our piece we went for a very low angle and focused just on the antagonists feet, we used a foley recording of him walking through the mud. This is conventional in a thriller because it helps us get the point across that there is obviously something wrong with the character and helps theaudience feel spooked out and unease.

From the screenshot above of Cabin In The Woods we can see they have also done the same thing where they have focused in on the protagonists legs and feet, we did not however get the idea from this film it is by coincidence i found this image and thought we obviously did something right if the same was used in a big movie.

This screenshot above from our film is taken at an odd angle behind a tree to give the sense that someone is watching her, (the audience from that person's point of view' and the pathetic fallacy of the audience knowing and the antagonist not, it keeps the audience on edge to see what happens next. We filmed this not on a tripod to give the sense it was direct POV and not still.



This other screenshot above shows sort of the same thing but this time from a canted angle like the antagonist was ducking behind a tree in and out to make sure he wasn't seen, again its a POV angle. The editing for this part is fast paced ad we have a zoom on the antagonist as she walks over the bridge.



From the screenshot above from Cabin In The Woods we have a worms eye view of the cabin itself which gives an odd feeling that possibly it could be being watched by a person lying down trying to see something inside, just like our shot from somewhere where the protagonist would not see anyone and be unaware of the antagonist looking at them.

QUESTION 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

•  We decided to look at the Pearl and Dean website in guidance to pick the social class, we decided to go with B - C2. 
• When deciding on getting actors, we decided to go for teenagers and younger people, this is because for a start we knew that when we had finished the product, we could easily find feedback from our friends who are of the same age.
• Also we knew it would be easier to find actors our age.
• We decided to make the protagonist an innocent female, choosing females for these kinds of roles are good because stereo typically women\girls play this role and usually are seen as venerable and weaker then men. 
• Because of the fact above, we decided to make the protagonist a man.
• We did not have any other ethnicity's besides British white people .
• Sexual orientation did not matter for our piece because it has nothing to do with the opening and is irrelevant to any audience member. 

How are the 2 main characters being represented? 

Harry -  The Antagonist - Pictured to the right, seemed an ideal antagonist due to the fact that he is larger than the average man and dressed in all black clothing would look menacing and intimidating to the regular person and to the audience (plus he said he didn't mind walking bare foot in the mud). 




Louise - The Protagonist - Pictured to the right, is the sibling of Rosie who is in the group. This first off, meant it was easy to complete the cast as there were only two people needed and both nearby and offering to act for free. She was an ideal person because she is quite petite and looks vulnerable especially walking round in a big wooded area. Once meeting her it confirmed the remaining members of the groups thoughts about having her included in the film. The bonus was that she had a dog which we used in the film to give the protagonist a reason to be walking through the wood alone.. walking the dog. 

From this picture on the left which was taken during a break from filming, we can see the costumes that they were wearing

We dressed the protagonist in such a way that she would look like the average girl taking her dog for a walk, nothing unusual as thats how we wanted it to come across. Her hair and makeup were kept to a minimum due to the fact that we wanted to keep realism and if she had all her makeup and hair done like she was about to go to a party this wouldn't be realistic

Also I told her that during some parts of the filming to convey certain facial expressions, and body language when doing things such as running away. The props that were used were just the dog. 


The antagonist was dressed all in black to give the stereotypical 'bad guy' presence all though we decided against having his hood up. No makeup was used, for example we could have put fake blood on his hands or face but we didn't do this.

When filming this part on the right, I deliberately did it in a long shot perspective to show she's all alone and looks so small compared to her surroundings which makes her look vary vulnerable. We used a foley of a stick breaking during this particular part which made her turn around and look worried. We see her as a normal teenager.

Continuing to the antagonist from this screenshot we can tell he obviously has something wrong with him if he is walking bare foot through a wet muddy wood, to enhance this we put more mud on his clothing to make him look even worse. To make the ground we we actually used a bottle we repeatedly filled up from a small stream within the wood and poured it onto the path he was treading. He comes across as being unstable and odd because of this. We have chosen to represent him in this way because it instantly comes across to the audience something weird is happening and gives off those thriller vibes which make you think. 

