Video above shows my thriller opening.
For our thriller we viewed many different thrillers and there opening. This included a wide variety of thriller sub genres such as film noir and British gangster. It was these two different sub genres that caught our eyes when we were deciding what sub genre we were going to use in our opening. In the end we chose British gangster because it was much easier to replicate due to the locations and costumes. And British gangster is much more appealing to our target audience which shows in my audience research.
1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Because we were making an opening to a British gangster film we used many different forms conventions from that thriller sub genre. In the opening to the British gangster film “Layer Cake” it has much in common with the first section of our thriller opening. For example out thriller has a voice over at the start, as does “Layer Cake”, another thing it has in common is the type of shots at the start, in both “Layer Cake” and our opening the shot types are smooth and more importantly inside the frame it looks sunny and bright, this contrasts with the dirty, gritty nature of this sub genre of thrillers. Also in our thriller the sunny nature of the first scene contrasts with the second scenes dirtiness, it’s this scene which is much more in keeping with the sub genre of British gangster.
The opening to “Layer Cake” is embedded above, this shows the voice over that is crucial to establishing the opening of a film and keep the viewer and it tells the story much faster than a set of shots on film. The image above shows the similarities between our opening and the shots from the opening of “Layer Cake”. Both images show the sunny noir shot types that contrast with the dirty/ gritty nature of a typical British gangster film. In our thriller opening it has the second scene (below) that contrasts with the opening shots, this is to show the main character (played by Jordan Howes) decent into poverty to show all he has lost.
Like most other British gangster films costume plays an important part in showing the personality and status of a character, our opening was no exception to this. In Guy Riche’s “Lock Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels” it uses the sharp suits for the successful people and dirty run down cloths for the unsuccessful people, this is the same concept as we are using in our opening to our thriller as it aids the viewer to be able to establish the social positions of the characters throughout the opening.
In the 3 photos above it shows the costumes that we used on the two characters. For the main character played by Jordan Howes for the first scene he was dressed as a successful businessman this is to contrast with the nature of the film and with the same character a month later. The second character played by Tosh Goldspink who is only in the second scene he I dressed in smart trousers and an expensive coat (Barbour style) which isn’t formally smart, but it shows that he is a snappy dresser and has lots of money to back up the expensive looking cloths. This coat is similar to the ones used in “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” as the still of a dodgy deal going on in the opening of the film shows. This kind of style is iconic in British gangster films because it shows emphasizes the goal of all the men to be the alpha male, which is shown by the use of baggy or tight clothing to show ones muscles, and if they are wearing expensive cloths it shows they are successful which adds to this idea of the goal of being the alpha male inside the group.
For our location we looked for somewhere run down and derelict. This was to use all the connotations we needed to get across to the audience. These connotations include the bleakness of the setting which we wanted to put over strongly because we wanted the audience to feel like the main character was stranded and isolated from the rest of the world, and more importantly from his family, and his lucrative job. For some of the establishing shots of the second scene we used bleak shots to set the scene, we also used a grey filter amplify the depressed and bleak nature of this scene. This technique has been used prolifically in the movie “Essex Boys”. In the opening scene there are many shots of very bleak and grey surroundings which makes the audience unsettled. Making the viewer feel unsettled is one of the key components of a good thriller and “Essex Boys” uses this to great effect. Another way to make the viewer feel unsettled is to make inside of the frame very busy with lots of different textures. The film “London to Brighton” uses this concept well because the opening scene is in a toilet cubical that is extremely claustrophobic and there is graffiti all over the walls which make it an intimidating place to trapped inside. For some of our scenes in the end of the first and parts of the second scene it shows the many different textures in enclosed areas.
The still above shows a grey scene in the film “Essex Boys” compared with our take on the greyness which adds to the feel of bleak and hopelessness that the image below shows. The still below is another still from “Essex Boys” which shows the bleakness of the type of shot. The still next door to it is the shot we chose to use to show the bleakness and the stranded nature that we were trying to convey to the audience.
The claustrophobia adds to the helplessness of the main character, it also helps the audience to create some sort of bond with the character because they seem helpless in their situation and it seems an unfair fight in the eyes of the audience. The two shots below shows the opening of “London to Brighton” and our thriller opening. Both show the hopelessness of each character and this is accentuated by the location because of its cramped and dirty location.
