Monday 29 June 2009
Tuesday 31 March 2009
Our media product which is a thriller opening uses the ideas and conventions of a real time swindling thriller. Conspiracy and conning were the main forms of our thriller, with the opening we wanted to create an understandable storyline. Not too simple as it would not be challenging for us and we feel we could be insulting the intelligence of our audience whilst also not explaining enough of where our film goes. However we could not make it too complex as it’s an opening, audiences need time to realise what is going on. We also had to be weary not to tell too much within two minutes, we wanted the audience to gather thoughts but not to be able to predict the whole movie otherwise it would not be appealing.
As the clip develops the use of our soundtrack becomes more fierce and upbeat, along with the various camera angles the action onstage becomes more meaningful and tense. As we introduce more characters the drums come in as the orchestra fades slightly, as the exchange is made and our character walks off, the orchestra and drums fuse together to make tension rise. Our idea of a briefcase exchange has been seen before as it has been used in many films, however in differing ways.
The main emphasis being the tension up until a person is finally able to see what is in the briefcase, as it’s possible anything could be in the briefcase it’s an excitement factor for our audience. In the films we took our ideas from the contents of the briefcase can vary from drugs and money to letters and body parts. We needed to be less graphic and try to be more original with our idea as predictability was going to be a problem, so we used the idea of a phone ringing as the contents for our briefcase. I believe it proposed more questions that what drugs or money would it links to more intrigue and makes the audience think. We got this thought from a French director who had the strong belief of not giving the audience what they have come to see straight away, to prolong it and then give them the climax in the best way possible achieves the best results.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The thriller represents the middle/working class social group, I believe this because we had a mix of causally and smart dressed actors. We used our location as a strong basis; The Barbican is surrounded by workplaces and offices. As we planned to film here we felt we had to have some of the actors blend in with the location otherwise the location would not be justified. The target audience was late 20’s onwards, this is because I feel the younger generation would like the action to be brought to them quicker and this opening has no real physical action just yet.
The film is mainly aimed at males, there are no women involved, the film creates the idea of two members of a gang making a deal with each other with one eventually trying to double cross the other. Women rarely have any interest in our genre of thriller. Filming at the Barbican was a good choice, at the time of filming the place was quiet, and it creates an abandoned atmosphere whilst also being a hotspot for work which would make the Barbican an unsusceptible place to not make a dodgy dealing.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I believe we could get recognition from rising British companies who try to make something of British Talent. The thriller opening has all the elements of a British film, the location, plot and lighting. I feel our product has strong British authenticity so it would only appeal to a small dedicated audience. As most of our lighting, action and sound are limited, it would be highly unlikely we would receive any attention from the US or Hollywood. This is because Hollywood must set a standard and maintain it otherwise your product is not recognised.
Our Thriller opener was inspired by the film “Collateral.” We took the elements of the opener and made it our own, adding the themes that people would normally associate with British film. The weather (rain), the dark sky atmosphere, and the rush hour. As our characters want to make the exchange quickly and be off to their next destination. The Barbican as a filming location was good as it’s a well known place which reflects the work ethic of British culture.
Another institution that would be able to distribute our opening would be the internet, using sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe and Vimeo. These sites are well known for accessibility and being able to upload videos of any content. This makes a great place to view documentaries, music videos, TV programmes and short films like ours. If our production is good, it would receive views that lead to recommendations, popularity and then a fan base.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience for my thriller are people aged from their late 20’s and onwards I don’t feel we have to place an ending age target audience anyone interested in our product will view it. Anyone from this age onwards can represent any lifestyle. A working or unemployed person, the person who likes to socialise and others who prefer the comfort of home. Overall out thriller is accessible tp alot of people, however a description of who is most likely would be a working male in his late 20’s or early 30’s who enjoys action and thriller films.
How will you attract/address your audience?
There are two main methods I would want to use to attract, address and inform our audience of our opener. The best method would be using the internet, as well as being able to post our opening onto Vimeo and other video uploading sites; we can advertise our product on networking and socialising sites such Facebook and MySpace. It would be best the best option as it would receive comments, reactions and popularity. It would also become more interactive through aspects like fan base and groups . The second option would be billboard advertising, although it’s not the best way of advertising it has potential to reach people more as not everyone owns a computer so it can be seen at any time when travelling to work and home again.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have learnt a considerable amount of new shortcuts and handy ways to edit, move and change footage. Although there is much more I could and need to learn I can say I know more at present due to constructing our thriller. I was the director and main cameraman for our product and it meant having to know how to handle the equipment without making any irreversible mistakes. We managed this despite the weather conditions being testy, the rain contributed to our unique look of the opener it just meant there more caution taken with moving the camera and tripod in particular. It was through the weather we started thinking of more shots like POV, and medium close-ups it was convenient as it was also protecting the camera. In the process of filming we also had to use the editing software “Final cut pro.” Editing was harder to adjust to but we did it, there were only trivial problems like, as we would try to edit or write our names for the credits we kept encountering problems like overwriting names or the font/size being irregular. Despite that editing was good. The main aspect of editing was logging and capturing the right footage as we did make plenty of bloopers whilst filming. Learning about that was one of the highlights of this product because we saw everything and remember the mistakes we also made.
