thriller evaluation final!!

What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media product.

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.

watch each other thriller.

in this lesson we got to watch each others thriller opening. it was very interesting to watch others thriller as we can see whats differences and similarities it has with your own thriller. we also had to give feedback on each others work.we had positive comments like, the soundtrack really suits the whole action thriller thing, they also said they like the shots where there was 3 of the actors (david, emre,teddy) in one shot.

watching film openings. (documentary) Monday 5th jan

in this lesson we watch a documentary about film openings. we had to watch the documentary and answer question about what the people say about film openings.

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..

3 lessons of editing

In this lesson we started editing our thriller opening. We started off capturing the filming we did on the previous lesson onto final cut. After we did this we started to choose which part we needed in our thriller by shortening it by using (i) in point, (0) out point.

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’.

Filming thriller opening.

On the first lesson off filming we decided to film the opening of our thriller at Barbican. This was because we didn’t get our permisson to film at the train station. Also if we didn’t film on this day we would risk not finishing the thriller on time as the closing deadline was close by.

The Barbican was a perfect place to film our thriller as it would relate to the bag swap because the area was full of office worker so they would be in suits, so teddy and emre who was going to do the bag swap wore their suits so they both would blend in with all the office workers.

Unfortunately we had a problem. We started to film our opening but end up not finishing it so we decided to finish it next lesson but couldn’t because of the snow as if we do film on the next lesson there would be problems with match cuts.

So the lesson after we started to film the whole thing again. The character were, Me, Teddy and Emre, James was the cameraman. Teddy and Emre would be doing the bag swap and i would be the man that works for emre and follows Teddy when both bags had been swapped. We did a lot of shots such as emre walking down the stairs off Barbican to meet up with teddy who is sitting down on the bench. We also done a pan shot of emre walking down the stairs, High angle shot of him coming down the stairs. We done a POV shot off emre having a glace at Me standing there looking at him. A POV of me looking at emre. We had a low shot of emre placing the suit case on the floor next to him while he sits down next to teddy and then teddy takes the bag a walks off the set. A high angle of teddy walking away. Long shot of teddy walking towards the camera and me following him.

We decided to make two ending and would see which one would be the best to end with. First ending was emre picking up the suitcase and watching teddy walk away with a grin on his face not showing whats in the suitcase. Second ending was emre picking up the suitcase and opening it and finds a phone ringing.

We finish on that. I thought the filming went well but we did miss some shots out that we really needed but the shots we had was very good.

the pitch!

on this day i was absent....

planning of thriller opening!

In this lesson as a group we started to plan our thriller opening. Together we had many ideas for the thriller. Some of the ideas was; a person walking home from work and witness a murder and was chased by the killer himself. We thought this was a pretty good idea as the chase scene would create suspense as needed in a thriller opening. We were told that it wouldnt be a good idea as it would happen to quick and too much happening in a opening scene.

We ended up with a final idea, where there would be a bag exchange. We started to plan where this thriller opening was going to be located. As a group we had lots of ideas as where we can film such as the underground, airport, busy areas.... the problem with this was we had to ask for permission to film in the underground and airport. But we was liked the idea of a bag exchange in the underground so we decided to film it in the underground train station hoping we could get permission. We then thought of what would happen in the opening scene; the idea was for two men to work togther and steal the other mans bag. There would be 3 men in this scene, man 1 + 2 are working together to scam man 3. Man 1 would exchange the bag full off money to man 3, then man 2 would exchange a bag of newspaper pretending its money with man 3. At the end off this man 1+2 would have bags full off drugs and money but man 3 would end up with a bag full off newspaper.

second practice film lesson.

in this lesson we had to create a second practice film. Creating this second practice film we try to not complicate things as we did with the first practice film and complete ignore the genre. In this task we had to film a person walking into a room and a little bit of dialog between 2 people.

As a group we decided to film (emre) walking up the stairs to get to the room that (james) was in. This really helped as we was able to get more different shots and angles such as close-up, mid-shot, low angle shots, etc. We did each part of the filming a few times as we did each shot in a different angle and shots. We experimented with different shots to see if it would work. So we decided to do a very high angle shot of emre opening the door to create a birds eye view shot. We also tried a point of view shot with emre holding the camera while walking so the audience would see what he is seeing. Another shot we tried was a OSS while the to people was chating. This practice film wern’t like the first one as we didnt have a genre to link it to so it made filming and acting easier.

