Thriller Evaluation

We began by exploring the forms and conventions of thriller films. This was done to help us understand exactly what a thriller was and what our thriller would need to broadcast to our audience to keep them interested and consequently be successful. Although, our task was to create the opening and not a film, we still needed to have knowledge of a thriller as a whole. But with our task to create a suspenseful opening, we also bared in mind that what we saw and learned about thriller filmed had to be shaped into a successfully opening and not a film.

To commence, we explored the differences with a similar genre, horror. We learnt that thriller films are based on every-day circumstances and are created with the aim of attracting their audiences. We noticed that thrillers also built a sense of tension within our audience’s hearts and minds, to motivate them to carry on watching to the end. In addition, thrillers also introduced sub-meanings and agendas within them, like Arlington Road, she had a political agenda, as well as, an illustration of every-day life. Moreover, a technique of thriller making is to make the audience feel as if they know something the characters in the play do not know. If successfully done, the directors of the film are able to entice the audience further by introducing sub-plots and unexpected scenarios. I learnt that conventional thriller films usually consist of a hero and villain to attract their target audience. On the other hand, horror films follow storylines that are more fictional than real and ordinary. Horror films objective is to make the audience afraid and excited, all at the same time, whereas, a thriller allows its audience to imagine themselves as one of the characters and think about the plots and meanings and how they can relate to their own lives. Although, Horrors are very random, Thriller films show scenarios which are more realistic, and however controversial the topics explored are they relate to ordinary people.

When it came to pitching an idea for our project, we kept in my mind what we had learnt about thriller conventions. For example, we knew we would have to incorporate a range of different shot types to establish location and the characters. As we considered different ideas, we thought of how we could twist a simple, every-day situation into an effective thriller opening. We, as a group, decided on storyline which was simple with enough space for twist to trigger any individuals mind. We knew we would have to show this in our opening to be successful. I feel we did this successful through the repair man asking for tea and as hours pass, he goes to look for the home owner and his tea to find a newspaper that she died years ago, although, she offered him tea hours before. This was a great thriller opening as it was a normal setting, with ordinary working people containing a twist which could result in the main character, ending up being a hero by solving a mystery or going crazy and continuing to hallucinate. I believe our opening allows our audience to think of numerous possibilities for the film and its ending. I feel our opening surely exerts a pull on the audience meaning they want to find out the films conclusion, if it was a film and not just an opening.

In my opinion, an appropriate audience for my thriller film would be for individuals with an imaginative and have an open mind. Meaning they can be old or young, however, it should be someone who knows what it is to hallucinate or see something that may not be there or understand how someone can believe they have seen something, although the world says its not, meaning the target audience cannot be too young. The viewing public could include secondary school students, college students, working people, lovers of the physiological thriller genre and generally members of our society. I feel our film succeeds in attracting the mainstream audience because it meets conventions of a thriller, as well as, being original, while keeping its simplicity. I believe our opening falls into the sub-genre of a psychological thriller with the characters having ordinary jobs and the opening illustrating an everyday scenario, as well as, having a controversial ending.

I feel anyone can have interest in my film from its dramatic, entertaining and twist consisting opening.

For example,

‘25 year old Tommy Daniels from London, A’ levels being highest form of education, permanent job as an electrician, loves to play football and go to the pub with mates on the weekends, shops in H&M and watches TV in the evenings. Enjoys films which make his heart jump or make him feel like his part of something big and they is something else to his life.’

‘17 year old Fatima Boston, American born, studying full time in a London college and currently living with her aunt. Has a part time job at Waitrose and very hardworking. Enjoys reading and watches little TV but goes to the cinema in her limited spare time to watch anything which seems interesting and out of the ordinary, as well as, relating to her life and studies.’

I feel word-of-mouth is our most concrete way of advertising and making sure our film reaches its target audience. Simply because people trust what people they know say, making them more willing to take interest. Additionally, as we don’t have any star appeal or a budget to join up with other companies to reach broader audiences, like high budget, Hollywood films do, I feel word of mouth is best. Moreover, advertising our film may be hassle free as the generation of our target audience is extremely internet orientated and with easy access to virtual marketing, we could promote our film on popular websites such as, social networking sites like Facebook for free through posting trailers on YouTube, where videos can be found and viewed on their also, through vague and ambiguous titles, such as “great thriller”. If we make our trailers leave viewers with enough food for thought, I am sure they would be dying to watch whole film.

