Our Animatic - Charlie Denny

Evaluation - Caitlin Hooson

Thriller: 1) A book, play or film that has an exciting plot involving crime, mystery or espionage. 2) Somebody or something that thrills people.

Caitlin and Charlie's Final Thriller Opening Link --->

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

• There are many conventions that we used to determine that the opening we filmed was a thriller. The first convention that we used was that we started to develop the idea that during the film opening we have produced had a calm pace at the start with questions being raised about the mystery throughout. From the start when she was driving in her car along a road, raised many questions such as: Where is this women going? What was her destination going to be? Was there even a destination? and if there was What was going to happen once she had reached this place?. We wanted people to ask themselves these questions because we want our audience to feel that something catastrophic is going to happen or has already happened, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats at all times. We also wanted them to think that the expected things would happen in a typical thriller, and something they would never have thought would happen does. Once  one of the secrets has been revealed the pace becomes faster as she is trying to get out of the house, to get her things from the car; this shows that's she has become rushed rather then walking calmly, she starts to walk faster raising more questions from the audiences perspective. We have done this so even from the first shot the audience are asking questions and as each secret reveals itself, the pace increases. 

 

• The next conventions we used was to ensure that our thriller is full of mystery and suspense. We have achieved this by using few, slow shots to manipulate the audiences persecution on what is happening and keep them wanting to know more information about the both the character and what she is doing, one of the ways we have achieved this was by never capturing the face of the woman, keeping her identity a mystery. The shots we have used are low angles of her feet walking past as she is moving from one destination to another. We have done this because it was a good transition to get the feel that not only is she moving from place to place, that the audience are also moving along with her, for example she is moving from the car to the living room which keeps the audience under suspense; they are asking questions such as: Where is she going?, Why is she going there? and What is she going to do?.

• This is not such a unique idea with following the footsteps of a character(s) as this has also been used in the film The Disappearance of Alice Creed to follow what look like workers in a hardware store shopping, this is taking the audience at a fast pace moving the audience with the characters following them to see what they are getting up too. The difference between this clip and the way we have used this is the fact that our woman is walking slow and as if there is no rush and she is just an average working woman, when secrets are shared with the audience, the pace moves faster. Also this was filmed while the camera was tracking the actors feet, where as we wanted our camera still and watch the woman walk past, so we fixed our camera on a mini tripod so it was high enough off the ground and also stable.

^ THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALICE CREED LINK (33 seconds) ^ 

• We decided to use over the shoulder shots when she is looking at the faces and crossing out the faces behind the picture in the living room, we achieved this by using a tripod to keep the camera steady so that we could get the right height as the actor was much taller then we were. The reason we used this shot was because we wanted to get the audience to feel uncomfortable with this character and with what she is doing, to achieve this sense of closeness we wanted to get a ghostly feel where the camera acts as if the audience are standing watching over her shoulder. This also raises questions during this part of our thriller opening, Why is she crossing out her face? Why is she circling his face? We want our audience to feel uncomfortable with what they are seeing and what they are feeling towards this character. This was a unique idea and the idea of being uncomfortably close to a character will keep the audience wanting to know more about why she is doing what she is doing.

• We also wanted the audience to feel a connection to the people on the other side of the picture on the wall,.We wanted pictures of people all ages, genders and race this was because we wanted the audience to connect with at least one of those people on the back of the picture. This is so that when she crosses off a person it makes them feel emotional to what she is doing, which also leads to suspense asking the question, Who is next? This is unique and we came up with idea ourselves, and the fact that it is an obvious place where no one would think it would be, is where secrets are kept.

This is a copy to a link to the part of my blog that shows my audiences feed back:

AUDIENCE FEEDBACK ---> 

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

 

• To show that she is an average working class office worker we have dressed our character appropriately for this roll, in a brown pin stripped pencil skirt suit set with a pastel pink blouse, nothing that looks too expensive, but still looks good for a women that has a middle class ethnicity. This means that she has the characteristics of a middle class woman rather then the working class woman, which is about her economically state such as how much money she makes and where she works. This means that our audience would connect with the fact she is an average woman and wears normal cloths rather then high branded posh clothing.