What was the audience feedback from the class?
When it was our turn for our thriller to be viewed I was nervous, for our efforts we got applause. We were praised for our plot, as it was not too vivid for an opening. Within the class we were the only conspiracy/conning thriller storyline plot which was nice. The soundtrack was very important to getting to good feedback we did get, in my opinion it was the soundtrack that set the mood and tempo along with the footage as it went well together.
Compare your thriller film to your preliminary task
We learnt our lesson and vowed to stick with the genre that we had to actually project. We put more thought into this project the fact we had more time helped, for the preliminary we got good footage and sounds the downside was it had no relation to the thriller genre. We made everyone laugh which was what we intended but it was off task as we were not doing a comedy, we learnt from this mistake and made a good opening.
A screen capture from our opening showing two of our actors (Emre and Teddy) also demonstrating that it’s on Vimeo for anyone to be able to view it and leave a comment.
The main character of our opening Emre, through seeing the opening he looks like the ringleader. If we were to use billboard advertising this capture would be one of the options.
This shot captures the action of our opening, there are 3 actors in the opening two working together against one, colour coordination was used black against grey.
This shot captures our creative sense and highlights the location and environment where we set the thriller.
The sites we would be using to advertise our thriller
film editing
In this lesson, we were continuing to edit complete our thriller. We have nearly finished editing everything with one lesson to spare. Our camera shot sequence is as follows:
An extreme long shot of Emre walking down a first flight of stairs followed by a low angle shot of the same area focusing on his knees and feet.
We have a 3 second cut with a black screen to give display our movie name we still needed to think of one and also hide a jump in our footage that was hard to get rid of.
Another long shot takes place of Emre walking down a second flight of stairs; we had the camera at the bottom of the stairs to get another angle.
As Emre looks over to another person we have David’s POV shot of him staring at Emre as he quickly walks by acknowledging each other.
Another long shot takes place of Emre travelling to Teddy, who is already sitting down waiting
there is a close-up shot of their legs and the briefcases next to them a few seconds later, Teddy picks up a suitcase and walks away. We have a low angle shot of him taking one of the briefcases away and having a building in the shot which was really effective.
We see another long shot of Teddy walking towards the camera; David is following close behind but maintaining distance so Teddy will not see him.
This triggers a mid shot of Emre realising that David is after Teddy, he looks at the briefcase and picks it up followed with a POV shot
Finally there is a close up of the briefcase and its contents, a mobile phone ringing.
Our group decided on an orchestral sound that would be supported by drums for the soundtrack of the thriller. Experimenting with the sounds we had from Soundtrack Pro. We were working on fitting in the credits.
Our only problem of the lesson was finalising a suitable name for our thriller, however we will think of something good enough as our final lesson is on Thursday.
filming session day 2
Today we had planned to continue filming from Thursday. Instead of slush and snow conditions, there was heavy rain and no trace of snow or ice. This meant we had to start the filming process from virtually the beginning; otherwise we would have had noticeable inconsistencies that were too obvious when we need to match-cut. So we started and finished filming at the barbican, we had a little more trouble filming with the rain and an issue of permission but we dealt with both issues effectively and finished with time to spare. It helped we had done most of the filming on Thursday.
The difference we made to today’s filming was that at the end, when the hooded man (David) follows the man who had been waiting (Teddy), the main man (Emre) looks at the situation, opens the briefcase happily to find a ringing mobile phone.
In case we did not our original thoughts on film, we thought of alternative options and filmed another ending just in case these first ideas were not good. The difference is that Emre will be looking in the Briefcase and grinning. The footage will not show the contents of the briefcase to the audience.
The Pitch
In this lesson, I, Emre, Teddy and David had to pitch our idea to the teacher and the class. As we were not completely sure of our own idea the pitch was a little complicated, because of this we thought of other possible pitches better, so we thought of another two ideas.
After further contemplation, we thought the idea of number 2 bumping into number 3 to get his bag was stupid and unnecessary. A new idea we came up with, was that number two would follow number 3. Then number 3 would stop by a kiosk and buy himself something, while he would be doing this he would leave his bag unguarded for a minute, so that number 2 could quickly steal the bag without being noticed. Although this sounded god it was way too complex and did not make sense after waiting to make the swap why would someone be stupid enough to leave the bag unguarded.
