Evaluation

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

By researching various thriller openings as a group throughout both the planning and filming stages of our task, we gained a great understanding of what the typical codes and conventions of thriller films are. When I initially researched 'The Shining", "Kill Bill", "Inception"  and "The Butterfly Effect", I realised that several key and effective conventions of thriller openings were. 

• Lighting used to convey the tone of the opening (eg. high key to make the audience feel comfortable before a climax or fill light used to create silhouette-like feel) 
• Eerie music gradually quickening in tempo, fast paced heart-beat foley effects 
• Fast paced cuts between shots to disorientate the audience but to also show them lots of the action within a short space of time

Inspired by the opening credits of 'The Shining' which show as the camera pans the landscape, I decided to take a similar approach with our titles as our film opens with shots of the surroundings, like 'The Shining'.

I chose a gothic, worn-looking font which immediately conveys the genre and the tense-nature of the opening, as you wouldn't see a font like this in the opening of a romance or a comedy. I chose to put the font in white so that it was clear and easily read of the variation of backgrounds on which the text would be placed.


The boldness of the font which I chose is also a convention of typical thriller openings. However, the majority of thriller films which I looked as faded the background the black whilst showing the film title, as this draws attention away from the storyline being shown through the shots and towards the name of the film only. However, what's being shown on screen whilst the credit text is coming up is key to the story and is important to develop the beginning of the plot and so I chose to instead of fading the background to black, I kept the background as the shot an instead, faded the text away.







When looking at lighting in the researching stage, I noted that a popular lighting technique in thriller films is to highlight the main focus of the shot, such as in the opening of 'The girl with the dragon tattoo'. We did our own take on this by using two LED lights to highlight the main character's face during CU and MS sequences. The outcome of this was very effective and also gave the film a professional look.

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

Using mise en scene, we presented our characters in a specific way in order to represent certain typical stereotypes. The female character represents a typical young adult of her gender, dressed in a current trends (a leather jacket) and a short skirt, connoting youth. This representation is further reinforced by her makeup and hairstyle, which in the flash back scenes is shown as being well-styled and connotes the idea that this is a 'girly' girl. Her T shirt is white which gives the audience connotations of purity and innocence, immediately creating sympathy for this seemingly vulnerable character. 

In the present day scenes, the female character has been stripped to her tshirt and tights. The red of the blood stains on the white tshirt create a contrast between the innocence we associate with the colour white and the death/danger that we associate with the colour red. Her vulnerability is emphasised by her now exposed legs. The audience could immediately associate this attack with sexual abuse as obviously she is no longer wearing her skirt - although this is never referenced in the actual film.

According to an article by Pete Turner, 'Icons in the hood - how working class youths became chavs': “Hooded, tattooed and often anonymous due to a covered face, ‘chavs’ wear tracksuits and trainers.”
Using this stereotype as a basis for the character's costume, we dressed the male character in a dark hoodie branded ‘Thrasher’ (a known skating brand, connoting ideas of hooliganism and general anti-social behavior, as people generally associate boys in dark, ‘skater’ clothing with violence and crime).
Because of my choice for the character's costume, tension will immediately be built through the audience's instantaneous suspicions of what trouble this character will bring as through their (correct) stereotypical assumption, this character will be the antagonist.

We used camera angles as a way of demonstrating the power balance of the two characters. The man has the clear dominance as is framed in a low angle shot, giving the impression that he is dominant. The shot is also POV and so as well as being a representation of their power, it is also the female character's actual view making her lack of power all together more frightening, thus further establishing her vulnerability.

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

The film I have created is an independent, low budget British film.  Because of this, there are only really two main ways of distribution.

The first is being taken up by an independent film distribution company. To do this, the distributor will go through 3 stages.

