1.
Question: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Task: Choose 6 stills from your finished thriller that you think illustrate how you have used thriller conventions and opening sequence conventions (3 each). Annotate each still with notes on exactly which convention is being shown and whether you are using, developing or challenging it.
Our thriller opening sequence definitely uses a lot of conventions that are typical of real media products:
-It includes enigmas such as who is the teacher that is watching the pupils? why are they watching them? have they committed any typical antagonistic crimes previous to this film? why has one of the pupils disappeared from the opening of the film halfway through it and what happened to them? what is the antagonist going to do?
-A complex story line is started off in our opening, we show close ups of things such as the antagonist's eyes and a poster for ballet classes which combine together to start off the audience wondering what would happen later on in the film if it were to be continued. The story that we start off in our opening grows more and more complex as more pictures of the two girls are slowly revealed and the crosses and circles around them show how the antagonist is plotting something and the audience will wonder what.
Screen shots that show this:
-A brooding atmosphere is created throughout our opening as we use the build up of micro elements to show that something big is going to happen. The images we show such as the flash of the eyes show something is going on, and the music we use slowly builds up and becomes louder and more unsettling and creates tension and the sense that something bad will happen soon.
-Unsettling sounds are used all through our thriller film, we used the 'static' sound from garage band whenever quick clips flashed up, and we also slowed down and edited the 'dance of the sugarplum fairy' music to make it sound unsettling and create tension.
-Limited angles were given in our film as we wanted to build up enigmas and we didn't want to reveal the antagonist's face in the opening. We included extreme close ups of the antagonist's eyes and camera shots where you can see them from the back watching the girls dancing, from the side, and reflected in the mirror but never their face.
Screen shots to show these camera shots:
-Contrapuntal sound was used towards the end of our film as things started to grow more unsettling, as we used an unsettling slow beat underneath our music, but a typically happy, upbeat tune over the top of it which contrasted with the growing scariness and tension of the film.
-I also think our film challenges conventions of real media products as we shot and edited it to make it look like a home video, as if the antagonist was filming some parts themselves as a stalker, and this is a different way of making a thriller that has not been attempted in many real media products.
2.
Question: How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Task: Select a still from your thriller that you think shows an individual from a particular social group you have represented. Then, select a still of a character from A. another film that discusses the group and B. a still of a real individual, possibly from a news story, who also represents that group. Write annotations for all of the stills that discuss why you have represented this group in your particular way and how your representation compares or contrasts with both your chosen real media text and the still of a real person.
A big particular social group that our media product represents is dancers. The whole film opening is centered around ballet dancing, a ballet teacher and young ballet students. This screen shot from our film shows an individual from this group as there are two teenage ballet students and they are working together but the camera is zoomed in and focused on one of them, to show that her character is going to be the protagonist in our film.
A very popular and famous media film that represents the same particular social group as our film opening is Black Swan. This film centers around the individual in this picture striving for perfection in her ballet dancing and what effects this can have on you. This still shot of Natalie Portman is similar to the still shot from our thriller as the costumes are very similar; pink and white leotards and tights. This shows that the mise en scene we chose to represent this particular social group in our film is similar to that of famous Hollywood films.
A news story about a ballet dancer getting the role of a lifetime again shows an individual who represents our social group of ballet dancers, she is representing how hard training and striving for perfection can pay off, and this could be why the students in our thriller are training so hard. The costume in this news story also relates to the mise en scene we used in our film as the dancer in this picture is again wearing a pink and white leotard.
3.
Question: What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Task: Use the www.IMDB.com template to create a page for your film. You will need to fill in all of the blank information.
A type of institution such as Paramount Pictures might distribute our media product as it has distributed other thriller films recently such as 'The Devil Inside'. I think if our opening sequence was continued and we made a whole film with our story line it would be an intense and memorable.
IMBD Page for our thriller opening:
4.
Question: Who would be the audience for your media product?
Task: Decide on a film magazine that you think would be most likely to carry reviews and adverts for your film. Create a word document that includes an image of the front cover of the magazine, a 300 word analysis of why you think the publication would be appropriate for your film and a 300 word review of your film that could potentially be found in the magazine.
The audience for our media product would be anyone over the age of 15 as this is the certificate for our film. I think all sorts of people over this age would be entertained by our film, but some people over a certain age such as pensioners wouldn't typically enjoy watching our style of film.
I think 'Total Film' magazine would be a likely magazine to carry reviews and adverts for our film as it is a popular and well written magazine that knows which sort of films are good to write about in order to attract the audience of film enthusiasts it is looking for. As soon as you look on the website for this magazine you see reviews of films straight away with the amount of stars out of five that the magazine have rated popular films, so I think if our film was released in the cinema and on DVD then 'Total Film' magazine would be likely to review it and rate it out of five for how good it was on their web page and in their magazine. As 'Total Film' magazine is a well known magazine company they would definitely need to advertise films in order to make money and stay relevant, so I think they would be very likely to advertise our thriller film somewhere in their magazine's advertising section if it was released, as we would pay them a fee to make it well known and boost sales of cinema tickets and DVD's of our film. I think this magazine company would be a very appropriate company to choose to advertise and review our film as we know for a fact that lots of people read it and therefore lots of people would hear and be intrigued about our film.
Film Reviews on the website:
Review:
A new term begins for the students at Long Road Sixth Form College and the parents are quick to send their children off to all the new extra-curricular classes available, not realising the dangers of a new teacher who has recently joined the college team and who's sketchy background has been overlooked. Things start to turn ugly as students start mysteriously disappearing and a heavy search begins to find the criminal with well covered up tracks before it becomes too late, but not everything is as it first seems and stopping this criminal just will not be that easy. This film is an intense psychological thriller that includes all the right ways to mess with your mind and catch you off guard, just when you think you have it figured out it will catch you out with a different perspective and turn everything upside down. There is not one boring moment in this film, and you must keep focused the whole time to insure you understand the complex story line that runs throughout. An edge-of-your-seat thriller that may well change everything we thought about thriller films forever, this film is definitely a must see of 2012. ***** The team here at Total Film magazine give it 4.5 stars.*****
5.