Also the limit of 2 minutes meant we had to be realistic, we had to use different camera shots, that would be challenging enough without complicating the footage on-screen. Exceeding the 2 minute mark could deduct points from us and cost us a grade. So, we kept our options open and thought we could try filming both and see which one turns out better.
match-cutting
Match-Cut
Today’s lesson we given a storyboard and had to make up shots for it, there were two groups one had to make up the series of shots whilst the other did the same and they we would have to compare the results.
The storyboard was:
A day in East London, 3pm. A man has confidential information and eagerly loads this on a CD. He then packages it to send it off.
In the group I was with Emre, we worked together in this task and David, together with Teddy worked on the same task. After we finished comparing, we found that Teddy’s and David’s sequence was in more detail as they considered more elements and was praised by Mickey for their work.
Mickey then introduced us to “match-cutting”. Match-cut is used in editing where you have a scene and two or more shots, in different angles, have been cut accordingly to fit and let the action carry on with no interferences. It’s a requirement for our thrillers
Mickey then showed us his version of the scenario he gave us. We spotted how he applied his match-cutting technique into the video.
Our Preliminary Video Planning
Our group was given another scenario, we had to actually produce the video piece with our ideas that we put on paper. The scenario was that one person walks into a room, sits opposite the other character and shares a conversation. Our group came up with ideas into creating the shots and putting them together.
plan for thriller opening
In today’s lesson our group had to plan an idea for our actual thriller opening. We had talked to each other about how our thriller opening should be also discussing likes and dislikes of certain thriller opening ideas; this was the lesson we had to have everything on paper. We were thinking of ideas like the location, whether the film was going to be in the day or evening, and if the characters were going to be alone, how many character would be on-screen if there would be any dialogue.
We combined our ideas come up with some decent scenarios. We thought of a scenario, where there would be a normal person walking at night witnessing a murder, combined with a chase scene with the witness and murderer, similar to the policeman flashback thriller we saw. We thought this was a pretty good idea because it had the “instant arousal” factor for the audience, but we were told that it was way too fast and that we could be making an attempt at a whole movie in two minutes instead of just an opening.
We then had a final idea, where there would be a conning. The opening contains a bag handling situation where two bags contain contents that each man want what the other man has. Two men work together to steal the third man's bag. This is how the scene will work. The two men working together will be called number 1 and 2. The third man is the man that gets conned. Number 1 sits in a quite area with the bag waiting. Number 3 sits next to him with a bag. Number 2 sits on the on the opposite side and impatiently waits for the swap. After the swap happens between 1 and 3, number 2 deliberately follows or bumps into Number 3 to confront him.
Thriller openings
Student Thriller Openings
In this lesson to gain more of an idea on what we have to film, we watched a few thriller openings that other students had made.
Blasphemy
Blasphemy has the opening of a psychological thriller, a compulsive person that is collecting pictures of people at random. There is great detail to the point that he is cutting and distorting the pictures, as this is the opening there is no insight to why he is doing this. The man also takes time to underline quotes from the bible. Blasphemy takes similar ideas from the film “Seven.” The opening had slow panning and tracking shots of a pathway and church Also, long shots of someone making their way through the abandoned church. An exercise we had to do was decide what sort of age group each film opening would suit, Blasphemy I felt had the target audience of 25-35. It’s a sophisticated opening which didn’t feature too much action and I believe younger audience would need to see something adventurous early to continue watching.
Essex Road
Essex road is more of an action based thriller opening, centred on a police officer trying to piece together the events of a girl who was attacked in an underground station. The officer was pacing around in his office trying to work out clues to catch the killer, it made me think that someone may be trying to attack him too. The camera shots focuses on the girl with long shots and mid range shots, these were the main focus as she was being chased. There was a close-up of a bracelet she dropped as she was trying to get away, this highlights significance to the film and the officer solving the murder case. The opening uses flashbacks to show the killing and links up the evidence. The target audience age can be lowered compared to Blasphemy as it’s accessible to young viewers from 18-40.
Timecode
Timecode’s thriller opening is about a boy who wakes up in the middle of nowhere, in a back alley and finds himself hand-cuffed to a briefcase. A frantic attempt takes place to get himself free ensues. He sees a man on the other side of the alley, and the opening comes to a head. The action of the film was slow. The choice of the location was well suited to the action and the background was also good to watch where there wasn’t anyone in the public caught on camera. There was a good variety of shots. I think that this opening had a target audience of 25-45 year olds.
Days Are Numbered
the opening was unique compared to the other thrillers, because it used the idea of not actually being thrilling in the begging to justify an opening that would not be considered thrilling at all. The target audience for this opening would be 35+ as its non-relevance to a thriller may annoy people who are not willing to understand.
