Question One -

A thriller film is a film which is typically scary and involves an exciting plot which revolves around crime and espionage, which usually pits a hero against a villain in one form or another.

Thriller films, like any other genre, have conventions. Conventions are what people use to associate different films and they are inter-contextual. There are many conventions in all aspects of the genre and how it is created, sometimes, creators will tend to ignore the conventions in order to confuse the audience, or perhaps reverse them to make their film something different.

Editing - Fundamentally there are two types of thriller - an action thriller and a psychological thriller. In an action thriller, the film will have a lot of straight cuts and short clips, which when played repeatedly have a very high pace and will keep the audience on the edge of their seat. With a psychological thriller, the editing will be conventionally slow which can also keep the audience on the edge of their seats. In our thriller we used a large amount of straight cuts because they are quick and for every clip to have a transition would not work.

Another key transition used in a thriller films is the 'dissolve', which simply means to have one shot which fades into another. This is often used to show time going by and sometimes flashbacks, which potentially can be used in both psychological and action thrillers. We used the dissolve feature a few times when showing our flashbacks, this showed time passing by and helped to make it more simple when watching.

Editors can also use a jump cut in their film, which is an abrupt cut between two shots. This is often used to show the passage of time or transformation and sometimes drama, however one has to be very careful when using this or it can look very poor. We did not use any of these in our thriller, simply because they are difficult to execute and don't really achieve a lot.

Another transition can be fade to black and fade to white - which essentially means at the end of the shot, one can make the clip dissolve into a completely black background, this is often used and the end of a thriller opening. One popular convention is to have one scene end with fade to black, and have another begin from fade from black. This shows the passage of time or some form of change which is often revealed later on. Fade from black or white is the same as fade to black or white, only with the clip fading in from this background. We used this a few times at the beginning and end of our thriller opening to show time passing by.

Mise-en-scene: Mise-en-scene means to literally 'put into the picture' - so conventions for this involve anything that you would traditionally see in a thriller film. The main convention that people consider is darkness - nearly every thriller has scenes where it is dark and this is usually when things go wrong. Our entire thriller opening took place in the darkness, this is because where these is darkness, a human being's vision is impaired, which is basically a weakness.

Another convention of mise-en-scene is environment, although there are a few, the essential idea is that the victim of the thriller is in an open area in the middle of nowhere, whether it is in a house, a car, there is more often than not nothing around them. This gives a sense of helplessness which in effect makes the victim completely powerless to the villain, like in the still shot of ‘The Strangers’ shown above.

         A shot of the location we used. There are a lot of old barn doors which, when the area is breezy, creak.

In our thriller opening, we used a location which matched the cconventions of mise-en-scene for any thriller opening – this is an area in Morton Fen that has absolutely nothing around it for a long while, and there is very little in the way of passers-by. When dark, the area is very secluded and eerie and combined with the creaking of the barn door and the sound of owls tweeting from a distance makes for a frightening location.

 

Sound: Sound can vary from being anything to non-digetic and digetic, sound effects and music, or anything similar. All films will have a sound track to create a bridge of atmosphere that can have any effect on the audience watching it – this is called non-digetic sound – sound that is added in while editing as opposed to sound that is captured on the day of the filming.

There are two popular types of thriller films – action thrillers and psychological thrillers – our opening was simply a psychological thriller, and to match this we did not have a fast track, it was fairly slow and somewhat odd. This was the right thing for us to do because it did match the conventions for what you would expect in a thriller, it is difficult to play the conventions for something different in terms of a sound track, and this was the only piece of non-digetic sound we had in our thriller opening.

In the duration of our filming, we did capture some digetic sounds which we would go against using in our thriller opening because they were simply not credible and couldn’t really go anywhere within them. These consisted of the sound of a gate creaking, a police siren and some owl noises; we didn’t think they would really work in our film.

All of the digetic sound we used was simply what we captured on film to use, for example the scream was a digetic sound and we ended up having to take it several times before it was just right. A scream is a standard piece of thriller paraphernalia and we decided we’d have to use it at least once, which we did in a successful way.