QUESTION 3 -  What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

This was a low budget british independent film, there were very few costs involved, this is because the clothing we already had, we did not have to rent out anywhere to film. Props again we used things we already had. The only two things that required any money for the film was the renting of the college camera and tripod which is a deposit which you get back. The other being petrol from my car, all four of us went to separate locations for filming and prepping around 10 times which adds up but isn't that much of a substantial cost. 

As you can see from this image on the left, one of the final small bits of filming which needed to be done had to be done without a tripod as the one we had been given was broken. 

This is one of the only issues we had whilst filming besides losing some footage which had to be reshot.



There are three parts to producing a film, these are... 

FILM PRODUCTION - Making the film, shooting it and editing.

We made the storyboard in good time so we knew exactly what to do once we started filming.

We filmed on about 10 separate occasions and i ensured we got lots of waste footage so we had more time to play around with spare clips and get it just right. 


Once all the prepping, filming and editing had been done which you can see in the surrounding photos we then move on to 
film distribution



FILM DISTRIBUTION - Securing the placement of the film on an exhibitions screen and for home viewing.

It would be extremely hard getting any big exposure for example on television as much more money would be needed to make that work.

In order for our film to grow to different audiences there are some things we could do, for example 

1. I could put the film on Youtube which is the 3rd most visited website in the world and many people could find it and it could unexpectedly blow up and have a huge number of hits 
2. Send the video out on an email blast which would reach around 1000 people depending on how many peoples emails you have
3. Facebook is brilliant for things like this, everyone uses it and things like the opening to our film could easily get a lot of exposure and people talking about it, word of mouth also spreads rapidly.

The good thing about Youtube is that there are like and dislike bars as well as comments sections to get good feedback, Facebook is similar but not as useful.

FILM EXHIBITION - The place the audience watch the film, traditionally cinema.

If we really wanted to get people to know about our film we could hold an event round a friends house who could accommodate a large amount of people and who has a projector and film down screen, i know someone with this and wouldn't be hard to organise it. However one issue which could let us down was the cameras were not in full resolution of 720p instead of 1080p.

QUESTION 4 + 5 - Who would be the audience for your media product and How did we attract/address our audience?

Our selected age range is 18-30 years old, we chose this for the following reasons... 

• The actors involved are in that age range
• The elder generation wouldn't like it
• The younger generation wouldn't understand it 
• The younger generation could get scared
• The younger generation could mimic scenes within it 
• We didn't think it would appeal to anybody else

Obviously we knew this age range from the start, we used the website pearlanddean for guidance. 

There are many different age categories but we felt like 18-30 would just be the most appropriate. The available ones were 11017, 18-25, 18-45 and 35-55.

I did some research about what other thriller films my peers watched and what they thought of them, some of the results i got were films such as

1. The Cabin In The Woods
2. Fast And Furious
3. Transformers
4. The Hunger Games
5. James Bond 
6. White House Down
7. Now You See Me
8. The Gathering
9. Black Rock
10. Vantage Point

This helped me because some of them for example Cabin In The Woods has some of the same themes as our film and would mean they hopefully liked it.

We designed this questionnaire and went round the college asking some students what they  thought, taking my iPad and showing them the opening of the film.

1.  Do you think that this opening targets both genders in the age group of 15 - 30?
2. From watching the opening of this thriller, would you continue to watch it?
3. Which aspects of the opening do you like? and why?
4. Do you feel like the opening needs any improvements?
5. Which age certificate would you apply to this film?
6. Do you feel that using a girl works best for the victim? And why?
7. Were you able to empathise with any characters? How?
8. Do you think that the soundtrack and music chosen suits the opening?

In addition to this i asked a few members of my extended family what they thought of the piece and got some surprisingly good feedback. 

Why would our audience enjoy our film?

• Because we included scenes of suspense and danger 
• Scenes that make people want to see more and find out what happens
• If we liked it then surely people with similar interests would 
• A range of editing techniques that they would find impressive such as

1. Multiple match on actions
2. Shot reverse shots
3. Sound bridges
4. Parallel cuts
5. Jump cuts
6. Cross cuts
7. Clever titles
8. Fast paced action

• Clever camera work including many different angles, distances and movements, these can be seen in the images below.