Thriller Films & Audience
In this part of the lesson we looked at some statistics that dealt with what types of genres people liked to see and how gender affected them. There was a list of films that were out at the same time. We rightfully concluded that men would be more likely to watch films that focused on action, war and violence. We knew that women would tend to watch more romance and comedy movies. What did surprise me was finding out that women were equally likely to watch thriller films than men.
watching a documentary
In Today’s lesson we watched a documentary about film openings as a class. There were interviews with directors such as Jean Jacques Beineix, Orson Welles, and critics such as Thomas Sutcliffe and Stanley Kauffmann. The documentary was about differing opinion and reasons concerning the question “how should a film opening work”. This was interesting as we were asking the same question and trying to consider the best approach, whether such as brutal as a killing should take place or should we prolong the thrilling events.
T.V critic Thomas Sutcliffe described films that “need to seduce their audiences into long term commitment and that the temptation to go for instant arousal is the most irresistible.” I Which i think means they need to be given a reason to be enticed by your movie and the best known way of doing this is to excite them from beginning to end.
Others have a different opinion such as French director Jean Jacques Beineix,” the risk of having instant arousal in the opening of a movie is that you may not be able to answer the questions afterwards, or even not be able to make the rest even dramatic than the beginning.” Beineix relates to me more than Sutcliffe does to give the audience what they want straight away makes it hard to produce a film that can go the distance instead of just have one particular great scene but everything else is flat.
Stanley Kauffmann talks the classic opening with “a long establishing shot of the city, a mid shot of the shops, a long shot of the building and a mid shot though the window to the main character.” He says that this type of opening works because it allows the audience to know that everything is well before the dilemma kicks in. Which is true, it sets the tone and represents the calm before the storm.
The Shining
15/12/08
In today’s lesson our objective was to watch “The Shining” as it will contribute ideas to why thrillers differ to horror films. We were asked to analyse certain scenes in the film, whilst explaining how the suspense was built and maintained, we had to monitor all aspects such movement of the actors, eerie soundtracks and the periods of differing editing. As the film concluded, there was a class discussion about particular scenes that highlighted and maintained suspense. A few of the scene that we commented on were the following:
Jack’s staggering limp – Jack is chasing Danny down as he tries to kill him with an axe, because of the menacing look on his face and the dragging on Jack’s feet the scene is more intense as we have to continue to watching to see whether Danny is killed or escapes.
The Intro scene – I found this scene thrilling in a different sense, there was minimal action however there was constant weariness because the car being followed through a bird’s eye view this creates a situation of predator and prey. As the story is told straight away you had to wait to see when it was coming which I think is an inspired idea. Finally, as Wendy tries to make conversation with Jack she finds that he has repeatedly written “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” The aftermath of this scene is she realises that Jack is becoming psychotic as it is also a revelation to us that he was never writing a book as he was kept insisting he was and from here we see a dramatic change in Jack and now feel something bad will happen soon.
Filming session
In this lesson we started to begin filming, as there was limited time we had to think of ideas quickly. Teddy thought of the Barbican centre as a filming location we went there and the buildings and the environment made the Barbican a great too place to film. We originally planned to film our thriller at any tube station we could find, however we had to change our plans because we did not obtain permission in time from Transport for London, it would take at least two weeks to receive an answer which could have been no. So we decided there was way too much risk without gain so we carried on.
The Barbican had much to focus on; it had a sophisticated look that we could incorporate into the thriller. In my opinion filming in the Barbican is far more beneficial to us than filming at the tube station there is more to interactive with. We finally decided who was going to do what for the project, I was going to be directing and holding the camera. Emre, Teddy and David were going to be the actors, Emre and Teddy making the briefcase swap and David is going to be waiting for Teddy to be vulnerable so he could steal Teddy’s briefcase for Emre.
The plot we originally made was still kept, three men feature in the opening and two are working together however one man is not aware of this nor does he ever see the third person. As we were filming we just decided to use all the time we had gathering different shots even if they seemed hard or nonsensical we wanted to use as much variety as possible. Although I do like filming at the Barbican there was one shot in particular we would miss, it was heavily reliant on the escalators so it was for this reason we were determined to make up for it.
We were close to finishing filming today, but we had run out of time so we had to travel back to college the only fear I have is that the snow and Ice will not last until Monday and we may have to start filming again. If this does happen I still believe we will finish filming as most of our shots do not feature ice or snow so it would be extra work but not a worst case scenario.
Wednesday 25 March 2009
Monday 23 March 2009
Emre walking with the bag, smartly dressed, with a serious attitude. Tall buildings in the area, mainly workplaces.
Emre Walking towards Teddy, David waiting at the back and ready to get the bag off Teddy once the exchange has been done.
David walking behind Teddy to grab the bag off him. David dressed with hood to cover his identity.
A screen-capture of the movie Collateral. This is the scene where Tom Cruise is confronted by two men to give his bag. He then shoots both of them.
A screen-capture of the movie Grand Torino. This is a suitable example of perfect image quality. There is good lighting. It makes the film look bold.
An image from the movie Green Street, based in the UK. The quality differs with many American movies.
A screen-capture of an amateur movie called The briefcase. Our film and this one both associate with the idea of the importance of the contents inside the bag. 
