Thriller Evaluation- With Visuals

Thriller evaluation

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Thriller Evaluation:

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

At the beginning of the task I looked at Thriller-Horror films and analysed the use of camera, sound, editing and mise-en-scene. This has allowed me to understand the key conventions and concepts of the thriller-horror of real media products. There have been many Thriller-Horrors which have influenced our opening, for example Cape Fear, Hitchcock’s Psycho and Seven. These film all use the generic musical conventions of a Thriller-Horror, the music is tense and suspenseful. In our opening we followed these generic conventions to allow the audience to identify with the genre and set the mood and atmosphere for the rest of the film.  Also another way in which we applied specific conventions was the use of black and white, when doing my research I noted that a lot of Thriller- Horrors use this display colouring such as Hitchcock, Sin City at the beginning of the film. We used black and white as it was in the past that the murders occurred suggesting it was a flashback or memory. 

However, there are ways in which are Thriller develops and challenges these key convention. In most of my analysis I found out that many Horror-Thriller sub-genre films use slow paced graphical sequences or use slow motion shots for their opening. For our opening we have used a quicker passed editing style and narrative title sequence. This builds our plotline to a point where the narrative can be continued and the audience are intrigued as to what’s going on, giving them a condensed back story. However it is ambiguous who Toby Hackett is and whether he’s in the opening or not.  This may be a subterfuge leading the audience to come to misleading conclusions.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

When following the generic conventions of Horror-Thriller, we noted that the male gender are usually represented as the antagonist characters. Therefore we presented our antagonist as a man, to imply the strong powerful nature of the gender. Throughout our opening we only used male characters as at the beginning of most horror-thriller the male characters are introduced first and then the female characters are introduced further on in the film.  We choose a teenager to play the part of our antagonist, this makes the audience question the antagonists motives and mental state as he is a young person, suggesting this could be his past, interesting the audience. Gender is represented in a stereotypical manner, as we present the antagonist character as a male and there are no females in the opening at the beginning; however no female characters have been murdered at the beginning of the film subverting the conventions and suggesting they are a powerful gender.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

If this opening was to be extended into a film I feel that it has elements of the Art house films as its filmed in black and white and it has multiple deaths and distorting music therefore it could be seen that this film is not most suited to a contemporary Hollywood audience. The mise-en scene of our opening supports this as it displays dark lighting and eerie murders in strange locations which are all key concepts behind Art House Films, also the narrative has the opportunity to be continued in this style. Therefore it has elements of an Art House Film.

However there are many films which are Art house crossovers which subvert the typical conventions, for example Black Swan is a successful Hollywood blockbuster which is essentially an art house film.  We would supplemented this by internet social media marketing to advertise the film and intrigue the audience.

Another way in which our film could be distributed is by a major Hollywood studio, this is because there is the opportunity to extend and alter the narrative. As it’s a horror-thriller this is very popular in the 15-25 demographics, the SAW generation of films, therefore making an extended amount of revenue in the form of a Hollywood film. I feel distrubuting our product as a Hollywood film would be best suited to our opening.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

From my research from the BBFC website, we decided to our opening would be a 15+ because of the violent nature of the film. The target Audience demographics would be 15-25. It could be seen that the target audience would be highly male dominated as the film is a horror-thriller and if distributed through a Hollywood Studio this would make the target audience more mainstream and contemporary. If distributed through a Hollywood Studio the film would become more violent and fast-paced action and suspense, relating more to a male target audience. Also in the opening the film is male dominated, the antagonist character is male suggesting that they are the more powerful gender therefore more of the male gender may watch this film as they can identify with the characters easily.

However, if distributed as an Art House film the target audience would become broader making it not only suit one particular gender or target audience.   

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted and addressed our target audience in the research and planning stages of our opening, by carrying out frequent questionnaires about our storyboard, animatic and rough cut/ final piece. This allowed to understand whether our target audience, the 15-25, would be happy to watch a sub-genre horror-thriller. From our research we learnt that the majority of our target audience were interested in horror-thrillers.  In allowing the audience to witness the death scenes and put themselves in the place of the antagonist murderer, in our opening, we re-evaluated the age of our audience and made sure it was a 15+ certificate.  This means that the audience are not negatively impacted on their own enjoyment of the film and therefore they are  prepared for the subject matter of the film before viewing. 

