Links to important blog posts

Final Thriller Opening

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Task 2

Evaluation Questions:

Question 7

Question 6

Question 4+5

Question 3

Question 2

Question 1

Question 7

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

Looking back on my preliminary task, and looking at my final thriller opening, I can see I have developed my skills in lots of different areas such as 'camera work' as when we were filming our preliminary tasks the camera angles and shot distances were not that great but in our final piece the shot sizes were all correct and not out of position, also the angles of the shots were all good to, Another skill I believe I have got better at is video editing because in our first video the edit of it was not very good and the clips didn't really run together, but in our final piece all the transitions were in time and well placed and all the clips looked like they ran well together and didn't look out of place.

Another skill that I have learned is creating 'Graphics' in photoshop when I started making graphics at the start of this unit they were not that good and they were just basic things but now, I can make detailed graphics, and this really helps in this topic as you can make logos and titles with this skill.

Another skill that I have learned in this unit is 'Sound' work, I have improved my skills with sound, as before I could not do it very well, but now I can make backing music for our opening and I can create sound effects for bits in our film, this is a good skill to have in media as quite a lot of the subject revolves around sound and making sounds for opening like ours.

Another skill I have learned whilst filming our final thriller opening is about keeping everyone in the same clothes, in each scene as we filmed on different days, it is key that we filmed in the same costume every time as the viewer might think that they are different people, and this could lead to confusion and would look very un-proffessional.

Looking back at our final thriller opening there is only a couple of things I would change one of these items I would change is maybe have a little bit more 'diegetic sound' because I feel we had too many sound effects, even though the feedback from our survey suggested this idea, I didn't feel that it felt tense enough as there was no 'diegetic sounds'

Overall I feel my skills in media have dramatically changed and I have made a lot of progression with working with media technology and creating videos and sounds.

Question 6

Question 4 + 5

Who would be the audience for your production?

The audience for our thriller would be for 16 year olds because we did a survey about what thrillers people liked and what style they would want and most the people who completed the survey were the age of 16 so we picked them as our main audience because the answers they gave would help us to create what type of thriller they wanted, and the the type of thriller they wanted was a phycological thriller, so we picked it because we assumed that was the type of thriller they liked.

The film would be a 15+

When creating our thriller we tried to keep to the theme of psychological thrillers, we did this by using a clock as a background theme, we did this to keep a psychological presence in our film, in our thriller the prop is key because the prop is used to build the story and help the characters to find this psycho killer, in most thrillers sometimes the prop can be more key than the characters because it can be the main key to the storyline, we also found out in our survey that people like soundtracks in thrillers to create enigma and suspense, we created our soundtrack by using garage band, we used garage band because it has lots of good SFX that would be suitable for our thriller.

Question 3

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

Distribution of film is the process of the film getting known and seen, big film company have lots of different ways of distribution, this is done so people have knowledge of the film, and so they go see them.

There are plenty of places you can market your film, for example you could advertise your film on youtube on adverts which are played before the video you are watching, also it can be advertised in magazines, TV, billboards and the web, also films will put in things which have something to do with the audience they are making the film for, such as a comedy film been advertised on a comedy channel or before a comedy TV show, so distribution is all about the film getting seen and into cinema and then onto DVD and Internet streaming such as Lovefilm.co.uk.

When it comes to distributing our film we will use youtube to distribute it, because our film would not be a high budget film, but putting it on youtube isn't that bad because it can be seen for free in any place with internet access, this means loads of people can see it and this means it could be directly linked from adverts and this means people can find it really easy, also it can be shared on facebook and it can spread by family and friends, and then it might become popular, and this will only lead to more views because it might be on youtube's top rated.

Question 2

Question 1

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

Our groups thriller opening is a cereal thriller based around a clever man who is a clocks maker and he commits murder and leaves clocks on the dead body these clocks carry numbers wrote on the back of them, secret formula's which the police have to figure out, which will all link to the main plot, because we are doing a thriller it has the conventions of a thriller, such as, titles, credits, sound, characters, costumes, props, use of enigma, camera and editing. when making our thriller opening we took into account the conventions and we used this to our advantage.

Location 

When choosing our location for our thriller we used our thriller research and knowledge to pick the perfect spot to film it had to be remote, dark, creepy and somewhere suspense could be build, usually in thrillers they use forests, big remote house's and small villages so we took this into account and we decided we would film in some remote woods, because this gives a sense of loneliness and makes the thriller more creepy, the second location is a small dark, blacked out room, we chose this so the audience were left wondering what was happening at the time it is shown. At the start the two main characters are in two totally different locations and environments, the bad guy is in a small room working on a clock and the other is in a deserted woods this creates, these two locations would nether usually fit together this creates a mystery of what is going on.

Then in the next scene we see the person who was in the small room, in the woods walking down the same path as the other character this creates suspense and gets the audience questioning what is going on and what is going to happen, this creates a link from what was happening in the previous scene      

Characters

The main character portrayed in our thriller opening is a psychotic clockmaker, who is very smart, in the third shot of our opening it shows a shot of the villain working on a clock and doing some mathematical equations, this gives the audience, an impression that this character is intelligent and this adds on to mystery.

The second character shown in our thriller opening is a guy who is wearing fairly standard clothes we first see him walking into the woods, this gives a mystery about him because everyone probably wonders why he is in the woods.  and in the scene when the character is dead it creates questions about what the characters have done. 

Camera

The camerawork we used to make our thriller, have conventions of other thrillers, were we used low angle shots of the villain to make him look bigger and make him look like a main character in our thriller opening, this allows the audience to guess he is the main character and he is going to feature in most of the movie, another camera technique we used was giving a first person shot from the eyes of the villain, whilst he chase's down his victim in the woods, this creates suspense, and gets the audience questioning what is going to happen. 

Props

Props in thrillers could be anything from knifes to bags etc... they are most commonly used in thrillers as clues such as the murders weapon, a bag with documents in and items owned by the murderer which helps the people to find the killer, in our thriller we use a clock, the clock is the murderers symbol, he leaves the clocks next to his victims body with a mathematic formula on it, the reason we use this clock is because the first time the audience see it they will be confused and it will created a mystery about but as the film goes on they will become more familiar with it and if they see it they will know what has happened, this adds to the mystery of the clock and this creates enigma.

Final Thriller Opening

This is our final thriller opening

Final Soundtrack

This is our final soundtrack, we created this on garageband

Animatic

This is the animatic of our thriller opening storyboard this shows the storyboard in a motion way.

Rough cut

Interviews

Risk Assessment

Filming Evidence

Ash filming in the clock shop in shrewsbury

Recce Shots

Clock shop (Shrewsbury)

Tilly road (woods)