My Thriller

Below is the link to my final opening sequence of a thriller that I have created.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Fn_zeeia0&feature=youtu.be

Thriller Comparison - Miss Georgiou

My thriller sequence is successful because it shows many different skills have learned through out my course. For example, my thriller contains many conventions taken from other successful thrillers and adapted to create my own unique final product. My opening sequence contains features such as low key lighting used through out in order to show a metaphor for how dark the plot of my opening sequence is. Also effective, tense sounds are used in order to make the audience feel up-tight and scared as they aren't aware of what's going to happen in the opening sequence. The cinematography used within my opening sequence is very conventional to thrillers such as hand held, high angle, and close up. These camera angles allows the audience to view how the characters are feeling and portrays their fear clearly, as well as emphasizing the vulnerability of the characters. Therefore, due to these conventions that I have included within my opening sequence, I believe that my opening sequence is successful.

Throughout the whole opening sequence I contributed towards each element within the product but I felt that my best work can be seen in hair and make up. This is because being a female, with required expectations on how to look through pressure from society, I am able to understand the importance of appearance and am therefore able to apply my understanding towards the characters in my opening sequence. For example, the youthful female used within my opening sequence has blonde, thick hair representing a typical convention towards thrillers. This is because it has been seen in many films, such as Hitchcock's Pyscho, Jaws, Scream 2, Saw and many more. Blonde victims are portrayed to be gullible, weak characters who lack intelligence and ultimately make a perfect victim. The female's outfit showed her character because she's wearing clothes that cover her body, which I felt would be powerful to use as it makes the audience question the females self worth and opinion on herself because she has her body covered up throughout. This relates to the audience because a lot of young girls are shy to show their figures and ultimately have low self esteem, so I was confident that by adding this into my opening sequence would gain, particularly the female audiences of the opening sequence because they would be able to relate. Therefore I felt it would be best to make sure the female character would be blonde in my opening sequence so it showed my understanding of conventions within a thriller. However, I then became creative with my second character who is played by a male. I used a slightly older character who had a sophisticated look to him to show my own unique twist on my opening sequence. Using the materials that I had to create a strong male allowed the audience to feel a sense of security and comfort, the male character is misleading to the audience because he has this strong approach to him, yet as my opening sequence goes on there is a clear show of vulnerability and therefore tricks the audience.  Another character of which I was in control of costume and make up is the killer. I was sure to dress the killer in dark clothes and masked his face in order to in-heighten the sense of enigma. Having an unknown character to the audience makes a tense atmosphere and a sense of vulnerability  is thrust upon the audience. Having a masked killer in black clothing follows the typical conventions of a thriller and therefore I wanted to include this into my group and I's opening sequence. Due to the audiences reactions to the characters who were dressed to my accord and had myself take care of their appearance, I saw a lot of positivity with regards to how approachable the characters where and how their appearance had drawn the audience in. Therefore, with regards to my creativity and understanding of my thriller opening sequence in hair, make up and costumes it shows my complex understanding of how to get the audience to enjoy the opening sequence and be drawn to the main feature of the film - the characters.

My opening sequence can be likened to a varied amount of other successful thrillers such as Scream 2 and Hitchcock's Psycho. This is because in Scream 2 there is a clear show of iconography which is a knife and in my opening sequence I was eager to use this iconography as it shows the conventions of a thriller clearly because knives are widely used withing thrillers. I felt by using my first victim as a blonde female it would follow the plot of Scream 2 as one of the victims is a youthful blonde victim as well as show my understanding of thrillers and the conventions to follow in my own opening sequence. I also used a blonde victim as it shows that I gathered this inspiration from Hitchcock's Psycho and Scream 2 to show that when I decided to include this type of iconography and use of blonde victims I researched into it first so that I would gain an in depth understanding of how I would go about filming my final product with my other two group members. I feel that I have used inspirations from both these films and therefore my work is most alike these two films, showing my clear understanding and shows that I was able to gain ideas and inspirations from other films and then my ability to adapt these conventions into my own final product.