• We decided to use a functional car rather then a high branded car such as a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW, we didn't do this because it would show that this women has the money of a middle class woman rather then working class. This will keep the audience wondering about both her background economically and ethnicity and why she acts more middle classed then her economic state. still asking themselves questions such as How did she fall on the ladder of class? and Was she was even economically middle class in the first place? Another reason why we have chosen this car was because we wanted again the audience too feel that she was normal and not suspect anything about this women, and hoping the fact that they wont suspect that it would be her that is doing wrong, that something is going to happen to her.

• Before we had started on this second attempt at out thriller opening we looked at all the things that went wrong and made some decisions to ensure that the same mistakes wont be made such as the lighting. This was such a big factor that went wrong with our first attempt of our thriller opening. so that the same mistake didn't accrue again we decided to use the lighting sets to produce natural lighting then using coloured filters, this was one of the main reasons we had to start again. We mainly used the lighting set indoors because the light in the room that we used wasn't bright enough and didn't match the weather that was outside which was sunny. We also filmed these scenes later in the afternoon which meant it got darker later at night. The difficult thing with the lighting set was the fact that we had to watch the reflections on the picture frame because it was class which reflects the light and creates a mirror effect.  
• In the editing suite Charlie and I decided to use a mixture of different sounds for the different parts of our thriller such as we decided to use Hyper-realistic sound, Diegetic Sound, Non Diegetic sound, Natural sounds. We used Hyper-realistic sound when the car is driving down the the road, the reason for this is that we used the radio when we actually filmed this and when we put the final product together we decided that it didn't work, so we found a much louder exaggerated sound. The footsteps when the woman is walking past the camera, especially outside on the drive, was Natural sound, we liked this because it matched the speed of her footsteps and we thought it would be hard to replicate the same speeds and we also thought there was no need to as the sound came out well thought the camera microphone. The non-diegetic music we used was to set a mood for the terrible things that she is doing, the sinister piano overlapped with chilling music to make the audience feel for these characters, this is also to show that what she is doing isn't a good thing, what she is doing is evil.

 

^ Caitlin and Charlie in the editing suite ^

3) What kind of media institution might describe your media product and why?

My chosen institution options and the advantages of each.

• Soda Pictures: This is good because soon they will be offering digital downloads rather then having to go out to the cinema to watch it or even have to buy it on DVD. They produce different genres of films which means that they may choose to produce low budgeted thrillers occasionally.
• Momentum Pictures: This is good because they already have many successful films out and even thought we want to keep our thriller low budgeted, it may become a hit, also this company may sell our thriller to the Duke of York movie theatre that shows low budgeted films and have specialist nights/weeks such as a thriller night which would appeal to our product.
• Revolver Entertainment: This is great for our thriller because it seems that they produce different genres of films and it has an online link to all the films they have linked to iTunes which would be amazing because this means that our film doesn't have to go straight to the cinema it could go straight on the Internet which means that our low budgeted thriller wont have to pay out £1500 per film print, with 5-6 reels of film weighing at 25Kg each and would take up space in storage, where as if we kept everything on digital copy and keep it away from cinema this would save us lots of money and storage.
• Optimum Releasing: This isn't really for me because they mainly produce foreign films however they may produce my low budgeted thriller film.  
• There are many ways I could distribute my thriller such as cinematic, Internet, TV, digital, home viewing and portable devices, there are different options and ways for us to distribute our thriller. However there is not enough funding to distribute this product in 3D because it is too expensive and home viewers won’t be able to watch it in 3D because not everyone has a 3D T.V in their homes.
• I want our thriller to be a low budgeted film which means that it won’t be a main attraction to any mainstream cinema as they would think that it won’t make them as much money. Also it means that it wont cost £1500 per film print because digital is much cheaper but it depends where the final product ends up.  
• I feel that our thriller should be an Internet download on iTunes for portable devices such the iPhone, ipad and other apple products. If we did this, the best Institution for us would be Revolver Entertainment because it is connected with the Apple brand which we hope to be our market.

4) Who would be the audience for your media?