Camerawork: This is arguably one of the most important parts of constructing a thriller film because there are many aspects to it and it is vital in making the film tick the boxes which make a successful film. Conventionally, one will expect to see a range of shots, in an entire film there should be everything from an extreme close up to an extreme long shot.

 

This is an example of a close-up shot, which is normally only used to show emotion or detail of a person or object. In the Psycho shower scene, a murder takes place where a woman is stabbed multiple times by a knife, this is the shot of before the stabbing takes place and the light is shone so that the knife is shown in great detail to give a sense that it is the most important item in the shot.

In our thriller opening we were able to use a couple of these, for example when the girl is about to be killed, her reaction was shown and we felt this shot was the best to do so, it was not an extreme close up because we wanted to be able to see her surroundings as well as her reactions.

Another common piece of camerawork usually used in all films, not just thrillers, is a pan shot. It is effectively a way to show the movement of a character and gives a better effect than a straight cut to another clip.

This is an example of a pan shot; it was just before the knife was shown, it is very effective because it builds tension if it is done slowly. In our thriller film, we were able to use one of these effectively and it showed the villain in the corner of the screen - somewhat subtly. We used this pan shot well but ours was done more slowly than you may traditionally find and went against the conventions one may expect – it followed the subject as opposed to finding another character in the shot.

As well as this, high and low angle shots are often found in abundance because they carry a very important meaning and have connotations that help us infer the plot of a complicated film; this much can be achieved from a small amount of shots in this way. The Psycho shower scene uses a massive variety of shots which is seen here again when using both a high angle shot and a low angle shot.

We used one of these in our thriller film to show inferiority to the victim and superiority to the villain.

What makes a good thriller opening: In my opinion, I think that if one is able to use the conventions in a realistic manner, yet still be able to change them in some ways to make them unique, the opening will be different and more exciting to watch. I think that the thriller opening must make technical sense and must be understood to some capacity – on the other hand, if the entire plot is given away with the opening there is very little reason to watch the rest of the film.

The opening must also have a variety of shot types to make it more entertaining, if there is one shot type the whole time or there are not any cuts, enjoyable. The editing also ties in with this because I believe that it must be well edited, in effect it must have every aspect completed to perfection.


I feel that a very good thriller film which breaks conventions successfully is Psycho - particularly a shower scene. Normally, a murder will take place outside in the middle of nowhere, where there is usually darkness; what's more is that the murder is almost always a man as they are considered the dominant gender of the two as they have a higher amount of physical strength. 

However, this scene is completely contrasting to the conventions, which is what makes it so successful. The scene takes place in a shower room which is lit as brightly as one could imagine, and is done inside. As well as this, the gender of the killer is fairly hidden, however if one looks closely they can tell that it is a woman by the shape of the face, the painted fingernails and the hair style. This breaks all of the conventions that the viewer would expect to see; they do it in a way to make the particular scene memorable but they do not stray away from the thriller genre too much, the murder is still there and it is done with a knife (an object which is inter contextual with the thriller genre).


The Strangers is the film which inspired our thriller opening - our entire group had watched and enjoyed the film in terms of it being psychological and still scary. The mask over the head was used in the Strangers as all of the villains have their identity concealed, we thought this would be a good and unique angle because in most thriller films the identity is not hidden and everyone knows who they are. 

Question Two - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Fundamentally, I feel that our group represented a couple of different social groups. We did not want to overload our thriller opening in these terms because we felt too much would confuse the audience, so we kept it fairly simple.

 

We wanted the victim of the opening to come across as a fairly average teenage girl, that there is nothing special about her. The reason we attempted this was due to the fact that there can only be one murder in the opening, and the killer would not be murdering a person because of one of their features, simply because they were them. The murderer is pestilent, he will kill anything he wants and he won't necessarily have a reason for this, which is why we wanted to girl to look nothing more than average. While she is being followed, she is looking very intimidated and genuinely fearing for her life; because she is a female we wanted to apply this as much as possible. Another sign that she was simply an average teenager; she did not have any means of defence and merely screamed for help while doing nothing to try and escape. Her clothing and her stance implies that she presents herself as a fragile teenager who is once again conveyed in her reaction to the text message she receives. We feel that we did this well and it carries along with the norms and stereotypes of modern day society.