Scream 2  

Hitchcocks Pyscho

Audience Feedback - Miss Georgiou

Audience feedback is important within a production because it allows the people who have created it to get a clear understanding with regards to their strengths and weaknesses, so that when it comes to producing another piece of work, they are able to excel on their strengths and get rid of any weaknesses. Gathering audience feedback allows the people who produced the product to also connect with their audience by a better understanding of their preferences.

I was able to gain some audience feedback from my target audience through carrying out different ways in which I could focus my audience in order to get the best out of them. For example, I created a questionnaire with my group that consisted of both open and closed questions, therefore allowing variety within the answers and enabled my group and I to see what type of thriller the audience would like to see, and what they'd like to see within it. This meant that my group and I were able to follow the many conventions of a thriller and develop a clearer understanding of each element included throughout my opening sequence. I also worked with my group to do a screening of my production followed by a presentation of why I have included certain elements within my opening thriller sequence. From doing this, I was able to be a first hand witness to engage the audience reactions to certain parts of the final product. I was able to see from this that there were areas on which I needed to improve on, and areas where the audience felt my group and my work was creatively and successfully used. I then lead the presentations with the other two members of my group and towards the end I asked if there were any feedback from the audience which resulted in many answers from the audience.

This feedback was beneficial to my production as it allowed my group and I to reflect on previous mistakes and strengths and to proceed onto making improvements. For example, when we screened our rough cut we got a lot of negative feedback which then allowed us to re film these parts and correct the mistakes after taking the constructive criticism that the audience had given my group and I. Audience feedback is also important to the filming industry as it allows improvements for next films so that the variety of audience who have viewed the product grows.

For example, three positive comments from the audience feedback was:

• Characters were approachable and easy to watch
• Follows conventions of thriller successfully, allowing suspense, shock and surprise within the audience.
• Developed understanding of how to apply skills to own opening sequence.

Reflecting on these positive comments has allowed me to see where my strong points where in this film and I was particularly excited that an area of which I worked on (Costume and Make up on the characters) was recognised which helped me to identify my strengths within this production and allowed me to evaluate myself on this. The positive feedback has helped me to gain insight as to what success' my group and I have worked towards and allows us to see that some of our hard work has paid off.

Three negative comments from the audience feedback was:

• Unclear with regards to what the narrative is
• Consistent sound track throughout, but fails to experiment with a wide range of sound
• Some areas were too dark for the audience to understand the events taking place

 

Being able to get the negative feedback from my audience allowed my group and  I to get a clear understanding of the areas that need improving when it comes to producing another thriller opening sequence. I was pleased that I got this negative feedback as this works as constructive criticism for my opening sequence as I feel that if I were to make another thriller production then I would know what areas that I would need to improve on. For example, instead of over exaggerating low key lighting, I would have a slight bit more light so that the audience were able to keep up with the opening sequence and engage even further with an in depth understanding.

Overall I feel that I have followed the aims of my brief by creating my own two minute opening sequence to a thriller. This is because my group and I looked at inspirations from many different thrillers and worked together in order to create a plot of how we would approach creating a two minute opening sequence for a thriller. Our aims were to include many moments of shock, surprise and suspense, cast approachable characters and to follow the conventions of a thriller. I feel my group and I was successful in reaching the aims in our opening sequence because our audience feedback contained many features that were successful that we included. For example, when the character of 'Dave' has returned home to find his dead wife 'Stacey', he panics and attempts to leave the house. During this time, the killer is watching Dave squirm and panic and before he comes into contact with him it creates a tension within the atmosphere and therefore the audience feel a sense of shock, surprise and suspense. Therefore due to this I feel that the aims were met in my opening sequence, and due to creating my product I feel I have got a clear understanding of thrillers.