• Firstly is film production, the actual making of the film.
• Secondly is the film distribution; securing a place for the film in the industry
• Thirdly is film exhibition; finding where it would be viewed, for example cinemas, Netflix, lovefilm

British independent film distributors that I would consider approaching include:

• Studiocanal
• Pathe
• Picturehouse
• Momentum
• Metrodome
• Lovefilm

This method of distribution has one major advantage, being that it's likely to become more well-known and make more money. When a film is released in cinemas across the country, the film will generally become popular and will make more money than a film not released in cinemas. Generally, films show in cinemas for up to 4 months, depending on its popularity. The follow step is DVD release, which generally follows 2-4 months after the film has stopped showing in cinemas. After this comes the release of the film onto such platforms as Netflix and Lovefilm which are VOD. This means that the audience can watch the film whenever they please and this is generally released after around 6-12 months of the film not being shown in the cinema.

Another method of distribution would be to market the film myself. Due to the increasing popularity of VOD and websites such as youtube, online platforms are becoming a common way to successfully distribute films.

Being able to access the film anytime and anywhere on devices such as phones and ipads is a popular selling point in the new digital age.

This method could be very successful as it's a lot cheaper (uploading a video onto youtube is free) than traditionally distributing a film, and also a snowball effect could be created as the film could easily be shared across social media platforms such as twitter and facebook. Through creating an online fanbase, word of the film could spread across many countries and so its popularity would grow.

The two platforms which I would consider uploading my film onto are Youtube and Vimeo.

Youtube is the most popular platform as there is no upload charge and the uploader has potential to make money from the upload if it reaches a certain amount of views (and have applied to become a 'Youtube partner'), for example 1000 views earns the uploader $2.50. On top of this, should the uploader allow 'TrueView' instant-playing adverts to play before or during the upload, the uploader could receive further income based on how many views or clicks of/on the advert. 
Uploading onto youtube would be successful in targeting a world wide audience as Youtube can be accessed from most countries.

Vimeo however, could be another good choice of platform. Though it has no advertising which therefore means no extra income from the film, the website has a better reputation for being reliable and so this would increase the amount of viewers in my intended demographic.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience of our thriller film is young males aged 15-24 as this is a popular demographic for this genre.
We looked at similar film's audience profiles such as 'Robocop' and saw that the majority of it's audience were C2 males. After looking at other films profile's such as 'Non-stop', I noticed that typically the most successful audience for thriller films were males 15-24 of the C2 class. 


According to the BBFC website, any of the following constitutes a 15 rated film:

•   strong violence
•  frequent strong language 
•   portrayals of sexual activity
•   strong verbal references to sex
•   sexual nudity
•   brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
•   discriminatory language or behaviour
•   drug taking

At the rating of 15, No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate for 15 year olds. however there can only be strong threat and horror as long as there is no sustained focus on sadistic or sexualised threat.

I believe the target audience for our film / media product would range from the ages of 15 - 30, as our film will be classified as a 15 due to gory images, profanity and violence. The target gender for our film would appeal both to male and female, as the genre of film is classed as thriller / crime. The target social class of the watching audience would be mainly aimed at the C1/C2 class

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

The sexual undertones in the film may appeal to the target audience and the use of a young, attractive female lead in danger plays on audience's sympathy while generating interest for the story line from the beginning. We avoided a lengthy introduction prior to showing the female character as we wanted the captivate the target audience's attention immediately. The chosen shot type for the female's initial shots was a CU as this more clearly denotes the female character's 

The intense story line and graphic action will appeal to the younger male audience and by keeping it tense from the outset, the audience could wan to share their enjoyment and emotions towards the film with friends via social media, promoting the film. This is another good reason for targeting a younger audience as social media is an excellent platform of promotion and it's free.

The story unfolds quickly but with enough suspense to keep the audience engaged, showing the after effects of the attack at the beginning of the film is an attempt to gain empathy for the girl and to arouse the curiosity of the audience in regards to what has happened to her and why. The reason for the attack however is not overt and although the male character appears threatening, reinforced by his dark clothing and hoodie, his involvement is not revealed until the end.