Using recognized actors may be a further way of attracting our target audience. Well known actors come with their own fan base attracting a greater audience. Another way of advertising could be through TV adverts. For example, having our trailer in the intervals of sky channels would certainly meet our target audience. But as mentioned above, we cannot afford to advertise on sky, as well as, attract recognisable stars, as our thriller is just a low budget, British film.

A possible media institution that may distribute our media film to begin with could be a small independent UK release association. A motive for this is to see how the proposed target audience will react. If the film is a major hit in the UK, then it stands a chance of worldwide release and having a “must see” caption with big Hollywood blockbuster organizations willing to invest on part 2, or a sequel or just simply advertising the original worldwide. Possible actions after releasing the film to the world could include DVD release. Although, internet publicity could possibly jeopardise the films financial rewards, as many people may rather watch a new film for free, it still would assist in promoting the film and generating hype and press interest.

Making use of the different technologies to create our thriller opening has taught me a lot about film manufacturing. As if constructing 3 minutes of video took my group as long as it did, I can imagine the dedication and patience it must take to produce an entire film. From the simpler tasks of taking hold of the camera to coming up with an idea and planning what you want to film, and the messages you want to portray to your target audience. Moreover, not forgetting the practical tasks of filming and editing which take time, concentration and skill.

I believe I made a great contribution to the final product from the commencing processes with me and the rest of the group learning about shot types and angles through watching famous thriller openings. I used the practice filming to put what I saw in the openings of the film openings, such as, taking various shots from different angles.

Additionally, I learnt the importance of story boarding, as we consistently changed and updated our ideas and shot types. My group didn’t believe storyboards we necessary but quickly realised that we needed to plan, as we couldn’t remember certain shots and so we wasting time coming up with ideas and going with the flow.

Successfully editing our footage proved to be challenging but achievable. Once we had finished filming, we transferred our recordings on to the Apple Mac and used Final Cut Pro, to carry out ‘logging and capturing’ and place captures on time line. This procedure basically allowed us to select the wanted parts from the clips we filmed, and order them next to other cuts to form a continuous moving image until we finished our opening.

This was an enjoyable task, as I was able to work as a team with friends and learn how to use specialist software. I also really enjoyed going to the cinema and seeing our opening on the big screen, I actual feel ours was quite original and distinct, although it consisted of many conventional features of a thriller opening, the fact our opening ended on such a twist really had an impact. Overall, I feel that our group created a potentially great thriller through the opening. In addition, as the opening of Arlington Road kept me attentive and made me want more, I feel our opening captured our target audience and even surpassed their expectations of a good opening to a thriller.

Thriller Evaluation

Thriller Evaluation

Our thriller project began with an introduction to forms and conventions of thriller films. Helping us to understand it better, we then compared the differences with a similar genre, horror. We learnt that thriller films are based on every-day circumstances and are created with the aim of attracting their audiences while building a tense sensation that makes them want to carry on watching. This tense sensation classically allows the audience to be aware of the negative scheme in the film, also making them feel that they know something that the other characters don’t know. If used well, this technique can make the audience focus on a current situation while a surprise scenario is unexpectedly introduced, grabbing deeper onto the attention of the viewer. Thriller films usually contain a set of characters which act against each other to form an interesting plot e.g. hero and villain.

On the other hand, horror films follow storylines that lead to the unexpected. They usually contain typical conventions such as ‘the last girl standing’ where at the end of the film, the only character left alive is a female. Horror films objectivise on making the audience feel afraid and excited where as thriller films focus on providing a thrill.

When it came to pitching an idea for our project, we kept in my mind what we had learnt about forms and conventions and how real-thriller openings were effective with different shot types. As we considered different ideas, we thought of how we could twist a normal, every-day situation to convert it into an effective thriller opening. We, as a group, decided on story that contained mystery and suspense. This is reflected in our opening 20 seconds were anonymous feet are tracked walking up some stairs, producing a feeling of curiosity within the audience.

I feel that my participation in the group was influenced and encouraged by the variety of preliminary tasks I completed before commencing the project. Beginning the whole process with learning about shot types and angles, helped me understand how things can be done to produce an effective outcome. Watching a selection of famous thriller openings also reinforced the importance of shot types. Steadily moving on to practice filming was an appropriate approach to train my new skills. Between my 1st and 2nd filming practices, I learnt about shooting from certain distances (180º rule) and about different lighting scenarios. What you see as your filming isn’t always what you get on tape. We experienced this in one of our practices where the lighting seemed to be on our side as we filmed. However, when we viewed it on the computer before editing, we realised that the film was darker than we originally thought. Learning from our mistakes, we improved upon the 2nd filming practice where we purposely selected a dark atmosphere to hide a serious conversation between 2 associates.

