Our thriller plays on everyone's biggest fears - internet hacking and stalking. The film starts with a red herring as the audience see the main character with his back to the camera typing on a computer, then after a few seconds he walks away with a police badge in his hand. We then see him:
- at a train station
- at a shopping arcade with a large crowd around him, however, the audience can't see his identity
- At a bus station
- Outside a school
Alot of the film will be based around the police man who could either be the stalker or the good guy going after the real stalker.
We will later in the thriller have flash backs to bad deeds the bad guy had already done, for example, you will have the stalker torturing someone in his house, but you will never see the guys face, so it will play on the mind of the people watching, who is that guy... is he the good guy, really good? or does he have a dark secret?
What we will do to create contrast in the film is to show something weird going, like maybe the peedo going his thing, which is disturbing, then you could see the policeman doing something normal, like, watching Tv, eating a meal. The audience will not know of this is happening at the same time, or if it is him doing it in the passed.
The last few scenes will see the antagonist revealing himself....
Monday, 13 December 2010
Sunday, 12 December 2010
planning for our thirller
In lesson we were told to start to come up with ideas of what we could do for our opening thriller scene. So we created a brainstorm with as many ideas as possible so it would give us more options to expand on and possibley use. Aslo incase we needed to change our idea we had good back up ideas to use if needed. Once we had choosen our final idea, we expanded on it and then drew it up onto a storyboard.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
thriller conventions - how is a thriller a thriller?
Thriller is a genre litereature and film. There are many sub genres of thrillers, the main wons that everyone will know are crime, mystery and supernatural. The main featurs of a thriller is tension and suspense this helps keep the aduience at constant cliff hangers and at the edge of their seat, and keeping them watching. Usually thrillers are a mystery threwout the film until the end to keep the audince guessing and interested. some people may get slightley mixed up with horror and thrillers, recently they have combined slightley more than ever.
planning our thriller
Yesterday in our lesson we started to write up and storyboard which idea we had choosen to use for our opening scene. our final idea that we have choosen to use is:
The camera is following one man around but the audience never see his face, this is to make it a bit more mysterious and to keep the audience watching and interested in who this person is. We are going to try and betray that this man is a paedophile when really he is a police officer trying to find a paedophile. Threwout all the different shots the audience will never see his face they will just see clues that make them think that he really is the paedophile. then at the end of the film the audience would find out that he was a policeofficer and would find out who the paedophile was.
This storyboard will be uploaded onto the blog.
The camera is following one man around but the audience never see his face, this is to make it a bit more mysterious and to keep the audience watching and interested in who this person is. We are going to try and betray that this man is a paedophile when really he is a police officer trying to find a paedophile. Threwout all the different shots the audience will never see his face they will just see clues that make them think that he really is the paedophile. then at the end of the film the audience would find out that he was a policeofficer and would find out who the paedophile was.
This storyboard will be uploaded onto the blog.
Friday, 10 December 2010
Films ideas
We had the idea, that a normal man was seen as a paedophile, showing clips of him searching and talking to young children, often the shots contain clips of the screen, typing and his scrapbook full of notes. Although within the last few seconds there is a shot of him in his authorititive uniform of a police man, leaving a controvercial red herring amongst the audience.
- Lives at home with mum and dad
- Keeps scrap book
- Very secretive
- No one knows
- Never see his face
- several public locations
- No friends/lonely
- public appearances
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Questionnaire Results Analysis
Therre has been some more results collected from our questionnaires, I have collected the results and shown them on the blog. From what has been collected there is a lot of variety within answers which shoud help me and my group to understand the audience and what they think about thriller films.
By these results it is clear that the audience are not as knowledgeable about media terms when it comes to conventions of a thriller film, this makes the results more valid as they are not analysed but from a typical audience members point of view, the majority of results are valid, not allowing a lot of information to be gained for us.
From the results it is clear to see that an equal amount of men and women both took our questionnaires, making the results less biased to one gender, and more valid when reaching both genders opinions.
