We were aiming to make the opening and title sequence of a thriller. During the course of my product research, I discovered that opening sequences need to quickly establish a sense of atmosphere.
Thriller genre conventions:
-A disturbed character with a flaw
-Vulnerable character
-Night-time setting
-Frequent low and high pitched sounds
-Slow paced music during beginning credits to create suspense
Usually in thrillers in order to create mystery there is a heavy use of close-ups where not so much is revealed to the audience. Therefore, the audience are forced to ask questions and gives ambiguity to the film.
Foe example, in Vertigo there are extreme close-ups of lips, nose and eyes.
In our thriller, we used this same effect where we do not see the killer’s face until we are mid-ay through our opening. We also used a vulnerable character and a disturbed character with a flaw. However, we challenged theses conventions by using a young innocent teenage girl as the criminal rather than the typical hooded teenage boy.
As well as this, instead of a night-time setting in order to create mystery. We used a morning setting which is seen to be quite unusual. However, we created mystery through our beginning shots of the boy’s face not shown so the audience begin to ask questions.
Q2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Teenagers in modern society are stereotypically represented as being associated with being guilty of a knife crime. Therefore, in our psychological thriller we used a teenage boy with a ‘hoody’ to support this representation. This is because we felt it would appeal to our target audience where they can relate to his character and make our thriller seem more realistic.
In contrast, we portrayed the girl as being innocent and a softer character. She has a close friendship and is unlikely to be associated in unlawful acts.
Q3, What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
United international pictures
-Jointly owned by Paramount and Universal - have higher production values due to their high income and invest in new ways of digital distribution.
-Paramount is a mainstream producer and can appeal to our mainstream audience through their high production values
-They acquire films by independent producers locally, internationally and regionally as well as mainstream. So we can appeal to our mainstream and independent audience
-One of the sixth major American movie studios so we can gain a greater audience
-investing in new digital distributions so they can compete with other major film companies. An example of new technology is D-BOX Technologies, Inc. (e.g The fast and the furious)so we can make our thriller more appealing and exciting for the target audience
’engages in the design, manufacture, and marketing of motion systems for home theatre, video game, movie theatre, and commercial arcade sectors in the entertainment industry. Its patented D-Box technology allows for synchronization between the screen action of a movie or game and the motion generated’.
Q4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
Audience Research
Using our results from our questionnaire we decided that our psychological thriller was made to appeal to a number of audiences in order to broaden our appeal. We tried to attract to a mainstream as well as an independent audience between the ages of 15 and 25.
We also found that some individuals preferred the storyline introduced during the opening of the thriller. Therefore, we decided to use photographs to illustrate the character’s connection with the girl killed and a flashback to the beginning to represent who was the killer.
Ways in which our Product research related to the making and ideas...
From The Shining,we decided to use a similar technique where both characters footsteps in order to connote that they are in the same location and I also decided to have both characters wiping off the blood from their hands to portray this same effect.
Instead of using reoccurring themes like Hitchcock, we decided to use a high pitched note to introduce the killer and show the girl's change in personality. As well as a rewind effect to indicate the significance of the previous shots of the marking of the calendar and the girl ripping the photo.
We used a technique from Michael Powell's Peeping Tom of a close-up of an eye in order to dehumanise our character. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7nwyk_peeping-tom-17_shortfilms
This was one of the difficulties we found as it was hard to zoom-in without having a blurred image.
This was the sort of image we were trying to acheive:
Cameras used
changes made from our original ideas...
We changed our idea of having the close-up of an eye and a mid-shot of our character at the very start.
This is because we felt it did not set a scene to draw our audience into as well as it did not fit our storyline where we wanted to include a rewind effect.
Therefore, I decided to use our character looking at photographs to portray to the audience her relationship with her friend who has been killed. Fortunately, we were then able to use a rewind effect to show her ripping the photograph to illustrate who was the murderer and to show a change in time from her memory to the present.
Q5. How did you attract/address your target audience?