I also learnt the importance of storyboarding after we consistently changed and updated our ideas and shot types. My group didn’t believe storyboards would affect our filming but we soon realised that we couldn’t remember certain shots and so had to re-create the ones we hadn’t memorized. This wasted valuable time and provoked our ideas to change as we filmed.

Editing our footage proved to be challenging but doable. Once we had finished filming, we transferred our recordings on to the MAC on Final Cut Pro, using a technique known as ‘logging and capturing’. This procedure basically allowed us to select the wanted scenes and prepare them to be linked. When the ‘logging and capturing’ was finished, we began to connect the clips together in a way that made them look continuous. I think that this task helped us the most when it came to editing our final film as joining the scenes together with a smooth, constant flow, adds professionalism.

In my opinion, an appropriate audience for my thriller film would be young, independent people who do not expect the unexpected, roughly from the age of 16 onwards and both genders. Viewing public could include students, dropouts or even working individuals, after all, the film revolves around a normal, every-day situation. This important convention automatically makes the film mainstream as the world lives in ordinary conditions, all the time, making the films spectators global. Another necessity of the audience may be the characteristics of interest and comprehension. The short opening may perhaps fall into the sub-genre of a psychological thriller, where the public may have to be able to understand what is happening, without directly being told the story. Typical audience members of the film may be:

‘22 year old Aaron Walsh from London, very few qualifications, permanent job as an electrician, loves to play football and go to the pub, shops in H&M and watches a lot of TV. Particularly enjoys thriller programmes.’

’17 year old Janita Kahn from London, originally from India, full time college student, part time job at Waitrose, enjoys dancing and shopping for well-known brands. Watches little TV but is keen on watching new, interesting films at the cinema.’

Advertising our film may be hassle free as the generation of our target audience is extremely internet orientated. Using viral marketing, we could promote our film on popular websites, particularly social networking sites where audiences may be attracted by trailers or images. This method also benefits our budget as it is free and dependant on these websites which currently, are very fashionable. Another way may also be to post trailers on YouTube, where videos can be viewed through attractive links or even by mistake. If we make our trailers eye-catching enough, we could persuade the public into wanting to watch the whole film.

Using recognized actors may be a further way of attracting our target audience. If artists are identified for performing well in previous films, they may cause the centre of attention for even unexpectedly wider audiences. Some people see certain stars as role models and/or idols so they may be encouraged to watch the film, already expecting positive performances.
Another way of advertising could be through TV adverts. If we aim to show our trailers on the more known channels like BBC outlets, the possibility of our target audience catching a glimpse increases. This is because already a variety of appealing programmes, also partly aimed at our target audience, are broadcasted on these channels, making them out-standing for public notice.

Our media product represents a particular social group which is of those who live traditional lives. The short opening introduces characters who can be associated with the viewing public, as they are shown undertaking usual routines. The audience and characters are also comparable in age, gender and class. This adds the effect of making the viewers realise that they could find themselves in a similar position when they least imagine. E.g. the male character is revealed performing his job, which is implied as a natural, daily job. He does not expect that he will meet and work in the house of a young lady who is supposedly meant to have died a couple years ago.

A possible media institution that may distribute our media film to begin with could be a small independent UK release association. A motive for this is to see how the proposed target audience will react. If the response is better than expected, then a big Hollywood blockbuster organization that shares movies worldwide may be the next step. If the film has a major hit in the UK, then it stands a chance of becoming a celebrated achievement. It also includes the fact that the film can relate to a majority of ordinary people internationally, even outside the intended UK target audience. Possible actions after releasing the film to the world could include DVD release. Internet publicity could possibly jeopardise the films success as many people may rather watch a new film for free, than pay. Either way, internet posting will assist in some sort of promotion.

Making use of the different technologies to create our thriller opening has taught me a lot about film manufacturing. If constructing 3 minutes of video took my group as long as it did, I can imagine the dedication and patience it must take to produce an entire film. Starting with the practical tasks of filming and editing, I experienced a stressing but beneficial understanding. Taking hold of the camera and knowing how to handle it was challenging at first, but once you focus on a shot you want to record, there’s nothing really stopping it from being faultless. The tri-pod instrument was a true essential as it helped to perfect certain shots that were difficult to shoot by free-hand.

