Evaluation

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

When looking into our film opening, it was important to recognise the things that work and the things that don’t. Thrillers contain many different elements, in order to make ours effective, we needed to contain as many of these conventions as we could to ensure it delivers to the expectations of the audience and maximises its potential of sales.

What Does Our Thriller Need?

The first 2 minutes of a Thriller film needed to grab the audience’s attention in a way that encourages them to watch the rest of the film. Your audience should feel as though they are really watching the conversation between the characters and experiencing the feelings of the main character. A tense atmosphere should be created and the question of right and wrong should be going through the minds of the viewers to interpret a final opinion on multiple people. The audience should want to find out what happens in the film, do any complications occur and how is everything resolved in the end?
We should include a large variety of camera shots effectively to create the right mood for the thriller and add music which relates to what is happening within the clips. It should run smoothly from start to finish having no jumps or continuity errors causing confusion the audience to become confused.
A strong storyline is vital when creating a Thriller film. It mustn’t be cliché and already of been done many times before, but a brand new, exciting, fresh idea leaving the audience highly enraptured in the opening.

Important features:

Camera shots: A range of different camera shots should be used within our Thriller opening, however some are more frequently used than others. Close ups are often used within Thrillers for two main reasons. They show deep emotional feelings and reactions, linking a personal connection with the audience. They can also be used to exclude things in the external shot and only show one side of the narrative, creating the sense of mystery which the audience thrive for. Other filming techniques such as panning are also used a lot within the Thriller genre. A 360 degree pan can show you the complete environment, helping to build up the atmosphere within the film and show the audience what the character can see and everything surrounding them. It is important that a Tripod should be used so that the shot is steady. School provided these to ensure that the footage is the best quality it could be.

Lighting: Natural lighting is often used within Thriller films, but artificial light can also be added. Big film companies with mass equipment and a large time scale in which to film in, can spend the time and money perfecting their lighting so the camera's show the perfect surrounding and highlight key moments within the films. Due to our lack of professional resources, natural light (if good) can be used to our advantage to create an atmosphere idelic to the atmosphere we are trying to create.

Mise-en-scene: To keep a Thriller film believable, everything appearing in shot should relate to each other. For instance, if a film was being shot in the time period of the early 1900's, things such as modern sports cars should not be visable in the shot. This is  to ensure everything looks realistic and that the audience's do not encounter any unessecary suprises or point out something which isn't relevant to the mood trying to be created within the narrative. This should be carefully studied to ensure that everything is in the right place and that no incorrect props or machinery appear.

Sound: Diagetic- No diagetic sounds will be put into our film due to the idea of removing the audio. No characters will have a conversation or speak to the audience directly as we wanted our music track to be the most important element within our opening.
Non Diagetic- Two different types of music appear within our Thriller opening. Firstly, the two different copyright free sound tracks which we discovered on "royaltyfreemusic.com" were synced together via garage band to sound eerie and mysterious when played with our Thriller opening. The other non-diagetic sound technique which we included was a sound effect off Garage Band. This effect was called a "Pulsing Sweep" and we added this in two different sections where the mystery and suspence builds to a peak.

 Narrative: We included 3 main characters.
A religious man (psycho) who kidnaps a girl he is in love with.
 A girl, who gets kidnapped by the psycho and held as a hostage and killed.
 A drug dealer, who supplies the psycho man with his drugs.
After watching the Thriller opening the audience should think about who's fault the result of the opening was. The drug dealer for supplying him with the drugs, the girls fault for letting the psycho see her, or the religious man.
 It should be obvious to the audience that he is mentally unstable and that his character thrives upon pleasing God, and doing his work to remove temptation out of people's lives. Hence, the name
 "The  Disciple"

Editing: We needed to make sure that no continuity errors occur during our Thriller opening. This will make the opening look unprofessional and be an obvious ammature production. It was our target to make the Thriller opening look as realistic as possible and as close to a real Thriller film opening as it could be. Editing is a vital piece in the making of the opening. Many different techniques such as "fade to blacks" were added to ensure the best possible look of our Thriller.