A stereotypical example of the target audience we are approaching. A young entrepreneur. 
An example of a Facebook discussion group. This particular one is about the film Superbad.
Thriller Evaluation
Thriller Evaluation
1. In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge form and conventions of real media products?
Our thriller film uses codes and conventions of real conspiracy thriller movies by having the tension all the way through the film. We have managed to do this by creating a quite serious image for the film; by having two smartly dressed men doing a bag swap without properly looking at each other, showing hardly any facial expression; by having the lightning jumping in as soon as the film starts; clearly having the unmistakable bags, where the audience would immediately know that whatever is inside has some worth, creating suspense; bringing in the hooded man to go after Teddy and steal the bag back which performs one of the best things you could have in a situation like this, for a thriller movie. We have used the instant arousal idea (where David goes after Teddy), from the “Watching” documentary. We have done this because, as it says in the documentary “a good beginning must make the audience feel that it doesn’t know nearly enough yet, and at the same time make sure that it doesn’t know too little”. We have portrayed this by preventing the audience from knowing too much. For example, the audience do not know the purpose of the mobile phone in the bag, which leaves some mystery to it. Also the audience know some aspects of the film, such as the fact that Emre has conned Teddy by having David, Emre’s partner, to go after Teddy to get the bag back from him, which only the audience know about. As Alfred Hitchcock says, “Let ‘em play god; they’ll work like a devil for you because they know what fate is facing for the poor actors.”
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Although the actors in the film were all 16-17 year old college students, we aimed our target audience to be 25-40 year olds, possibly middle class and have a job in a formal workplace. The way we established this, was by getting out of our usual clothes and to go for a smarter look, because this social group are most likely to appoint to this article of clothing on a daily basis. The reason why we didn’t have David smartly dressed was because he wasn’t part of the exchange of bags and that his job of stealing the bag from Teddy required for him to wear a hood, because he was engaging in noticeable criminal activity, so he couldn’t show his face. We also thought about David’s clothing to represent the stereotype of a robber. Our thriller was made in the Barbican Centre, which helped justify the extent of which the bag swap had a serious role in. The Barbican Centre was quite desirable for our location as the structure of the area and the tall buildings surrounding it had some representation of businessmen/women having a job there. The codes and conventions were best suited to the 25-40 year old category because that is the age group that would have the highest level of employment, and that the idea of business would relate mostly to 25-40 year olds. The idea of middle class came to mind as people in that class would have a job associated to an office or in the management area, so the Barbican Centre also gets points for that. The maturity of the thriller would also have the biggest impact on out target audience, as other audiences, such as the younger generation are more likely to watch films with greater action and adventure.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our thriller film was influenced greatly by the briefcase scene in the film Collateral, where two men go after Tom Cruise to get his bag, and since it is a successful movie, it may have a positive impact on our film too in the Hollywood scene. It also fits quite well into being a thriller film, as it performs the codes and conventions of a thriller film, such as creating the suspense and leaving a mystery, and letting the audience “play God”.
However, the actors aren’t in the age group that they have targeted the film to be at, so it would seem very amateur, because people in a certain age range would inherit different characteristics, for example the clothes they wear, their posture, their attitude, the way they speak and their appearance. The lighting or the quality of the image isn’t up to date compared to what we would receive from the Hollywood film industry. Overall, in my opinion I would say that our film may not shape up to fit into Hollywood standards.
Nevertheless, I would see this movie as a British underdog rather than a Hollywood mainstream movie and would think that it has a chance to draw itself into Britain’s movie screens.
I think this film would be accepted by the British film industry, as our film has the factors that make a film British. In terms of the atmosphere its dark, its dreary weekday in London, and the characters are in a rush to get the bag swap over and done with. The level of lighting is one good example. Our film is quite dark and many British films possess that feel. It’s almost like a disease. The Barbican is also another good example as it is a well known location in London. Compared to American films it also has people from ethnic minorities which reflect a diverse British culture.
Also it will be suited to placing a spot on the famous YouTube website, as it is recognized for hosting many types of video production, including amateur films, documentaries, music videos etc. Yet it will need quite a lot of attention and web hits to become noticeable worldwide and make a name for itself. After some research I found that our thriller film was quite similar to another amateur film called “The Briefcase: chase scene”. It is about a boy walking a long distance and after some time he finds himself being followed by another person, and his aim is to grab that bag off him. It’s had 594 views and is getting positive comments from other YouTube users. I think YouTube has its highly respected reputation for having a ground for amateur videos, and is the type of media we would like to distribute our video to.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
My audience would go as follows. A 25-30 year old entrepreneur who is making a considerable good amount of money because of his genius. He has a good sense of humour and has good negotiation skills. He is a success. He loves to watch Dragons Den and likes to grab ideas for his next invention. He drives a brand new Audi, with his own personal number plate. He is very much into his social life as he goes out to bars and clubs in the weekend. He is single, and makes the most out of it.
