We started by brainstorming what a thriller is and the sub genres. We did this to help us get ideas for our own thrillers and get a better understanding of what thrillers are. In a lesson we looked at short film clips, we were looking at how the films build suspense towards the audience. I learnt that sound is a big part of creating suspense. For homework we had to choose from the many short films we watched to analyse as a way of getting more ideas for our thriller openings. I choose collateral to analyse. In the clip the sound was the key thing about the thriller so I used the idea of building up of sound in our thriller opening.
In our opening we have a black and a Greek girl in London so there are lots of different people round them who are from different background, so someone watching our thriller could tell it was set in London and possibly relate to the people in or around the shot. The girls starring in our thriller are both 16-17 but we wanted them to look slightly older because our thriller was aimed at a slightly older audience.
I would not want our film to be a big Hollywood buster I think it will be distributed by smaller companies in the U. K or it could possibly be a made for T.V because our thriller is about a girl being followed and it is an everyday thing that happens a lot, so we could use our thriller as a warning to girls and storkers out there.
Our target market is mainly young women. A typical girl that shops in Primark or New look, likes to go out with friends have a laugh, drinks occasionally, likes boys, goes college or sixth form, talks on the phone a lot, likes watching Eastenders and about 18 years old. 0ur movie is aimed at 16 plus because these are the main times you want to feel older, Start College and are at risk of a lot of things in the world.
We will market our film via billboards in the city, on the bus, in shops like Primark and new look. We could get someone famous to star in the film and mention that when we advertise to attract our audience. The main place I would want to advertise is on T.V because that is where the film will be shown. I would not advertise on the internet because I feel it will not be serious but on the other hand we could possibly make a site just for the film for our audience to find out more about the film and in a lot of ways it could widen the potential of our audience because a lot of people have myspace, you tube accounts which means there are a lot of people we could reach on the internet.
The filming experience has been very challenging but interesting for me because I have worked with cameras before but getting to grips with the five second count in was hard for me, as easy as it sounds. The easier part for me was setting up the tripod and putting the camera on it but my biggest challenge was final cut pro and soundtrack pro. I have never really used software like this so at first it was like I was learning a new language as time went on I began to enjoy using final cut pro and playing with the different sounds on soundtrack pro. I have learnt new useful skills. We used the internet to record our filming process on our blogs.
The preliminary tasks were a massive help because it taught us a lot of what we needed to know before we started our thrillers so as soon as we started our thrillers we wasted no time because we knew exactly what we were doing. We had a match cut exercise and we included a few match cuts in our thrillers. The storyboarding and planning took a while because we came up with an idea but we were told it was too long so we had to keep changing it but we split the tasks up on the planning part, so one member of the group would talk about music, lighting, the storyline etc. to the class for the next lesson. I learnt a lot about logging and capturing even though I didn’t do much of that part, I did more of cutting. We split the editing up as a group and everyone learnt something from editing. In terms of filming I think we all tried to film. I also learnt how to plug a camera into a computer via the hard disk. I learnt more about the software we used but at first I found it difficult and didn’t want to use the software but it has been another valuable skill. When I first heard we could not use copy right music I was not too happy but now I’m happy we used soundtrack pro because it made me be more creative because you think more about what sounds sound good together and why they sound good but I also thought at first having a variety of sounds to choose form was really good but when we were putting the sound together we found because there were so many sounds it was slightly harder to create because you feel like everything or nothing goes well with your opening. I also thought that the opening is a big part of why people want to watch your film and the sound has s big part to do with it, it sort of determines the genre and gives you a sense of the film.
If there is anything I could change I would of taken a more active role in my group and done more filming but sometimes it is hard when there are four people in a group to be doing something all the time.
Saturday 28 March 2009
Friday 27 March 2009
Ursula Thompson
Thriller evaluation
To start out thriller we had to look at the conventions that make up a thriller, we looked at films such as The Shining, 28 days later and what lies beneath. From this, we could see what elements we need to include into our own work. We decide to start our thriller in an attic, as it has a minimalist set and creates a series of questions of what motives the actor has in our film. We also realised we needed our opening to establish the story line without giving away the film plot. We did this by putting subtle hints to what the films about into the opening such as camera clicks and hiding the actors face.