The detective is fairly well dressed without being completely suited up. We feel that this represents detectives of many types for a few different reasons. We didn't give away too much about this character because it would give the audience something to infer over without lacking the knowledge that he was important both to the film and to society. While he is dressed smartly, he is not wearing a complete suit, his shirt is not tucked in and his top button undone. This shows that he is fairly casual about his job and we wanted to convey the idea of not all crime-fighters having to be carbon copies of the conventionally smartly-dressed ones. Each of them have something different, and there is no exception with this character. His pose also suggests that he has no intention of messing around. He is standing fairly strongly and wants to be different from his female partner. 

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

There are many media institutions all over the world that have become renowned due to the variety of (or lack of) the films they produce and distribute. For our media product, we feel there would be several that would and would not affiliate themselves with our media product.

Having reviewed several different institutions that would be potentially appropriate for our product, I decided that Paramount Pictures would probably be the best.

 

Paramount Pictures are a very popular and experienced institution, and I feel would be absolutely perfect for our film. They have been world-renowned for producing and distributing films of a massive variety of genres; one of which is thrillers. They will have a catalogue of great producers and will have a distinct knowledge of the consumers to which our product will be aimed at, they will be able to market it well as they have been known to do so many times, and every aspect of what they do is top-notch. Not only this, but they have a very high income and so the cost of films to produce is not an issue at all, nor is the cost of marketing.

Our product is the potential start of what could be very popular, and Paramount would be happy to get on board and offer any help they could to make this media franchise a popular one, it fits in with everything else they do and by signing a small company they do not have a large amount to do, so considering it is both similar and different to what they have a vast amount of experience in, it would be something that is popular with the audience that is always interested in the projects that Paramount Pictures supports.

Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product and why?

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

To determine which age category this thriller opening would best suit, I went on to the official British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) website, where there is a guide showing how each film can come into each age rating and what is allowed and disallowed for each. 

We decided that the best age to market the product would be to those able to watch a '15'. This appeals to a large amount of people while still being acceptable to a relatively young audience - while sending out our questionnaires from the audience I found that our audience likes to see violence, menace, and do not shy away from bad language while watching their films - luckily I found that this fits in perfectly with films rated as 15+.

The majority of people who prefer thrillers turned out to be males in our audience research, so with this considered I expect the majority of our viewers will be males, however I did not feel narrowing the market would be acceptable so it would be appropriate for females of this age too. Two different genders do not have a specifically acquired taste in that they are happy to watch a lot of things and a lot of them are happy to watch a similar film, so we would not have to chop and change anything when considering who we were aiming at. Fundamentally, our film will be aimed at people aged 15 plus who have a taste for thriller films of any gender or ethnic background.

People of this age group are mostly using social networking sites such as Facebook, where word of mouth is probably the most used form of marketing and their social interests consist of going to the cinema with friends, which is also another sign that this would be a good age demographic to use - films often market themselves via these methods.

"The laws on 15 rated films become much stricter than others (excluding 18, more on this later). No child under the age of 15 is allowed to watch a film with this certificate at the cinema and must be unable to rent or purchase any works of this in a shop. Drugs are allowed to be used more openly in these films, as long as easily obtainable drugs are not glorified, such as solvents, and strong threat and menace are permitted providing they are not sadistic or sexual. Sex is allowed to be portrayed unless specifically strong detail is used. Violence is permitted unless there is a prolonged dwelling on infliction of injury and strongly gory images are not allowed. Any sexual violence must be discreet and uncommon."

Above is some of my previous market research, where I examined what should be permitted in a 15+ film. Considering that our opening itself has no mention of drugs, sex or strong gory images, I felt that we could keep our options open for the rest of the film by allowing such things. There has to be a consideration based on where the film will actually lead, it may continue to have fairly graphic violence or use drugs in some context or the odd amount of sexual violence - by making our film a 15 we permitted this. On one hand, a 12 film may not be open enough and could mean that the film ends up sub-par compared to the opening, but there is no intention of using constant 18+ material and it would need to be much scarier for this, so a 15 rated film is the best middle-ground that we can add in. 