Research

When looking into the thriller genre, it was important to analyse the conventions which appear in each and the effects they create. In each of the four thriller films which I looked at in detail, the main character always seemed to be a male actor. This is what first gave us the idea of making ours male. Men are usually shown to look dominant and strong in all manner of situations. Traditionally, men are perceived as aggressive, short tempered and powerful. This contrasts a female character. Stereotypically, women are seen as weak, powerless individuals. The blatant opposites in personality show the audience a clear performance of good vs evil. This typical element of  the Thriller genre work well together, influencing us to stick to typical thriller conventions. This keeps our Thriller fitting the conventions of existent films. Each main character is very different, but always has a strong passion of some sort displayed throughout the film. This passion usually affects the plot or causes the person to make decisions according to this.

In "The Happening", his passion was Science. Everything about the subject he knew, he predicted the problem in the world and tried to fix it accordingly. By having to keep this wife and friends child safe it gives the character the drive to provide for them and solve the problem infront of him. Throughout the film an effective mise-en-scene is used. By showing largely populated cities to be in mass panic from the occurences in the film, and fleeing to the country, shows a realistic representation of people's reactions.  

In "Donnie Darko", the main factor of his character was that he was a schizophrenic, causing factors within his personality to be abnormal to an average human being. The film includes characteristics of a typical Thriller. These have been put in to make the audience feel as though they are trapped in the same schizophrenic mind set as the main character. One character is the main focal point of the film, showing his friendly side and alter ego. By using flash backs, it kept the character more easy to understand from the audience's point of view. Dark lighting is used throughout the film to increase dramatic tension and give the film a freaky atmosphere to make give the "on edge" feel.

In "Memento", the character had lost his short term memory. He could not make any part of the life he leads make sense and could never make any new memories. He lives his life through notes, and throughout the film the story unravelled. Due to the story being non-linear, I found myself struggling to keep up with the narrative. Guessing the beginning of the film instead of the ending was something I hadn’t done before. However I enjoyed the challenge of piecing everything together and guessing the drive of the character.

In "Limitless", the character wanted to become the best at everything. He wanted to live his life to its full capacity and learn things in record time. It made the audience think of the familiar though occurring after taking a drug and being on a high, you always experience a low. When was his luck going to run out?


Making the perfect Thriller. Things to include:

Things Already In The Industry.

Many types of Thriller films were released in 2011. Such as:

Hanna, I Am Number 4, Limitless, The girl With The Dragon Tattoo. 

This proves the amount of competition out there concerning Thriller films. It is a very competitive industry and this genre of film is on high demand globally. Thriller films are easily accessible, by being advertised and watched in the cinema, rented out of DVD, watched online and many other ways due to nowadays modern technology abilities. Many thriller films consist of clichés such as stalking, chases through the woods and an anonymous killer in a group of people. To really engage the audience our idea needed to be different! I found that when looking into some Thriller films, the companies choice to over complicate the story line made people lose interest in the film. This gave me the idea of thinking of the famous quote “less is more” and keeping our storyline basic, but effective. Some Thrillers may follow the conventions of what makes a good thriller, suspense, mystery, a good story line, change of pace etc. However, some directors that want to make a shock in the Thriller industry will change these conventions and make a different type of film. “Memento” is a good example of this. Although it includes conventions such as murder, fight scenes, sex scenes and a fast paced nature, it is very different to anything else out there. The story line is hard to follow and the whole film lays in a backwards order and shows the ending before the beginning to confuse the audience in a different way.

Film makers like to explore the different ways to make their audience feel a type of tension or atmosphere. People who watch Thriller films long to be surprised. Thrillers already in industry are sometimes extremely predictable causing people to lose interest half way through as they find no satisfaction in watching something they could have written. People want their predictions to be wrong and a new twist to appear as something is beginning to become solved.

 A good film maker would recognise what people want and see what already is in industry and change conventions to create something completely new!