Our media product represents teenagers to adults from the nature of the film; it also represents women to be vulnerable as she is being followed by a man. It also gives a bad representation to black males as portrayed by the actor playing the main role.
I think our thriller film would be a made for TV film or internet downloads, as there are similar films which have been released such as ‘one hour photo’ which may make it unpopular in cinemas as people would have seen a similar film before. It would be funded by a small independent distribution company.
Our thriller is aimed for an audience from late teen to early 30’s, with more interest for men of a middle class status, the overall typical person to watch my thriller is Chris who is 25 who works in an office, who’s taking his girlfriend to the cinema. It’ll also be a mainstream film, as it the film maybe to specific for a niche audience. As I think it contains everything a good thriller needs to be entertaining.
To attract an audience to my watch my thriller I would put big named actor and actress. This would create a lot of attention towards my film. To advertise I would have trailers shown between 4;30 and 9;30 on main channels such as mtv, channels one to four and the channel it will appear on. I would also advertise on billboards in cities such as London.
From filming my thriller I have realised I need more experience using the camera, as it would take two or three attempts to get the shot right. Also the lighting was a problem, as we were filming on different days the weather would influence how strong the light was meaning the takes didn’t flow as the lighting would change. The editing side of our thriller was a lot easier then the filming as I had a better idea of what I was doing on the computer. Throughout making our thriller we have used the internet, as we have blogged our process and what we did. Using the internet has broadened our audience by using programmes like Vimeo, Blogger and You Tube.
Through the whole experience of making our thriller, I have learnt so much about the filming and editing. If I was to make another thriller I would make my story board more intricate so I could follow it through bit by bit. I would also have better time management on my group as we had to start late as a member of our team was consistently late.
Thriller evaluation
To start out thriller we had to look at the conventions that make up a thriller, we looked at films such as The Shining, 28 days later and what lies beneath. From this, we could see what elements we need to include into our own work. We decide to start our thriller in an attic, as it has a minimalist set and creates a series of questions of what motives the actor has in our film. We also realised we needed our opening to establish the story line without giving away the film plot. We did this by putting subtle hints to what the films about into the opening such as camera clicks and hiding the actors face.
Our media product represents teenagers to adults from the nature of the film; it also represents women to be vulnerable as she is being followed by a man. It also gives a bad representation to black males as portrayed by the actor playing the main role.
I think our thriller film would be a made for TV film or internet downloads, as there are similar films which have been released such as ‘one hour photo’ which may make it unpopular in cinemas as people would have seen a similar film before. It would be funded by a small independent distribution company.
Our thriller is aimed for an audience from late teen to early 30’s, with more interest for men of a middle class status, the overall typical person to watch my thriller is Chris who is 25 who works in an office, who’s taking his girlfriend to the cinema. It’ll also be a mainstream film, as it the film maybe to specific for a niche audience. As I think it contains everything a good thriller needs to be entertaining.
To attract an audience to my watch my thriller I would put big named actor and actress. This would create a lot of attention towards my film. To advertise I would have trailers shown between 4;30 and 9;30 on main channels such as mtv, channels one to four and the channel it will appear on. I would also advertise on billboards in cities such as London.
From filming my thriller I have realised I need more experience using the camera, as it would take two or three attempts to get the shot right. Also the lighting was a problem, as we were filming on different days the weather would influence how strong the light was meaning the takes didn’t flow as the lighting would change. The editing side of our thriller was a lot easier then the filming as I had a better idea of what I was doing on the computer. Throughout making our thriller we have used the internet, as we have blogged our process and what we did. Using the internet has broadened our audience by using programmes like Vimeo, Blogger and You Tube.
Through the whole experience of making our thriller, I have learnt so much about the filming and editing. If I was to make another thriller I would make my story board more intricate so I could follow it through bit by bit. I would also have better time management on my group as we had to start late as a member of our team was consistently late.