Editing the footage on Final Cut Pro confirmed to be tricky but very exciting. Initially, I had no knowledge of how to utilize this type of software. However, after a straight-forward tutorial, I distinguished the main features needed to edit. During the period of the preliminary editing practises, my familiarity with the program developed, and so did my end products. I felt that I stood out in my group as the perfectionist.

While undertaking the above tasks, we were asked to access the internet to individually ‘blog’ each activity that we performed in the class. Blogging proved to be useful as reminders on what we previously did in class, to help plan and improve current and future projects. As we finished our main thriller assignment, we were able to post it onto our blog page where it could be viewed by almost anyone. Final pieces were also updated onto a website known as Vimeo. Releasing our film openings onto the internet broadened the potential audience as people all over the world may be able to access it. This in itself is a form of viral marketing.

Overall, I feel that our group created a potentially successful opening to a thriller film. I feel this because our opening follows the main conventions of a thriller which is to be based on a normal circumstance, where a thrilling sensation is produced by revealing slight clues to what is happening, without completely giving the story away thus making the audience want to find out what happens next. Comparing our opening with a well-known one such as Arlington Road, I can relate the worms’ eye view tracking shot of the walking feet. Like in our opening, this produces a mysterious wonder within the audience, making them question about what is happening and who they are following. Tracking the feet directly, limits the viewers choice to see the surrounding scene so this feeling is slightly unavoidable. Furthermore, the audience feel eager to continue watching, making the first couple of minutes effective as they are particularly necessary to grab the viewers concentration, affecting the rest of the films viewing attentiveness.

Lost in daylight - Evaluation.

Marika Ella Ames

AS Media Studies.

Lost in daylight.

Thriller Evaluation.

A good thriller must always consist of numerous high tension climaxes, have the viewers on the edge of their seats, fast paced music that builds into a crescendo at high suspense points, the audience being aware of the ‘villains’ plotting in order to make the audience feel they have a superior seat whilst viewing the film, the audience usually feel that they know something the other character’s don’t, in order for this to happen, a thriller must always contain interesting characters that are at great risk, usually most thrillers have a twist to them, which throws the audience completely off track; this is what makes a good thriller. We studied various thriller films in order to find these points above. Arlington Road was my favourite as the plots was constantly being changed and provided the audience a false sense of security throughout, which Is an essential element of thriller genre’s, but in a way that we as the audience could still focus and not end up completely confused. For example one moment we as the audience thought we knew who the killer was, and that he was going to be arrested, and then the plot completely switched and left it un guessable. Arlington Road is a physiological thriller, which is what our main incentive was for our thriller.

Suspense is created in two different ways, either the audience are unaware of that is to happen next, or the audience immediately knows what lies before them. For example in the thriller film Psycho we are immediately thrown into a spooky dim-lit corridor of a small child cycling through each hallway. We are very confused and not knowing what’s going to happen which creates a great element of suspense. We decided to use this style of film openings to our film; we immediately put our audience into a house in north London, and then recorded feet walking up stairs to create that element of suspense. We thought very hard about each section of our trailer and made sure we knew the main generic conventions of a thriller opening and made sure we applied them to ours. We really wanted to focus on the main element of the conventions, providing the audience a constant false sense of security; we did this by immediately taking our audience into the comfort of a safe ordinary house, the sense of security then disappears once we hear the knock on the door, this leaves the audience in the element of surprise, this is why it’s a constant false sense, of security, which leads us into another generic convention we tried to follow of the audience is always being on the edge of their seat not knowing what is going to happen, having an un-predictable plotline.

As we had to keep to a tight time scale of 3 minutes or under, we unfortunately could not use our incentive to its full potential, the beginning first 20 seconds tracks a pair of feet walking up and down stairs herrrrrrrre which made the audience feel as though they had the upper hand on the other characters, and were somewhat intrigued to find out who this mysterious character was. After this we are immediately brought into the house before the mysterious character knocks on the door; this makes the audience question who she is and why she’s there but this also portrays her as vulnerable.

Our film opening is about a man who comes to a lady’s house to fix her computer, only to realize an hour later that she had died several years ago in a car accident, this is revealed to the audience at the end with the news paper, titled ‘suicide or accident’.