After the filming we had to edit it on final cut. Again this was easier as we didn’t have to make the film suspenseful like the last film we had made. After we completed editing and creating match-cuts with the filming we did, we decied not to add and sound track as all the sound we found did not contribute with the film.
In this lesson i thought that the filming went very well as we stook to our original plan and didn’t complicate things.

The Shining.

in todays lesson we watched a Thriller movie called The Shining. whiles watching this film we were ask to look for at least three examples of a suspenseful moment.

After watching this thriller we gave feedback about what parts was suspenseful and what made it suspenesful. Through out the film it was very suspenseful as the same soundtrack of a kittle getting louder and louder. This made the whole film very suspenseful. Some of the feedback:
the beginning starts of with a birds eye view shot following a car with a non-diagetic music of a heartbeat effect which made it suspenseful. also the birds eye view shot shows the location were the car is and establish isolation.whiles the boy was in the bathroom talking to his finger, there were a slow zoom on to him with the non-diagetic sound of kittle. As the zoom gets closer to him the sound gets louder this created suspense. The maze chase was very suspenseful as we don’t know whats around each corner also with the sound that contribute with teh chase. Tracking shot hightens suspense. When the boys sees the two girls there were quick shot of dead bodies this made me jump of my seat and again the sound contributes with it.
After this lesson i learnt that sounds can really make a different to the type of genre. The sound in this film made it very suspenseful as it repeats the same sound and get louder as somethink is about to happen

practice thriller David le

In the past few lesson we were put into groups of 4 (teddy,emre and james). as a group we had to plan a practice thriller which was to make a newspaper thrilling.

In the first lesson of our planning we was told to make a storyboard by taking photos of different kinds of shot that would make the newspaper thrilling or draw it by hand. My group decided to take photos of the different kinds of shots as it was easier to do than draw it by hand as we were not as artistic. Our idea of our thriller was a man which i was played by me reading a newspaper and see somethink exciting. This lead to him jumping of his chair in excitment. He then runs out the room with excitment and happiness. As he runs out another man who was played by James walks confusly over the to the newpaper which was thrown on the floor and there he sees a picture of Angelina Jolie. As we took the photos we took different camera shots to make the whole thing thrilling. We took a close up of the man reading the newspapers emotion, we try to take 4 shots which was to convey a rotation shot, over the shoulder, extreme close up and much more.

The lesson we had to film the thrilling we changed parts of the storyboard that we done to make it more better as it turnt out to be. Filming this thriller was more easier as we can use lots of different angles shots and moving shots. This was much different to taking photos as you can use moving shots.we decied to take 3-4 different shots on one part of the thriller. The first shot we came up with was a tracking shot with a close up of my feet, high angle shot of myself entering the room, also a low angle of myself walking in to the room and sitting down. After this scene we took a low angle of myself picking up the newspaper to read it, as i was reading the newspaper we shot a 180 degree slow moving mid shot around me and ends up with a over the shoulder shot of the article that i’m reading. A close up of my reaction, a long shot of me running out. A low shot while i run over the camera, a low angle long shot of james walking towards the newspaper and then finally a close up of a picture of Angelina Jolie. The next lesson we had to edit the footage that we took. Editing the footage we made some shorter to make it contribute with the nexts scene. This was easy as we knew were to place each clip. After editing we moved on to sounds. This part took some time as they were quite a lot of sound to chose from. We tested alot of sunds that will fit into our thriller. As we tried to chose the right sound we then realise the we made a mess of this so called thriller. We realise that we made a mistake on filming as after the editing with sound our clip did not feel like a thriller actually it was completely not a thriller. This was our own fault as our idea was not thrilling at all. As a group we thought that the sound was the biggest promblem as we chose fast pace happy sound which a thriller does not have. We then stop editing the sound. The film ended up to be funny. After this we all learnt that the sound of the film can indicate to us the genre of the film. Sound is very inportant!