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
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 "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.
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.