1. We included crabbing round the tree at the end 
2. Overlaying
3. Close ups
4. Medium close ups
5. Long shots
6. Pans
7. Canting
8. Extreme long shots
9. Over head shots 
10. Intense, suspenseful music

Over the shoulder shot

Close up

Over head angle

Very low angle

Stalking perspective

Worms eye view

Our characters helped to target this audience because of their ages so the audience can relate to them. They fit with regular stereotypes of films like this typical girl in trouble and a scary murderer is chasing her in all black clothing and acting mysterious with odd boxes with picture of people in them. We know this because we heard it from peoples feedback as well as knowing it ourselves when deciding the storyboard.

QUESTION 6 and 7 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product and what do you feel you have learnt in profession from it to the full product?

Conclusion - I feel there were some big ups and downs with the project but I'm very pleased with the way it turned out, if i could change anything I would definitely have done my time management better and we all needed better communication within the group as one or two small issues raised but have all been sorted out now. 

You are able to tell some progression has definitely been made since the first piece we created for example simple things like match on actions seemed to go down a lot smoother since the first task, for example in the first piece where i get out the car and it flicks to a shot of my feet as i step out the car which you can see pictured below one of the match on actions in the new piece which went a lot easier would be when the antagonist walks through the mud to and then it switches to a rear perspective angle as you can see below.

Match on action from this view to the view below

Question 7 of Evaluation - Harry's post

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

Before we started our main task we had to complete a preliminary task which was a two minute clip which had specific criteria we had to follow which included certain camera shots and other factors.

This preliminary task helped us to practice the multiple techniques we would need to use in our actual piece, including filming, editing and the other basics. 

I'd say the main area that changed from our prelim to our final piece was location and costume. As in the prelim these two did not matter we used the college campus and whatever we were wearing on the day to film. However when it came to the final piece we did extensive research on where we could complete it looking at 3 to 4 places before finally deciding. As well as this costume was key as it is a very important aspect of mise en scene.

A key area that was vital we learnt in the prelim task was editing, it allowed us to get to grips with the software and make the basic mistakes on this product before we went on to our final piece, this allowed for easy editing and used up less time whilst in the editing suite.

Some areas of editing we used were:

cutting

transitions

sound enhancements

We used all of these on both the prelim and the final product however in the final piece the quality was of a much higher standard.

As well as this when it came to the final piece we knew that getting as much raw footage as possible would make it far easier in the future when it came to editing and filling in gaps with small clips, also filming the same clip multiple times to get the best quality out of it.

I think a key area of editing we took a step further in our final piece was match on action, take the two pictures below for example; this kind of editing allows the piece to have a very professional feel to it as it involves making sure the continuity throughout out is perfect.

Evaluation - Stephen Craddock

Question 1 

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

In my personal opinion i would say that our Thriller film contains many aspects of most mainstream thriller openings, giving suspense to the audience and really wants to make them watch more.

As you can see here, this is one of the screen shots from my thriller opening research. I believe that this partly represents our thriller opening as it follows the 'suspicious' rural area, such as the woods in which we recorded our film in.

Using a more rural area, in my opinion, makes the film more suspenseful as it creates much more of an enigma in the viewers mind, which of course is a largely important part of any mainstream thriller opening.

As in our film there is a murder case involved, the location of the filming would be imperative to the success of our thriller opening. After doing some research myself and group members decided that the best setting would be in a wooded area as it is peaceful, gloomy, muddy and little sunlight to add to the low-key lighting. 

 The screenshot on the left is a key example of how we have used low-key lighting for the film. As you can see there is little to no sunlight as we purposely fitted filming times around when the weather reports appeared to be 'overcast'. Because of the nature of our thriller opening the weather and setting was key. Fortunately due to researching and planing it was very successful. 

Yet another reason why we chose our setting as woods is because it really conveys the isolation of the protagonist and the antagonist, therefore making the whole situation far more intense.

This is from some one of the thriller openings that i have researched. As you can see it is an extreme closeup of a persons hand. This may seem pointless to some people but it is a key idea which we have put into practice in our thriller opening. One of the reasons it appealed to us is because it hides the antagonists face therefore causing an enigma in the audiences mind. Below there is an image showing where this has been used. 

As you can see we have put some of the research into practice and involved some of its aspects in our film. This will most certainly cause an enigma in the viewers mind with rhetorical questions like 'Who is it?' What is the purpose of this?' Only to find out that this is revealed at a later date in the film as such with the researched ' Taken 2' sample above.






