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

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 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.

Evaluation Question 5

I believe our target audience was attracted to our thriller because of the interesting narrative. I also feel that this was our USP. We thought that a film about a young woman desperate for a child who can't conceive one would sound interesting to other young women and grasp their attention. As they would be able to identify or sympathise with the leading actress more than a male could.



We targeted our Thriller at females aged 18-25 as we felt that there would be a sense of audience identification between the actors and the target audience, due to age similarities.

However this was only an assumption, when the film was finished I asked a member of our target audience to sit down and watch it and give me feedback of what they liked and disliked about the film.




I recorded them watching it to get their initial reaction, and then after I conducted a short interview with them to find out what they thought.

Our rough cut feedback helped us improve our film a lot, showing the rough cut of 'Captive' to our target audience was a chance to get their opinion on the thriller opening. They said that they like the overall idea of the thriller, and that it was well captured. However they also thought that some of the shots were too long, for example when Giselle was walking along Tower Bridge, and when she was walking to the door of her house. We shortened these shots and the audience thought this was big improvement in the thriller opening.

So far we have distributed our Thriller though showing it to our target audience at the cinema 'the screen on the green'.

Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 7

I created a Camtasia which describes the process of creating the Thriller and what I learned. 

The process of making my own Thriller opening taught me a lot about the Thriller genre, as I had to research the genre before making my own one. I enjoyed watching Thriller films and know I think it might be one of my favourite genres of film.

I also learned about the differences between a Thriller and Horror, I found this very interesting as before I could not differentiate between the two. 

Making my own Thriller opening has also made me confident with using technology, such as professional cameras and softwares. Before starting this project I could not use software such as Final Cut Pro or Soundtrack Pro, through making this thriller opening I have learned how to use these softwares and this is a skill that I can take with me after this project.

Coming up with the narrative was another aspect of making the Thriller, that me and my group really enjoyed. It was fun to come with an original idea, and come up with our own storyline. 

I have learned that I do like working in a group, however sometimes when working in a group I found that I favoured my ideas a lot over other people, and would become annoyed if someone did something that I thought was unnecessary. (For example editing something in a particular order, which I thought was wasting time).  

I also think that the part of the process I least enjoyed was filming. As we had to film shots many times in order to ensure we had got what we wanted.

Planning was my favourite part of the process of making my thriller, as I liked being creative and having the opportunity to create anything I wanted. A particular part of the planning process I really enjoyed was making the 'Missing Child' poster, knowing that it was the most important prop in the film I attempted to make it look as realistic as possible, I enjoyed the challenge of doing this. 

The other members of the group Carina and Giselle were really fun to work with, our personalities didn't clash at all and we communicated well together. We had already formed a friendship before the project so we were able to discuss other things as a group making the process of producing a Thriller not too stressful. 

Overall I enjoyed most of the process of making a thriller and think that I know obtain skills that I didn't not have before starting the project.  

I have learned a lot about the process of making a film, and the thriller genre.
Thank you for joining me on this process through keeping up to date with this blog.

FINISHED !

The final touches we had to make on our Thriller was adding in the last set of Titles and ensuring that the music matched the clips being shown. We finished editing before the deadline and we had more than enough time look over our final product. The very last thing we had to do was marked the words finished next to our group number to make it official.

The Order of The Titles in Our Thriller

THE MISSING CHILD POSTER - Prop When Filming

The missing child poster is a prop I created for our filming. It was definitely an essential to our Thriller as brings a better understanding of the thriller and the roles of both actresses in the film.

I modelled the Poster after a real missing poster I found on google images.

  This is the poster I used to help me design the missing poster I was creating, it helped me understand how to word the poster, where to put certain bits of text and what exactly needed to be included on the poster.






This is a picture we took when filming, you can see Giselle looking at the poster. It is the part of the film when she notices the poster and grabs it of the wall.







When were were editing we decided that the title CAPTIVE should be show before the Giselle makes contact with the poster, we thought also though it was important to get a good shot of the poster so that people can link the girl in the poster to the girl in the girls house later in the opening.

Vlog About Our Idea

This is a vlog we made shortly after we were put into a group and given the task. In the vlog we discuss our Initial Ideas for our Thriller.
This vlog will help you see how our idea evolved as time went by and other ideas we had for thrillers.

Final Stages of Editing

Constructing the Timeline

These are some picture of our construction/editing process.

Some of the shots we took when filming were not included in the finished product of the thriller as we felt the narrative made more sense and looked more like a thriller without them.

We had to find suspenseful pieces of music on soundtrack pro. that matched up to mise en scene in the timeline.

Adding titles.

These are some screen prints of the titles we were adding. As seen, we tried to make the titles contrast to the background. We also followed the conventions of a typical thriller opening as we have put all of our titles in the correct order. This shows our understanding of how and why titles are placed in certain places, for example, the main actors/actresses always are put one after the other, with about 4 seconds showing each. Then actors that have smaller roles, are shown for less time, and often put together.

We can also see that we have put the first names and first words larger and in bold. This catches the audience attentions. We added fades to smooth out the look of the titles. And it also created a more professional look.

Titles Research

We studied the conventional order of titles in lesson before we started filming our Thriller, we watched many openings to films such as The Panic Room, The Stepfather and The Roommate.

We had to make a title opening timeline to help us remember and understand the conventional order.

This a blog post I made that stated the conventional order of a film.

Further research I did to increase my understand of thriller film openings, was study the different styles of openings there was. I learned that the different styles of openings were, a narrative opening, a diverse opening, a stylized opening and titles over a blank screen.

Film openings I watched to identity opening styles where Orphan, Panic Room and Fatal Attraction.

I made a blog recording the information I discovered.

Adding our own titles onto the thriller was very time consuming, we chose a simplistic font for the titles and thought it would be suitable for it to be over the narrative.