Our post/pre – production helped me understand a lot about the filming making process. I soon realized how important story boarding was after we changed our ideas numerously and forgot to record certain shots. This wasted a lot of time as we had to re-create shots that we could not remember due to not recording them down on paper. For example we forgot to use any close up shots which is key to show expressions and reactions. We did not record these down so had to fill In the spur of the moment. Also our plot was completely changing as not all members in the group agreed with the original idea. I believe that this changed our final product a lot, due to many shots we hopped to have not being in our final piece. We learnt that in future you must know what your idea is fully and discuss all aspects of the plot before you start to record any ideas down on paper, this is what we had failed to do.

Our preliminary audience for our thriller opening would be teenagers, in our pre – production work one of the first things that we decided was that we wanted to target teenagers, from 15 years of age and onwards. We thought our characters in our piece were a representation of our target audience. We had imagined a specific person, preferably a boy, who enjoys playing on the latest game consoles and regularly goes to the cinema. His interest in music would vary from jazz to rock who shops in urban outfitters weekly we believe this person represents our thriller opening. Our secondary audience may be the parents of these teens.

In terms of our soundtrack chose to use the same continuously flowing self composed song, throughout with various soundbites such as door knocking, and the ticking of a clock.

We made sure we used a lot of various orchestra instruments as they highlight tension and suspense such as the violin and piano. Our original plan was to build the music up into a crescendo which we unfortunately did not do due to lack of time, however at the end of the opening; we chose to lower the music to a stop as we felt it would leave the audience wanting to see more. A thriller is made up of lots of different supposed tension sequences, however the majority of them normally build up a high pace; for example in 28days later, when the car brakes down, a lot of tension is built, because the car is the characters safety zone, which subliminally provides us a false sense of security however this security is broken when she is forced to leave the car to fix it, the music starts off at a very slow pace while we are still in our comfort zone of the car, however once she steps out the music builds into a crescendo of high pitched orchestra sounds, then finally lowers back down. The audience are on the edge of there seats throughout this, as they no longer know what is going to happen. The pace normally builds up for nothing to happen and then lower back down, and we chose to apply this convention to our music.\

In terms of distribution, I think that working title would fit our film perfectly, we wants a small UK based independent distributor. From our research Shaun of the dead had given away t-shirts to every person that had gone to see the film when It was In the cinemas, I was thinking perhaps we would do the same, but give away free boxes of popcorn to accompany you whilst watching the film.

As our thriller would have been a very low budget one, since of target audience is teenagers, our main advantage in terms of advertising, is that the teenage generation is very internet orientated, we would use viral marketing, we would definitely use this to our advantage and advertise on the tree main social networking websites for the teenage generation; Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, to attract and select our target audience. This is the easiest form of advertising as it’s cost free ad also spreads the word very quickly. It’s merely other people doing our advertising for us. Or possibly showed at a film festival specified for teenagers. Also to advertise as we’re targeting an internet orientated gender, as appose to using money on television trailer adverts we would use another form of viral advertising and post our trailers onto youtube, where we could have the possibility of thousands of hits per day. With our current web 2.0 we can see our audience’s feedback and try and estimate/calculate our later audience for when it progresses into cinemas.

We would like our film to be a low budget independent small UK release distributed around various small arthouse cinemas. After this if we hit our target in terms of numbers of people viewing our film, we would then progress into DVD release.

I feel as though our group has created a very effective opening to a thriller. For example we have followed the majority of generic conventions that you must apply to an opening. I feel like the constant changing plot line in our pre – production work had wasted aot of time we could have used to do more important things such as story board. We had learnt a lot from our thriller practice exercise. Mainly the lighting, we realized that although things may seem a lot brighter on the camera screen when it is logged and captured and uploaded to the actual computer screen it was a lot dimmer. We made sure that in our opening thriller there was sufficient lighting throughout. We experienced many problems as a group for example clashing of ideas. To resolve this situation we formed all of our ideas into one. Thankfully as we have no shots outside, we did not have to depend on the weather to be consistent each day.

Evaluation

Media Evaluation – Lost In Daylight

In the first few lessons of media we learnt about the forms and conventions of thriller films, and then learnt about the differences between a horror and a thriller film.
The conventions of thriller films are that they are based on everyday life situations, and are constructed in a manner that makes the audience want to know what happens next, they usually have a hero or villain in the story line, thrillers also have sub-genres such as; An Action-thriller, crime-thriller, psychological-thriller…etc.
Examples of thrillers are: Psycho, The Godfather, 28days Later, The Sixth Sense.
In class, we watched a thriller called Arlington Road, after we had watched it we had to analyse different conventions to show that it was a thriller film, Arlington Road used generic conventions to show this such as suspense, tension and a false sense of security.