50% of the results were taken by people within the age bracket of 15-21, this shows that our results are mainly based from younger audience members, and just within the brackett to watch thriller films, as the typical thriller film is certified 15, although some can be 18, possibly implying that they have not seen a large amount of our results are biased to thriller films as they have not seen 18 certified films.
Equally 25% of the results are split between yes, sometimes and ever so often when asked how often they watch thriller films, it shows that 75% of the participants have watched more than one thriller films, and allows us to use their results when applying to thriller films.
As there are a lot of different options to choose within this question the results becomes less valid in proportian to the rest of the results. Through the table it is evident that a large majority of the participants find comedy, other, Action and Adventure and Animation as the most common types of film genre, but comedy is the most popular with 75% of the votes, showing that most successful films within the audiences enjoyment must involve a form of humour, to entertain the audience. This possibly suggests that for a successful thriller we should involve some form of comedy within our film.
From these results, we can understand what different genres of thrillers the participants have seen, allowing the reader to understand what their preferences of films are.
When asked to name producers of thriller films, the only two results were "Alfred Hitchcock" which indicates that they have knowlegde about thriller films or media.
Unfortunatley this question got the 87.5% of votes replying NO to supplying imput, which doesnt help us to know what they want within a thriller film.
Overall I feel the the questionnaire worked well to generate reliable and valid results which can be used to help us understand some more about audience preferences and their opinions on thriller films.
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Jelly Babies
In our last lesson, we planned and took photos of 10 clips of a typical conventions of a thriller to reproduce a short clip. We used various background ranging from skiing mountains, roads, forests found on the phone used as the background, we think these are portrayed well to show the persuit of the spy to find his enemy to kill. We gave 3 of our jelly babies facial features making their characters look more realistic and authentic, also as we used a variety of camera techniques changing from an extreme close up to an establishing low angle, by doing this we have followed the typical conventions that are found within a thriller.
Still to be edited as we are facing some problems uploading the photos, I may add that they are not in order or with a caption at the moment.
Still to be edited as we are facing some problems uploading the photos, I may add that they are not in order or with a caption at the moment.
Preliminary Film
Our preliminary film is finally on youtube, type in "Apollo Preliminary Film" and it should come up with our film, our youtube account name is "apollomedia1" so that can be searched to find our film aswell.
We are really pleased with our preliminary film.
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Editing
In the last lesson i was in we edited our prelim work, we did this on final cut express.
This is things i have used before, but i hadnt in a while, so it took me some time to get used to it all again, and i still dont think im back to how i used to be, so i just need some more practise i think....
We as a group had issues with uploading from the camera, and as the cameras we used are different from ones im used to, the uploading is different, so that took us a while to figure out.....
This is things i have used before, but i hadnt in a while, so it took me some time to get used to it all again, and i still dont think im back to how i used to be, so i just need some more practise i think....
We as a group had issues with uploading from the camera, and as the cameras we used are different from ones im used to, the uploading is different, so that took us a while to figure out.....
Editing
As I am worried about my editing skills I have been doing some research to try and understand final cut express, and hopefully be able to use it correctly. I was searching through the internetand I came across some useful websites displaying some information about the programme itself, and some videos explaining how to use it.
Wikipedia have described Final Cut Express as "a non-linear video editing application created by Apple Inc. It is the consumer version of Final Cut Pro and is designed for advanced editing of digital video as well as high-definition video, which is used by many amateur and professional videographers. Final Cut Express is considered a "step" above iMovie in terms of capabilities, but a "step" underneath Final Cut Pro and its suite of applications." By reading this I know that final cut express is used by a large amount of people, ranging from students to professional film companies; as one of my aspirations in life it to have a career within media and films it is very important that I understand the importance of these programmes.
Wikipedia have described Final Cut Express as "a non-linear video editing application created by Apple Inc. It is the consumer version of Final Cut Pro and is designed for advanced editing of digital video as well as high-definition video, which is used by many amateur and professional videographers. Final Cut Express is considered a "step" above iMovie in terms of capabilities, but a "step" underneath Final Cut Pro and its suite of applications." By reading this I know that final cut express is used by a large amount of people, ranging from students to professional film companies; as one of my aspirations in life it to have a career within media and films it is very important that I understand the importance of these programmes.