Evaluation AS 7

Here is the link to my preliminary task: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrdoESQ6ipM

Q7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

As part of exploring and developing camera skills, my group and I done a preliminary task. I did this in order to get clear understanding of how to apply certain skills in our final product. We included camera angles such as shot reverse shot, 180 degrees, high angle and low angle. The purpose of doing the preliminary task is to get an idea as to how my group and I would do our final product. I learned from doing the preliminary task how to achieve different camera angles accurately so that when it came to do our opening sequence, I would know how to approach the difficult camera angles and successfully incorporate them into our final product. From doing the preliminary task I learned many skills, such as how to use Final Cut Pro X, how to use a tripod, how to apply different learned skills to my work and to realise the effect that I can create using these camera angles. For example, using Final Cut Pro X allowed me to construct my work together successfully and allowed me to make last minute changes if required. Also, I learned that by having my camera angles in a specific order can help to create an atmosphere as if they are camera angles that make our audience feel either tense, happy, sad, fearful and more. Being able to use a tripod I found particularly useful as it allowed me to experiment with camera angles such as high angle and mid shot. This further helped me in my final product as I was then able to use these camera angles in order to create the sense of shock, surprise and suspense. 

To conclude, through the process of creating an opening sequence I have learned many skills and developed an excellent understanding of what successful thriller films have, what conventions there are and how to make my own opening sequence.

Evaluation AS 6

http://prezi.com/_wdo2d0v1h7f/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Q6) What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the process of developing my group and I’s ideas to create a final product, I learned a various amounts of skills regarding constructing the product using different technologies. For example, in order to plan and evaluate our opening sequence as well as research what makes a successful thriller, I used blogger. Using blogger allowed me to document each of my processes on what I needed to do and give me a clear understanding of where I was up to, and how to go about certain key elements that are needed within a thriller. Having done so, I was able to document my progress with regards to the skills that I have learned and the skills of which I have now applied to my opening sequence. I researched into conventions of a thriller and what made thrillers successful so I would then be able to produce a successful final product. Blogger also allowed me to keep all of my work organised and clear for myself and others to read, this was important throughout because lack of organisation would delay the process of making the thriller as I wouldn’t have known how to carry out the planning of my opening sequence clearly. Another technology I used was the camera and tripod. The camera enabled me to do the filming and with the opportunity to film various scenes from different camera shots meant that we were able to, when editing, find it easier to piece it together smoothly and successfully. Alongside with the camera that I used came a tripod, the tripod helped my group and I to accomplish the necessary camera shots on an even and stable level so that our filming looks more professional such as high angle. Having handheld camera shots in thrillers is very successful, but by having it too much can make our final product look unprofessional and amateur which is something my group and I do not want to achieve, therefore using the tripod allowed us to experiment with how to handle our camera shots too. Moving onto the technology that helped my group and me to develop our final product further, is an editing programme called Final Cut Pro X. This programme allowed my group and I to view all of our recordings together and enabled us to see what pace our final product would be at, as well as viewing it with the ability to add in special effects so that when our audience finally views our final product, they will be more engaged with it. With regards to the sound and credits, that was also put together on Final Cut Pro X, but this part of our final product was under control with my group member; George Moore. He had the ability and understanding to present to Vasil and me certain sounds and style of opening credits that he felt would be successful within our opening sequence. He was able to pick the sounds that complimented our opening sequence very much and helped to develop our opening sequence even further so that it was finished. 

When editing my thriller I was able to edit sound into the opening sequence by using freesound.org which helped me to include sound in order to help create tensions and allow shock, surprise and suspense within my opening sequence.When it came to recording, my group and I worked well together in order to achieve the camera shots that required during the process of filming. For example, when we used a high angle during the filming in the bathroom, we found it difficult because we had to find the point at which would appeal to the audience and make the characters look vulnerable creating the necessary atmosphere. We over-came this difficulty by lifting the camera onto the tripod and tilting the camera slightly and holding the tripod firmly so the camera angle looks stable. Another difficulty that we came across was getting the camera from POV. This was first used through the killers eyes, it was challenging to film with because we had to make it seem that the audience is looking through the killers eyes and so if the camera is too far forward or out of sync with how the killer is walking, it would arouse suspicion and make the final product look amateur which isn’t something that my group and I want to accomplish. However, we were able to get over this obstacle by getting the killer to hold the camera as close to his eyes as possible whilst he walks so that there is a clear link between the camera angle and the killer so the audience are able to see this. 