Compared to a Thriller ,a Horror is not based on everyday life situations, as they have things that would not happen in real life happen in the film, horror also has the typical conventions of the ‘last girl standing’, when at the end of the film there is a woman left still alive who gets rescued with all her friends dead, and ‘the black man always dies first’ self-explanatory within films. Horror films play on effect to make the audience scared and excited, were as a thriller film is to thrill the audience and to make them jump.

Looking back at when our group did the preliminary film task we learnt about match cuts by doing a match cut exercise in which we got a series of ‘Bait’ clips, and had to match them together, after we learnt about match cuts on Final Cut Pro, we then went on to do our own two minute film, before filming we planned this by getting ideas together and then storyboarding them onto paper, after this had been done we started to film, as a group we found it hard to plan our idea, as it was difficult to come up with an idea and plan it and making sure it had a good storyline.
Once we had finished the filming we edited our film, first off we had to transfer out footage from the camera onto the Apple Mac Computer we did this by using the ‘logging + capturing’ the needed footage, when we started to editing we used match cuts, and other techniques we had learnt in our final cut pro tutorial, this helped us when we edited our final film, as any problems we came across with when doing the preliminary task, we could fix when doing the final film, it also helped our final filming by seeing any mistakes we made , when doing the final version of our filming that we could fix.

The target audience for our thriller film ‘Lost In Daylight’ would be people aged between 16-35. This is a bit of a psychological thriller in a sense, so you would have to be over the age of 16 to understand the psychological parts of the thriller and to stay interested about it, as a younger audience member, may not find it interesting or understand the concepts of the film. A typical audience member of the film would be;
“Alex from London, 18 years old, full time university student, who love to regularly go to the cinema, reads crime novels, and shops at Topman and Office”.
This movie will be a mainstream movie, of which both men and woman of a working/middle social class background will watch. It will appeal to all cultural backgrounds, because this film has no specific cultural reference within the movie, so it will not appeal to one certain culture more than another will, this movie could be an example of a diverse cultured film.

The way, in which we will attract our target audience, will be by having advertisements on:
-T.V, after 8pm on channel 1-5 mainstream channels with a wide audience range, and on Living TV, Bravo, and Paramount, Fiver, these channels are targeted at a specific audience that watches programmes involving Mystery, Crime and Suspense, so they will be a good channel to promote our thriller that involves a mystery crime of a woman.
-Posters, These will be on the side of London buses, in main area of London for example, Oxford Street, Liverpool Street Station, the reason for this, as there a lot of people who commute and got to these main places within in London regularly so they are able to see the poster advertising our film.
-Trailers for ‘Lost in Daylight’ will be shown in cinemas and shown on the television aswell like stated before.
Viral marketing via the Internet of the movie trailer on teen social websites such as Myspace, Facebook will be used aswell to get a wider age range for the audience.
The main stars of the film will not be an overly famous actor/actress, but will be recognisable stars, for example a person that has been in television such as; Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire and Skins) or Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead and Spaced) this will attract an inherited audience, as the audience will go to see the film, to see what the particular star can achieve and perform too.

The way our media product represents particular social groups, is that the audience can relate to the people who are starring in the film, as they are similar age, gender, and class to the target audience of either a male or female middle/working class person, whom is of the age of 16 or over.
There is no representation of sexuality and religion, as this film is not based on this, it is based on the question of death and how it has happened.

The kind of industry that might distribute our media product, would be a company that distributes around the world such as a Hollywood Blockbuster, this is because our film would be a versatile film that would attract audience members from around the world to see the film, for example a similar film like ours would be ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, as it has a similar ‘Unknown’ Cast, but with a great storyline, and advertising, it will entice people to watch the film.