We chose our name for our thriller after thinking for a number of days of a suitable name. It was after my partner in editing wrote the script to the voice over when we realised that the title should be “Too Good”. I think this name works well in the thriller genre because it links in well with the story line but to someone who has not seen it; it adds a sense of enigma because it asks the question ‘why is the character too good?’ A good example of a thriller that has a name that the audience at the end realise but adds a sense of enigma is the movie “Memento”. Anyone who has not seen the film would find it a catchy yet it still creates enigma. To viewers who have seen the movie you realise that the main character has to create reminders tattooed onto his body or using Polaroid pictures with notes on them because he loses all memory every 20 minutes or so. This makes the title relevant to the movie but still keeps that enigma that is crucial to keep the suspense that a thriller needs.
Above shows the two title shots with the names of each thriller on it. Notice that our thriller does not have any sort of background with any detail which is a sharp contrast with the title shot of “Memento” which has one of the most important shots of the whole film on it.
One very circuital element of a thriller is the importance of an interesting shot. I do photography A-level as well as media and this helped me greatly understanding what made a good shot. For example some of the shots of the second character smoking look extremely film noir, this genre of film noir type of shots is in the photography world to. Photographers such as Bill Brandt and Man Ray use the idea of film noir strongly in their work. Also in some of the dirtier grittier shots photographers such as Wolfgang Tillmans work on this kind of claustrophobic style.
The images above show the film noir style shots of Bill Brant next door to our shot of the second character in the almost chiroscohiro lighting. The images below show the work of the German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans compared with our dirty gritty photo of the second character searching for the main character.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our thriller opening only had two different characters that are both male. The main character played by Jordan Howes in the first scene is cool calm and collected and has high social status because it shows him on the phone to an unknown person, and he is wearing a sharp expensive suit which shows he is extremely successful, it also shows that he lives in a wealthy neighbourhood which also shows that he is successful. The establishing shots of his house show he is a family man with children and possibly some sort of partner. This represents a typical middle class happy suburban family with no major issues. The same character in the second scene is the paranoid, weak, vulnerable male who fears for his life. The main male character is not normally shown as weak or vulnerable in a British gangster film. Most of the important characters are like the character played by Tosh Goldspink, the strong confident male. Overall the main representation of characters in our opening is the fragility of the male persona, and the way people’s social status can change dramatically in a short period of time.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
As I have said in my thriller audience research our target audience is the age group ranging from 16-21. This strongly influences the way in which we might distribute our film. I think because of its unconventional and original plot I would distribute this as an independent film. This would mean that it would be more independent cinemas that distribute our thriller. This is because in my thriller audience research I found out that people wanting to watch an independent film expect to see a thriller with a more complex plot and less action than an independent thriller. Because our age group uses the more technology than any other age group, to distribute our film, if we were to make it feature length, we would use the internet strongly in advertising it but also we could exhibit or film on using such sites as You Tube to actually distribute it. In 2007 a small indie film made by a couple of students in New York called “Four Eyed Monsters” about an unlikely couple. It has been a massive success with over 1 million views, and it being exhibited in 20 different film festivals including Sundance and SXSW! And the directors/writers have gone on to bigger things since. To date there hasn’t been a full length thriller released to You Tube but there have been many documentaries, Bollywood, and small indie films exhibited on the video site. I think if we exhibited it for a couple of months on You Tube and spread it over the internet using the viral marketing technique, then there would be the people watching the film. Then after a couple of months when the viral has spread to enough people I would take it down and replace it with a trailer, and make a DVD available to buy. The people who have seen it and loved it will pay to watch it again, and the people who have not seen it they can buy it. I think this is a good way of exhibiting a first time film makers film because it gets your name and film out there for people to easily see.
The video above shows the trailer for “Four Eyed Monster” that was solely exhibited on the internet then later sold on DVD. The embedded video below is one of the many Bollywood feature length films that are exhibited on the internet.
