Final Thriller Opening

Question 5: How did you address/ attract your audience?

We produced a survey and handed it out to a variety of different ages, genders, ethnicities and from that created pie charts to easily display who are audience is and what they like in thriller movies. For example their favorite genre of music was Indie rock which we supplemented into our opening by creating our own so as to completely control the style to fit our audience's preferences. While the favorite genre of tv programme were drama and documentary which lead us to making our opening symbolic, and from a narrative's point of view to help build the drama and tension for our thriller's plot line. As our movie is certificate 15 it allowed us to be able to include alchohol and cigarretes, which we believe will intice ages 15 and up as it will either help them relate and feel connected to the main character or through their interest in rebellious drug use.

Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

We produced a survey to find out who our audience would be, that likes and watches thriller movies. From that we were able to see what age and gender to target and suit our opening around, such as music and theme. Overall we settled on certificate 15, after realizing that no one below that age watched much of the thriller genre and leaving us able to follow the guidelines of this in terms of alcohol, drugs, mention of death. It was more fitting with our movie idea, and left us open and able to include certain props to add detail to our character's narrative voice. 

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our opening represents or shows the social group of policemen, we stereotypically picked middle aged men as they are used most commonly in old movies. We present policemen in a negative way, as enemies because they killed the narrator's brother. 'Vice Vendetta' is all set around police, as the main character tracks them all down and kills them one by one, we purposely picked pictures of men dressed plainly in shirts and ties, which creates the image of ordinary work-a-day men but as they are burnt it introduces the violent nature of the film. Policemen are the only 'social' group' represented in our opening but the main character is shown to be the complete opposite (antisocial) ; through his clothes, alcohol, living conditions and his day-time activity showing he has no job, or family.

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

We had to make a psychological thriller which is produced mainstream meaning we had to make it attractive to a wider audience.
1. The title of the film- 'Vice Vendetta' we chose to have it in white over black background to make it more extinguished and represent the police as the hope or light in a dark world. The colours suit the style and time period of our film's setting.
2. Setting/location- We wanted somewhere dark and secluded, preferably quiet, after searching we came upon a spot in the main hall under the stairs. There was already a table and cupboard set up and a curtain to block any light making it easier for us to alter the space for our needs.
3. Costumes and Props- As we had decided to go the symbolic route, props were essential to our opening and the first thing we prepared before filming. Going for a period look we seeked out aged blankets, glass, bottle, ash tray etc to help create the effect we were going for.
4. Camerawork and Editing- It took a while for us to get the look we wanted, as we had no dialogue or acting it all relied on our props being shot in the right way to create the narrative voice we wanted for our character. We used constant movement across the table with the use of panning and tracking, to display everything slowly and smooth. Although in editing we mixed it all up to create confusion for the audience, in representation of the unpredictable life the main character has.
5. Title Font and Style- We chose eroded type writer font which we downloaded from Dafont, we believed it again reflected the period style of our thriller, and matched our props in the idea of documents about police   for him to track them down.
6. Story and how the opening sets it up- The narrative of our main character's hatred of police is shown clearly in our opening, it helps and prepares the audience to understand the story line's background and history of what is to come. Also our props help visually to show and introduce the plot; pictures of men hung up, documents, maps.
7. Genre and how the opening suggests it- The props help suggest the mysterious plot line and the dark lighting and setting create a tense atmosphere.
8. How characters are introduced- With the symbolic route we used only one actor to play our main character, and emphasize the narrative voice of our opening. He is introduced with a mid shot, throughout most of the opening we only see parts of his body in the corner of the frame; pouring drinks, burning cigarettes etc to present him in a dark light.
9. Special effects- As i mentioned earlier we edited our film by mixing around the shots to create confusion, we put certain clips quicker than others and in different lights, sometimes going backwards to disorient the audience and represent the narrator's unstable state of mind; how he is living in the past by avenging his brother's death.

Huda Hashi- Question7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

MIS-EN-SCENE

In our preliminary we made many mistakes, for example our film was set in the 50's and our film was also set in an office, however, we didn't manage to cover all the objects around that made it obvious that it was set in a school. At the time of filming we did not realise these errors but we knew that the task was mainly focusing on our camera skills. In our final product we knew the mistakes we made in the preliminary therefore made sure that we prevented it from happening again. In our final piece we didnt focus as much on continuity as the preliminary task, it was more of a montage and just tried to get the audience to get a sense of  what genre we're trying to convey. Once we got on to our final product we were aware that the location would be a very important aspect, this was after seeing our preliminary finished. When we spotted out the setting errors we started looking for our perfect location for our opening squence. This took us a while as we had different options but we had to be sure our choice would suit our story well.  These pictures to the right show the difference of our preliminary task and final product. The areas highlighted help to illustrate the errors I have mentioned above. The final product print screen demonstrates how we overcame this problem and this was simply but using close up shots instead of mid-shots as used in the preliminary task.