INFLUENCES

“The Happening” followed the typical conventions of a Thriller and were easily recognised throughout the film. It influenced our Thriller by the opening music grabbing our attention. The pace of the music started slow and sped up during the middle of the track as the shots gained speed. To make ours similar, we found copy right free tracks online representing tension and linked them on Garage Band. The drums in the back ground gave me the impression that danger was lurking and ready to jump out at us keeping me on the edge of my seat and not being able to take my eyes off of the screen. The music starts with one single violin doing a simple tune, starting to enrapture your attention and then becomes layered. Other instruments join until the track ends up busy with several different tunes linked together making you feeling on edge. This is the feeling we hoped to achieve through the making of our Thriller opening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zdw-zubV0U

 

Another influence was the film “Taken”. This was due to when watching the film it was clear of the love that occurred between father and daughter. We wanted to interpret the feeling of love through our Thriller and although it wasn’t between family relations, but another type of love, we needed to achieve the heart wrenching feeling of loss. Throughout the film Taken, the girl’s father would give anything to get her back. He kills many people in order to ensure her safe return. We came up with the idea of the man in our Thriller opening having to kill the girl due to the love being too over whelming, however the concept of men feeling a passionate feeling of love stayed the same. We looked closely at the film at the type of feelings the character goes through such as, denial that she has gone, worry due to her being missing, anger for the people who took her and relief after she had been found and returned home. We tried to interpret these feelings through our main character. Denial of him loving the girl, worry of how to cope with temptation, anger of not being able to have her without sinning against God and relief after he has killed her and she is no longer a threat to his relationship with God. By altering the feeling of love it gave feeling to our Thriller theme and made it a much stronger base for us to work upon.

Memento also influenced our piece. Throughout the opening of this film, the filming would turn to black and white, indicating a flash back. We used the idea of no colour being used in our credits. The man in our Thriller opening’s religious views could be used to make our credits look interesting as I felt they sometimes let the opening to a film down by being irrelevant to the story. By including our credits in a bible using similar fonts and illustrations, it looked much more interesting on camera and looked professional in the idea of them being pages of a bible.

On "The Happening" DVD cover, the mise-en-scene shows a stormy setting. No one seems to be around when analysing the road shown on the cover. This illustration contradicts the title "The Happening" due to the cover showing that nothing is happening giving the film a sense of mystery to the Thriller just from a glimpse. Although the phrase of "don't judge a book by it's cover" is said, a staggering amount of people would buy the film depending on the title and picture on the front.

Similar colours are used to advertise a film of the Thriller genre. Black/dark coloured backgrounds with images which are likely to make the audience feel on edge giving them the rush of anxiety they crave to fulfill whilst watching a Thriller. This is used on all 4 of the examples I have chosen to show.

Metallic colours, standing out against the background draw the audiences attention. The use of metallics ensure the DVD to be shiney and catch the customers eyes when looking into buying/renting films.

How does your media product reflect particular social groups?

Our Thriller on Prezi

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What Kind Of Institutation Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why?

The institution which would distribute our media product would be Paramount Pictures. This is a massive company known in media. Releasing hundreds of films all year round, they would be the type of production team a thriller film maker would rely on to make it big. They are a global distributor and release all genres of film, including Thrillers.

 To make our thriller as successful as possible, the biggest and best distributor should be, not only to hit a maximum audience but for the paramount logo to advertise the film during cinema screenings, television breaks and other commercial times.

Paramount has a well known recognisable logo. It has been successful distributing thrillers such as "The Godfather", "Transformers" and many more. By the wide range of films they have distributed and for the amount of years they have been running successfully for, their knowledge on the subject will be great and know exactly what to do to make our thriller as big as it could be.

It has been running since 1910 and is based in Hollywood. This name is very familiar to the filming company proving them to have the correct resources and people to make our film great. They will have many connections including advertisement companies. The main way to make our film a new “must see” advertisement should be carefully monitored. The look of it, the time the adverts appear and how people will interpret it will be vital in making our thriller popular.

 If we chose to use a smaller company, the threat of them going bankrupt will always be there. Paramount Pictures is a company worth billions of dollars and is America’s biggest distributor. They make a huge turnover of hundreds of millions each year by investing in films with that “something different.”

Paramount is a safe choice of distribution, ensuring success for our film by making it global.

Example of Paramount Picture's recent sales:

Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

When reviewing our thriller film, it is very conventional in the way we have made it and the story line. For example, the cliché of the young teen female victim. Many existent films such as Psycho had the same idea and made their female character a vulnerable target.