I have learnt about the technological construction of a film is first of actually making the film.
My experience of being about to make a title sequence and actually being about to film with a camera and using all the conventional rules to make sure the film was correctly filmed to be a thriller, this was hard but enjoyable, and by having practises of how to do this by doing a preliminary task it made it easier to not make any simple mistakes when filming our final thriller. Then using Final Cut Pro, and moving the recorded footage onto the computer to edit, by using ‘log + capture’ this process was hard because I was not used to doing this type of editing and transferring footage and getting the correct points from the filming was tricky but it was useful for editing. When actually editing, it was hard to make sure that all the match cuts were correctly in place, and to make them unnoticeable to the naked eye, for example when Silvestre knocks on the door and then my head turns to react to the knock, then back to him knocking on the door, after getting used to it, it got easier, but overall editing is difficult.

Secondly we used the internet to record what we had been doing lesson by lesson, we had personal blogs on blogger.com, I found doing this was very simple, as it could be written and then be posted instantly, and there were no need for losing papers or any important information. After we had finished out final film, we then uploaded it onto Vimeo, which was a simple step-by-step process, once this had been done; we then embedded our videos onto our blog, which was simple. This modern technology, was very quick and simple, it was not time consuming, and made it simple to move footage from one place to another within minutes. By using the Internet it also widened the potential audience viewers of our film, as lots of different people use the Internet, and people you may not expect to watch out media product, may find it interesting and want to go and watch it, increasing the amount of audience who go to see the film.

Zanele Lloyd-Dawethi

The Cinema Experience

The Cinema experience was very good...
As we arrived at the cinema, it felt like a premiere for a new load of films coming soon. Sitting waiting one by one for our film to come up, it finally came.
Watching our film on the big screen was very good, quite dawnting watching myself on a big screen, but it was good. Hearing the reactions from the audience was good, we got lots of claps, from the audience, this showed that they enjoyed our thriller trailer.
After all our hard work that we had put into doing this thriller trailer, it payed of when we got to the cinema to watch it.

Seeing other peoples thrillers was nice aswell,as we could compare, and see all the different types of work that other students had done, and all the work they had put into doing it.

I Enjoyed , and Appriciated going to the Vue Cinema in Angel, to watch the Premiere of the AS Thriller Title Sequences.

Cinema and responses.

Today we had a nice treat by going to the cinema to watch a showcase of our final piece thriller openings, this was a very great opportunity as we had 200 people fitting our exact age criteria and target audience stereotype. All in all there were 45 openings to watch and although ours was closer to the end we recieved a big round of aplause at the end of our sequence, this was a great experience as we were shown different aspects of editing that movie distributors have to consider, if showing in a cinema, for example credits. Previously in class we had watched our thrillers and had filled in sheets for each group on areas that they could have improved on. Once we had recieved our constructive criticism back we were quite happy that all of the negative point were things that we felt we needed to improve on also, for example variation of music to prevent tidium, sharper sound effects that fit into the scene, and larger credits so it can be visible to the audience. Theese are things i would deffinately change if we had another chance to redo or even tweak our thriller opening.

Last minute.

Today was our second to last day of editing, and we had finally realized how few shots we have. We needed a variety to enable us to get high marks, so we rented our a camera and quickly filmed some close up shots and shots that we didn't need our main location for filming. For example we filmed things in a kitchen at college and as we did not show the kitchen in our main filming house location, it enables the audience to presume that it is all in the same area. We filmed an extreme close up shot to expand our variety of shots. also we filmed the back of a computer to match cut it to a wide shot of a person fixing a computer. This worked very well as although it was two completely different computers in two different locations the audience would not know this.

Editing.

We had to import our filming, and watch carefully to make sure that we logged and caputred the right sections. We had import it sequence by sequence to ensure easy editing and also to save alot of time. We quickly refreshed our memories with all of the edit how-to's and also revised the transitions, rotations and dissolves. We made sure we started to use theese in our progression to our final piece. In terms of music we had to create our own piece using different sound effects in our sound tab on the mac computers. We were not alowed to use copyright so Silvestre and Nathan took it upon themselves to create a composition, the had different peaks, which later built into a cresquendo. This was extremely important as it was a generic convention of a thriller film; to have rapid fast paced music lowering and increasing volume throughout. However i felt the music was to repetitive and could have varied in terms of various orchestra or string instruments. However at this stage we needed to focus on our editing aspect as we had limited time to change our music sequence. we added in various sound effects such as clock ticking and door knocking as an attempt to variate the music, we did this by lowering seperate points of our music and adding in the sound effects. Today we have almost finished three quaters of our piece but still need to edit the last sections.