We also posted our rough cut and final cut of our opening on Facebook to get some feedback from our target audience, this was helpful in understanding the negative and positive areas we had to work on. Generally the feedback was mostly positive and the target audience agreed that they would view this film.  If I was to do this task again I would have made sure our feedback from our target audience was more thrower, allowing us to understand what they want to see in this type of film and gage our understanding further.  

This is the target feedback we received:

Really good nice work for your first proper film.’

‘That’s well good it actually scared me a bit with the music and the black and white display.’

‘Also the last shot is the best, good quality camera work throughout.’

‘That’s actually pretty good.’

‘Good use of different camera angles and shots, nice delivery throughout.’

‘I like the tension and suspense which is built up by the music and the variety of different shots however it could be seen more as a short film than a thriller opening.’

‘I think the shot of the male character running up the stairs could be shorter, as it is too long, however the use of the low angles are really well thought out.’

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Throughout the whole process of constructing our Thriller opening I have learnt a lot of in depth knowledge and hands on skill about technologies, for example editing on premier pro, camera work and using the camera’s equipment. Since the continuity task I feel I have,  individually, and the group, as a whole,  have an extended knowledge of premier pro, we are now able to cut, crop and edit clips and make sure the pace of the editing is correct. I now understand the effect if one clip is to short or long, and how the pace of the piece is affected. I can now use premier pro very compliantly, I feel the editing in our opening is a lot better than our continuity task, our opening is smooth and well-paced.  Also when filming our continuity task our shots were out of shot and not straight, is meant we had to re- shot because of our lack of understanding of how to work with the camera’s equipment.  When filming our opening we had the experience to allow us to evaluate whether the camera was straight and that everything was set up well enough before filming our piece.  I can easily add music and sound effects in to our film and edit them in premier, however when Premier has been on for an extended amount of time, this makes it slow and un-reliable therefore sometimes we had to restart the programme to make sure the footage could be edited at normal speed.

 

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

From the preliminary task to the final opening I have learnt a lot about the importance of planning, storyboarding and researching. When doing our continuity task the most significant area was to plan what we were going to do. Although, as we knew what shots to include this made it easily when planning. However, it was apparent that we did not plan in enough detail and we where un-organised when on location shooting.

The continuity task highlighted the significance of planning our storyboard, animatic and narrative of our thriller.  When doing our opening we had a shooting schedule and understood what individual scene we were filming each time.  This made it a lot easier. Also we had become a lot more confident in using the equipment and gaining better results. Overall I feel that we made a successful Thriller and fulfilled the brief as the quality of our film was of high quality, it followed the conventions of a typical thriller and the opening lead into a narrative compliantly.

Finished Product:

Comparing to other Thrillers:

I feel our Thriller Opening can compare to Sin City Directed by Frank Miller, as this opening has a narrative and there is dialogue which runs through the whole  opening. Our opening has a strong narrative; this therefore compares to Sin City as both intrigue and catch the awareness of the audience, making the audience want to watch more.  I did research several thriller openings before planning and making our own thriller opening, Sin City was one which caught my eye. In our opening we have a narrative however it does become ambiguous and misleading as to who’s Toby Hackett, intriguing the audience further.

Genre is being challenged and subverted using varaition, repitition and familiarity for the audeinces viewing, when veiwing other thrillers of example Cape Fear, Hitchcock’s Psycho and Seven. I noted that all these films use the generic musical conventions of a Thriller-Horror; the music is tense and suspenseful. We have the same music in our opening as we felt this built up the atmospheric environment, therefore are thriller opening is using genric conventions and varying them slightly to make are film different.  While there are comparisons to be made, we also challenged the typical thriller conventions and used a variety of quick paced shots to set the mood of the piece. Many opening of Thrillers have slow paced editing and shots, however with are narrative and when thinking of the audience we felt this would be more appealing to our target audience.   We are subverting the conventions distinguishing are thriller into the industry but varying the generic conventions and therefore creating something different for the audiences.  