As well as this, we also made the male character much more dominant than the female. He is shown to be powerful and have authority during the scenes which we have shot. In real life, many organisations have been set up to stop men from hurting women. Although it would be sexist to assume men are worse for violence than women, when illegal issues are discussed, the male is always presumed as the villain and the woman is seen as the victim.

Domestic violence is usually performed by a male. Although people would think of me as sexist to state such a thing, statistics online support the accusation. We stuck to thriller conventions and chose to make the criminal in our piece a male.  A stereotypical male featuring in Thrillers:

The film opening which we have created is a conventional Thriller. Things included such as change in pace, sense of mystery, atmosphere of tension, variety of shot types make the piece more interesting to watch. Everything we put into our thriller was relevant and the story line but had things which would shock the audience such as a religious man committing a sin as big as murder. This would be a jaw dropping piece of information for the audience to interpret due to the fact that the character should be living a sin free life.

When our Thriller opening is compared to other Thrillers currently in industry I feel it sticks out in the fact that it shocks much more than some other Thrillers do, however it fits in conventionally.  This is important so that the large audience Thriller films attract aren’t disappointed when they want the “edge of their seat” feel in the cinema.

The     The audience for my media product would be people above the age of 15. The BBFC have created the different ages of films and what each film should/should not contain in them to be the certain age rating. This is designed to guide parents of what films would be suitable for their children and if not, why not. No one should be sat in a cinema and not enjoy the experience to the extent of wanting to leave. The BBFC age rating shows everyone the fair age rating of each individual film for the protection of children.

“Suitable only for 15 years or over

No-one younger than 15 may see a ‘15’ film in a cinema. No-one younger than 15 may rent or buy a ‘15’ rated video work. Films under this category can contain adult themes, hard drugs, strong language and one use of very strong language, moderate-strong violence/sex references, and undetailed sex activity.”

We attracted our audience by handing out questionnaires with a variety of different question types on. We wanted to get the maximum amount of feedback and so printed out 20. We thought this was a good amount of responses to take into account in determining how to create our Thriller.

Limitations:
 Although a 15 classified film can include things such as mild violence and light sexual scenes, a limitation is that a film classified as an 18 could include a lot more to create dramatic tension and an atmosphere representative of a Thriller.
"Films under this category do not have limitation on the bad language that is used. Hard drugs are generally allowed, and strong violence/sex references along with strong sexual activity is also allowed. Scenes of strong real sex may be permitted if justified by the context."
 By being able to film things such as very violent scenes, we could have made the "psycho" man to be a lot more disturbed than expected. By us filming the scenes in a way where little violence was shown, we thought the audience could make their own assumptions as to what he does to the girl. Although many members of the audience could have great imaginations, some people don't like having to sit and solve problems throughout a film. If, in our two minute opening she showed something such as the man hitting the girl, the audience would be more disgusted in him due to seeing the direct contact he forced on her.

We asked the question “What type of music do you think should be played in a Thriller?” The results were very varied however one type won by a staggering amount. Eerie music was by far the most popular by almost two thirds of the votes. It was obvious that the audience we were aiming for wanted music to set a strong scene of tension and make them feel a little bit freaked out.

“Calm” music got no votes, showing the audience wanted at least one type of music to cause a little anxiety. Classical was the second most popular. Knowing this, we decided to mix classical and eerie music together to get a result of the two.

 Problems we faced

We were limited to our own age group at school.

It would have worked better to have teenage, adult and elderly feedback to work out the most popular things on average, not just for one age.

Although 20 questionnaires seemed a large amount at school due to it being a class full of people, if we were a proper company making this film, we would have asked hundreds of people for feedback to have the largest amount of feedback possible.

AUDIENCE PROFILE

Teenager of 17/18 years old.

Male

Watched 2 films per week, usually a Thriller film four times a week.(Out of the genre’s he watches -Thriller films the most!)

Enjoys going to the cinema regularly, uses internet sites such as “Youtube” to watch film trailers, which are soon to be released.

Usually goes to the cinema with a group of boys from school.

