Signing out

I have really enjoyed working on so many different projects to lead up to a final project that turned out really well. I have also enjoyed learning about new techniques with software, working with different people and getting to know about the film industry.

Although some parts were challenging to do, I think I have gotten so much better at using all this technology and hope I can continue to get better.

Thanks to everyone that worked with me and helped create something new :) and to everyone that followed on this journey.

Signing Out !

Although I found making the Thriller challenging at times, I learned a lot form the process and really enjoyed it. Thank you for keeping up to date with my journey of making my own thriller through this blog. Its been great ! Bye x

THE FINAL THRILLER OPENING - CAPTIVE

EVALUATION QUESTION: 1

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGEFORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

  

CONVENTIONS OF TITLE SEQUENCES:

These two pictures show some of my previous research on titles sequences. I had to do this because of my thriller so I now know a great deal about the conventions of titles sequences. 

There is a certain order in which the titles should appear in, however there are some exceptions to the conventional order. 

In this image, it shows a title sequence analysis that I completed. In this title sequence, we can see that it follows the conventional order that many, if not most films follow. 

EVALUATION QUESTION: 2

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

Representation is different for different people. They are intentionally composed, written, branded, targeted, and censored by their producers, and that they are entirely artificial versions of the reality we perceive around us. 

This is a collage of the stereotypical 30 year old woman in today's society. In my thriller opening, the main character is a thirty year old woman, but she is completely the opposite of the stereotype. She is mentally disturbed and she commits a crime. However, she does have a job and she does have a house like most thirty year old women would probably have. 

The social group that I have represented is normal working class women who are in their thirties. They work and they own their own household. Normally, these women would have children and a husband. They would probably have a nuclear family and would be part of some type of activity in their community like the gym or dance classes. 

I have presented this stereotypical idea of thirty year old women in a negative way. Although she seems normal at first and she looks like there is nothing wrong with her, when she goes into the house we see that actually she is not normal. It is a negative representation because we are presenting her as being crazy and quite disturbed, which detracts from the normal stereotypical idea of these women. 

EVALUATION QUESTION: 3

WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

If we had to choose, a production company that would distribute our film would probably be screen gems. This is because they distributed 'The stepfather' which was the film that we took our inspiration from. 

EVALUATION QUESTION: 4

WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

Our media product was an opening thriller that told the story of a woman who is unable to conceive and becomes obsessed with having children. Because of this, she ends up kidnapping a child and in the opening we see her coming home where we eventually see the child and we know something is not right.

Since our film explores the idea of some people having mental illnesses that lead them to doing things like kidnapping children, we thought that our opening falls well into the psychological thriller sub-genre.

Through research I found out that psychological thriller's target audiences are often 18+ due-to them including quite a lot of violence as well as heavy psychological issues that could be disturbing for people under that age.

 For our thriller opening, we decided to make the target audience people from about 18-30 as that is the age range for people that would usually watch that genre. We also thought that it would catch women over 30's attention as one of the main characters in the story is a thirty year old woman.

FEEDBACK FROM SET 7 AS MEDIA:

This was some of the feedback that we got from our class. Both the students and Marisa gave us valuable feedback which helped us to see that we had chosen an appropriate target audience to aim our opening thriller at. 

This is a screenshot of someone talking about our opening on Facebook. We found it very interesting as well as motivating to see this and it helped us understand that we had once again chosen our target audience well. As the film revolves around females,we thought that it was good to see a girl commenting on how much she enjoyed the opening. 

EVALUATION QUESTION: 5

HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

In our opening, there were various aspects that appealed to our target audience due-to things such as mise-en-sene, who the protagonists were and the name of the film. 

We used mise-en-scene like a handbag to appeal to the more feminine side of our target audience. We think this worked well as many girls liked the opening. I also think that having Giselle as the protagonist in the opening helped us because her friends will be drawn into seeing the movie and also me and Hermenia's friends will also be drawn into watching our opening. I think the name of the filming is also quite captivating as it is short but it will get someone's attention. The name 'captive' seems quite dangerous and will draw people in that are interested in quite twisted genre's of films. 

The feedback we got from our rough cut really helped us a lot when it came to the final stages of our editing. We were able to change some of the shots and how long they were on screen for. When we went to see the opening in the cinema, I realised that the changes we made really did make it better.

These videos are some of the responses that I got from some of the students after we all got out of the cinema after having finished watching all of the openings. Some students commented on how they thought the opening personally effected them and what made them like the opening.