This is another screen shot from some research i have done about taken 2. Before the opening scene changes the camera focuses on the main antagonist ( in this case the leader). We thought that this would be a good idea to put into our thriller opening as it would cause a good effect.

The picture to the right shows exactly what we have done in relation to the film research. The camera slowly pans towards the antagonists face and fades into the next shot to show the reflection of what has happened.

The Music.

The music that we have chosen for our thriller opening is a continuous piece of non-diegetic sound which is overlayed on top of the entire film as a music sound track. The reason that we have chosen to not include any lyrics in the film is because during the film no dialogue is used. This creates a far more 'mysterious' and 'spooky' effect. In ALL films, folleys are used to make sound effects more intense and just overall better quality. We have followed this by adding in folleys to out thriller opening. This is a non-diegetic sound also as the characters cannot hear it.

THE FULL SOUND TRACK USED.

Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Before making the thriller film we had to know what social class we were aiming at so that we can tailor-make the film to the standards of those people and what their stereotypical interests are. What i mean by this is 'what are they interested in?' We looked into this further and then decided we are going to choose the social classes B - C2 as the genre and quality of the film reflects that. Some reasons for selecting class B - C2:

• The clothing of the actors is just casual, normal clothing.

• The camera quality is good, however it is only at a 1280x720 resolution instead of the full HD 1920x1080 resolution which most films today commonly use.

• The film is quite low budget so very little costs were involved in the production of the film.

• The setting was in a wooded area, therefore it is rather mainstream in comparison to filming in a 5 star Hotel.

This is the male actor (Harry) that we chose to be in our film. The reason we thought harry would be a great actor for our film is because his height and build makes him come across as stereo typically strong and have a big presence which comes across overall as a very intimidating antagonist.We wanted a male as our main 'bad' character because the man as a stereotype is meant to be 'strong' and 'overpowering' which works great with the plot that we had planned.

This is the female character (Louise) who is the protagonist in the film. We chose Louise for a few very good reasons. Louise had to come across as very innocent and vulnerable in our film, this would give the audience the best idea of what is going on in relation to her being stalked by harry and eventually killed. Louise is small which makes her look very vulnerable compared to the larger antagonist harry.The blonde hair type is stereotyped worldwide as being 'Unintelligent' so this is a great add-on in relation to our film also.The fact that she is a girl means that she gets an instant stereotype as a weaker, lesser person compared to the big strong male character.The two actors both fall into the age group of the lower spectrum of age in the audience. This is good because it means that the audience can relate to the actors and perhaps find it overall more interesting for them.

This what Harry and Louise are wearing during the film. As you can see Louise is wearing casual clothing for walking the dog ( A coat, jeans and walking boots ). Harry on the other hand has been put in black clothing so that it appears that he is more mentally ill. He is also barefoot which clearly conveys he has some kind of mental instability.

As you can see here, this is part of the film. The antagonist is bare foot to convey mental instability. 







The social class that we are aiming at will be most likely to appeal from lower working class to middle class folk as it is inevitably a small production company with low viewing rates. 

When relating to the ethnicity of the two actors they are both White British. Some people may say that this makes the female character look even more weak and feeble.

Question 3

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

We are a low budget independent British film company who have made a Thriller film.

When producing a film there are 3 steps which are involved:

1. Film production - Story-boarding, Filming and Editing
2. Film distribution - Securing the placement of the film on an exhibitors screen and for home viewing.
3. Film exhibition - The place the audience watch the film.

• Cinema

• TV

• Video / DVD 

To promote our video to a world wide audience, i have put the finished video on YouTube so that it is free to watch for the public. The benefits of this is that there is no upload costs and it is accessible by people 'Anytime Anywhere' on computers, mobiles, tablets etc. This is a great way of promoting as you can also receive income through advertisements. Due to us being a very 'Low Budget' film company, there are not many other ways in which we can make people watch our film without them paying a large amount of money or with us having to pay a great amount for putting it on different types of exhibitions such as the cinema or DVD as it would just simply be impractical.

The distribution method that i have chosen is to put the film on YouTube as its the most cost effective way of doing it, also it will potentially gain many views. In addition, it means that the audience can interact using the 'like - Dislike' bar and also commenting to give their views and opinions. 