The characters are fairly stereotypical; the woman is young, attractive and vulnerable when walking alone. The male character is not developed but he is portrayed as menacing by his walk and his reluctance to reveal his face. Also at the end of the film as he towers over the cowering woman his dominance is evident. These stereotypes were chosen to appeal to the young male audience, if the characters had been reversed and the male had been the victim of a female attack this may have been harder for the audience to empathise with.

Dialogue specifically targets the audience in the final scenes when the girl repeated cries for "Help!". With an intended audience of mostly males the desired effect that this would have is playing on the male's need to protect a vulnerable female and so dialogue would connect with the audience's emotions on a personal level. 



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

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

As my preliminary task was our first time working as a group to create a finished moving image piece of work, we were inexperienced and so many elements of the finished product such as the lighting and the sound could have been vastly improved upon. Comparisons between the preliminary and our final film demonstrate just how much we learnt and how vastly we improved our filming/editing skills as a group.

Firstly, in the preliminary task, we made the mistake of not planning ahead when deciding our location and so on the day of filming we decided to film in front of a large window. This had consequences as we forgot to adjust the white balance and so much of the film is too bright and washed out, making the film look unprofessional.

In our final film however, the location and the lighting were two of the first things we thought about and decided upon. We originally intended to use a suburban-looking street but however discarded this idea when we realised how noisy most streets were and how often our filming would be interrupted. We decided on an empty, long, countryside lane as it would be ideal to film in (as there would be no interruptions) and also the openness of the space meant that natural lighting along with hand-held LED lights would be more than enough light to give a professional look to the film as well as the desolate surroundings giving a more isolated feel to the scenes - creating tension for the audience.

The editing in our preliminary was very basic as our knowledge of how to use Final Cut was quite limited. Because of this, we didn’t vary the cuts between the shots at all and so every cut is a straight forward jump cut. In our final film, we varied the pace of the cuts and also used different transitions to convey a particular effect such as a flashback.

Though in the preliminary we slightly varied our shots, including an ECU and match on action, for the most part the majority of the shots were very similar. In our final film however, because we had researched so many other thriller openings we were more aware of the types of angles and shots that were effective in conveying the genre and so we made sure to include these, being shots such as worm’s eye views and long shots of the surrounding area.

There were many things of which could’ve been improved upon in regards to the sound in our preliminary. One problem we encountered when filming was that an alarm or siren was going off in the background of a couple of the shots, this too contributed towards the overall unprofessional look of the sequence. This could have been corrected by muting the volume of the shots in the editing process and recording the dialogue separately or by changing locations and re-shooting the shots. The non-diegetic background music we chose was an instrumental version of ‘Hometown Glory’ by Adele. This could have caused problems if used in our final film due to copyright issues. In our final film, we used two copyright free suspenseful-sounding pieces of music, which were successful in conveying the intended tone of the sequence.

From a non-diegetic sound perspective an improvement that could've been made on the final product is during the 'chase' scene the sound effect we created to synthesize that of a heartbeat is relatively quiet and isn't prominent when accompanied by digetic sounds. This could've been rectified by adjusting the volume settings of this particular scene when editing.

In order to improve the overall professional aesthetics of our final product there were several aspects of which could be altered. The opening credit text doesn't look like that of a professional film and so from the outset it is clear that this is an amateur piece of work. Aswell as this, panning shots and zooming-in transitions could've been edited so as to give a smoother appearance rather than the 'jumpy' end result. 

In the 'chase' scene especially, care should have been taken in regards to the white balance on the camera as the overall appearance of the scene is almost washed-out. However this could be justified as (in reference to my blog post entitled 'confusion effect research') being because the scene is a flashback and so should have an eerie and dream-like quality. 