This video shows all of the media students waiting outside the cinema to be called in. We then walked in, and we sat down and began watching akkl of the thriller openings one by one.

  

This is a GIF of screenshots of parts of the feedback videos where the students are talking specifically about what they liked about the thriller opening. 

Drew is talking about the fact that he liked the sound and he also enjoyed the fact that there were close ups. He said it made it really good and interesting to watch. 

Leila is talking about the fact that the poster is good and it made it seem really realistic and more professional looking. 

Farheen mentioned that the setting was very good. She also mentioned the props and the music 

EVALUATION QUESTION: 6

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT? 

The technology that we used was extremely good! We found it very easy to use and we enjoyed using the equipment! However, the technologies were quite difficult to carry around as we only done that two at a time. We did try and in the end everything worked out well and we managed to work well with all of the equipment. 

EVALUATION QUESTION: 7

BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESSION FROM IT TO THE FUL PRODUCT?

In my preliminary task, I think my group done considerably well and I think it looked acceptable. However, with making the thriller, we have learnt so much more than we did with the prelim. 

Comparing skills between the PRELIM and the THRILLER OPENING:

This is some of my prelim evaluation that i had to complete as one of my blogs. This blog is not very detailed and is not too much depth about how the prelim went and what i thought of it.


Below is the analysis of the prelim. Although it took some work to get all of this done, it did not take half the time that it took my group and I to get the research for the Thriller done.  For the Prelim, we did no have to do much research. In fact, we just got on with the work and we did some analysing (as seen below) after we had done everything. 

Comparing the research and planning that we did for the prelim with the research and planning that we did for the thriller opening is quite hard because the thriller opening was a much bigger project. We spent a lot more time on the thriller which really helped us to improve our research skills but also our overall knowledge on the thriller genre. I spent many weeks getting some research done on thrillers and things like target audiences. I made sure that I knew everything before I went on to making and planning my thriller with my group. 

We had to do a big amount of research in order to make our thriller opening good. These screenshots show some of the planning that I done about thrillers and also some of the initial ideas that my group and I had before we decided on which idea we were going to go for. The research was also in much more depth as we had to think about EVERYTHING!

Also, in the thriller opening, we had to worry about things like what mise-en-scene and props we had to use because we wanted to make it look as realistic as possible. We had to plan out what the characters were going to wear and what the house would have to look like in order to transmit the feelings we wanted.  Whereas in the prelim, it was much easier as we did it in college and we had to work with what we had as opposed to what we wanted to work with. 

This is one of our match cuts from our prelim. At the time, we thought the match cut looked fantastic. The experience we had compared to the experience we have with programmes like Final Cut Pro now was minimal so I think that we actually did quite well. 

The lighting was not the best and the types of shot was also not the best. We used a long shot in order to show the whole of Giselle's body. However, if it was now, we might have used a medium shot that would make it look more professional as well as showing Giselle's face more clearly. 

Also, we have definitely developed our titles. In the prelim, they are very simple and it did not take a very long time to get done. When we were doing these titles, we had recently learnt how to put titles into our work. Since then we have had time to improve on that and the titles in our thriller came out much better. 









This is one of the match cuts from our thriller opening. Immediately, we can see the huge improvement from the match cut in the prelim. 

It looked very effective on the cinema screen and it definitely made our film look much better and diverse shot wise. Because we are now more precise and we have more practise with using all the tools on Final Cut Pro, we were able to make it extremely precise and the timing to be perfect. 


We learnt that the match cuts really help to make it look so much more professional and interesting for the audience because it helps the action to happen faster which is perfect for thrillers. 

By making our thrillers, we also learnt how to film better and what would look better on a screen. In these screenshots above, they look a bit dark and it is very hard to see the characters face, which is crucial. With our thriller, we made sure that the lighting was perfect because we may not have another opportunity to re-shoot it. 

The storyboard for the prelim and the storyboard for our thriller opening are completely different. 

The first storyboard shown above is the one for our prelim.  It is not very detailed and we decided to use real life pictures instead of doing things like drawing out the whole storyboard because we thought that would take more time and concentration. Although this storyboard has the description of each shot, the storyboard for our thriller opening was much more detailed because we decided to draw it out and it took us half of one of our 1 hour 40 minutes lessons to do so whereas we managed to get the other one done very quickly. 