Enjoys an exciting film and feeling the pressure during a tense scene.

Attends college and has had further post 16 education.

Stereotypically an average teen. Not well known throughout college or popular, but not a “nerd” who’s always studying. Enjoys socialising with friends in spare time. Thriller films often come up in conversation.

How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

We attracted our audience by including the things which they said they wanted in our Thriller film. The eerie and classical music which they said they would prefer we created to ensure that the maximum amount of people liked it.

We added shocking images such as a Deer’s head to grab the audience’s attention. By the photo being so barbaric, the audience will do a second glance to see if the photo really is of what they thought it was. This was easy to get hold of due to Henry’s hobby of Deer shooting.

Our credits were made to look much more interesting to the audience than just words scrolling on the screen. We wanted them to relate to the story line and fit in with our Thriller opening. They look very realistic and similar to the bible. The bland colourscheme we used in our media of black and white effect reflects upon the good and bad in characters which are put into our Thriller opening.

Things we included during editing:

When showing people our creation in the media room we got a lot of great comments back! This was important to us. To get feedback at all is a way to improve a media production for next time. What the target audience say is vital to whether our Thriller opening could make it in the industry in real life. Luckily, everybody we showed liked it and gave us great comments about how we effectively created the mise-en-scene and the story line was strong. They said it enraptured their attention and made them feel nervous, demanding them to keep watching to see how it ended.

 We were given a booklet explaining how to use Imovie, although I had never used it before. Unfortunately I personally find it hard to follow instructions due to me missing our a vital step or struggling to find a certain button and I find I work much better researching the Mac myself. I would clip on clips and play around with them finding how to do each individual task and then remember how to do it so I can repeat the task if I need to do it again. This tactic worked well and I ended up becoming a whiz on the mac, managing to do things other people in the class thought would be impossible such as putting a picture over a picture on the programme Final Cut. Many people were baffled by how I managed to get the programme to work and wanted to use the same effect on their media production.

The image shows Henry walking out of the door after locking the girl up inside and leaving her. It is unclear to the audience whether he left her alive or dead, as no violence or the tying up of the girl has been included. We felt that sometimes, it is scarier to imagine what has happened to the girl rather than actually see the footage of the psycho character causing physical harm. Luckily the two images work very well together as the long shot of Henry fits perfectly inbetween the close up of the hostages eyes, giving the over lapping of these two photos an effective look. If one of the images became blured or unrecognisable due to the over lapping, it would be pointless to include it as it would only confuse our audience and make our Thriller opening look unprofessional.

 We filmed the responses we got from our questionnaires and uploaded them on imovie on Kingston's apple mac. We then used our advanced new skills and we edited them so that the conversation flowed properly excluding any breaks or laughter which occured from nervous peers chosen to give us our feedback.

 In total, 4 interviews were done. We made sure that we interviewed two boys and two girls to that the results we recieved back were even and fair. We then uploaded our interviews onto Youtube so people could see them and "like" them or add a comment which could consist of constructive critisism which could help us improve our questions.

Feedback we got through interviews.

    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

What Have You Learnt About The Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

Before I was asked to do this task, I hadn’t even been able to turn on a video camera without asking for assistance. During this task I felt as though I was thrown in the deep end and needed to learn how to use one fast! I researched things on Youtube such as how to film effectively. I watched many videos explaining so I could have a basic understanding of how the camera would work and how to operate it. This made me feel much more relaxed and turned by attitude from panic to excitement. Whilst doing our prelim we practiced many more challenging shots such as a steady pan. I discovered the importance of using a tripod throughout filming the hard way after recording some scenes by holding the camera to see how steady it would be. The result was unfortunate and disgraceful when compared to the same scene done whilst on a tripod. I also practiced doing a steady zoom and managed to get the hang of this quickly and ended up using many of them in our Thriller opening when zooming in on the bible. I carefully placed the roseary beads onto the ten commandments of the bible. I made it so that when the camera zooms in, the most visable commandment which the audience will look at will be "thou shalt not kill" creating the mystery as to what the religious man would do to the girl whilst still trying to keep his beliefs and loyalty to God.