Group Progession:

Since the beginning of the project when we first gathered ideas for our opening, many changes and adaptations have been made which has improved the outcome of our results. One change we have made is to change our initial storyboard and narrative. At the beginning, the opening was going to be a thriller horror sub genre; the plot summary was a baby who was going to commit numerous murders. As a group we decided against this due to the fact of how hard it would be to work with a baby doll as it wasn’t a live person, we felt we wouldn’t be able to shot effective shots with the baby. We therefore agreed we used another member in our group, Callum, to act as the antagonist who murders two people. This made it easier for us because it meant we could have Callum act specifically to how we wanted the main character to appear in the opening.

Also, we had initially decided to film much of our opening in a corridor and stairs. It was hard to get shots looking effective because as the lighting was much to dark meaning the shot weren’t coming out to high enough quality. We felt as a group, we would only use this location to place the dead bodies at the end of our opening. However, after taking into consideration feedback from our teacher and our target audience, also looking at how this would appear on screen, we decided to go against using the corridor/stairs altogether. This is because, the change in location was un-necessary and seemed to confusing for the audience to understand what the narrative was begin this.

Target Audience Feedback for Rough Cut:

Having posted our Rough cut of the Final Thriller Opening, we received this feedback, also theses responses where from our target audience:  

‘Really good nice work for your first proper film.’

‘That’s well good it actually scared me a bit with the music and the black and white display.’

‘Also the last shot is the best, good quality camera work throughout.’

‘That’s actually pretty good.’

‘Good use of different camera angles and shots, nice delivery throughout.’

‘I like the tension and suspense which is built up by the music and the variety of different shots however it could be seen more as a short film than a thriller opening.’

‘I think the shot of the male character running up the stairs could be shorter, as it is too long, however the use of the low angles are really well thought out.’

‘The ending could be seen as a bit too concussive, apart from this the rest of the film is technically very good, the music fits the pace of the piece and the acting isn’t too bad.’

‘I like the pan of the dead body, it works really well on the circular seat, I also really like the shot of the male character in the distance, the variety of shots are all really well thought out and technically displayed.’

Rough Cut:

This is a rough cut of our final thriller opening, we need to add another shot of a death list, which will develop the narrative further and intrigue the audience. This will mean we will get a higher grade as we are thinking of our target audience and the overall pace of our opening. We have also developed the opening, so that it leads into a narrative, we feel this shot will interest the audience and lead into the following scene well. We are going to make our titles appear in a far more attractive manner, which will add to the delivery of our opening. We have worked on the teachers and target audince feedback to make sure we are developing our opening to maxium level.

This is our rough cut some specific changes will be made to add to the delivery of our opening.

Individual Evaluation:

My individual progress has improved greatly. At the beginning of our media coursework I began little understanding and experience about making films, however I am now able to differentiate genres and hybrids really easily this allows me to apply this knowledge to my coursework. Also, when we first began filming I found at difficult setting up the camera and the equipment that was needed to film our scenes, since this I now feel a lot mo0re confident when filming and am able to use the equipment efficiently. This has really benefited the group and myself as an individual as I am now able to stop relying on other for help. I also feel comfortable using the Macs to do editing to our piece, this means that I can have an input when editing scenes in and how the piece flows together, which is very significant when working in a group. When working in a group a key factor to success is communication and contact with one another, I feel now we are able communicate our ideas and thoughts easily, which overall benefits the finished thriller opening.

Filming Session: 08/3

This filming session we worked on the teacher’s feedback, which was to add two POV to add variety and let the audience see the actors. I feel it went well as we used a LA POV to add variety within our shots and build the pace and tension. We also filmed another shot however this time we did not do a POV as we were unable to get the height in our shot, as the tripod did not extend high enough. Therefore we filmed the shot from a different angle, to show another angle of the death which adds diversity.  We also added a pan of the dead body in the specific death location, the pan was smooth and steady, as the bench was circular, and the pan looked effective as they were both spherical.  We also added a ending shot which was of the antagonist walking away, this was shot from a LA and the camera gradually tracked upwards so the antagonist became in full view. The title will appear over this shot, to finish the opening effectively.  I feel this is an effective ending shot as it would lead into the narrative well.