As I was searching through youtube, I searched under the title of "how to use final cut express for beginners" through this search I found an incredible useful video where a young boy goes through step by step on how to use Final Cut Express, the maker made the video extremely well, he highlights the key elements and blacks out the rest of the page allowing no ambiguety from the audience, and also ranges from how to open the programme to editing films itself. After watching this I feel more comfortable about using final cut express in the future, I look forward to using it again.
The typical things that can be found in an Opening Sequence
I created the brain storm of what is typically found within an opening sequence, by doing this I now understand what can typically be found in most films, and I will make sure that by involving these things within our introduction to a thriller film as it will make our film look more professional and authentic.
Preliminary Planning
When we were planning and discussing how we would make our preliminary task we made a story board displaying all of the different elements of filming we were going to involve within the task.We decided that we would use a variety of different camera techniques such as shot reverse shot, over the shoulder, panning, and then zoom panning, allowing the audience to see where the filming is and who is involved. By doing this I believe we created a professional looking short scene, although as it was our first time editing, in future it could be done better in order to make the film look better. A certain part that I edited has a small gap where there is no sound at all, but by doing this I am able to learn that in the future there should be no noticable gaps in the sound, and the camera clips should flow smoothly creating a sophisticated and professional look. I am very pleased with the finished product.
Above is the image of our story board, the planning for our preliminary.
Monday, 6 December 2010
Planning the Thriller Film
We have spent our last lesson as a group planning and discussing different ideas which we think we could use in our introductory 2 minutes of a Thriller film. As a group we came up with a vairety of different ideas ranging from mystical thriller to a back track of what happened. There is a photo of our spider diagram where we arranged our ideas, and planned for our opening credits.
Our first idea was an ariel view of a crowd, and then a gradual zoom into a member of the audiences face, from then on there is the rewinded, back to front look where the whole scene will be showing the present rewind into the past, showing clips of doors slamming, walking, a close up or a gun or knife, and then a zoom on the original face, then the dead person.
A second idea was a young boy on his birthday, as he receives an antique present discovers a note in the paper, it tells him where to go and for when, the young boy then travels to the location, and the camera uses different angles to see this. When he finally arrives he discovers a box on the floor, and a man from behind jumps on him.
A suicide, the close up of a body, then the TV flashes on displaying a variety of different news clips and imaged telling of this dead body, and then the remote is picked up and switched off, following the woman as she leaves.
Back shot of a man walking down an alleyway, dark lighting from a street lamp in the distance.
A person who's loved ones and placed become ruins and damaged, he returns to find his life has changed dramatically but cant find a reason why, burnt house and damaged church.
There are a few more ideas but they need to be noted.
Our ideas are not finalised as not all of our group members were present to discuss, we will try and think of a few more ideas, and then choose a final option. We have thought of some good ideas and will decide and blog about our film choice.
A second idea was a young boy on his birthday, as he receives an antique present discovers a note in the paper, it tells him where to go and for when, the young boy then travels to the location, and the camera uses different angles to see this. When he finally arrives he discovers a box on the floor, and a man from behind jumps on him.
A suicide, the close up of a body, then the TV flashes on displaying a variety of different news clips and imaged telling of this dead body, and then the remote is picked up and switched off, following the woman as she leaves.
Back shot of a man walking down an alleyway, dark lighting from a street lamp in the distance.
A person who's loved ones and placed become ruins and damaged, he returns to find his life has changed dramatically but cant find a reason why, burnt house and damaged church.
There are a few more ideas but they need to be noted.
Our ideas are not finalised as not all of our group members were present to discuss, we will try and think of a few more ideas, and then choose a final option. We have thought of some good ideas and will decide and blog about our film choice.
Friday, 3 December 2010
The Da Vinci Code film opening analysis
The music at the begining of the film is very chiling and dramatic, and when the film title appears it gets louder and ends on a climax, which shows how epic and bold the film will be.The lighting is very dark coloured which associates the theme of terror and death, and makes it more exciting for the audience as they get drawn in to what's happening.