5. How will you attract/address your audience?
I will attract my target audience through billboards around the UK. A billboard is a suitable method to approach my target audience as they will be outside, at work, at lunch, unavoidable seeing advertisements like these. The billboard itself will have just a photo of Teddy, turning behind his back with an angry facial expression. That billboard will give the idea that he is going to do something unpleasant, for example take revenge. But we will show that he is “the good guy” on the billboard. Also I would extend the presence of our thriller by having trailers onto the internet, with a great deal of slow motion shots and a beat to go with every shot that pops up. I will use sources such as YouTube and Vimeo. I will also raise the awareness of our thriller through social networking websites such as Facebook and create its own discussion group for people to put their views about the film.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
My experiences of filming and editing have been phenomenal, as I have gained new skills using the camera and getting to grips with the editing software Final Cut Pro. Filming has been fun as we didn’t suffer any problems during the process, and experimented with the camera angles to make our film look neat. We used as many shots as we could that would suit our thriller. I used to do some editing before, but final cut pro on a Mac was more of a challenge for me, as I wasn’t familiar with using Mac’s and that I didn’t know how to use Final Cut Pro. My editing skills, such as log and capture, creating effects and adding text into the video have expanded. I have also used the internet whilst making and editing the film. This was to help me blog for every lesson I had during the project.
7. What was the audience feedback from the class and cinema?
When we showed the video in class to the other groups we had in set 1, they were pleased with the plot for the film, that it was a conspiracy thriller and it had its unique vibe to it. They found that the soundtrack went well with the film, as it was a good combination of opera sounds that we used from the software provided.
In the cinema the audience were very happy with our performance as there was cheering from many people, and we got an applause after the film had finished.
8. Compare your thriller film to your preliminary task?
Our thriller film, compared to our preliminary film showed that we put great efforts into this project. The reason is because, although our prelim was enjoyable to watch, it didn’t grasp the idea of a thriller film. Instead it was more of a comedy, as we had David smiling all the way along the film.
thriller evaluation final!!
The way our thriller opening uses, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real thriller movie openings is that we didn’t make our opening to simple because it wouldn’t have that much affect on the audience but we didn’t make it too hard so that the audience wouldn’t completely not understand what is going on. We also didn’t give away that much as this is to keep the audience off their seats so that they would want to know more as the film progresses. We created tension throughout the opening this was created by the soundtrack we created as the opening of our thriller would just start with a basic sound then as it continues the sound gets more upbeat, just when Teddy one of the actors who is doing the bag exchange with Emre picks up Emres bag the sound contributes very well as teddy picks the bag up and walks away. Many films that have bag exchange in them there is always tension that is built to when the person actually opens the bag and reveals what is inside the bag. Normally when the person open his bag he would find either money or drugs in them, but we thought why not put a phone in there as this would keep the audience thinking. We didn’t really want the audience to know a lot as we got this idea from watching a Documentary; a good opening shouldn’t give the audience enough information but not too little.
this is the ending when emre opens the suitcase only to find a phone ringing.
Convention we also used was the credits. We didn’t want to make the credit too fancy as this wasn’t that important. We kept it simple and clear. We didn’t have our title at the end like others, we placed it 20 sec after the start.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our thriller represents middle class social groups. This is because that we didn’t dress in our everyday style. We dressed up in smart suits. This was to link to the place where we filmed our thriller opening which was the Barbican. The Barbican was surrounded by offices so we knew we had to dress up just like office worker/ businessmen/women to blend in with the location. Our target audience we aimed this at was to be 20-30 year old middle class people. Even though we were 16/17 years of age we manage to hide our age by wearing smart clothes. The Barbican was an ideal place to film because it was very mature place as the place is calm and quiet with middle class workers working about so we don’t intend crime and dodgy stuff to happen around this area. Our thriller isn’t really for women’s but more men would want to watch this sort of thriller as most of the actors are boys, not only because of this, it’s because men are more interested in these sort of films.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I am sure i would not see our thriller in a Hollywood film industry but would see it as in a British screen. This is because our thriller has all the factors of being a British movie. Many British movies the lighting is mainly dark and the weather is dark, cloudy, rainy and a bit depressing. All this factors comes in to our thriller.
Our thriller was influenced by the movie Collateral were two men goes after Tom Cruise to steal his bag. This was a very successful movie so we decided to use the idea but change a bit as it wouldn’t be a Hollywood movie but a British movie.