Imovie was a lot simpler than I first thought! When watching people edit before I had any of my own experience, it looked extremely worrying. However, shortly after having a play on the mac during our prelim editing I soon got to grips with what it was I needed to do and how to use it effectively to make our media run smoothly.

The most challenging part I did during editing was figuring out how to use Final Cut and detaching the audio from it so that the clips together make a really dramatic effect when watching it back. I thought to make it look even better and more dramatic was for Henry to close the door in slow motion, and so changed the speed of the clip towards the tortoise to ensure a slow finish to our Thriller opening.

 By adding fade to blacks (or whites) between different clips, ensured a smooth finish to our opening. There were no jolts in the filming as the black screen polished off the production and dramatised the building of tension but a quick flash of black before seeing a distressing clip. The careful allocation of where the fade to blacks went made the audience wonder how far into a violent scene they would see before they got cut off. By repeatedly surprising your audience they are more than likely to become more and more determined to see the end.

During this task I have discovered and used many different programmes

 Wordle: This is a programme which allows you to make "word clouds." They are aesthetically pleasing to look at and are very eye catching inbetween text. You can chose your own colour, style and direction the words face.  

Final Cut: This programme allows you to put a moving image over the top of another moving image to create a special effect. I decided to go onto the programme and have a go to see whether I would be able to work it effectively. I put the image of the girl unconscious in the chair over the top of Henry locking up the warehouse leaving the girl inside. After this, I detatched the audio on the images so they are ready for when they are put onto Imovie and the sound track is added. By using this software, it allowed a professional finish to our Thriller opening.

Prezi: This is a form of power point which I used. It's a much more interesting technique to use on blog as the viewer interacts and controls the speed and rate at which the prezi goes. They are in control of how far into the presentation they go and at what rate they read it. It is a software most people find hard to control due to it being a quite unknown technology. However I found it a personal challenge to look how to control it and use it effectively to answer a complex question.

Imovie: This is the software which played the biggest role in editing our Thriller opening. By it being so popular, some people who are owners of apple macs were already familiar with the technology and able to use it. I have never used a mac before and so the experience was completely new to me. I soon came to grips with the software and was able to edit effectively after researching into it. We included techniques such as flashbacks, to put the audience's focus on religion and how the psycho character reacts to the written laws of God.

Garage Band: The software where we merged copyright free tracks together. To begin with we looked at the ready made tracks which garage band had but found them to be over used and not work effectively when syncing them to our Thriller opening. Instead we found the tracks off a website, ensuring they're copyright free and adding a sound effect in two places of our opening to highlight the most dramatic peaks. The software was easy to use and allowed us to make a new track quickly and simply.

Garage band also allows you to fade out the music during the end of the piece. This sounds much more pleasing to the ears than having a sudden stop at the end of our opening. It also signifies to the audience that they are reaching the end of the Thriller. If there was a sudden cut off in the music, the audience would feel let down by the fact that they were unprepared for it. Fading the music out gives subtle hints to the ending of the piece and is an additional effect to make our Thriller sound better and shows we have thought about every detail to improve.

 Google, youtube, facebook and networking sites: Google was the most common search engine which I used throughout creating my blog. It allowed easy access to things such as "wordle" and "prezi." By uploading our prelim and Thriller opening onto "Facebook" we got feedback  from our peers to see what they think of our Thriller opening and whether it did the job it was supposed too, and entertained them, giving them the "on edge" feel which a Thriller should create. Youtube also allowed easy access when uploading our prelim and Thriller opening onto blog. It was quick and easy and we could check the feedback given to us from youtube.

As well as using how to use all of these programme, we also managed to upload our Prelim and final Thriller Opening onto Facebook and Youtube to get comments/feedback from people online to see whether they enjoyed what we had filmed and how, if next time we could improve, and whether they think our Thriller fits the conventions it should do.

During editing I learnt how to:

Fade to blacks/fade to whites

Speed up clips/ slow down clips

Change the contrast of the clips i.e. old world etc

 Making the soundtrack on garage band

 How to film a steady shot

 How to cut clips to make them the right time scale to fit in

 Using final- This was used due to the simplicity of imovie. I found I couldn’t do all of the things I could see in my mind and wanted to use a more complex programme to ensure the best possible result. By putting a picture over a picture I find it adds much more dramatic tension and was commented on several times by people who had watched our Thriller, saying it was a very effective technique and finishes off the piece perfectly.

