Thriller

Thriller

Preliminary Task

Preliminary

Thriller Opening Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

 

Thriller films usually centre on a central protagonist fighting against insurmountable odds, be it physical, such as The Expendables, or psychological, such as Black Swan. There are many variations with their own conventions, but all thrillers share a common goal; to create tension through the use of fast paced editing, dramatic camera angles and keeping the storyline as shrouded in mystery as possible to keep the audience guessing. Thrillers also effectively use lighting to leave parts of the set or characters in shadow to add to the mystery of certain areas or characters. This is most prevalent in the film noire sub-genre, most popular in the early twentieth century, although it has recently made a comeback in the form of The Artist.

Openings to thrillers usually have their own conventions as they need to impose a message onto the audience as soon as possible and set the tone for the rest of the film. This is done through the use of long shots with captions to distinguish location, as in The Bourne Supremacy, or extreme close ups to keep the audience interested without giving too much away to what the subject is, such as Se7en. The use of non-diagetic sound builds tension and suspense in the opening scenes where very little actually happens. This keeps the attention of the audience while the opening gives some backstory and an insight to the main character.

This image shows a collaboration of screenshots from the opening of Se7en. It uses extreme close ups to disorientate the audience and force them to think more about what is going on, rather than it being explicitly depicted. The opening gives an overview to the major themes within Se7en, through the use of emotive and provocative imagery such as the letter writing and photographs symbolising memories and the razorblade symbolising violence. We used a close up to start our thriller to not give away the location of where the film is set and to give a dark backdrop in which to overlay our credits, much like Se7en.

This is an opening scene to The Bourne Supremacy. It uses an extreme long shot to set the location in the mind of the audience without focusing on a subject. Since the film starts in Amsterdam, it is most likely a location viewers are unfamiliar with, which makes the viewer uneasy straight away as they suspect something unusual will occur. While facts about the film are scarce to begin with, the director (Paul Greengrass) felt necessary to give the viewer a solid statement to base their understanding. Straight after our close up, we used a long shot to determine location to the viewer as well as revealing the back of the main character. The character turns his head away from the camera quickly, and this brief look builds an interaction point with the viewer, making him appear more human.

Shutter Island is a quintessential thriller; a slowly unwinding story that keeps the audience interested through the use of unexpected plot twists and dark undertones. The film utilises the geography of the island to make the detectives seem isolated, which makes the audience fearful at the end of the film when the truth behind the lighthouse comes to light. It’s a physiological thriller in that it makes the viewer think, rather than just take in information, much like one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s similar films, Inception. In our thriller, we don’t reveal who the people in the pictures are. This is to make the audience make their own conclusions about who they are, and the importance they may have on the story.

Films predating the introduction of colour to motion pictures (The Wizard of Oz, 1939) had to use different methods to get across their message, and silent films more so. The Artist, released in 2011, chose to film without diagetic sound and in black and white, rather than technological limitations. The film looked authentic without mocking the era, as the mise-en-scene perfectly emulated the 1920’s. It utilises many tricks used by silent film makers of the time, such as reflections, pantomime and props to bring to keep the audience interested. It uses intertitles as well as props such as newspaper headlines to tell its story without spoken words. We planned to do something similar in our thriller, to have the credits or title appear on a piece of paper the character threw out of the drawer, but we thought it looked forced and took away from the action.

The typical poster and opening credits has bold text to draw attention to the poster as well as to distinguish itself from the action taking place on the poster. We have emulated this in the titles of our thriller, which uses bold text to make the text stand out from the background it is on. Thrillers often have a lone wolf character, which we also have used. We have done this because we wanted the story to be the focus, rather than distracting the audience with lots of characters introduced in a short period of time.

These are some posters that demonstrate that need for bold text to distinguish the title from other text or action on the poster.

 Here are some credits that overlay the shots in the opening of thrillers. It demonstartes the importance of font and colour of the text to set it apart from the background it is on.

  These are an example of the credits we used in our thriller opening.

           

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We aimed our thriller opening at young boys, between the ages of 12 and 15. This demographic generally like action films with past paced action and simple storylines, as well as films with a BBFC rating of 15 or 18. This is because films of a higher age rating contain more violence and swearing, which young boys like as it makes them feel like they are watching something they shouldn't be allowed to. 