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Throughout my audience research I have concluded that the age group we are planning to target are the people who fit in the 16-21 category. This is because I myself fit into this age category which makes it much easier to find out what is expected of a thriller aimed at the age group. Because its an independent thriller it will appeal to a slightly more intelligent audience because of the complex plot and its clever twists and the lack of action compared to a mainstream thrillers that are often shown at big multiplexes. It’s not just the type of age group that we are targeting its the lifestyle of a particular group inside this age group. We are targeting mainly students that like to spend their money on social arrangements and new and exciting experience. Those two last points link in well with the idea of going to the cinema with a couple of mates, and a cinema experience never repeats itself unless you see the same movie more than once. So my target audience are students that are aged between 16 to 21.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
From my audience research I also found out how to attract an audience for the specific target audience, and what an audience expect when they pay to go see a thriller film. To find out how an audience is attracted to a thriller I made a questionnaire and it threw up some interesting answers. One of the main questions I asked was “what’s the first thriller that comes into your head”, this was to find out what the most prolific thrillers are in peoples mind. Out of the 15 who took it over half said a movie made by Quentin Tarantino and the one that popped up the most was the 1994 cult classic “Pulp Fiction”. Because this film is one of the most popular thrillers ever made we were going to want to draw similarities between our thriller opening and the classic Tarantino film. There are a couple of main features that we got inspiration from ‘Pulp Fiction’ such as the second character played by Tosh Goldspink. His character is supposed to be based slightly on Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) in the sense that Vincent and Jules and our character are all hitmen who are working for a higher power (a drug lord in ‘Pulp Fiction’, and a pissed off banker in ours) they have similar types of costumes as well, in ‘Pulp Fiction’ they are wearing snappy black suits with professional ties, and in ours he is wearing smart trousers and would be wearing a suit but because it was mid winter when we filmed he wore a coat over the smart top with a tie, and I suspect if ‘Pulp Fiction’ was filmed somewhere colder than Los Angeles then some sort of coat would be used.
Authoritive characters of our thriller opening and the cult classic ‘Pulp Fiction’. Above shows the similarities and the differences between our authortive character and ‘Pulp Fiction’s’. For our Character it shows no weapons but he does have a big torch that is used to light up the dark areas he cannot see. Whereas in ‘Pulp Fiction’ there are abundance of guns and other various weapons shown to the viewer.
Because independent films are normally made on much tighter budgets than mainstream films, aspects of the final cut can show the lack of money. In our thriller opening you can tell we have used no artificial light and the actual camera quality isn’t that good. Whereas in a mainstream thriller there would be prolific use of artificial or manipulated lighting. Even in many independent thrillers artificial or manipulated lighting are used. This might repel some people because our thriller was filmed with the absolute minimum of equipment.
The two shots above shows the chiaroscuro lighting that is used in most thrillers to create a mood that is very typical in thrillers. The difference is that for our shot we only used natural light from the sun, whereas in this iconic shot of “The Third Man” they have used lighting angled at the perfect degree to create this interesting shadow thrown up on the wall.
Going back to equipment all we had was a camera and a tripod. Many shots these days in both independent and mainstream films are shot either from cranes, dollies, helicopters, cars and other expensive equipment. This affected us because it was difficult to get any sort of moving shot while the camera was on the tripod because the tripod was stiff and jerky. So to get the moving shots we needed we had to take the camera off the tripod and risk having slightly unsteady shots, but we did use the unsteadiness to create a bit of a sense of confusion to unsettle the audience. I think this shows that you can attract and audience without the big amount of money needed to get the expensive shots.
The shots above show the difference in budget and shows how budget effects the type of shots used. The shot on the left is a shot from the opening to “Layer Cake”, you can immediacy tell that its shot from a helicopter because its following a very fast moving car at a height a helicopter could achieve, you can tell its not shot on a rail because it’s a little jerky and it changes direction very smoothly. The shot next to it is the highest shot we could get. We had to climb up some high steps to get this effect which shows that you can get good quality shots without the equipment.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout the production of our thriller and our preliminary task I have learnt many techniques that have aided me in creating our thriller opening. The first thing we learnt in our preliminary task is how to operate the cameras. Nothing fancy at that point just how to switch it on and record. After we hand finished filming where we learned about the 180 degree rule and continuity, we moved on to uploading the raw footage onto the computers which took a couple of attempts to do. After all the footage was up onto our computers we learned about editing. This has got to be one of the most time consuming parts of the production. For the preliminary task we did not need to know much about editing just the basics. After the preliminary task was over we started on our thriller. Filming it took along time because our camcorder kept breaking (3 times in fact!) this meant that every time we had to wait a day to come to school. This was extremely annoying as we were already a little behind. After we got the camera working we learned about the different settings on the camera, for example changing the white balance to suit the conditions that we were shooting in. after filming we had to edit our hour long footage into just two minuets. This proved a task but in the end we got it all together ready to put the finishing touches onto it. In our thriller the finishing touches included putting a filter on the shots to make it seem greyer and more depressing adding to the mood of the overall thriller. We learned about how to put writing over the top of the image which we used in adding the credits. We also learned how to record and sync with the footage a voice over which was an important part of our thriller opening. After all the footage was all edited and finished we had to upload it to You Tube. Then once the opening was on You Tube we had to embed all the pictures and videos needed to put my evaluation onto my blog. This has been the different stages of making my thriller and the technology I have used along the way.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Over the time of producing my thriller I have learnt the processes needed to produce a thriller, such as the technological points that I explained in the question above. I have also learned a lot of the creative side of the types of shots, this links in well with my other A-level photography. I have also learned about the preparation side of it, for example the storyboards which we had to do to show the types of shots we were going to use. I feel have also learned about film audiences and their habits. This has been very interesting and since my preliminary task I feel I know so much more than I did before about the film industry in general. Before I started this project I did not realise how much time it takes to produce the short 2 minutes. This will help me prepare for next year.