This is an ideally typical member of our audience who we will aim to target our thriller opening on. It is clear that he is a teenager who enjoys thriller films and will be able to watch and enjoy our film.

Question 5 - How did you address/attract your audience?

I feel that we did a good job of addressing the audience that we selected by using the allowed level of conventions while still leaving room for manoeuvre to add more in. To address the audience, we posted our video on popular networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The feedback we received was mainly positive, but with some aspects on which we could have improved the opening if need be - an example of this was that some of the camera-work could have been slightly improved, there was some jostling on the camera at some points but other than that our feedback was largely that the audience would be happy to watch the rest of the film based on the opening. They always know what they expect to see and they said that they saw it in our film - we were happy to see that all of the planning and hard work had paid off in this sense. 

Question 6 - What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product

I feel that I have learnt an absolutely tremendous amount about many different technologies in the process of creating this media product. Before I started, I did have a mandatory knowledge of different technologies and how to use them, however it has increased a massive amount in the last few months. 

The first thing I learned how to use was a camera - preceding my media tasks I had never used a proper video camera before and I had very little knowledge about how to even turn one on! I feel that I have learned not only how to be technically sound with a camera, but how to use it the most efficient way possible; everything from saving battery life and positioning to how I could best capture mise-en-scene and how to follow the 180 degree rule. I have also progressed with regards to using different shots in a practical manner (before, I knew them all on paper but had never fully used them all). 

Additionally, I had on no occasion previously used a mac before studying Media. Since doing so, I have learned that there is a multitude of things that one can do on a mac - I have learned how to fully edit a video and how to add transitions and different effects. Specifically, I have gained an extensive insight on how to time different clips and add in transitions and lengthen them to the correct amount of time - beforehand my grasp of editing did not pass beyond Windows Media Player, which is still decent, just not as effective as iMovie. Furthermore, I found that iMovie is helpful when looking to do the following things:

Cutting, adding transitions, using filters, importing sound and footage, using MP3 files, taking files from the internet, freeze frames, reverse or add speed, stabilisation. Add the ones that are relevant and how we did them, title sequences.

• Cutting video clips
• Using filters
• Importing sound and footage
• Using MP3 files
• Taking files from the internet
• Capturing freeze frames
• Adding or subtracting speed from a particular clip
• Adding in stabilisation to wobbly clips

When creating the non-digetic sound for our thriller opening, we required a programme which would allow us to do so; principally we had to make a direct choice of using Audacity of Garage Band. We elected to go with garage band, which taught me personally how I could use synthetic sounds and produce a good amount of appropriate music which could be looped repeatedly and subtly.

To note down all of our ideas and planning using the internet, we as a class were told that we would be utilizing Blogger, the most appropriate and simple blogging website on the internet. I had never been on a blogging website before, but to my surprise it was exceptionally easy. I have learned how to add images from a computer desktop into my work and add captions to it, however everything else was common sense, very simplistic as it is almost identical to Microsoft Word, just a touch less advanced with a fewer amount of features. It was very helpful with respect to keeping all of the planning, organisation and logistics of our media product in one place which we could easily refer to if need be. Blogger has its pros and cons; I feel it can be disadvantageous while being used. It is easy to use, but can be frustrating in terms of inserting pictures and other things; it is like all technology, which can be frustrating at times. However this is only a minor issue when compared with the amount it can do and the amount of work that it stores. 

Another programme that I have got to grips with using is Adobe Fireworks. When creating a logo for our business franchise, it was a decision between using that and Photoshop. This was not a particularly long job and a logo could be somewhat knocked up in a short space of time without looking too tacky - we did not make a long job of it and quickly made a logo in Fireworks - I did have a fundamental idea of what I was doing, but I have been able to remove the white backgrounds from pictures and edit some colours of a picture to make it look for effective. This was the full extent to which we used Fireworks in our project, it was not too complicated at all and was a step up from using Paint which a number of people did. 