During the process of editing, I noticed some of the strengths and weaknesses of mine that I feel helped towards making my opening sequence. A strength of mine was being able to look at the opening sequence and see if the timing of the frames were accurate in the sense of being able to create the wanted atmosphere that we wanted our audience to feel and notice. For example, at the beginning of the opening sequence I have the male character ‘Dave’ driving home from work, and if this shot was too long the audience would get bored of this very quickly, however if the frame was too short then it would be unclear to audience as to what’s going on. Therefore I felt that by finding the balance between the two would allow the audience to get an understanding of what’s going on, and also to keep a consistency of change throughout the opening sequence in order to make it more interesting and therefore our audience would engage more. I felt that another one of my strengths was my ability to help towards how smoothly our final product run. It was a joint group effort of which we all excelled at and so it was a group decision on how to run things, I feel that this was a lot of my strength because if my other group members missed something out, I would pick up on it and give them feedback so we would be able to progress our final product even further and more successful. Something that I felt was my weakness was my inability to decide on the correct sound used, and therefore my group and I decided upon George doing this role in picking the sound as he’s work and efforts with this section of our opening sequence meant that it would be successful. Though I am not bad at putting appropriate sound in within our opening sequence, I felt I couldn’t do this to its full potential so as a result of this I chose not to take control of sound.

One area in our film that reflects my editing skills is during the last four frames. This is because this part of the opening sequence shows the most eventful parts where successful editing is heavily required. I believe this to be my most successful editing throughout the whole opening sequence, as despite this being an equally shared group effort; I was able to make sophisticated decisions based upon how certain shots should happen and what pace. For example, in the twenty first frame there is a close up of our male character finding the now dead female victim. From this point onwards, there is a fast pace which I suggested as it represents panic and being unstable. This would make the audience feel unsteady and fearful of the ongoing events, Vasil and George agreed that this would be good to include in the opening sequence so therefore I felt that this was a very successful element to use. Reflecting on my efforts during the process of editing I feel this was my most successful piece of editing as without my direction as to how fast or slow the frames are, we may not have created the tension to the correct standard of creating tension and engaging the audience.

In order to create my evaluation I first used Microsoft Word but as I came to finish I converted each section into different parts onto blogger and prezi. Blogger allowed me to display my different sections and answers clearly and then allowed me to convert my work on to Prezi which is a modern power point and allows me to show an advance and smart way of displaying my work and show my understanding further.

Evaluation AS 5

Q5) How did you attract/address your audience?

As part of finding out what I could include in my opening sequence, I had to explore ways of which to attract the audience and how I would go about doing so. In order to help me, I looked at the work of successful thrillers of the same target audience as ours and took inspiration.  For example, I looked at thrillers with the audience of 15 such as Scream 4. There is a lot of gore used throughout the film however the concept and level of how barbaric it gets is minimal, therefore when it came to filming my opening sequence I was confident in knowing that if I wanted to, I could include swearing and a lot of violence. By looking at successful thrillers and taking inspiration from them, I was able to generate unique ideas and as a result of it I came up with ideas that I felt would attract the audience that I wanted. I was able to do so by adding youngish characters, therefore making them a big part of my thriller as the audience that I want to attract is young. I also took it amongst myself in order to help with my research towards getting a better understanding of thrillers.