There are several camera techniques which are used to great effect, such as at the begining when we see a man running in an art museum, and panning is used to show the paintings as he runs past them, which creates the effect of as though the paintings are watching the man. Also when he runs, a high - angled camera is used to show how big and vast the museum is, and the audience also has the advantage of seeing who is chasing him.
A jump cut is used to show two scenarios happening at once, so the audience has to wait and get anticipated as they want to find out what happens to the man who is being chased.
There are several camera techniques which are used to great effect, such as at the begining when we see a man running in an art museum, and panning is used to show the paintings as he runs past them, which creates the effect of as though the paintings are watching the man. Also when he runs, a high - angled camera is used to show how big and vast the museum is, and the audience also has the advantage of seeing who is chasing him.A jump cut is used to show two scenarios happening at once, so the audience has to wait and get anticipated as they want to find out what happens to the man who is being chased.
Our premilary task
Our premilary filming task went very well. We used several different camera shots such as zooming in, close - ups and low angle shots. For this task I did mostly all of the acting, which I didn't at all mind doing, even though the weather was very cold!
It took about 45 minutes to film and we had no problems with choosing a location, and we chose to film outside E block as there were many stairs and corridors to use. When we edited our video we used Final Cut Express on the macs which were provided for us. The video looked very good as we used many camera techniques and this made it look quite proffesional, and if we had time to improve it we could include more dialogue.
We hope to upload our video on Youtube as soon as possible.
It took about 45 minutes to film and we had no problems with choosing a location, and we chose to film outside E block as there were many stairs and corridors to use. When we edited our video we used Final Cut Express on the macs which were provided for us. The video looked very good as we used many camera techniques and this made it look quite proffesional, and if we had time to improve it we could include more dialogue.
We hope to upload our video on Youtube as soon as possible.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Questionnaire Results
So far, although there are only a small amount of replies from our questionnairres, I can still make conclusions from the results. As I posted the questionnaire on blogger, facebook and survey monkey it means that there is a large chance that a large variety of people all over the world can access it, although, they don't know it exists, or they just can't be bothered! Which is understandable, but it would be really helpful! Unfortunatly quite a lot of our results are answered by mutual friends or family, meaning that the results will be within a similar age range and familiar types of people.
Survey Results
Are you female or male?
40% male
60% female
What age group do you fit into?
15 - 21 80%
52 - 61 20%
All other age groups were not selected.
Do you Often watch Thriller films?
Yes 20.0%
Sometimes 20.0%
Ever so Often 20.0%
Rarely 20.0%
Never 20.0%
What is your favorite film genre?
Action and Adventure 40.0%
Animation 20%
Bollywood 20%
Comedy 100%
Crime 20%
Documentary 20%
Drama 60%
Family 80%
Horror 20%
Music documentary 0%
Musical 20%
Period and historical 20%
Romance 60%
Science fiction and fantasy 60%
Thriller 20%
World cinema 40%
Other 80%
What would you say are the common features of a thriller film?
1 - Scary
2 - Thrilling...
3 - Suspense
4 - They Make you Jump A lot
5 - Suspense, psychological mind games. gets the audience scared. etc
Have you seen any of these thriller films?
Sherlock Holmes 50%
Taken 50%
Awake 0%
V for Vendetta 25%
The Da Vinci Code 25%
Hide and Seek 25%
IRobot 50%
Gothika 0%
The Eye 50%
2000 Ad 0%
Can you name any producers of thriller films?
No 80%
Yes 20%
How could you help us to improve them? What themes or preferences do you want to see in a brand new thriller film?
Do not have input 80%
Input 20%
To follow on from this post I will analyse the results, and compare them to others.
Survey Results
Are you female or male?
40% male
60% female
What age group do you fit into?
15 - 21 80%
52 - 61 20%
All other age groups were not selected.
Do you Often watch Thriller films?
Yes 20.0%
Sometimes 20.0%
Ever so Often 20.0%
Rarely 20.0%
Never 20.0%
What is your favorite film genre?