We learnt alot from our match cut thriller practise. Mainly the lighting, we realized that although things may seem alot brighter on the camera screen when it is logged and captured and uploaded to so we had to bear in mind constantly when filming our actual thriller piece. Today was our final date to finish our thriller pieces, we had great difficulty with our various credits, as we needed them to be the same throughout, same colour size font and placing, however in certain shots the colour would simply blend in with the video. One we had overcome this problem by simply setting the colour to white which was a resistant colour from all of our other shots, we made sure that all of our sound had finished, been lowered and made louder in all the right places. We cut our soundeffects by mili-seconds on the mac computers just to make sure everything was in time with the actual video. Unfortunately half way through our video sequence there was a small gap which made a black screen appear on screen, this was only for a split second, and nobody else could notice, however because we were constantly editing it and watching it then re-watching it, it enabled us to realize small details. Once we had finished our sequence we watched them in class the following lesson. We were very dissapointed at the size of our credits as you could not read the writing as we failed to realize that although we could see it on our small mac computers screens when it is projected onto a larger screen writing will appear smaller. However we could not change this. When it came to watching our trailers in the VUE cinema in angel we were extremely dissapointed that none of our credits could be established as writing. So if i could that would definitely be a glitch i would change in our piece. Also in one of our shots, we added a sound effect of a clock ticking, which carries on after the clock hands stop moving, this would definitely be another element i would change.

Preliminary Film..3

The next lesson was based in the MAC editing room where we began the next task of editing. We started viewing all the sections we had previously separated and decided how they could fall into a consequential order. Finding the correct clips wasn't difficult as they were all titled. As we proceeded with the task of putting the clips together, decisions were made to make clips shorter or/and longer. As the finished product began to emerge, we felt that something was missing. A soundtrack. I asked Mickey, the teacher, to show me how to bluetooth a song from my phone to the MAC. 

After he transferred the song, we decided carefully where to place the song in the finished film. We put it in the bit of the film where Nathan walks into my 'office'. The effect of the song was, that the dialogue was drowned out so that viewers would wonder what was being said. This creates confusion and interest because near the end of the film, I stand up and walk around the room with my hood on, making it seem as if something violent is about to happen. 

Last Lesson

This was our final lesson, so we had to finish the end of the thriller by the end of the 3 hour lesson.

This was a stressful lesson , we were all over the place to get our thriller finished.

We had finished most of the editing, only a few things had to be finished before our thriller was finally done.. 

This was nearly ready to be done but as the lesson finished we did not have enough time, so as it was the deadline day we at lunch to finish the editing.

At lunch we finally finished our thriller, this was just done by adding the little details into our thriller to get it finished off properly, this was great, and it ended all the stressful moments of having edit our piece to fit the deadline.

Preliminary Film..2

We used 10 minutes of the next lesson to finish filming our short film clip. We knew what we had to do so it was not time consuming. Once we were done, we allocated ourselves in the MAC room where we began to edit our film. We began with a technique called 'log and capture' which is basically cutting the film into separate sections, shots and angles. Zanele took charge of starting and stopping the film at the appropriate sections. Because while filming, we had taken the 5 second rule into consideration, it wasn't too hard to separate the sections. I renamed the sections so that later we could identify them. After the logging and capturing exercise, lesson was a near end so we did not start on the next task.   

Preliminary Film..

In our 3-hour lesson, we had a short time at the beginning to agree on our previous ideas. We then began filming. We decided to use a dark classroom to create a sort of underworld atmosphere. As we filmed, using many different shots and angles, our ideas expanded and became more realistic. Nathan became the character who owed Sly the money. Marika and Zanele were filming. As the end of the lesson approached, we still had not finished. 

19th January.. Short Film Idea..

We spent a short lesson thinking of an idea on what we was going to film in our 3-hour lesson. Our ideas where a bit more constructive because we had experience after filming our short newspaper clip. We decided to create a scene about a guy owing someone money. Although we only briefly jotted down the details, we still knew what and where was was going to film. 

Continue Editing

In this lesson Marika and i did the editing as Silvestre and Nathan did the sound.

We used the clips that we filmed from the last lesson, and then log and captured them , after we starting editing and putting the clips into it ,so that we could finish the structure for the end of our thriller, then continue to finish editing it more in detail afterwards.

This was near enough our second to last lesson, so we were under alot of pressure to get our film sorted. The music had not been added to the film yet, so we had to get this finished before adding the final non-digetic sounds could be added.

Marika and Nathan had a 3 hour gap in college, so they stayed to continue editing the thriller.

Lost in daylight final piece.