Our thriller opening only contains one actor, and as such only presents one social group, adult males. Chris is presented rather negatively as he is only shown in darkness or his face is not fully in shot. We did not intend for Chris' character to represent adult males negatively, but this may be the way it could be perceived due to him being the only character. We did not use any violent props and so we are not stereotyping adult males as being violent, although this decision was made as it was more appropriate to the story rather than trying to send a message. Chris was also dressed in fairly smart clothes, which contrasted to the plot of the film, as you would expect him to be dressed more low-key or look more like a typical criminal. We did this so the viewer wouldn’t think he was trying to rob the house but was rather returning.

These are stills from the films The Football Factory, Kidulthood and Green Street. These are the images usually associated with young people in films; violent and involved in gangs. This contrasts with our opening as our character is alone and is not wearing the clothing connected to what is the typical "youth", no hoody, jeans or trainers.

 

 

 

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I believe that our thriller opening would be best suited to the style of Twentieth Century Fox. They are known for distributing thrillers as new IP that have gone on to make successful series, such as Die Hard, Alien, and Taken, whilst also branching out into other genres such as Home Alone.

 

 Die Hard is one of Twentieth Century Fox's flagship brands, with 5 films released between 1988 and 2013.

Twentieth Century Fox were very active during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and they are still distributing films to this day. They are considered among the top six American film studios as of 2011. They were a success from the very start, as two of their first films, The House of Rothschild (1934), and Les Misérables (1935) were both nominated for major awards. They are currently owned by the News Corporation and are based in Los Angeles. 

 

 This would be beneficial to our thriller as New Corporation own many established media platforms on which to launch our media product. These include the television networks Fox and Sky as well as newspapers such as The Sun and The Times in the UK and The New York Times in the USA. This multi-organisational structure would allow our media product to be promoted very easily and cheaply around the world, thus leading to our thriller being target to a wider audience. If a full film was commissioned, a big company such as Twentieth Century Fox would be able to provide a large budget to allow us to be more ambitious.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for my media product would be young teenagers. I think this because we filmed the opening in a way that it would achieve a rating of 12 from the BBFC. I believe the media product would get a rating of 12 due to the infrequent swearing, the occasional psychological horror scenes and any violence will take place off screen. As the audience is quite young, psychographics did not really come into the targeting of the media product as they are too young to be fitted into those categories due to not having any responsibilities.  

 

 

 

We produced a questionnaire to ascertain our target demographic. We gave the questionnaire to as a wide of range of people as possible, from all ages and genders, although we mainly gave them to younger people due to that age being more readily available to us. We asked about age, gender, the age rating they most like, their favourite type of film and their favourite film as well as what they expect from a thriller opening.  The questionnaire revealed that most people that answered were under the age of 18 and they wanted to be kept in suspense during the opening. 

 

 

As the film would be distributed mainly within England, I feel the main audience specifically would be white males between the ages of 12-15. I say these because the themes in the film would be most relatable to that demographic, and people that are older than 15 may find that they want more visceral on-screen action to keep them entertained. I think the audience is of a lower class as the theme of betrayal is most relatable to this group of people. I believe that the main audience is white as since the film is made by me and Jack, two white people, and so our cultural influences may come through in the film.

 

 

The audience expect to be kept in the dark in terms of the story, as our age rating and budget/time constraints do not allow us to film anything visually impressive in terms of effects. 

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

The audience probably expected an actor that was older than 17 as not many thrillers use actors of that age, especially as main characters, but due to the time we were filming, we had to use Chris. Our audience also wanted to be kept in suspense, and we did that through the use of only getting clear shots of Chris' back and reflections. This is a technique also used in No Country For Old Men. It keeps the character shrouded in mystery as his details are left unshown to the audience.

 

 

 

 

 

The actor in our film is a 17 year old male, and so we thought that males aged 12-15 would find him relatable but would see Chris as a authoritative figure, and so they would feel the tension when he dies, rather than finding the situation funny as if it was someone so relatable that it could be one of their friends. Research has shown that the age group of our audience generally have a short attention span, we used cutaways to keep the action fast paced and the time between cuts short. This ensures that the audience remain attentive towards the film, rather than not really paying attention. It starts with low angle shot types, and ends with high angle shot types. This shows the transition of him being more and more under control of the killer upstairs.