Thriller Evaluation
Thriller Evaluation
Frequently in thrillers there are the conventions of suspense. This is shown in the opening of my groups’ thriller ‘The Following’. We created tension by not showing a specific characters face by using camera shots and camera work such as point of view and over the shoulder. We also included camera work that included tilting from the feet to the back of the head and a close-up of the feet. This creates many questions to the audience, as they don’t know who this mysterious character is. Another thriller convention that was included was the setting of the attic. The attic gave a creepy mis-en-scene and showed a contrast between light, the dark lighting in the attic and the natural lighting from the outside. The last panning shot of the different pictures was influenced by the movie ‘One hour photo’. Having this shot influenced by this movie thriller connotes that the character in this movie is a slightly disturbed person which adds to the convention of a thriller.
In the opening of this thriller there are only two protagonists. Looking at them you can see that they represent two opposite characters that can attract a wider audience. The only comparison between both of them is that they look roughly around the same age. This is 16-18. Whereas ones a male this is showed to the audience by clothes. A baggy black tracksuit represents a typical adolescence because this is what they mainly wear now. The fact that it’s black connotes that the character is very dark and mysterious. In the opening the hood is up for the whole time which creates this character to be very anonymous. But looking closely you can see that this person has a black ethnicity. This particular person is represented slightly as a creep because of the constant obsession of the other character. Whereas the other protagonist is a female who is represented as a typical teenager who may even be superficial. This is shown by her going to a clothes shop and then a phone shop purchasing items. This character has a Greek ethnicity which is opposite to the other character which creates a different representation especially to the target audience.
The movie ‘The following’ seems like it would be a small independent UK release distributed around a descent number of UK ‘arthouse’ cinemas. This is because a UK audience can relate to it more with the characters and the rest of the mis-en-scene. It wouldn’t get any bigger than this because it doesn’t have a big enough budget or have a wide enough audience to become a Hollywood blockbuster.
For the thriller ‘The Following’ the target audience for this film would male and female 17-21 year olds. This is because the two characters in the movie have a totally different race from each other which widens the target audience. As the audience is around 17-21 they would mainly be in a college/sixth form or university. You may still get workers who are this age who didn’t want to carry on their education but would end up having quite a low paid job. Thinking about the class of the target audience it would mainly be mainly a young working and middle class, this because at this age you are only the class of your parents and I find that this audience would be more of a niche audience. The reason why they are a niche audience because the movie doesn’t appeal to really big audience or have a big enough budget to be mainstream. For example the target audience would in include someone like… Phillip, 18, is doing his last year in college but has a part time weekend job in Sainsbury’s. Likes getting clothes from Topman, Primark and H&M. And has an I-pod, Nintendo DS and a Sony Erricson.
The trailer for the movie ‘The Following’ would be shown on channel 4, Film 4, the 15 minute break between movies on sky Action/Thriller. Also other channels that appeal to the target audience. You could also see the trailer on ‘You tube’ for those who loves the internet more than television. It wouldn’t be on the really big billboards on top of buildings, but it would be on the billboards on the bus stops. There isn’t any ‘star’ lead role in the movie they are all fresh up coming new actors. So this would be they’re first big British film.
I’ve enjoyed making this film a lot even though I wasn’t behind the camera much, I did do some of the point of view shots. Which I did like especially feeling like a director shouting out action. But what I found the most challenging was the Final cut pro. It was new to me but it was easy to get the hang of especially how we filmed a certain way which would make the match- cuts easier. But my favourite was doing the sound and music, watching the film at the same time as adding all the sounds for example the door opening and closing and the alarm of the phone going off, doing all of this was fun to do. Using the blog was like having a diary on to the internet. Because it I had to record down everything we had that linked to the thriller and the process of making it. To have the film then launched onto the internet would be perfect because it would get a bigger audience because other people would then send it to other to go and watch. To also see the movie on Youtube would be good because then we could get views and peoples ratings on how they feel about the movie.
Making a movie without a storyboard is nearly impossible which is why it is there for a reason. Even though we didn’t always have a storyboard with us, we had a very strong idea of what we wanted to film and edit. So we kind of had a mental storyboard with us. Going back at the preliminary task I found it very difficult to do the match-cuts on to the computer as I was very new at it and I thought that I would never get it. But after moving onto my own film it got easier as I knew what I wanted so I then got the hang of it. What I have learnt from all of this is that it’s not that easy making a film and editing but having the post-productions makes it feel like a routine as there is always a deadline for making a film.