Filming session: 01/03

During this filming session we were able to re-shoot some significant shots, the shots were noticed when editing the footage, they weren’t smooth and therefore inadequate for the film.  The shot we filmed first was from the prospective of the antagonist (a POV shot) in the film, it was shot as if the audience is placed in the view point of the antagonist to connect the audience to the tension and suspense that is being withdrawn in the film. We repeated the shot over and over again to make sure it was the best possible quality, keeping the camera level took a certain amount of difficulty as we wanted this clip to be fast paced to again adding  to the anticipation.  When editing we will have to make sure the transition from the fast paced POV shot into the next shot is smooth and of good quality.

The next shots we were able to complete was a Low angle MS of the characters, the problem we had was keeping the camera straight and the actor was wearing different clothes from the last time we filmed, however we were able to conceal this by making sure a jacket was placed over his body, making the continuity is flawless. As this was one of our targets in the previous filming session. To add variety to the shots we placed the camera on the floor and shot from ground  level  to place

Teacher Feedback:

Feedback on Opening so far:

The teacher feedback we received was that our editing needed to be smoother and we needed to slow down the pace of the opening, by adding a POV of Luke to add to the tension and suspense and slow down the death. Also we need to add a shot of Callum, POV, to slow down the pace. The cut of Callum holding Sam needs to be quicker and briefer so the audience understand the narrative. 

Another piece of feedback we received was not to have the cuts of the dead bodies in the basement instead to have the camera panning over the bodies in the specific area of death at the end of the opening with the titles fading into the black screen.

We also need to add some dramatic music to add to the tension and suspense and build up the atmosphere, which we need to research to find a particular piece that works well with our opening.

Filming Session: 15/02

This filming session went well, however when we do our next filming session we must have a clear idea of what shots we are going to use and how the audience will respond to this as this will convey a suspenseful atmosphere at the start of the film which is shown in many Thrillers. In this session we started to film the next 30/40 seconds of the next killing, we used a mixture of shots for example LS’s and MS’s were used to add variety and place emphasis on important characters.  In the next session we must have a key target of what needs to be done and how we are going to convey this in our opening. Another key point which we learnt from this session is that the continuity must be flawless and that we must not break the 180 degree rule when filming.  The level of the camera when using the tripod must be completely straight otherwise we will be marked down.

Aspects of consider when next filming:

ü  Continuity must be flawless (180 degree rule, keeping the camera perpendicular.)

ü  Having a plan, avoid losing time.

Editing session: 14/02

I feel this Editing Session went well, as we were able to edit the first 40 second in and put the footage in the right position making it look as smooth as possible.  This will make the project move forward and then we will be able to move onto the next task. We managed to put the titles in over the top of the footage, which was our main aim. A difficulty we had was changing the footage to black and white within the post-production stage of our project, however we re-evaluated what we were doing and managed to work out how to change the footage’s colour. We had a lot of footage so the difficulty we had was choosing the right shots to use, it was helpful to have variety to choose from, so therefore this reinforces the fact that our filming was good as we had plenty of shots to work with. Therefore we learnt from this editing session that the more increasing number of shots you have makes it easier in the post-production stage when editing as you have more choice.

In the editing stage of the post production, we changed the second shot at the beginning as we feel this is an improvement to our opening. We were initially going to track over the dead bodies on the stair case and then cut to the flashback, however after re-evaluating this with my peers we have decided to go straight into the flashback and use a ‘dip to black’ to show the body at the end. This means that the action will start right at the beginning of the opening, catching the audience’s attention and enhancing the quality of our opening.