I think the main distributors for our thriller would be Associated British Film Distributors (ABFD) as this would be more of a British film than a Hollywood blockbuster.
i also think YouTube would be an ideal institution for our thriller as YouTube is one of the biggest website in the world were u can upload your video’s and see what people think about it. It would be a good idea to put this on the website as you can get peoples feedback and then you would know that what you have created was successful or not. On YouTube there would be millions of people across the world exploring the website watching video clips from other people. I explore YouTube all the time and there are lots of rubbish video clips that i have seen and waste my time on but there would have many views. This shows that if we do upload our thriller on YouTube we would get people from all around the world watching it so our thriller will get more audience watching it.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience for my thriller would be men age 25-30 who works and makes a lot of money and has the skills of a businessman. I also think older teenagers age 18-20 would also want to watch this kind of movie as they in the future would want to become a businessman and that there are in the environment of businesses. As i already said it would be middle class men who would actually watch this thriller movie.
How will you attract/address your audience?
What i would do to attract/address my audience is to create posters about my thriller film and placing them around London. Also i would create a trailer and have it on the internet. I would have it on YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook. This is because all of this website are very popular and have millions of people on it everyday.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at our preliminary task we have learnt the lesson of not to complicate things and to keep it simple. During our preliminary task we made a lot of mistakes such as going overboard with the genre and making the genre completely different. I also learnt that props are really needed to make the film more realistic and that it would contribute with the genre. I also learnt how to create match-cuts and using different camera angles and shots to use to make it more exciting.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
In these past weeks of filming our thriller i have learnt a lot. I have gain a lot of skills for this project such as using Final Cut editing our thriller and preliminary tasks. I learnt how to add effects, log and capture and adding texts. I also learnt the skills required to use the camera. Even though i used final cut before this project it was still a challenge as we had to do more stuff editing than the task we did before with filming of our thriller, such as adding credits, creating a black screen in between the scenes. Filming was very fun and enjoyable to do.
Media evaluation (thriller opening)
I also learnt how to use the soundtrack program to make the soundtrack of our thriller. This was way harder to use as it had a lot of sound from different instruments to choose from and most of them weren’t that great. But we managed to create a perfect soundtrack for our thriller. I also had to blog everything we did during our project using blogger.com.
What was the audience feedback from the class and cinema?
The feedback from our own class was very good. They said that our soundtrack really suits the film and that it really built tension to the part when teddy and Emre first meet. They also liked the shot of the three characters (me, Teddy and Emre) in one shot. They also understand what was going on so it really did go well.
At the cinema the audience were very pleased with our thriller as they cheered and applause at the end. This shows that our thriller was a success.
this is the shot when emre walks towards teddy and you can also see me at the back.
Sunday 22 March 2009
Thriller Evaluation
Thriller Evaluation
· In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
When we looked at different thrillers, and concentrated on there openings we noted a few things that help the thriller become more dramatic, one of these things we saw was that letting the audience be one step ahead, knowing more than the character.
As a group we thought that we should include this in our production. We decided to use an POV shot so that the audience can tell that there is an acknowledgment between the two. There is also a over the shoulder shot looking back, so we can see that the character I am playing being 
followed, however I do not know.
We all so thought that cutting away from this to see Emre’s character smiling looking towards where we walked to would show that they did know each other (David and Emre) and that something bad has happened to me, not showing what happens also adds to the dramatic effect as it is left up to the audience to decide what happened to me.
When we came up with the idea of a business like bag swap we knew location would be important, like in “The Shining” the house’s isolation plays well with the idea of him going mad. So we knew where we filmed had to have an “executive” look to it, we had two places in mind, we thought that
So we decided to film in the Barbican centre. There are less people and the architecture gives it the sense that it is a well kept, business area.
· How does your media production represent particular social groups?
Our group was all males, so we could not go for the “venerable” woman and the stalker man. So we thought that a bag swap with “Mob Gangster” like characters, so when it came to what to wear we knew that because they are supposed to be from different gangs, the clothing had to be different, so I am wearing a grey suit, and Emre is in full black with a cardigan. David being more of a “Foot solider” he is wearing more casual black (links to Emre wearing black same gang.) with a hood.
Both wearing black
Only one wearing Grey
From our feedback we got told that the use of the location was excellent as it shows a business area however it is also remote and “different looking” to most places.
· What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
If the whole film was to be made I think the category of “British gangster” would fit it well. So it would either be a sink or float film when it comes to over seas. All though I think it would be a British success such as “The Italian Job”. As there would be no real “star appeal” there would probably be many small companies would contribute to the film, and be distubuted by a smaller production company maybe Film 4 as they mostly invest in small British Films that are “Underdogs” when it comes to a successful film.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
The theme of the film being “British Gangsters” this genre would attract more of a male audience than female. Being a small film the audience would probably be people who enjoy watching independent films over the
We asked a few people (same age as us) what they though? And would they go see it?
The majority said that they would most likely see it, but they would doubt they would go to an independent cinema, they would most likely see it online or watch it on DVD.
How will you attract/address your audience?