In the 3 photos above it shows the costumes that we used on the two characters. For the main character played by Jordan Howes for the first scene he was dressed as a successful businessman this is to contrast with the nature of the film and with the same character a month later. The second character played by Tosh Goldspink who is only in the second scene he I dressed in smart trousers and an expensive coat (Barbour style) which isn’t formally smart, but it shows that he is a snappy dresser and has lots of money to back up the expensive looking cloths. This coat is similar to the ones used in “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” as the still of a dodgy deal going on in the opening of the film shows. This kind of style is iconic in British gangster films because it shows emphasizes the goal of all the men to be the alpha male, which is shown by the use of baggy or tight clothing to show ones muscles, and if they are wearing expensive cloths it shows they are successful which adds to this idea of the goal of being the alpha male inside the group.
For our location we looked for somewhere run down and derelict. This was to use all the connotations we needed to get across to the audience. These connotations include the bleakness of the setting which we wanted to put over strongly because we wanted the audience to feel like the main character was stranded and isolated from the rest of the world, and more importantly from his family, and his lucrative job. For some of the establishing shots of the second scene we used bleak shots to set the scene, we also used a grey filter amplify the depressed and bleak nature of this scene. This technique has been used prolifically in the movie “Essex Boys”. In the opening scene there are many shots of very bleak and grey surroundings which makes the audience unsettled. Making the viewer feel unsettled is one of the key components of a good thriller and “Essex Boys” uses this to great effect. Another way to make the viewer feel unsettled is to make inside of the frame very busy with lots of different textures. The film “London to Brighton” uses this concept well because the opening scene is in a toilet cubical that is extremely claustrophobic and there is graffiti all over the walls which make it an intimidating place to trapped inside. For some of our scenes in the end of the first and parts of the second scene it shows the many different textures in enclosed areas.
The still above shows a grey scene in the film “Essex Boys” compared with our take on the greyness which adds to the feel of bleak and hopelessness that the image below shows. The still below is another still from “Essex Boys” which shows the bleakness of the type of shot. The still next door to it is the shot we chose to use to show the bleakness and the stranded nature that we were trying to convey to the audience.
The claustrophobia adds to the helplessness of the main character, it also helps the audience to create some sort of bond with the character because they seem helpless in their situation and it seems an unfair fight in the eyes of the audience. The two shots below shows the opening of “London to Brighton” and our thriller opening. Both show the hopelessness of each character and this is accentuated by the location because of its cramped and dirty location.
We chose our name for our thriller after thinking for a number of days of a suitable name. It was after my partner in editing wrote the script to the voice over when we realised that the title should be “Too Good”. I think this name works well in the thriller genre because it links in well with the story line but to someone who has not seen it; it adds a sense of enigma because it asks the question ‘why is the character too good?’ A good example of a thriller that has a name that the audience at the end realise but adds a sense of enigma is the movie “Memento”. Anyone who has not seen the film would find it a catchy yet it still creates enigma. To viewers who have seen the movie you realise that the main character has to create reminders tattooed onto his body or using Polaroid pictures with notes on them because he loses all memory every 20 minutes or so. This makes the title relevant to the movie but still keeps that enigma that is crucial to keep the suspense that a thriller needs.
Above shows the two title shots with the names of each thriller on it. Notice that our thriller does not have any sort of background with any detail which is a sharp contrast with the title shot of “Memento” which has one of the most important shots of the whole film on it.