The editing process for our thriller opening was also much better compared to the editing we did for our prelim. Although we took much longer, it was much more precise and we made sure everything was perfect. The editing was also easier when we were editing our thriller although it was more nerve racking. We were already very accustomed to the equipment and the programmes so it made it easier to get what we wanted done. 

TEAMWORK:

When we were filming the prelim, we were not as comfortable with each other as we were when we were filming the thriller opening. This is mainly because we had spent more time with eachother. Also, when we filmed the prelim, it only took us a lesson to film it, whereas it took us three days of filming together to get the thriller opening done.

We made sure we had a schedule to make sure that everyone had fair work and that a certain person was not doing more work compared to other people in the group. 

 This was our production schedule. We created this for our thriller opening filming times so that we were organised. We worked as a team to come up with this schedule and we wanted to make sure that everyone in the group was happy with it. 


On certain days of filming, two of us would take the equipment back to college, and then we would swap. We done this and it helped our group to get stronger because we knew we could depend on each other. 

 My specific skills in team work improved a lot because I was able to share my ideas more freely. Also, we were all more comfortable with each other which allowed us to communicate more often through other means of technology like mobile phones. Also, I have learnt to use the camera very well so if any of my team mates needed any help with the camera, I would help them.

I really enjoyed working with Hermenia and Giselle and I think we made a very good group and we worked really well with each other. 

Evaluation Question 1

Effectively film openings are designed to work as a teaser for the rest of the film and should evoke interest in the audience and curiosity to continue watching the film.

There are four different ways which film openings can be presented to an audience, the names of these are, Narrative, Stylized, Titles over a Black Screen and Discrete.

the opening of Orphan is a discrete opening

The opening to Momento is an example of titles over  a black screen

The opening of Enemy of Stage is am example of a Stylized opening 

We chose to make our Thriller opening as narrative opening. This means that the opening, just like the rest of the film tells the narrative of the film. the titles are shown as the film goes on.



However we challenged the conventional style of a narrative as we put on title over black screen and this was the title 'Captive' which is the name of the Thriller. We did this as we thought it would effectively allow the name of the film to stand out and be noticed by the audience.

This is an example of a film that also has done this 

We conformed to the conventions of title sequences in a film opening. As we followed the conventional order which is:

- Production company 1

- Distribution company 

- Production company 2 &3 & 4

- Film Title 

- Actor 1

- Actor 2 

- Actor 3

- Actor 4

- Actor 5

- Actor 6

- Actor 7

- Actors 8 & 9

- Actors 10 & 11 & 12 

- Casting by 

- Costume designer

- Music supervisor

- Musician 

- Editor

- Production Designer

- Director of Photography

- Ex Producer

- Ex Producer 

However we did slightly challenge the conventional order of a film opening as the title of the film is presented after two of the actors names. (We justified this by claiming our actors were well-known making the order of our titles acceptable).

Evaluation Question 2

The leading role in our Thriller opening is played by an intimidating, strong and intelligent female character.
this challenges the conventional representations of women in films as they often are portrayed as naive and dependent individuals. Usually these women are dependant on a male character for safety and protection, however in Captive the lead female is made to look confident and independent.

We successfully made her appear this way by the use of mise-en-scene.  (the text on slideshare is too small to read, it says ) An example of females being portrayed as physically weak to males is shown in the film ‘Stepfather’, when a woman goes to fetch an umbrella from her pool, the ‘step father’ takes her vulnerability to this advantage and drowns her by forcing her head in the pool. He is not strong enough to release herself form his grasp and dies. Her reaction to seeing him in her house also reinforces she does not know how to defend herself as she does try to protect herself from him, she only screams.

However, she can be viewed as weak emotionally through the narrative, as the Thriller is about a young woman who kidnaps a child after she finds out she is incapable of conceiving one. This means that she was strongly lead by her emotions, which lead her to do something obscene.  This way we have conformed to the stereotypical representation of women in media. As they are usually portrayed as emotional beings who are strongly driven by emotion and can sometimes allow these emotions to lead them into mental instability. Unlike men who are better at withdrawing strong emotions that could make them appear weak.

We conformed to the stereotype of a child in reality and in media, which is that they are naive and easily amused. This is presented by the way Natalie (playing Melanie) is captured in the opening of the Thriller.
In the opening of Captive she can be heard singing a song which sounds very childlike and innocent, this communicates her innocence but also brings a eerie feel to the opening. In media voices of children have also been used to convey innocence and bring a haunting feeling to the audience.