There is no “star appeal” to our film. As it is more of a low budget production. We have a cast and crew of people starting there career. Being a “British Gangster” film it would attract people who are fans of that genre. It would be advertised at small independent cinemas in the cities and in magazines, there would not be much point for it to be mainstream advertising all over
It would also travel by word of mouth by things such as forums and chat sites about the genre.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Having a small experience in the filming and editing. We knew the basics and what we had to do, we needed to be refreshed in knowing how to do certain things, such as how to make a blank screen, and how to add text ( and edit it). Apart from this we all did our share in the making of the clip. We all put our own ideas in and if we didn’t know how to do something, we would ask how, and learn how to do it. The only problems we had where when it came to location and weather. Firstly we where unable to get our first choice of location,
Here is the kind of are we wanted. However we would have had to wait 2 weeks for the permission. Not having a lot of time we had to scrap that idea. We then though of the barbican centre, however when we started filming there was snow, and when we went back it had melted, so we had to film over again, and once again because of the little time we had to do it in the rain ( this played to our advantage though because we where able to make it more dramatic using lightning)
Using the blog helped us a lot, as we where able to document what we where doing, and we knew where we were up to, what we had to do and what went wrong, so in the future we knew what to change. Being able to upload the clip onto Vimeo we where able to widen the audience to whom ever wants to see it on the internet. (if they know about it).
Looking back at your preliminary tasks, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back I have learnt that the easiest way to get something done is to give it a bit of flexibility, in that say after you have created your storyboard, however when u get to the location to film you need to make drastic changes to the storyboard. I think from the match cuts I have gotten quite good at match cutting in final cut pro. Out of everything we had to do, the mind-mapping of ideas where the hardest, because we struggled to find something that everyone was happy with. The filming and editing where all easy as my group where egger to learn new techniques in editing and filming. The only problem was weather when it came to filming. However I am happy with our choice of location when asked some people said “it gives it something extra…in that the place is different to the normal streets of London” over all I am happy with the work we all did in our group and our final outcome went well. My favourite part was creating the soundtrack and editing it to fit into the video.
going to the Vue to watch the final edits
Monday 2 March 2009
watch each other thriller.
second day of editing
First day of Editing
watching film openings. (documentary) Monday 5th jan
the first question was, What does Thomas Sutcliffe mean when he says: "films need to suduce their audience into long term commitment. while there are many types of suduction, the temtation to go for instant arousal is most irresistible"
what this means is to open, grab the audience attention straight away instead of a build up to the drama.
another question was, what is meant by "a faourite trick of film Noir" this means to start at the end.
the documentary tells us the classic openings. this was described by critic Standley Kauffmann as she said that the classic opening starts with an establishing shot close up and closer ect.. because you know where, and what the characters are.
this documentary tells us alot about film openings such as showing us what openings can do, how to begin a opening etc..
second day of filming
Thursday 26 February 2009
3 lessons of editing
Our thriller would start with a long panning shot of Emre walking down the stairs only seeing his shoulders and above. To make a match cut we followed the action by a still low high angle shot of emre walking down the same stairs. Then followed by a long shot of emre finally finish walking down the stairs and walking towards the camera. This followed by a black screen, this was to show the title. Then there was a stil mid shot of emre walking past the camera and walking down another stairs, low high anle shot of him walking down the stairs again, the a OVS shot of teddy looking at his watch. Followed by a POV shot of emre looking at me and a POV shot of me looking at him. There was a long shot of emre walking to teddy sitting down, low shot of emre placing the suitcase down beside him when he sits down next to teddy only showing their legs and the suitcase. It continues with teddy picking up the bag and walking away, still low high angle of teddy walking pass the camera. Then a long shot of teddy walking towards the camera with Me following him from behind. We end this by having a mid shot of emre looking to the right where teddy walked away and looking at the suitcase, then a POV shot of him picking up the suitcase. Close up of emre opening the suitcase, then finally a close up showing the item that was in the suitcase which was a mobile phone.
After we edited all the shots we started to add credits to it such as the title, the actors names, director, cameraman etc.. we then started on the hard bit, making the soundtrack for our thriller. As a group we found it hard to make the soundtrack. We went through all the sounds that was provided and started to play around with it. We started to mix different sound together such as bass and violin sounds and it kind of worked out pretty good. We then played around more add rain noises, thunder... after we experimented with the sound we ended up with a very good soundtrack. Its starts of with a thunder noise which contributes with the rain as we filmed in the rain. It gradually gets more up beat following the action. The part when teddy looks at his watch the sounds get faster using the violin sound. This is to build up the action so the audience will start know that somethink important is going to happen. It continues to the part when teddy picks up the suitcase. This part the sound contribute more with the action as it changes abit when teddy picks the suitcase up. Our soundtrack ends with a sudden stop when the item in the suitcase is shown.
I thought that the soundtrack really helped made this opening more like a thriller as it builds up as the action builds on to the important part. As a group we was very happy of what we have produce. Adn also we named our thriller ‘Exchange’.