As I got to watch back the film with an audience not just to myself, I got to hear their feed back. A lot of it was very similar from everyone and that was that we had very good match-cuts, the credits was very nice and simple using just black and white. Having the credits simple didn’t make it cheesy or tacky. They also mentioned the fact that one of the characters was wearing a red coat which made her stand out to the audience which made everyone know that she was a target. They also liked the sound effects that fitted perfectly was the door opening and closing and the sound of the camera click. Looking back at the thriller I would only change little things such as a female playing a boy. It would have been much easier and faster if an actual boy played that character. But apart from that I wouldn’t change anything else especially the main female character wearing a bright red coat because it made her dominant to the audience as she stood out.
The Following from 283goswell on Vimeo.
Frequently in thrillers there are the conventions of suspense. This is shown in the opening of my groups’ thriller ‘The Following’. We created tension by not showing a specific characters face by using camera shots and camera work such as point of view and over the shoulder. We also included camera work that included tilting from the feet to the back of the head and a close-up of the feet. This creates many questions to the audience, as they don’t know who this mysterious character is. Another thriller convention that was included was the setting of the attic. The attic gave a creepy mis-en-scene and showed a contrast between light, the dark lighting in the attic and the natural lighting from the outside. The last panning shot of the different pictures was influenced by the movie ‘One hour photo’. Having this shot influenced by this movie thriller connotes that the character in this movie is a slightly disturbed person which adds to the convention of a thriller.
In the opening of this thriller there are only two protagonists. Looking at them you can see that they represent two opposite characters that can attract a wider audience. The only comparison between both of them is that they look roughly around the same age. This is 16-18. Whereas ones a male this is showed to the audience by clothes. A baggy black tracksuit represents a typical adolescence because this is what they mainly wear now. The fact that it’s black connotes that the character is very dark and mysterious. In the opening the hood is up for the whole time which creates this character to be very anonymous. But looking closely you can see that this person has a black ethnicity. This particular person is represented slightly as a creep because of the constant obsession of the other character. Whereas the other protagonist is a female who is represented as a typical teenager who may even be superficial. This is shown by her going to a clothes shop and then a phone shop purchasing items. This character has a Greek ethnicity which is opposite to the other character which creates a different representation especially to the target audience.
The movie ‘The following’ seems like it would be a small independent UK release distributed around a descent number of UK ‘arthouse’ cinemas. This is because a UK audience can relate to it more with the characters and the rest of the mis-en-scene. It wouldn’t get any bigger than this because it doesn’t have a big enough budget or have a wide enough audience to become a Hollywood blockbuster.
For the thriller ‘The Following’ the target audience for this film would male and female 17-21 year olds. This is because the two characters in the movie have a totally different race from each other which widens the target audience. As the audience is around 17-21 they would mainly be in a college/sixth form or university. You may still get workers who are this age who didn’t want to carry on their education but would end up having quite a low paid job. Thinking about the class of the target audience it would mainly be mainly a young working and middle class, this because at this age you are only the class of your parents and I find that this audience would be more of a niche audience. The reason why they are a niche audience because the movie doesn’t appeal to really big audience or have a big enough budget to be mainstream. For example the target audience would in include someone like… Phillip, 18, is doing his last year in college but has a part time weekend job in Sainsbury’s. Likes getting clothes from Topman, Primark and H&M. And has an I-pod, Nintendo DS and a Sony Erricson.
The trailer for the movie ‘The Following’ would be shown on channel 4, Film 4, the 15 minute break between movies on sky Action/Thriller. Also other channels that appeal to the target audience. You could also see the trailer on ‘You tube’ for those who loves the internet more than television. It wouldn’t be on the really big billboards on top of buildings, but it would be on the billboards on the bus stops. There isn’t any ‘star’ lead role in the movie they are all fresh up coming new actors. So this would be they’re first big British film.