Action and Adventure 40.0%
Animation 20%
Bollywood 20%
Comedy 100%
Crime 20%
Documentary 20%
Drama 60%
Family 80%
Horror 20%
Music documentary 0%
Musical 20%
Period and historical 20%
Romance 60%
Science fiction and fantasy 60%
Thriller 20%
World cinema 40%
Other 80%
What would you say are the common features of a thriller film?
1 - Scary
2 - Thrilling...
3 - Suspense
4 - They Make you Jump A lot
5 - Suspense, psychological mind games. gets the audience scared. etc
Have you seen any of these thriller films?
Sherlock Holmes 50%
Taken 50%
Awake 0%
V for Vendetta 25%
The Da Vinci Code 25%
Hide and Seek 25%
IRobot 50%
Gothika 0%
The Eye 50%
2000 Ad 0%
Can you name any producers of thriller films?
No 80%
Yes 20%
How could you help us to improve them? What themes or preferences do you want to see in a brand new thriller film?
Do not have input 80%
Input 20%
To follow on from this post I will analyse the results, and compare them to others.
Editing Preliminary Films
Today in our media lesson, we started to edit our preliminary filming which we took. I learnt how to use Final Cut express, a programme which will be a necessity to editing any of our filming which we take, using this programme today I uploaded the video's from the camera to the computer, put the clips in chronological order, and finally cut and cropped the length of the sound and camera clips so that all clips flow smoothly, making a professional looking short piece of footage. Once i had edited the footage so it reached my desired standard, I exported and saved the video allowing me to upload it to facebook. Unfortunately I could not load it onto youtube today as I did not know the youtube password. The video will be uploaded by tomorrow, so I am excited to see what people think of the clip. I found final cut express quite easy to use, and thoroughly enjoyed learning how to use this programme.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Personal Progress Report
Since the start of the Media Studies AS course, I feel as the development in understanding of myself has improved greatly. By September 2010, I knew some technical terms to do with camera techniques and mis-es-scene, but I had little knowledge of sound and editing. From beginning to study, I am now aware of all the technical terms and general knowledge I will need to know for the future within media. Alongside studying Media, through private research and teaching I now know and would like to know more about the production of films, the whole cycle that happens in order for a film to be completed, how location and marketing affects the sales, how different companies reputations and status can change the success of a film. All of these different attributions which help me to understand all about the media industry, may that be newspapers, music, TV or films, I now understand how much of an impact Media has on our everyday lives.
Since the blogger account was created, I have found myself spending my free time trying to improve blogs, learning how to use the website, and searching it for other media groups. I really enjoy using blogger as the whole idea blogging appeals to me, I read an article some point last year about the impact of blogging, so I signed up to blogger, yet after a short while I lost the willing to do it. The fact that blogger isn't completely new to me is useful as it means I have a general understanding of the website, although generally it is quite easy to understand.
I am glad to say that I have learnt how to embed a video, which has proven to be extremely useful when it comes to describing or analysing opening credits, or the format of a film, by embedding a video from youtube it allows the reader to see what I am analysing, making more sense and understanding. Another useful thing that I have learnt to do using blogger is to post photos onto the web page, or through a link, this is also another useful technique. As you can see above I have imported a photo from the Internet of different examples of media available, and I think other than helping the reader link to the undertsnaind of the text, it also makes the blog look more interesting and readable, as not many readers like pages of text without any type of graphology, by uploading photos and videos I can make the page look more interesting and readable.
Another thing that I am glad to say that I have learnt to do through blogger is to post links onto our blog, by doing this I was able to show research to any readers that follow the posts, quite often when I am analysing an opening title sequence or posting votes and references I have found about previous films, it is useful to post a link to the website I got it from, allowing the reader to get additional innformation if they need it. Quite a lot of the links I have used within my posts link to IMDB, Survey Monkey and Our Facebook Media Group, as I made a facebook account so that we could post our video and questionnaires onto facebook allowing a large variety of people all over the world to acces and complete our questionnaire, although not a lot of people know about it, or in some cases, they just cant be bothered! But it doesnt matter because we still did get some results, I found that by making our facebook account it offered people to get involved with our media, which I felt help for our group to improve.