I was also aiming to attract my target audience by carrying out various types of research that can be seen on my blog (danniellacrossmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2013). I created a questionnaire which helped towards get the audiences opinion so I could adapt it into my opening sequence and therefore it would be more successful, as if the audience have their say in what goes into it, they will be more willing to want to watch it and then tell their friends about it. This means I would gain more views, which leads to more people talking about my final product so that we can achieve what a good reaction from our audience.  For example, in my questionnaire I asked questions such as 'what setting would you personally use in a thriller?’ where 32% answered that they would film a thriller in a house. This meant that I could take from this that using this would make the audience want to watch my opening sequence and therefore my opening sequence would gain a lot of popularity. Moving onto the rest of the research that can be seen on my blog, I looked at age certificates and the BBFC. Researching through the age certificates and the BBFC allowed me to get a clear understanding of the do’s and don’ts of which I could include into my opening sequence that my group and I were working on. This therefore determined whether the final product was successful or not. Furthermore, I worked to help attract the ideal target audience to our thriller, I studied a varied amount of clips from thrillers that I saw as very successful, such as: Sleeping with the Enemy, Halloween Town, Fatal Attraction, Scream 2, Saw, Black Swan, Shutter Island, The Strangers and many more. This allowed me to get a lot of ideas and inspirations, before developing these inspirations into my own work so that my opening sequence with my group is successful. Having done all of this research, I felt that I was able to go into filming confidently because I had learned different skills that other directors and producers have used, and applied it to my own work. Some inspirations that I took from a lot of these films can be seen in my opening sequence, for example, when the killer enters the vulnerable house, it goes to point of view for the camera shot. I wanted to include this because it made the audience unaware of what’s going to happen and in heightens the sense of enigma. I also included a knife as part of the iconography and I got this idea from scream 2, I used a knife as I felt this was a widely used weapon that was conventional to a thriller and would portray fear and tension the most to my audience. By gathering this primary and secondary it helped to assist my group and me with an outline as to what targets I need to meet in order to gather our audience and attract them into watching my final product so it is then successful.

Evaluation AS 4

Q4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

A target audience is important as it allows me to recognise the scenes appropriate for my thriller so that during filming I am aware of what I can and can't include. My target audience is 15 which means that I am able to explore many techniques freely without having to limit what to include, however some scenes may be inappropriate for example if there are scenes of an extreme extent it wouldn't allow me to use the scenes.When my group and I were creating our opening sequence we took into consideration that the scenes used needed to be appropriate to our target audience. Having a target audience allows us to know what levels of features we can include in our opening sequence so that it’s not too extreme for our slightly younger audience. We needed to be careful of the amount of strong language, gore and violence used as too much of it wouldn’t be appropriate for our target audience and perhaps be too much, ending in the result of being too scary. We made our target audience the age of 15+ because we felt that it would welcome a large variety of age’s to watch our thriller, for example where we have included someone breaking into the house and a dead body of a young girl in or opening sequence, it would be insensitive to use for an audience for 12+ or under. Therefore we felt at 15, teenagers are able to handle a great deal more without being scared and would be able to cope with the more fearful scenes well.

The target audience should feel engaged with my opening sequence throughout because my group and I included strong elements to hold their attention and to gain their liking towards our work. For example, I have included two characters that are very likeable. This is because they represent a happy home and in love, they’re celebrating their anniversary so it makes the audience happy to know that these peaceful characters are happy, helping them to develop a relationship with our characters and so when something bad happens, it makes them want to help. I have also included some useful camera angles such as close ups to show the facial expressions of the vulnerable characters, this often shows the fear coming from them and as a result of this, the audience feel sympathetic towards our characters as they have therefore developed some sort of liking towards them. Another element that has helped to develop the relationship between the audience and the characters is the sound track. This can be heard when our male character, ‘Dave’ has returned home from work and discovers his dead wife... Whilst Dave is running to the bottom of the stairs trying to escape, the heavy beat of his heart can be heard. The use of this diegetic sound really emphasises the characters panic and fear, this makes the audience tense and feel sorry for our character and desperate to help. Due to these elements, I believe that our audience would find a connection and relationship with my characters and therefore our opening sequence would appeal to them.