A shot which i feel could've been particularly improved is in the opening minute of the sequence and shows the female character walking past the camera dripping blood onto the floor with each steep. Using thriller conventions this shot could've been improved by being filmed as a close up, showing only the falling blood accompanied by the sound of footsteps. This would've left the audience guessing as to what the wound is and the severity of it, rather than revealing all via medium shot.

Analysis of 3 opening sequences

Analysis of three thriller title sequences

 

Shutter Island

I began by looking at the opening to the film 'Shutter Island'. 
The title sequence begins with a fade in from black to a shot of an abandoned looking corridor which denotes a prison. The first credit  - "A film by Martin Scorsese" - flickers onto the screen in a bright red gothic-style font. This font style and colour is a typical thriller convention and immediately conveys the genre through the connotations that the unsettling font style gives.  By using a flickering effect on the text rather than just having it fade in then fade out - being the conventions of text featured in comedy or romance films - the audience is already unsettled and suspense has immediately been created. The first credit is positioned in the bottom right side of the screen in a dead space. Due to the dark lighting of this particular shot and using lineation, the text is the first thing on the screen which the audience's eyes are drawn to.


The previous shot fades into a shot of an empty corridor with water dripping from the ceiling. The dripping water gives the audience the impression that the setting is unkemt and disused, whilst the emptiness of the corridor could represent the themes of the film as well as building tension as characters are yet to appear on screen.
The following two credits are in an identical style with the same 'flickering' animations. They follow suit by being placed in an empty space on the screen. Like the first credit, the text is placed in a darkly-lit area of the shot and so the credit is very prominent.




 The third credit, however, is in white instead of red. This could be to convey the themes of the film (good vs. bad) with the contrast of connotations from the colours red and white (with white giving the impression of purity and innocence whilst red connotes ideas of violence, danger). The text is placed in a more central part of the screen than the previous three credits which suggests this particular credit could be more important. However it lasts the same amount of time - 4 seconds - and continues with the same flickering animation as the previous credits.
The shot shows a hand attempting to uncover a tile. By using a close up shot the audience isn't revealed any clues as to the story - building tension. 

The credits continue in the same style and same white font as the previous, until the music begins to build to an intense climax and the screen fades to black. The screen then fades back in with the text 'Shutter Island' in the same red as was used initially. The text doesn't use the same animation as before, this time instead it zooms in until the screen is fully covered with the words. This demonstrates the importance of the title compared to the previous credits as the font is much larger and the amount of time it's shown on screen for is longer.

BLACK SWAN


The screen fades in from black as non-diegetic slow piano music begins; these elements already beginning to establish the genre. The first credit 'FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES PRESENTS' establishes that this will be a high-budget film as Fox Searchlight Pictures, established in 1994, is an American film distribution company within the Fox Entertainment Group, a sister company of the larger Fox studio 20th Century Fox, specialising in US distribution of independent and British films.

This shot then fades to a CU of what appears to be a piece of charcoal being artistically dragged over a piece of paper while the next credit fades into the shot: "A Darren Aronofsky film". The font used for the credits is bold, gothic and dated-looking and so this draws attention to the text while creating connotations of potential themes of the film for the audience. The scene continues displaying same-font (and font size, displaying no varying hierarchy of credits) credits and continues with the CU of the piece of character which we can now denote is being used to draw a picture.

Eventually, the pace of the piano music begins to quicken and the tone of the music intensifies, conveying that of a typical piece of tension-building music. From this we can infer that this is using Barthe's engima code as the title sequence is slow paced and uneventful in order to create suspense and build tension and an almost 'calm before the storm'-like feel when contrasted to the rest of the film.
As this change in music occurs, a ECU of what appears to be a woman's hand (inferred through the french manicured nail) is revealed to be the drawer and the pace of drawing intensifiers, giving a hurried feel to the sequence.

A panning shot reveals the drawing however is too close up for an image to be able to be made out. This then fades into a darker part of the drawing and the title 'BLACK SWAN' appears on screen in the same gothic font as before however in white rather than black; perhaps for emphasis or perhaps to convey the battle of good vs. bad in this film (demonstrated through the contrasting connotations of black and white).