The video below is the opening title sequence from Catch me if you can, although not a thriller, the reason why I posted this was because it was a creative and unique way of displaying the credits, in my opinion Catch me if you can has a really professional looking style, using the less modern stlye of design. As part of our research, we have been looking up a variety of thriller films, the conventions and attributions to a thriller film, and researching way in which we can make our own thriller film. I believe that through all the research I have completed, I have a comfortable understanding of what I need to know to do with media and Thrillers, although there is still a lot of room for improvement. To improve, I will watch the opening 10 minutes to a variety of different thriller films, alongside a few different stlye so that I become clearer when noticing the conventions of a thriller movie, and the way films are presented.
Above is the opening title sequence of Catch me if you can
I have found that IMDB is a really useful website, it is an online sylabus of movies, allowing the readers to discover all they would need to know about a film leading from who was in it, where it was filmed, who funded it and when it is being released. My teachers introduced me to this website, and I often use it when researching how successful a film is, and the audience responce as IMDB has a voting system, which analyses the results into different sections of audience, this was really helpful when analysing the audience feedback and response to different films.
I believe that Apollo as a group work well, we all put the effort into planning and work, and it is evident that we all have our own posts on blogger. I think although I do regularly post onto blogger, I would like to improve vastly. I intend to try and analyse, or plan a post every day of the week so that I become in a regular cycle of posting. I think that by having more regular and relevant posts my grades will improve significantly.
I am glad to say that I have learnt how to embed a video, which has proven to be extremely useful when it comes to describing or analysing opening credits, or the format of a film, by embedding a video from youtube it allows the reader to see what I am analysing, making more sense and understanding. Another useful thing that I have learnt to do using blogger is to post photos onto the web page, or through a link, this is also another useful technique. As you can see above I have imported a photo from the Internet of different examples of media available, and I think other than helping the reader link to the undertsnaind of the text, it also makes the blog look more interesting and readable, as not many readers like pages of text without any type of graphology, by uploading photos and videos I can make the page look more interesting and readable.
Another thing that I am glad to say that I have learnt to do through blogger is to post links onto our blog, by doing this I was able to show research to any readers that follow the posts, quite often when I am analysing an opening title sequence or posting votes and references I have found about previous films, it is useful to post a link to the website I got it from, allowing the reader to get additional innformation if they need it. Quite a lot of the links I have used within my posts link to IMDB, Survey Monkey and Our Facebook Media Group, as I made a facebook account so that we could post our video and questionnaires onto facebook allowing a large variety of people all over the world to acces and complete our questionnaire, although not a lot of people know about it, or in some cases, they just cant be bothered! But it doesnt matter because we still did get some results, I found that by making our facebook account it offered people to get involved with our media, which I felt help for our group to improve.
The video below is the opening title sequence from Catch me if you can, although not a thriller, the reason why I posted this was because it was a creative and unique way of displaying the credits, in my opinion Catch me if you can has a really professional looking style, using the less modern stlye of design. As part of our research, we have been looking up a variety of thriller films, the conventions and attributions to a thriller film, and researching way in which we can make our own thriller film. I believe that through all the research I have completed, I have a comfortable understanding of what I need to know to do with media and Thrillers, although there is still a lot of room for improvement. To improve, I will watch the opening 10 minutes to a variety of different thriller films, alongside a few different stlye so that I become clearer when noticing the conventions of a thriller movie, and the way films are presented.
Above is the opening title sequence of Catch me if you can
I have found that IMDB is a really useful website, it is an online sylabus of movies, allowing the readers to discover all they would need to know about a film leading from who was in it, where it was filmed, who funded it and when it is being released. My teachers introduced me to this website, and I often use it when researching how successful a film is, and the audience responce as IMDB has a voting system, which analyses the results into different sections of audience, this was really helpful when analysing the audience feedback and response to different films.
I believe that Apollo as a group work well, we all put the effort into planning and work, and it is evident that we all have our own posts on blogger. I think although I do regularly post onto blogger, I would like to improve vastly. I intend to try and analyse, or plan a post every day of the week so that I become in a regular cycle of posting. I think that by having more regular and relevant posts my grades will improve significantly.
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