I’ve enjoyed making this film a lot even though I wasn’t behind the camera much, I did do some of the point of view shots. Which I did like especially feeling like a director shouting out action. But what I found the most challenging was the Final cut pro. It was new to me but it was easy to get the hang of especially how we filmed a certain way which would make the match- cuts easier. But my favourite was doing the sound and music, watching the film at the same time as adding all the sounds for example the door opening and closing and the alarm of the phone going off, doing all of this was fun to do. Using the blog was like having a diary on to the internet. Because it I had to record down everything we had that linked to the thriller and the process of making it. To have the film then launched onto the internet would be perfect because it would get a bigger audience because other people would then send it to other to go and watch. To also see the movie on Youtube would be good because then we could get views and peoples ratings on how they feel about the movie.
Making a movie without a storyboard is nearly impossible which is why it is there for a reason. Even though we didn’t always have a storyboard with us, we had a very strong idea of what we wanted to film and edit. So we kind of had a mental storyboard with us. Going back at the preliminary task I found it very difficult to do the match-cuts on to the computer as I was very new at it and I thought that I would never get it. But after moving onto my own film it got easier as I knew what I wanted so I then got the hang of it. What I have learnt from all of this is that it’s not that easy making a film and editing but having the post-productions makes it feel like a routine as there is always a deadline for making a film.
As I got to watch back the film with an audience not just to myself, I got to hear their feed back. A lot of it was very similar from everyone and that was that we had very good match-cuts, the credits was very nice and simple using just black and white. Having the credits simple didn’t make it cheesy or tacky. They also mentioned the fact that one of the characters was wearing a red coat which made her stand out to the audience which made everyone know that she was a target. They also liked the sound effects that fitted perfectly was the door opening and closing and the sound of the camera click. Looking back at the thriller I would only change little things such as a female playing a boy. It would have been much easier and faster if an actual boy played that character. But apart from that I wouldn’t change anything else especially the main female character wearing a bright red coat because it made her dominant to the audience as she stood out.
The Following from 283goswell on Vimeo.
Wednesday 25 March 2009
Thriller Evaluation
There are various conventions to a thriller movie, there’s the image of a vulnerable woman or child, hidden identities, and so on. The typical convention that we used was that of a woman being placed in a vulnerable situation, being followed. We have shown her being followed in quite a busy public area. I feel that this creates a more thrilling sense because people often feel safer in a busy area. However we’ve shown that even in places that you feel most safest anything could happen and anyone could be watching, another convention of a typical thriller. For example the setting of What Lies Beneath is in her marital home.
A place we would feel safest and think that nothing could happen. We also challenged the typical convention of a male following a female to a female following a female; however the follower’s identity is not shown in the opening. We felt that keeping their identity hidden keeps the audience wanting more, that they would want to carry on watching to find out who it is. It adds more intensity and excitement. I see The Following as being a small independent UK release film. I think this because it doesn’t seem ‘glamorous’ enough to be a big Hollywood blockbuster, and I feel that would take away the fact that it’s a British film. It reminds me very much of the film Kidulthood, a low budget film based in the UK. I think that if Kidulthood had been a big Hollywood blockbuster it wouldn’t have had the same effect and reached its target audience. The characters in the film are like your everyday teenager and so the way it was filmed really reflected their life and situation. I feel the same with The Following. According to the director of Kidulthood the film only cost just short of £800,000 to make, however the film still went on to be a great success.
Many short films are partly funded by the National Lottery; they have helped 115 feature films and over 300 short films. Even the well known Bend It like Beckham was funded by the Lottery. I feel that The Following would also be funded in this way or through a small film company. The Following would be aimed towards your average everyday teenager/young adult, from the age of 15-22. A typical example of the type of person that would watch The Following would be Andrew. Andrew is 18 years old and is currently in his second year at college. He has a part time job working in a sports shop and plays football every Sunday. During his free time he enjoys, going out with his friends to the cinema, bowling, pub or just relaxing at home. Andrew is ambitious and wants the best life possible. He is very much a typical student, broke and struggling to get to where he wants to be in life and always wanting what’s better. The Following would appeal to both male and female viewers because it’s very in between and doesn’t sway more towards one gender.