CAMERA

I feel like my camera skills improved drastically once we had got to our final task, with help from the preliminary task and practice shots we carried out ourselves as we wanted to be sure that we knew how to use a camera to the best of our ability. In the preliminary task we hand-held the camera. When we were filming our final product we used a tripod and tracks. This was to prevent the camera from shaking, we wanted to make sure we had steady shots. When we did our preliminary we had very little experience with the camera but was very pleased with the outcome of the product, I believed it to be quite impressive for a first mini-task. These print screens show the difference on how well we got the camera to focus by using a tripod. In the preliminary task print-screen the camera does not focus well on the pile of money which I believed caused a bit of distraction to the viewer, by picking up these difficulties it was essential to overcome them in the future. Also in the preliminary task we used the Canon camera which is larger than the Sony Camcorder, we discovered that as we are all rather small it would be much more suitable for us to use the smaller camcorder to prevent from shaking as the larger camera happened to be heavy. This helped us improve drastically from our preliminary task as we did not face these problems during our final product. 

EDITING

I found editing a very interesting part of the process, we used iMovie. I found it straight forward to use as I had used it previously. We had a conversation in our preliminary task, this was somehow difficult as we had to make sure we had every line in. Editing made our product more intrguing to the viewers as we added effects on the colour and the voice of the actress. Once we got on to our final task we were more fimiliar with the Apple computers and iMovie. Our skills developed drastically in our final product. We discovers effects we had not been aware of previously, this was the over lapping effect. I believe that this effect had a major impact on the audiences interest towards the opening squence.

PLANNING

Planning was a major point in producing our products as we worked as a team we had to keep in contact in order to meet up to work on our project. Both our final and preliminary needed a lot of planning as we had to collect our props and we all had to make sure we had the right props. Planning did not only include meeting up with each-other but also the storyboard, we took pride in planning our narrative for our preliminary task and our final product. However we spent a longer period working on our storyboard for our final task. 

This (on the right) is our storyboard for our preliminary task, as you can see we did create a storyboard, however, compared to our final task storyboard this is quite brief. We discovered that a detailed storyboard will help up in producing an outstanding product.

This (on the left) is our final task storyboard, this is much more detailed than our preliminary task this helped us put our final piece together.

Huda Hashi- Question6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? on Prezi

Huda Hashi- Question5.How did you attract/ address your audience?

1. Music adds a whole different atmosphere to anything, when selecting our music to use in our opening we had to make sure it was engaging and intriguing. This was one of the aspects we used to grab our audiences attention, with the mentality that good music makes it more interesting. When researching in the pre-production stage we asked our target audience their favourite music genres and tried to work around the majority's choice. The most popular genre was Indie. This would mean that our music that we chose to use should be near enough or in that genre. 

2.Again in the pre-production stage we went our and asked for the 'favourite genre of TV programmes' the most popular genre was documentaries. We used this and worked around it, we figured that there's also documentries about crime and thought it would be good to base our film around this concept too. This would attract our target audience as they are interested in documentaries.

3. As our opening is made up of constant movements across the table we thought that it would not be very much appealing to our audience, therefore we thought the best idea would be to make it a montage. We believed that this would attract our target audience as there is much more going on n the the sequence which makes it more intriguing and attention dragging as they would feel like they would have to pay attention to understand the plot of the story. This would also come under editing as our editing skills would change the whole attraction to our piece. By this I specifically mean the overlapping shots, this tool added interest to our product.



Huda hashi- Question 4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

We were told to give out questionnaires to find our target audience. By doing this it allowed us to work around their preferences and try and add things in that they might like to see.

AGE

We decided that we wanted our target audience to start from the age of 15. This is simply because we thought it would be better if we tried to engage those near to our ages so we could also relate to their suggestions. Our product would not be appropriate for those under that age as it involves alcohol and drugs (cigarettes). If we had used a younger age we would not be able to fulfil many of the requirements of the thriller genre which would effect the whole purpose of being assigned to do an opening of a psychological thriller as there would be many restrictions that come with it. Although we used age 15 we still had to work around the restriction we had, for example we were not allowed to dwell on inflicting pain. We tackled this by  only suggesting murder not actually filiming anyone get hurt. The use of dim/simple colours does not attract a younger target audience.

GENDER

We don't have a specific gender our film would appeal to, we believe for it to be unisex. However all the character are male but that might still attract female audiences.

ETHNICITY

We believe our film to be aimed at any ethnic group as you can see we have a variety of ethnicities (the pictures of the police officers). This would effect our target audience as they might feel its not aimed at them if their ethnic background was not included. In our survey we had many different ethinic backgrounds, however, we did not decide to focus on just one but try and get a mixture of audiences.