One very circuital element of a thriller is the importance of an interesting shot. I do photography A-level as well as media and this helped me greatly understanding what made a good shot. For example some of the shots of the second character smoking look extremely film noir, this genre of film noir type of shots is in the photography world to. Photographers such as Bill Brandt and Man Ray use the idea of film noir strongly in their work. Also in some of the dirtier grittier shots photographers such as Wolfgang Tillmans work on this kind of claustrophobic style.
The images above show the film noir style shots of Bill Brant next door to our shot of the second character in the almost chiroscohiro lighting. The images below show the work of the German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans compared with our dirty gritty photo of the second character searching for the main character.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our thriller opening only had two different characters that are both male. The main character played by Jordan Howes in the first scene is cool calm and collected and has high social status because it shows him on the phone to an unknown person, and he is wearing a sharp expensive suit which shows he is extremely successful, it also shows that he lives in a wealthy neighbourhood which also shows that he is successful. The establishing shots of his house show he is a family man with children and possibly some sort of partner. This represents a typical middle class happy suburban family with no major issues. The same character in the second scene is the paranoid, weak, vulnerable male who fears for his life. The main male character is not normally shown as weak or vulnerable in a British gangster film. Most of the important characters are like the character played by Tosh Goldspink, the strong confident male. Overall the main representation of characters in our opening is the fragility of the male persona, and the way people’s social status can change dramatically in a short period of time.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
As I have said in my thriller audience research our target audience is the age group ranging from 16-21. This strongly influences the way in which we might distribute our film. I think because of its unconventional and original plot I would distribute this as an independent film. This would mean that it would be more independent cinemas that distribute our thriller. This is because in my thriller audience research I found out that people wanting to watch an independent film expect to see a thriller with a more complex plot and less action than an independent thriller. Because our age group uses the more technology than any other age group, to distribute our film, if we were to make it feature length, we would use the internet strongly in advertising it but also we could exhibit or film on using such sites as You Tube to actually distribute it. In 2007 a small indie film made by a couple of students in New York called “Four Eyed Monsters” about an unlikely couple. It has been a massive success with over 1 million views, and it being exhibited in 20 different film festivals including Sundance and SXSW! And the directors/writers have gone on to bigger things since. To date there hasn’t been a full length thriller released to You Tube but there have been many documentaries, Bollywood, and small indie films exhibited on the video site. I think if we exhibited it for a couple of months on You Tube and spread it over the internet using the viral marketing technique, then there would be the people watching the film. Then after a couple of months when the viral has spread to enough people I would take it down and replace it with a trailer, and make a DVD available to buy. The people who have seen it and loved it will pay to watch it again, and the people who have not seen it they can buy it. I think this is a good way of exhibiting a first time film makers film because it gets your name and film out there for people to easily see.
The video above shows the trailer for “Four Eyed Monster” that was solely exhibited on the internet then later sold on DVD. The embedded video below is one of the many Bollywood feature length films that are exhibited on the internet.
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Throughout my audience research I have concluded that the age group we are planning to target are the people who fit in the 16-21 category. This is because I myself fit into this age category which makes it much easier to find out what is expected of a thriller aimed at the age group. Because its an independent thriller it will appeal to a slightly more intelligent audience because of the complex plot and its clever twists and the lack of action compared to a mainstream thrillers that are often shown at big multiplexes. It’s not just the type of age group that we are targeting its the lifestyle of a particular group inside this age group. We are targeting mainly students that like to spend their money on social arrangements and new and exciting experience. Those two last points link in well with the idea of going to the cinema with a couple of mates, and a cinema experience never repeats itself unless you see the same movie more than once. So my target audience are students that are aged between 16 to 21.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
From my audience research I also found out how to attract an audience for the specific target audience, and what an audience expect when they pay to go see a thriller film. To find out how an audience is attracted to a thriller I made a questionnaire and it threw up some interesting answers. One of the main questions I asked was “what’s the first thriller that comes into your head”, this was to find out what the most prolific thrillers are in peoples mind. Out of the 15 who took it over half said a movie made by Quentin Tarantino and the one that popped up the most was the 1994 cult classic “Pulp Fiction”. Because this film is one of the most popular thrillers ever made we were going to want to draw similarities between our thriller opening and the classic Tarantino film. There are a couple of main features that we got inspiration from ‘Pulp Fiction’ such as the second character played by Tosh Goldspink. His character is supposed to be based slightly on Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) in the sense that Vincent and Jules and our character are all hitmen who are working for a higher power (a drug lord in ‘Pulp Fiction’, and a pissed off banker in ours) they have similar types of costumes as well, in ‘Pulp Fiction’ they are wearing snappy black suits with professional ties, and in ours he is wearing smart trousers and would be wearing a suit but because it was mid winter when we filmed he wore a coat over the smart top with a tie, and I suspect if ‘Pulp Fiction’ was filmed somewhere colder than Los Angeles then some sort of coat would be used.