There is some off-screen violence which keeps the age rating down and makes the opening having an almost superficial cliff-hanger, where the audience have to imagine what happened rather than having it explained to them. A similar film which keeps tension and has lots of off screen action yet keeps it's 12 BBFC rating is The Woman in Black. It targets a simlar audience to our media product and attracts them through the use of darkness and shadows.

 

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of making this product?

Since I started AS Media, I have learnt how to use various pieces of hardware and software that I had previously not used. Before we went to shoot the preliminary task, I learnt how to use the camera and tripod. I learnt how to record and save clips and how to fix the camera onto the tripod to achieve more stable shots. I learnt how to adjust the tripod to different angles and heights, which we used to position the camera in tight positions eg. In the corner of rooms where the human hand would not be able to get to.

 

 

 

I learnt about the "golden rules" of cinematogrophy, the 180 degree rule, match on action, shot-reverse-shot and the rule of thirds. The 180 degree rule states that between two people opposite each other, the camera must remain on one side of their shoulders in order to not disorientate the audience about where the characters are in relation to each other. Match on action is two shots transitioning naturally onto each other when there is an action taking place, such as a door being opened. Shot-reverse-shot is the process of shooting over the shoulder at the person who is talking to give the illusion that the audience is involved in the conversation. The rules of thirds states that something must be happening on the four points where the lines cross if the screen was split vertically and horizontally.

 

 

This is an illustartion of how the 180 degree rule works.

 

This is how we used match-on-action in our thriller. Chris opens the door in one shot, and then walks through it in the next.

 

 

This is an example of shot-reverse-shot.

 

 

 This is how the rule of thirds works. The focus of the shot lies upon the points where the lines cross.

 

 

 

 

I also learnt how to use a Mac as it’s built in software, iMovie, is simple and efficient to edit together simple movies such as the thriller opening. We then used iDVD to burn the finished thriller onto a DVD. We learnt how to use transitions between shots to make the shots appear more natural.

I used PowerPoint to create our ideas pitch.
 

 

I used Blogger to host all of all of my content online. 

 

 

I used Paint to edit together a stereotypical poster for a thriller film to put up on my blog.

 

 

 

 

I also uploaded my finished thriller onto YouTube so that I could embed it on my blog.

 

We used iMovie to edit together the thriller opening as well as the preliminary task.

 

 

We used iTunes to get a soundtrack for the thriller.



 

 

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

One of the main issues we faced when editing our preliminary task piece together was that we didn't film enough cutaway shots. This made the finished preliminary quite jarring to watch as the different shots didn't quite flow together as well as we would have liked, as the timing of the shots didn't correlate correctly with one another. As such, when we filmed the thriller opening, we made sure to film many cutaway shots from as many angles as possible to mitigate any issues we could face in editing the final piece together.

Since the preliminary task lacked any sort of sound, I felt that it didn't quite feel finished. The inclusion of diagetic sound, such as the sound of footsteps, and the non-diagetic sound, the soundtrack, added to the ambiance of the scene. The sound added an extra layer of complexity to an otherwise dull scene.

In our preliminary, we filmed each scene over and over until we had one clip that we were happy with and discarded the rest. The issue we faced from that was in one of the shots, background noise was quite audible which we did not notice at the time, and since we only filmed one clip of that scene, we had to work around the issue which took some time. We fixed this problem in the final piece by filming each scene several times so we had two copies of each scene that we were happy with so that if a similar problem arises, we would be able to use either clip.

Since we didn't use storyboards in the preliminary, we found that we had to re-film certain scenes as we didn't realise what we would need to make our storyline make sense. Apart from the obvious time constraints, we could have had problems with continuity (in the weather, clothing and the availability of the actors on another day). Since we made a storyboard for the thriller, we knew what shots we needed and where they would fit together so there would be no need to re-film anything.

We tried to encompass a larger range of shot types into our final piece as our preliminary was limited to mostly mid-shots, mainly due to the small area in which we had to film. The location of where we filmed the final piece allowed us to film at different angles, and so our final piece uses a wider range of shot types than our preliminary, as well as panning and different types of transitions.

High angle

 

 

Long shot



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the sholulder