Question: How did you attract/address your audience?
Task: Re-import your finished thriller sequence into Final Cut and create either a voice-over or text that discusses key technical devices and other strategies that you used to engage your audience.
We attracted our audience , who would be people who are entertained by thriller films, by making promotional posters that looked as interesting as we could make them and showed how our film would be gripping, creepy and different, and attracting them into wanting to watch more by including lots of enigmas and secrets left unrevealed in the opening of our film. We addressed our audience by using lots of typical thriller conventions to make it absolutely clear our film was this style of film and by revealing just enough to keep them interested in watching more and finding out what's going to happen between the protagonist and antagonist, but not enough that the story line is given away and it becomes predictable. We did this by using conventions such as camera shots that never fully reveal the antagonist's face, and creepy and unsettling music typical to a thriller genre of film.
Voice-over version:
<object width="560" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bff3hDSyj2U?version=3&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bff3hDSyj2U?version=3&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="315" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bff3hDSyj2U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
youtube link incase embed code doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bff3hDSyj2U&context=C48745b0ADvjVQa1PpcFMaY2o3VBoXVjDrrW3UC7rR-eUUmZqip2U=
6.
Question: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
Task: Use the stills of you with shooting equipment that you took whilst shooting, screen grabs of software and of you using the software. For each of the stills, note down what you learnt about the equipment/ software, what it allowed you to do and what you might consider its drawbacks.
In the process of constructing our final thriller opening sequence I have learnt how to use many new technologies and now understand the programs we used to edit and create our film much better, such as final cut express and garage band. During making this film I learnt new and better cinematography skills such as different camera shots, I learnt how to put video effects on our clips such as 'noise' to give a crackly, fastforwarded video effect, how to put in sound clips like 'static' to make unsettling noises and add tension to our film, how to turn different sound clips up and down by dragging the red line up/down, how to mute the sound on certain parts while in the process of editing other clips and needing to listen to some without others, how to slow down or speed up clips using the 'speed' tool and entering the percentage of speed we wanted it to be, and how to place all different sound clips over the top of each other, some slower and some faster to create unsettling and original music.
screen shot of us using garage band to find sound effects such as 'static' to create unsettling
music and sounds for our film:
screen shot of us using adobe photoshop express to create a promotional poster for our film, using editing
tricks such as negative and positive images combined to make a very original looking poster:
screen shot of us using final cut express to cut and edit all the clips together, add in transitions and
effects and put in sound over the top. At the point of this screen shot we are rendering our film:
the camera we used to film all of our opening sequence clips and take stills that flash throughout:
we also used a standard tripod to steady this camera whilst filming as we knew keeping the camera steady and not shaky was important:
7.
Question: Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Task: Create a Prezi that takes your ‘reader’ on a journey from preliminary task to finished thriller. Include images to illustrate your points.
Since filming our preliminary task I think our group has improved lots at learning how to put together a good film. We have learnt many new camera techniques and shots and used some that we found out looked good from filming our preliminary film, and we have learnt how to use lots of new editing skills to make our film look more fluent than our preliminary version did, such as transitions. Some of the ideas we used in our preliminary film we ended up using in our final film because we liked them in our preliminary, and making up a storyline together for our preliminary film helped our group with making up a storyline for our final thriller film.
Similarities between preliminary and final camera shots (shows how preliminary helped us with inspiration):
through the window shot - preliminary film:
through the window shot - final film:
low shot - preliminary film:
low shot - final film
over the shoulder shot - preliminary film:
over the shoulder shot - final film:
Timeline of our journey from preliminary film to final film:
- 06/01/12: We filmed and edited our preliminary film which was about the crime of a murder being committed and covered up and an innocent person being framed, which helped us practice for our final film. (Images above)
- 13/01/12 to 27/01/12: Watching and writing an essay on thriller conventions in 'Inception', watching opening sequences, comparing and writing about thriller conventions included in 'Hanna', 'Vertigo', 'No Country for Old Men', 'The Prestige', 'Hidden', 'Vertigo', 'L.A. Confidential' and 'The Sixth Sense' This helped us with what we needed to include in our film as we saw many examples of ways to use thriller conventions in popular films. We also talked about what thriller genre films should include and should not include, and created designs for our production logo ready to put in the opening of our film.
- 03/02/12 to 13/02/12: Planning for test footage of final film including 3 thriller conventions and 3 camera techniques we could use and then filming our test footage which helped our group a lot as we came up with quite a few ideas of thriller conventions and camera techniques that we went on to use in our final film, such as a mirror shot in the toilets where the antagonist is standing behind the protagonist who does not realise, with the antagonist appearing then disappearing, and different ballet moves that we went on to use. We then came up with a story line for our final film and made story boards and plans for it and blog posts about it.
Test Footage Stills:
appearing:
disappearing:
ballet moves:
storyboard:
- 13/02/12 to 23/03/12 : We filmed, edited, and uploaded our final thriller film. During this time we booked the college dance studio ready for us to film in, brought in props such as mise en scene costumes and props like leotards and music boxes, uploaded and edited the footage and still clips together on final cut, used garage band, youtube and final cut to make the soundtrack, and put in video transitions and effects. We then made our film into a quicktime version, uploaded it to youtube then used the embed code to put it onto our blog.
filming:
editing:
