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
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.
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.
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 Cooperation and are based in Los Angeles.
I feel that they would be appropriate to distribute our film as they have a
history of distributing successful thrillers, and so they would know how best
to market the film as well as getting the film to as wide of an audience as
possible due to their size.
4)
Who would be the audience for your media product?
I feel that 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. As the film would be distributed 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.
5)
How did you attract/address your 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. Since our research shown that our audience have generally 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.
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.
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 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.
I used Paint to edit together a
stereotypical poster for a thriller film to put up on my blog. I also used
PowerPoint to put together a presentation of my ideas for the thriller opening.
I then took screenshots of the presentation and put those on my blog, too.
I also uploaded my finished thriller
onto YouTube so that I could embed it on my blog.
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.