At the very start of our thriller, we used a low note of a piano in order to create tension and lure the audience. Then we used a sudden high pitched note in order to introduce the killer and entice the audience.
We created mystery through the extreme close-ups of the killer’s shoulders, back and hands where the audience are unable to see the killer’s identity and the audience begin to ask questions. The extreme close-up of the girl’s eye dehumanises her face and indicates a change in time.
The use of footsteps walking towards the camera makes the audience feel more involved and possibly’ feel like a witness to the crime.
The use of the over the shoulder shot of the killer looking at the knife places the audience in the role of the murderer and feel more involved.
The use of pathetic fallacy, (The Shining) of the wind blowing when he is wiping the blood off his hands makes our thriller seem more realistic and builds apprehension among the audience.
The short pause before the title appears possibly, allows the audience to reflect on the killing and who was the murderer.
To target our mainstream audience we used stereotypical charcters 'hoded teenage boy'and to our independent we used a confused narrative storyline and used subvert genres of crime and schizophrenia.
Target audience feedback
After making our final film I gathered a sample group of our target audience and asked the following questions in order to see what improvements have to be made for our thriller to be more successful and appealing to our target audience.
1. How well does our thriller function as an opening?
2. What do you like/dislike?
3. How would we improve?
1. functions well as an opening-allows us to question what is going on-who was the killer- boy or girl, fake blood and shot was interesting and created an atmosphere
2.
likes...rewinding effect, was effective, not used in many psychological thrillers, unexpected and unique
dislikes...The photo scene at the beginning was to long
1. functions very well as an opening, sets the scene, establishes characters and cast straight away
2. likes... rewind, camera angles, sort of some liking about confusion-able to discover and make own interpretations, music was overall good
Dislikes...confusing storyline, maybe should be at a slightly more slower pace so the audience can have time to think about the storyline , the close-up of the eye is blurry
3. slower pace, better close-up of eye-needs to be more clearer
After looking at my audience's feedback i have found that the technical difficulties we had experienced with both the I movie HD and camera shots resulted in my final thriller having flaws.
* Close-up of eye
* blending the lower softer tone of music with high pitched sound to introduce killer
Q6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
During the making of our thriller we had to make changes to our ideas from our storyboard. This was for a number of reasons. Firstly, our ideas of a split screen of the two characters footsteps.
This was because the Apple i mac HD did not have the software to do this.
Therefore, we decided just to have to seperate shots of footsteps.
These are the sites were we found our music...
www.soundsnap.com
www.incompetech.com.
what i found quite challenging...
Finding non-copyright music was quite hard as many of the sites had limited access. As well as this, blending the music from the start of the extract to the scene with the calendar was hard as they wre two diffrent tones and styles of music. However, i was able to solve this problem by cutting some music from the scene of the murderur and overlapping it with the photograph music.
In addition, the idea of the lift. This was because we had to hold the camera still as the lift changed floors and film without the sound of movement. However, we was able to cover this sound with our music with the apple mac system.
Q7 looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at our preliminary task...
* learnt how to use a range of camera shots with and without a tripod stand.
* filming the footsteps of our characters without have a shaky camera - made our actors/actresses walk towards the camera.
This also helped create a greater effect where the audience feel more involved and if the characters are walking towards them.
We also decide to place our title near the ending of our opening as a sort of cliffhanger so the audiences are left wanting to know what happens next. This is also because in our preliminary task we placed our title at the very start as we felt it did not fit in as well as if it was at the end.
However, we kept the same font and editing of how it appeared on the screen by type writing to give a sort of documentary kind of feel to relate to the killer storyline.
our project overall...
After making our final media product, i felt that having had included a rewind effect may have resulted in our opening telling our entire film's storyline. On the other hand, looking at our target audience feedback we found that many enjoyed the rewind effect because it created a sense of confusion which was seen as quite effective and interesting.
I also found that having the idea of the killer's face not been shown until the opening of the lift was very engaging because it created a sense of mystery and made the audience try to imagine what he looked like.
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