Question 4 

Who will be the target audience for your media product?

Before we starting planning for our thriller opening, on of the first things that we had to take into account is 'who is going to be our Target Audience?' We had already established that it was going to be a stalker/murder theme to the film but we didn't know what was the best target audience to go for. 

So after doing a considerable amount of research we decided that we were going to set the Audience as the Teenage - Young adult range of 15 being the youngest age and 35 being at the bottom end of the spectrum. We chose this target  group because what we are producing (produced) is of quite a mature nature. 

Now all we had to do was select actors that would suit the characters that we had in mind. We chose 2 actors that are the protagonist and the antagonist. We chose the male with a mature look about him with a large presence. And the female with a more 'innocent' and 'helpless' appearance.Both actors are age 17 or over which means they should get a good response from the audience as they should be able to relate to them as the ages are similar. 

To help us choosing our target audience we did some research on site such as www.Pealanddean.com to try and gather information about what types of films attract different age groups. It turns out that after our research we established that our genre and setting of film appealed mainly to people between the ages of 18-30. I got this concept from the film'Cabin in the woods' which is also set in a wooded area for a majority of the film.

QUESTION 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

To attract our audience, we all did independent research to see what other people thought of our thriller opening. For example, Rosie has done a questionnaire to establish peoples opinions on particular aspects. For my idea what i have done is constructed 1 on 1 interviews with a select group of people of different ages to see what they think of the film. 

Below is one of the interviews which i had as an example of my research.

(Thank you to Jordan Gibson.)

I believe that this was a good form of attracting and addressing our audience as it enabled me to interact personally to one of the people who has already seen our thriller opening. I also interviewed 3 other people and they 3/4 had very positive feedback. I Taylor-made the questions to try and benefit our film.

There are many reasons why the audience should enjoy our film as its suspenseful, full of enigmas and exciting moments, the film has an interesting setting and the editing makes it even more intense.

To help attract our film to a target audience, i have constructed a poster so that people will want to look at it, i have also put the YouTube logo on the poster so that people can see where to watch it.

Here is the poster.

Here is the questionnaire that we used as a group.

1.  Do you think that this opening targets both genders in the age group of 15 - 30?
2. From watching the opening of this thriller, would you continue to watch it?
3. Which aspects of the opening do you like? and why?
4. Do you feel like the opening needs any improvements?
5. Which age certificate would you apply to this film?
6. Do you feel that using a girl works best for the victim? And why?
7. Were you able to empathise with any characters? How?
8. Do you think that the soundtrack and music chosen suits the opening?

QUESTION 6

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

What i have done is made multiple narrations talking about my experience with different aspects of technology that we used such as Sound, Music, Editing and Filming.

Editing

Sound - Music

Filming

Sound

In addition, i have decided to narrate over the finished product going through all the editing techniques which i had used when editing the film. 

Unfortunately the file size is too large for blogger so i have provided a private YouTube link.

PLEASE FOLLOW ATTACHED LINK AS BLOGGER WILL NOT ALLOW ME TO UPLOAD THIS VIDEO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_MIIvPchvE&feature=youtu.be

QUESTION 7

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

A couple of moths before we did our main task we did a preliminary task which was effectively a test to see how we would get on in the main task. The preliminary helped us as individuals and as a group to enhance our skills in filming and editing. It gave us a chance to practice properly with the camera equipment and then after he had done this, the editing software. 

 

In the preliminary task we used this shot and the following shot to create a match on action which is a type of continuity editing. As you can see in the picture below, we have followed and used the idea of the match on action shot onto the main task as well as the preliminary.

The pictures to the right show a clear demonstration of how we have used this match on action the in main task.

The above video shows a match on action shot which we have used in our main task.

In the preliminary it was very useful to look at the different tools and techniques in the Finalcut Pro editing program so that it would benefit us in the main task.
The main tools that we use are: 

• Cutting (B keyboard shortcut)

• Transitions ( Under video transitions - cross dissolve.

• Sound enhancements.

• Color correction

We have used all of these effects on both our preliminary and our main thriller opening task. However, i believe that during the editing process of the main task, the techniques used are far more advanced and more professional.

If you would like to have a look at our finished product then please follow the link below. 

Thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjiYqa0a0XA