THE ORPHAN

The film starts with the opening title ‘Orphan’, the title first fades in bold grey text, it then flickers and changes into a disturbing child’s painting of the same title splattered similarly to blood. This effect hints to the audience that the film may be daunting and suggests that the orphan may not be the stereotypical orphan that you would expect. This creates suspense and links the movie to the thriller genre

The sharp props and fake blood adds suspense and tension to the scene, this is because sharp objects can injure people are usually used for cutting things, putting the two together could mean that a person has been cut thus creating a gruesome image in the audience's mind. The nurse's white costumes make the hospital setting seem more realistic whilst making the scene more intense. The blood stained white clothing makes the scene seem more chilling and matches the hospital theme. Blood stained clothes are usually associated with crime, pain and death therefore confirming that the film is a thriller.

A rumbling thunderstorm sound effect plays in the background during the opening credits. This shows that the film may be dark just like a thunderstorm or perhaps that there is danger approaching. When the title flickers to reveal the alarming painting electrical buzzing sounds are used; this emphasizes the transformation and suggests to the audience that the film may be chilling and have some unexpected surprises relating it to the thriller genre. The sound effects essentially determine the fact that the film is categorized under the thriller genre.

The movie begins with bright white lighting suggesting that we may be entering a dream or flashback, this creates suspension and awe as it makes the audience eager to find out what is happening. The bright light matches the bright clinical look of a hospital in which the first scene is set., while the back light emphasizes the characters facial expression to show that she is in pain, this hints to the audience that something dramatic is about to occur.

Lighting techniques including opening bright white light and back lighting emphasizing facial expressions establish the genre of this film in the first 10 minutes.
Camera Techniques such as birds eye view are used to emphasize the length of the walk to the operation room in the wheel chair. This suggests that the character is being put through pain for a long time as the camera shot shows that the nurse is moving slowly. This is effective as the audience may begin to feel sympathetic towards the character and may expect for the worst to happen. 

In the first scene a variety of close ups are used, these shots are at eye level and capture facial expressions which is the main focus. This adds to the thriller genre as the audience can get a broader insight of the pain the charcter is experiencing just by veiwing her facial expressions up close.
There are many different camera angles used throughout the opening sequence, these are effective because they can make the movie seem thrilling by evoking different emotions from the audience.

Costume decisions

To help decide upon the costumes of our characters I decided to look at other various openings to films of the thriller genre in order to get a further idea of generally the kind of colours/style of clothing that characters wear in the openings.

After looking a few openings including 'The girl with the dragon tattoo', 'Usual Suspects' and 'Inception', I came to the conclusion that most thriller openings featured characters dressed in dark, plain clothing. I think that this is to draw attention towards the storyline and the character's actions rather than what they're wearing. Because of this, I have decided that both the male and female character will be wearing dark jeans and non eye-catching dark tops/hoodies.

I already had the idea that I wanted the female character to look like she hadn't changed in a few days and so her clothes would be dirty and torn to imply that the man had sexually attacked her. This would also imply to the audience that she had been running and hiding for a while now.
I also wanted the girls body and clothes to be covered in blood. However it is vital that the blood appears realistic as if the blood looks fake it could ruin the nature of the opening. So I went on to research several different substances which can be made to resemble realistic blood:

This is a screenshot from one of the websites I looked at giving instructions on how to make realistic fake blood

However in the end after researching several different methods I decided to purchase a pre-made tube of fake blood as it seemed the most reliable/effective method.

This is a video of me showing how to apply fake blood:

I then went on to research how fake blood had been used in thrillers featuring chase scenes as I thought this could be a useful basis for our opening. Firstly I looked at a chase scene from the film 'Shutter Island' which is known for it's high tension and interesting plot twists whilst incorporating a horror element into the plot line.