The way in which we would make our video viral on the internet was to use YouTube - a very simple video uploading site. I have used this website a multitudinous amount of times so there was nothing new to learn at all - it was very different to the previous material I have uploaded, so I did create a new account specifically for the purpose of the media product, but other than that it was a simple case of doing the ordinary again.

We did have some issues while using these different forms of technology, however we were able to come through them and make the video more positive than we had actually originally planned. One problem we had to overcome was a lack of ideas for a logo when we were originally drawing it out, however we simply decided to look at logos for other popular franchises, and while we didn't copy them, we bounced ideas from them and saw which aspects we could use of them to create a good logo.

Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel that there has been a massive amount of progression from our preliminary task to our thriller task. Our preliminary task was merely foundation of potential, showcasing what we could possibly do in a rather basic fashion. In this task, we used some fairly basic shots and used a basic understanding of iMovie to add in certain effects, to crop clips, edit them and burn the file to a CD. I feel as though I have developed in many ways, specifically in my editing and camerawork skills. While editing the footage for the preliminary task, the group in general had a slight tendency to add in effects that were superfluous and didn’t achieve a lot; they were only added in because they could be. Our first product was still up to a good standard, but there were a fairly large number of things we could improve upon.

Our preliminary production did use a small range of camera shots which were effective, and it was edited fairly crisply so there wasn’t much we didn’t need in there. On top of this, our dialogue was good and the short film looked realistic while still being succinct and straight to the point.

However, for every strength in our preliminary, we also a slight shortcoming which we had not predicted. There was an issue for us with continuity editing; we had an issue while using classrooms whereby one was locked and we could not gain access to it, our contingency plan was to find a second room, which wasn’t a problem at all. We had shot the scene of the lady walking up to the door and knocking on it very clearly, and one could see the sign very visibly. However, when we moved rooms and shot the scene afterwards, we did not have that sign to place back on to the door, and we did not think about it while making it. This showed a lack of continuity editing and our logical thinking fell slightly short on this respect. We did learn from this mistake though, and had no issues with continuity editing in our thriller opening, so it was not a problem again.

Another rule that we broke – albeit accidentally – was the 180 degree rule. In Media, the camera must always stick to one side to avoid any potential confusion with the viewer. We did in fact break this rule, we didn’t actually know that we had gone against it, but it became obvious as we viewed our video the whole way through. To ensure this did not happen again, we kept the camera on one line and only moved it along this line, apart from towards the end, this time we checked all of our footage over and were absolutely certain that we didn’t go against this rule of filming. We addressed both problems well so they were not a problem when it mattered.

Specifically, I feel that I have mostly developed on the editing front; before I started I would have no idea where to even start with iMovie, but having read a basic guide and learned the simplistic elements of the program, I have enabled myself to learn some of the more complex aspects of it; I edited the media production well and I feel the basics of cutting, editing the size of clips and adding effects were done well, and I had a grasp for the more technical things that could be done, such as editing the images.

   

As a team we were able to edit a simple poster of the word ‘Pestilence’ which was written with chalk on black paper, and change it to give it less of a ‘slapped-on’ look. I think we did this effectively and this is all a part of editing to make the video look more realistic, which gives a better impression of both the film. Often, a title sums up the look of the film, and we wanted it to look scary, have a contrast in it between one and another and be a little bit messed up – we feel we achieved this with our poster.

I feel that overall; our thriller opening was fairly successful and ticked the boxes of what we needed to do in terms of camerawork and editing. If I were going to do it again, there were a few minor things that I would change; the first of which would be during filming, there was a slight amount of jumping in the editing that looked a little tacky. For example, one section where a character was holding up a small bag, there was a cut and the bag was actually in a different place. This looked quite poor and it was difficult to hold it completely still. Next time I would instead probably not cut it at that point and keep the camera rolling. It may not be a massive issue, but it was a glaring error that really stuck out. Also, if I were to redo this task, I may have chosen to sort out the music much sooner, as when we did it, we left it fairly late and we had a few problems making it. If we had started sooner, it would have been easier to iron out any problems as opposed to panicking about them. However, we did get it sorted in the end so it is not a large issue.