 Add special effects

Smoothing the motion of a clip if it looked jolty (stabilisation)

How to learn transitions

Import/export footage and sound

 Using mp3 files

Freeze frames

 Tripods, number of takes, lighting (natural), avoiding problems which will show on the footage i.e. shadows

 Doing a smooth zoom and how to do it effectively.

Title sequences

180 degree rule- If this is ever broken the audience think that the actors keep flicking from left to right and back again. This will make them feel dizzy and not understand the conversation due to the constant moving of the camera.

 Continuity errors- This was one extremely important element to monitor! If this was not done correctly, the whole Thriller opening could have been ruined due to the audience being unable to follow the story line at all. If somebody went through a door but then on the other side the door was closed although the audience never saw them close it, this would not make sense. It would make the whole production look very unprofessional and would cause us as a group to be very disappointed in the piece.

 BLOG

 During our first few months of media when we first made our blog, I didn’t fully understand the concept of how easy it would be to use and update because I was so used to the concept of pen and paper. Posting all of my coursework on a blog instead of filing it in a folder I found much easier. I found I could keep up to date easily and I could complete work much quicker with it looking even neater than something hand written due to how easy it is to delete a mistake and not have to scribble it out and start again.

 I like the idea of everybody having their own website of coursework, and by following people it encourages people to add to their own when they see the amount of updates their friend has done. The only criticism I found with blogger was that people could copy work easily but change the odd word to make it look different. This I found to be annoying due to having to sit and think of ideas for layouts and picture uploads, to then find other people doing things too similar for coincidence.

 I like how you can scroll down a blog and see every post a person has ever made and being able to see good and bad examples of blogs to help keep me on the right track and posting successful blog posts. I also enjoy discovering and practicing the different elements to media. Prezi is very challenging to upload onto blog, due to it taking a long time to download off of the website and save into my documents and then after several attempts of uploading it on blog as a video, it has been unsuccessfully posted. This will need immediate assistance so that I can discover how to upload it successfully.

 Another success of blog I find it impossible to ruin. Paper work is easily lost, ruined in the rain and claimed to be eaten by pets. None of these disastrous things can happen to us on blog because everything is already posted and online. It can be accessed on any computer from anywhere in the world and can never be lost unless deleted!

 You can also edit posts to improve them. This is a very helpful element of blog due work being upgraded by working in spare time when convenient rather than tying us down all night to complete a certain post, it can be left and done when appropriate to me. It also saves your work whilst you are busy typing away. This is such a good idea to do on blog due to how prone computers are to crashing regularly! By having a copy already saved on your personal blog home page, there is no need to have to sit and retype all of your work again.

Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Think You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To The Full Product?

PRELIM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v90lQq1wEoo

THRILLER OPENING: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r155_ZyXPh0

 Our Prelim filming was completed within one hour. We got one lesson to finish it and then it needed to be uploaded onto the mac ready to edit. I stayed in the same group for doing our prelim and our Thriller opening. I believe we got on very well and worked hard together as a group resulting in a success.

 The story line for our Prelim was an agent handing in his letter of resignation and having to be killed to make sure that he doesn’t repeat any top secret information to the wrong kind of people. Two characters take part in it. The agent and the agents boss who kills him.

 You don’t see the agent get killed or even see a gun. We thought that it would be more effective to have a sudden black out and then the sound of a gunshot. The audience will know what has happened but it would be a complete shock due to only seeing Henry (the boss) only reaching into his pocket to get what could have been something as innocent as a pen.
 Lighting: Natural light was the only thing available when filming our prelim. No other resources could have been found within school to improve or change the lighting in any way.
Location: When filming our prelim we were restricted to one location. Due to it having to be done within one hour of school time, we were forced to locate the prelim in a chosen area of school.
Shooting: The prelim is only supposed to be a quick piece to learn about how to use a video camera effectively without problems such as continuity errors, breaking the 180 degree rule and remembering the rule of thirds in a shot.
Editing: A restricted time was given for us to edit our prelim to a high standard. It was during this time I first discovered Imovie and how to use it to my advantage to gain a positive impression of the software. By doing a prelim, it was easier to plan effectively and discuss media terminology such as camera shots, ideas on editing and musical pieces.