Throughout the chase scene in 'Shutter island', varying lighting is used to emphasise certain aspects of the frame. One particular shot which stood out to me was a low angle shot of the 'chaser' showing only his blood-covered foot. This was very suspenseful as it puts questions in the audience's minds and by combining this with quick cuts to different shots and varied lighting, the whole scene was very tense.

To further research my costume choices, I again wanted to research chase sequences from thrillers. I looked at a sequence from an episode of BBC's 'Luther'. The chase scene again uses quick cuts to convey a tense atmosphere. The characters are both dressed in dark clothing which  makes it unclear as to who the protagonist of the situation is. 

This helped me to make the decision to dress the female character in my opening in a white top to convey innocence and purity. The white will create a contrast to the red blood splatters which connote ideas of death and danger. I have chosen to dress her in tights as they're easy to give a 'distressed' look to by laddering and ripping and so I thought this would be an effective costume choice to demonstrate the attack which the female suffered. In the flashback scene the female will be wearing a skirt, however in the present-day scenes she will only be wearing the ripped tights. This gives the subtle impression of a sexual attack.

I chose to dress the male character in a generic black hoodie to give 'thuggish' connotations to the audience. Using the colour black will give the audience a clear indication of who is the 'good' person in the situation and who is the 'bad', as the female character will be wearing white. The male character will be wearing dark jeans so as not to stand out from the background/setting and give the appearance of a dark silhouette.

POST FILMING

When filming our thriller opening, we encountered a problem with the pre-made fake blood that I had chosen to use. In certain areas I had applied the 'blood' liberally, using a body makeup sponge (as shown in the picture below). About an hour into filming, the areas in which I had used a lot of blood began to crack and peel. To rectify the situation, we had a break from filming and I had to reapply the fake blood in the exact same place as before, however this time so as not to repeat the problem I used less of the product.

Another problem with one of my costume decisions was the the white T-shirt to be worn over tights was shorter on the actress than I had anticipated and so she had to keep pulling it down in between shots which became a hassle especially for long shots from behind the character. To solve this problem I should have had the actress try on the T-shirt with just tights prior to filming, so that I would have known the top was too small.

Researching ways to build tension

To effectively convey the thriller genre in our opening, it's essential that one of the main conventions - being a high level of tension - is emphasised.

I began by looking at a high tension scene from 'Don't look now'. The tension in this particular scene is built through the use of lighting. Most of the screen is in shadow whilst the main focus - and the main thing which is going to create suspense for the audience - is highlighted
.
 



This same lighting technique is also used in the opening of 'The Usual Suspects'.



From this research I deduced that our opening should incorporate some form of high key lighting focused on a specific object/person.

Another way tension is successfully built is through the use of sound. Generally a crescendo of violin or drum centred music gradually gets louder or increases in tempo as the opening scene progresses. Because of this convention being featured in so many thrillers we decided to look for a copyright free piece of tension-building music to put as a backing track to our opening.

We found a track which we'd like to use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms7Qu3XcwVo.
however this particular track was copyrighted and so we began to search for a similar sounding piece of music.


A third way tension and suspense are built is through rapidly paced jump shots. This creates a 'rushed' and 'panicky' feel to the sequence. We could easily incorporate this technique into our opening during the chase scene. This would effectively convey the girl's internal panic and fear.





Pre production planning

Lighting decisions

Again using other thriller openings for reference I came to the conclusion that generally thriller openings are either shot with very high key lighting, or very low key lighting. I think that this is to emphasis the mood of the sequence because just a standard 3 point lighting wouldn't create tension.

In the opening to 'The girl with the dragon tattoo' a very effective lighting method is used where the majority of the screen is dark however key aspects are highlighted using a key light. I think this effect would be easily achievable in our opening and would work effectively to build the initial suspense. 

Anamatic of storyboard with commentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb5FhfiYmxk