I feel that these social groups have been presented in a realistic and positive yet negative aspect, this is because realistically children are viewed as very gullible and naive people. Women on the other hand in media a represented as dependant on men and they often find themselves in tragic situations an example of this is in fatal attraction when Dan attempts to end his affair with Alex, she is not emotionally stable enough to accept the relationship is over so in a state of distress she performs self harm in an attempt to win Dan's sympathy.

In contrast the adult female character presented in Captive, does not beg for sympathy from anyone else, she takes matters into her own hands and decides to give herself what she is naturally incapable of having and does not appear to fear the consequences. This way she could be viewed as somewhat fearless and brave, which are usually the traits conveyed through men in media. In this way it is fair to argue that we (my group and I) have positively, represented adult female characters in our thriller. On the other hand one could also say that we have still presented women in a negative light as we still allowed our female character to act recklessly due to her emotions and was incapable of restraining them, unlike male characters in media who are able to withdraw strong emotions when necessary.

Evaluation Question 3

we worked with Candi Studios 

Skyfall is an example of a Film funded by a large distribution company 

These are films that have note been funded by large companies 

we would use these social networking sites to distribute our film 

Evaluation Question 1

Showing the title of the thriller over a blank screen. We used this because it would stick in the audience's head. Making it identifiable. The large font contrasts to the black background, making it easy to see and also letting the audience know it is important.

When we were planning our thriller opening we had to think what would be our USP to attract our target audience. We had to make sure that conventions of film openings were followed to maximise the chances of a succesful thriller opening.

Using famous London landmarks identifies this film opening as being a british film. The audience could relate back to it.

GIF showing and following conventions of a thriller opening. The shot is an establishing shot taken from 'Psycho'  and compared against ours.

We studied various different thriller openings to understand the conventions of title sequences as they all mostly have a very similar structure. The reason films have a followed structure is so the audience can understand better. For example, leaving the title of the film a few seconds longer than the rest.

Evaluation Question 4

The target audience for many Thrillers is 18+, this is because of the violent content in many Thrillers and sometimes confusing story lines. The disturbing content may be to traumatic for younger viewers to watch and the narratives might be a bit to confusing for them to comprehend.

Most Psychological Thrillers are rated 18+ as they have the more complex narratives made for a more mature experienced audience. Also they do contain many frightening, scary scenes that could be inappropriate for young children.

We thought aiming our target audience at ages 18-25 would be very suitable as the content and language might get quit explicit later on the film, we needed to aim in at a mature audience.

As the main character in our Thriller is a female, because of this we thought that we should aim our Thriller specifically at females aged 18-25. As they may be able to relate to the main character perhaps more than a male could. Also the main characters in the film are both females and would share the same ages as our the audience watching.



This is some feedback I got from my class after we presented our finished Thriller to them. We got a lot of positive feedback and in detail about what people enjoyed about it. Personal opinions from our class mates are shared in the video.

We (Giselle and I) created a social networking account for a member of our target audience.
We created what we thought their Facebook would look like and the kind of interests, hobbies and personality they would have.




The screenshots to the left show the name of our target audience member and their interests displayed through the music they enjoy, also tv programmes and movies they have watched.

















I thought that this selection of interests would be appropriate as it makes the individual seem interested in Thrillers and music that may be considered quite 'dark'. Also I thought it was very important not to make her seem like and average 18 year old, her interest in musicians like 'Frank Ocean' and movies like 'The Roommate and Dirty Dancing' and also TV programmes like 'Charmed and True Blood' communicate this.

It was very important for her to show an interest in the opening of the thriller 'Captive'.




We thought that it would be beneficial to add a more visual representation of what the target audience of the film might be like. So we created a Tumblr to accompany her Facebook profile so that the personality of our Target Audience would be clearer.

The Tumblr, like the Facebook communicates her interests, however Tumblr is a more visual representation of her personality. 

The page displays her taste in music through pictures of her favourite music artists.

Artists like 'Lana Del Rey' make music that is described by a lot of the general public as depressing, this reinforces the idea that she would enjoy our thriller and films of the genre in general as people could also describe as somewhat depressing to watch.


Similar to the Facebook page, we allowed her Tumblr to look vibrant and perhaps 'girly' but still thought it was necessary to give it a 'dark' edge, this allows our target audience to seem like and average 18 year old, but still someone that would take an interest in thriller films.