Authoritive characters of our thriller opening and the cult classic ‘Pulp Fiction’. Above shows the similarities and the differences between our authortive character and ‘Pulp Fiction’s’. For our Character it shows no weapons but he does have a big torch that is used to light up the dark areas he cannot see. Whereas in ‘Pulp Fiction’ there are abundance of guns and other various weapons shown to the viewer.
Because independent films are normally made on much tighter budgets than mainstream films, aspects of the final cut can show the lack of money. In our thriller opening you can tell we have used no artificial light and the actual camera quality isn’t that good. Whereas in a mainstream thriller there would be prolific use of artificial or manipulated lighting. Even in many independent thrillers artificial or manipulated lighting are used. This might repel some people because our thriller was filmed with the absolute minimum of equipment.
The two shots above shows the chiaroscuro lighting that is used in most thrillers to create a mood that is very typical in thrillers. The difference is that for our shot we only used natural light from the sun, whereas in this iconic shot of “The Third Man” they have used lighting angled at the perfect degree to create this interesting shadow thrown up on the wall.
Going back to equipment all we had was a camera and a tripod. Many shots these days in both independent and mainstream films are shot either from cranes, dollies, helicopters, cars and other expensive equipment. This affected us because it was difficult to get any sort of moving shot while the camera was on the tripod because the tripod was stiff and jerky. So to get the moving shots we needed we had to take the camera off the tripod and risk having slightly unsteady shots, but we did use the unsteadiness to create a bit of a sense of confusion to unsettle the audience. I think this shows that you can attract and audience without the big amount of money needed to get the expensive shots.
The shots above show the difference in budget and shows how budget effects the type of shots used. The shot on the left is a shot from the opening to “Layer Cake”, you can immediacy tell that its shot from a helicopter because its following a very fast moving car at a height a helicopter could achieve, you can tell its not shot on a rail because it’s a little jerky and it changes direction very smoothly. The shot next to it is the highest shot we could get. We had to climb up some high steps to get this effect which shows that you can get good quality shots without the equipment.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout the production of our thriller and our preliminary task I have learnt many techniques that have aided me in creating our thriller opening. The first thing we learnt in our preliminary task is how to operate the cameras. Nothing fancy at that point just how to switch it on and record. After we hand finished filming where we learned about the 180 degree rule and continuity, we moved on to uploading the raw footage onto the computers which took a couple of attempts to do. After all the footage was up onto our computers we learned about editing. This has got to be one of the most time consuming parts of the production. For the preliminary task we did not need to know much about editing just the basics. After the preliminary task was over we started on our thriller. Filming it took along time because our camcorder kept breaking (3 times in fact!) this meant that every time we had to wait a day to come to school. This was extremely annoying as we were already a little behind. After we got the camera working we learned about the different settings on the camera, for example changing the white balance to suit the conditions that we were shooting in. after filming we had to edit our hour long footage into just two minuets. This proved a task but in the end we got it all together ready to put the finishing touches onto it. In our thriller the finishing touches included putting a filter on the shots to make it seem greyer and more depressing adding to the mood of the overall thriller. We learned about how to put writing over the top of the image which we used in adding the credits. We also learned how to record and sync with the footage a voice over which was an important part of our thriller opening. After all the footage was all edited and finished we had to upload it to You Tube. Then once the opening was on You Tube we had to embed all the pictures and videos needed to put my evaluation onto my blog. This has been the different stages of making my thriller and the technology I have used along the way.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Over the time of producing my thriller I have learnt the processes needed to produce a thriller, such as the technological points that I explained in the question above. I have also learned a lot of the creative side of the types of shots, this links in well with my other A-level photography. I have also learned about the preparation side of it, for example the storyboards which we had to do to show the types of shots we were going to use. I feel have also learned about film audiences and their habits. This has been very interesting and since my preliminary task I feel I know so much more than I did before about the film industry in general. Before I started this project I did not realise how much time it takes to produce the short 2 minutes. This will help me prepare for next year.