The marketing of a film is very important, you have to know your target audience and reach out to them in ways and places you know they will see. The way in which you would advertise your film also depends on the amount of money you have to do so. Usually a small independent UK film doesn’t have such a large budget. In this case there are film festivals, internet campaigns and possibly even advertisements in magazine’s or newspapers. I see The Following being shown at a film festival such as the Edinburgh International film festival because, because one of the categories is British Gala. This is for a new UK film production that has a well known British actor or director. This leads me onto another way of marketing the film. Having a well known actor starring in the film can attract a lot of attention to the film which means less money needs to be spent on things such as magazine advertisements. The film can also be heard about through word of mouth which plays quite a huge part in the marketing of any film.
All throughout the filming process I have learnt so much, and am still learning. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the camera because it was a new experience that challenged me to begin with. My biggest challenge when first using the camera was being able to move it left to right, up and down on the tri-pod with ease. In both our preliminary tasks and final thriller there were scenes where the camera had to follow the actor’s feet. I must admit that I found it extremely hard moving the camera in time with the feet to begin with; I found that I would go too slowly. Eventually practice almost made perfect and I did get the hang of it. I think the thing I found the trickiest out of everything was the editing. I would say that is my weakest point about the whole process. Whilst editing, using Final Cut pro, I found the log and capture aspect quite easy to grasp. I found fitting the match cut clips together quite fiddly as you had to cut the clips down at exactly the right point or it didn’t look right. It could be quite time consuming but with the dedication we showed I feel that it looked quite professional. Throughout the whole process I have kept a blog, an online diary, of everything we have done. To begin with I wasn’t too keen on the idea of blogging after each lesson or after each time we had completed something. However I started to really get into it and enjoyed reflecting back on the work I had done. After each preliminary exercise we would place it onto our blog and evaluate it. I enjoyed putting these video’s onto the internet because it was a chance to show what we had achieved in that lesson. Once we had completed our thriller openings they were then placed onto Vimeo. This made me feel very proud because others were able to see the final outcome of our film. Also, by placing it onto the internet it has potentially attracted people that we may have originally thought would not be part of the target audience.
From our preliminary task, the ‘match cut’ exercise, to now I have definitely learned a lot and made good progression. Before beginning with this exercise I hadn’t realised how much preparation you needed to do before filming. To begin with we first came up with a rough idea of what we would do and then created a storyboard. Once we had our storyboard we had to construct our shot list, a list of every shot that you are going to film and at what angle. I found this at first quite confusing and slightly time consuming but when we came to filming our final thriller I really appreciated how useful a shot list is. Unfortunately when we came to filming our final thriller we didn’t have a shot list and we were making each shot up as we went along. This did have its benefits; we felt more free and less restricted however it was slightly more time consuming having to think there and then. I think that this was definitely one of the more vital things that I learnt. When filming for our preliminary task the camera was still quite ‘alien’ to me and I did find it quite hard to control and move. However practice did help and when filming for our thriller I had begun to improve.
I found holding the camera harder to control than it being on the tripod because it didn’t always look professional when I did it. The only area that I feel I haven’t made a drastic improvement on is the editing. From the preliminary task to our final thriller I still struggled and found it quite tricky. I don’t think my editing is appalling but I feel it definitely needs improving. Overall this whole exercise has been a learning experience and I feel a quite successful one at that.
Sunday 1 March 2009
The finale part of the thriller
Friday 27th Febuary Gourgina and I both decided to complete the thriller by adding the soundtrack to it. I started it off by just playing around with the insruments and seeing what sound with what, and by what sounded like a thriller. After playing around i found a violin and an acoustic bass that worked well together and fitted in with the short film. We then tried to find something that was very suttle right at the begining, but because we couldn't agree on what to have we ended up the acoustic bass at the beggining but at a low volume. After figuring out the music we then had to add in the sound which included the door opening and closing, the alarm for the phone and the click for when you take a picture. Adding all of those sounds at the right place was fun and i enjoyed it the most. Seeing the overall outcome i felt a sense of relieve that the opening to a thriller is finally over. But out of the whole experience i enjoyed the filming and the music/sound the most because i find i am better at it compared to the rest of the group.
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