 Our prelim was acceptable, but looking back at it now I see a large room for improvement. During the time of filming most of us had never used a video camera before and the whole thing was a new experience to us.

 We used many different shots during our prelim

This long shot was taken from the top of the stairs. Kingston is below the level of the camera, showing him to be vulnerable, reflecting upon his decision to resign from his job. He then becomes level with the camera, showing us that really he is brave to do so due to him knowing that he will most likely end up dead for doing it.

This close up taken from the floor puts concentration on the characters feet, it connotates the idea of Kingston “walking to his death” and adds tension for the audience watching as during this moment they are unsure as to where he is walking.

 The mise-en-scene could have easily been improved as I feel that is obvious we are filming in a school and an agent and a murder would not occur in a local school, but in a spy head quarters.

In order to make Kingston walking through the door make sense, we needed to shoot a behind and in front shot to show what he is doing from two angles so that he doesn’t just suddenly transform from before the door to after the door. Him walking through needs to make sense to the audience. This was our first attempt of filming the door from both sides without making a continuity error and it worked very well!

 We put the tripod as high as it would go and I stood on top of a chair in order to get this extreme long shot. We customised it to make it look like a CCTV camera had recorded Kingston walking down this corridor. This looks effective as it gives the audience a point of view shot from the camera, even though it isn’t really there.

A limitation of our Prelim was that during this scene we ran out of time to do a take without the actors laughing in the scene. We did 20 takes on this scene but found the new experience exciting and caused the actors to laugh a lot during filming throughout of the prelim, causing it to look unprofessional.

Thriller Opening:

This shot took a long time to produce. We used natural light and pulled the curtains in Henry’s house to leave a gap of light shining on the bible but keeping the corners in the dark. We thought this light looked very effective and made it mysterious by the bible being the only thing lit up in the shot.

Filming the credits needed to be done in a better light source than our opening bible shot. We did this in front of a large window to allow lots of sunlight inside to shine upon the book. This makes it easy to read and the effect of the shadows made by the hand at the top of the shot works well by hinting to the audience that someone in the room is reading the bible and are obviously very religious. Our first attempt looked unprofessional because we wrote onto a page in a red sharpy pen, rather than text being formatted through the computer and made to look like a real bible. Our second attempt look much more realistic and believable from the audience's point of view. These things such as religious illustrations and the credits in a bible, hint the personality of the main character in the first few seconds of our opening.

The acting during the Thriller opening was much better than through the Prelim. During the most dramatic scene, we had managed to shoot a very effective mid shot of Henry and I, just as he put the needle into my neck to knock me out. This makes our video look so much more professional and aesthetically pleasing by the acting being convincing.

Point of view shot from the girls behalf. I speeded this clip up during editing to make the struggle look like I was in serious panic to get out of being tied up and back into the village, highlighting the seriousness of what Henry has done and just how worked up I am about what he has done to me. It makes the audience ask the question of “Will she get out?” which is exactly what we were aiming to do.

 This final shot was what I made on Final Cut, Henry locks the door without a care in the world whilst I lay inside the place dead. I slowed this shot right down to ensure a very dramatic finish to our Thriller Opening and to shock the audience one last time before it ends.

 The importance of our ending it that you don’t see what he does to the girl inside the place he has locked her up in. This causes the audience to use their imagination as to what could of happened and gets them to wonder “what is the religious man capable of?” A big climatic finish is a key convention to the Thriller genre.

 During filming, we discovered that the windy conditions of the day caused the tripod to wobble whilst on the ground causing the shot to look unstable. We tried holding the tripod which seemed to work but natural shaking of the hands also affected some of the shots. After stabilising the shots which needed tweaking the end result was far better than we imagined it to be.

 To improve next time, extra care should be taken during filming to ensure the shot is as steady as possible and that not actors laugh or smile. By doing this it will help to make our filming look as though it was professional.