Filming- 07/02

As this was our second filming session we achieved advice from our first shooting, this meant that time was spent doing a lot more productive filming rather than wasting time. In this session we filmed the first 15 seconds- 30seconds of our opening, as we had to re-shoot this again. However this time the high-key lighting was much better which meant the footage was clear and of high-quality. This was because we used a small lamp and moved the light about to see the different effects we obtained. As I said in my last evaluation we took back the feedback from the first filming session and used a variety of different shots, we took close ups and mid shots of the actors as we felt this would increase the audiences attention. Once this scene was done, we were able to move forward and shot another scene, this was of the main antagonist character. We wanted to make sure he had the dominance of the scene as he is the foremost character; therefore we made sure he had the most screen time as this connotes this importance in the rest of the film to the audience. In this scene we will be using back and white as it’s a flashback, we feel this indexically implies that it happen in the past connoting that it had already happened.  We used a variety of shots in this scene including mid-shots, long-shots and Point-of-view shot to add diversity within our opening.  Overall I feel as if it was a good filming session, whereby a lot of high-quality material was produced. However when we next film all of our shots we will have a purpose to the variety that we use, to keep the audience engaged. We will also set a time during the day that will be suitable, for example light weather no rain/ darkness. We will guide are actors so they know exactly what they have to achieve in each scene.

Aspects to consider for the next filming session:

ü Guide the actors so they understand exactly what to do in their scenes.

ü   Make sure the continuity of our opening is of high-quality.

Filming 31/01

In our first filming session we tried to shoot the first 15 seconds of our opening, this is the part in the animatic located in the corridor/stairs scene, where the camera tracks along the dead bodies. As a group we realised that we could use new shots such as close ups and mid shots to create more variety, we began to consider our audience more and what would suit the genre more superiorly. We used a variety of shots to help engage the audience and avoid repetition and help them "guess" what they are seeing rather than being too obvious.  The location is a basement; therefore we wanted the lighting to be high-key artificial lighting, when filming it was noted that the shots were dark and burry because we were shooting in a dark room. This meant that we had to re-evaluate the lighting that we shot in and look at a way to solve the problem. We therefore came to the conclusion to use a small lamp to light the stairs well enough to see the faces and bodies of the actors in the scene. When we next film we must make sure the lighting is good enough to see the bodies and the footage isn’t burry, this means that we won’t be wasting too much time and hopefully the shots will not be too time consuming as we will know what to do. Also it will mean we can focus and direct are concentration on the smaller features of our opening such as the continuity and stability of our piece.

Aspects to Consider for the next Filming sessions:

ü  Lighting- making sure the footage is of high quality and the lighting is good enough for our opening.

ü  Using a variety of shots, such as close ups and mid-shots.

ü  Having a plan for the filming session to waste less time.

Evaluation of Animatic:

When evaluating our animatic, I feel that if I was to do the animatic again, more shots/drawings would need to be included. This is because we have roughly 20 shots whereas it was recommended to have 30. We found it hard to include more with the idea we had come up with for our film. This could suggest that more planning was needed so we came up with more ideas to include extra shots without changing our film idea too much. this would make it easier when filming as we would have a clear idea of what shots to use. We used a combination of drawings in order to show the narrative of our animatic. A Sound clip has been used so that we get a better idea of how our final extract will appear. We also used a sound clip at the end to see whether our opening gave of the right level of tension and suspense and kept the audience watching.It also enabled us to distinguish any negative problems in the extract; this helped us make various improvements.

I feel the animatic, has both good and bad points qualities. The length of the animatic is roughly two minutes. Our aim was to have an animatic which lasted two minutes so even though it is not exact, it is acceptable. Furthermore, the drawings show a clear thriller genre, although it is a hybrid so the opening is a thriller, horror. The music used links in with the story my group our aiming to put across and also creates a tense atmosphere for watchers as it is fairly scary, commonly done in thriller horror films. The titles will be editing in, during the post-production of our filming this will be edited in while the camera is tracking over the dead bodies.  We learnt that it vital to design each shot specifically to the storyboard so it is clear what the narrative is supposed to suggest to the audience. This task also enabled us to establish our strongest and weakest abilities when working in a group to deliver the most effective piece.

Animatic:

This is our animatic, this will give us an idea of the opening at the end of filming. It will help us to decide whether the music works well with what is going on in the shot, and whether or not there are any things we could ajust in our finished opening.