• My audience for my thriller is 25-50 year old women because I feel that they would relate to this character, more than an under 25 years old would, this is because this is a middle aged woman and not many people under the age of 25 year old would be interested in this type of thriller. I also think that this would appeal to women more because Men stereotypically go to see films where there is a good looking woman either in distress or wearing little clothes. I also think this will appeal to women because it shows that not only men are bad that some women have the courage to do the same things as men. Also I think women would applaud this because this thriller, because typically women always ware inappropriate clothes. This is different in the fact that the working women are all average size, waring decent clothes. This also  shows that it is ok that women are all shapes and sizes, rather all skinny like allot of the actresses. This shows that it is ok to be however you are, whether your middle class, working class or  even a murder, that everyone that walks past the audience in everyday life may not be all that they are cracked up to be.   
• I would rate this film at a 15 because there are scenes that younger children shouldn’t see, however there isn’t any bad language or nudity for it to be rated as an 18.
• I would aim this thriller at mainly women because I don’t think men would enjoy it as much because the women in this film have no sex appeal, just average everyday women. The women that we are representing in our thriller are everyday women, not show women.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

• I feel that my audience of 25-50 year old women would enjoy this because they may relate to my characters that i am portraying and understand and follow the emotion throughout the thriller. Throughout I want the audience to always be left wondering what is going to happen next, asking themselves questions hoping that the questions should be answered but they have to Wait. I want to attract my audience by them feeling this connection with these characters and feeling a closeness, whether it is an uncomfortable closeness or in an understanding way.
• I want the character to guide the audience thought the story, as if she is allowing them to peek over her shoulder telling her secrets. Mese en scene is important in the opening because there is no dialogue so the audience are relying on what they are being shown. We achieved this by carefully selecting the clothes she wares and the car she drives and the type of home she has.
• The sound contributes to the fact that it can change the audiences perception of the character, using the sinister music that with the camera shots gives the audience a shiver down their spine. Sound is really important as this is replacing the use of dialogue from the character.
• We chose not to use dialogue because we decided that the actions of the woman would speak for her. Also at this stage we wanted the audience to get to know this character before we meet anyone else. The only other character in the opening sequence was the pictures of the people behind the painting on the wall.

6) What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product? 

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

I feel that our Thriller opening project went much better then the Preliminary, I think this is because we tightened up out shots and kept the subject the main focus of the screen. I think that we in the preliminary had too much in the back ground and objects were in the way of the camera like in picture 1 there was a door frame in the way. This time in our Thriller we didn't use camera movement as often as we felt that we wernt setting a scene we were following our character rather then tracking her. We used more sound editing for this project because before we felt it needed minimal sound effects, when this time we needed to create more Hyper-realism diegetic sound for when she is in the car driving which we hadn't done previously. We also used natural sound for many things again for things such as the foot steps, the care pulling up and both the car door and the front door. This time round we also didn't have many continuity errors such as the one in picture 5 where there was a woman in the back ground talking on her phone. When we were editing the preliminary we used iMovie which is a simple way to put clips together and cut them down, a simple way of constructing the final piece, however in our thriller we decided to expand our knowledge and decided to used Final Cut, which has a lot more to offer to make our thriller better. By using final cut we were able to create a shallow depth of Field in the first shot, We had to get help from Ollie as we weren't sure on how we were going to achieve this. There were more tools that we were able to use and was much easier to cut our clips in the right places. We were also able to create still titles on a plain black screen, we were also able to make the title move along with the shot that was being shown, this meant that it flows better along side with each other where as we had never done this before as we hadn't used titles in the preliminary so it was new to us of how to in put them. Garage band was good for putting our sound on top of our final version, this meant that we were able to find sound effects that went with the mood we were trying to create for the audience, I think that we did this well in both our preliminary and our thriller.

Our final thriller opening and comments - Caitlin Hooson

Our Final Thriller Opening.

Hope You Enjoy :)

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Comments from when Caitlin posted our thriller opening on her Facebook page.

Caitlin: "I also got many positive comments and reactions from people, friends & family in person as they either didn't post their comments on my Facebook wall because my Media project came up in conversation or because I showed people that didn't have a  Facebook accounts, mainly my family. There were no negative comment;, I'm not sure whether this is because they wanted to be nice and not offend me and our work, or because they generally liked out final product. The dissapointing thing was when I posted this on youtube and linked it to the blog where there were no comments posted, this is why I posted it on facebook because I thought that there would be more comments and attenchion to our thriller opening."