Here's the link to our audience research (questionnaire): http://1221group32012.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/audience-research-questionnaire.html

Here are the results: http://1221group32012.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/questionnaire-results.html

Huda Hashi- Question3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

If we was to compare our film to a film that already exists then we would choose Se7ven, this is because I believe our storyline to be distributed by a independent company however have some mainstream qualities. The reason for this is because we have a niche audience of those who are into very meaningful symbolic thriller films, this might not appeal to everyone as there is a lot of thinking involved and is not a simple storyline.

Se7ven started off being distributed by an independent company, Brad Pitt was starring however he was at a young stage of his career, he is now at a mature stage of his career as an actor. After years of Se7ven being released the distributor turned into a mainstream company. In the future we would also like for our film to essentially follow the footsteps of Se7ven hence why we used a lot of this film in our researching stage.  

Huda Hashi- Question2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our opening we are representing police officers, the whole opening and the rest of the film is be based on them. The police officers are perceived as innocent individuals in the pictures, however the character 'Thomas Crickly' doesn't seem to think so. This is a stereotypical view of police officers as they are mainly targeted just by trying to carry out their duties, however, criminals like to target them as they feel threatened by the police. We chose not to challenge this stereotypical view of the police as we didnt want to make the story too complex, although it is slightly different than mainstream films. Thomas sees something bad in them, something they have done to him. As he draws the X's and burns the pictures of the police officers the audience might start to side with them and feel sorry for them as their innocence is shown through their smiles in the photos. The use of blue background of the police officers pictures also suggests that innocence the audience might have picked up. Police officers are usually respectable citizens, which are keen to keep the community safe. The pictures also show them dressed smartly which implies that these officers are also respectable people and have a high status within the community. Our product only shows one social group so far in the opening and that is the police officers. As it is not a very long clip the audience don't have much knowledge on each police officers but sympathise with them anyway as they are portrayed as the victims of this situation. However they are blind to the reasoning of Thomas Crickly's hatred towards them.

This is an extract from SAW IV. This is an example of police officers trying to help out the community, however, always having the chance of receiving challenging behaviour from the criminal. This is a conventional view of police officers which is similar to our film.

This is the view of the police in our society, which we get our ideas of them. In everyday life we see police officers being challenged by the minority that feel threatened by their presence. This reflects 'Vice Vendette' as Thomas is also against the police force, he represent the world of criminals, even though he has a historic story the audience are unaware at this stage therefore he is presented as a part of the criminal category which makes the representation conventional.

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

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

Jess Gell - Question 7- Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Looking back at our preliminary task, I feel that we

have developed in a number of ways:

1)Shot Composition: There was a lot more thought put into the shot composition in our final piece, and more of a regard for what could be seen within the shots. For example, in our preliminary task there were a lot of small aspects of the shots that made the film seem slightly unprofessional. (E.g. the fact that you could tell it was set in a school when it was meant to be an office) In our final piece, we made sure that there were no unwanted aspects in our shots.


2)Camera: Although I feel that she shots looked decent in the preliminary task, there wasn't much of a variety, particularly with camera movement. In our final opening, there are a lot more viewpoints of objects using a variety of shots, and a lot more movement so that the film is more kinetic and engaging. Also, the movement in our preliminary task wasn't as smooth and stable as it is in our final piece. In our final opening, we used tripods and tracks to ensure that all of the shots were steady.

3)Editing: The preliminary task was very helpful for drawing our attention to continuity. I think that our preliminary task actually had quite a nice flow and continuity to it, and we were able to build on this in our final piece.

4)Lighting: Although we tried to make the room as dark as possible, it was quite difficult to control the lighting. With this in mind, we made sure that the setting for our final video was in a naturally dark place.

As well as our development of the visual elements in our film, there was also a development within these areas:

Planning skills: In our preliminary task, there was a lot less regard for our storyboards, and although we did make a quick storyboard, we didn't follow it very strictly, and some of the shots we made up as we went along. In our final film, we did pay a lot more attention to the storyboard, as it meant that we knew exactly what shots to film. However, we did add a few unplanned shots in which still worked well.
Time management: Although we tried to improve our time management skills from the time between making the preliminary film and the final one, we did still find that we spent a lot of time planning the production rather than getting down to filming it. I think that because we had a shorter amount of time to complete our preliminary task, we completed it quicker and more efficiently, whereas in the final film as we had more time, we felt like there was more time for planning.
Communication and collaborative skills: I felt that the communication between our group in both the preliminary and final film was really good. Before we had even started the preliminary task we exchanged phone numbers, Facebooks, and email accounts so that we could remind each other to complete deadlines and send files to one another.

Jess Gell-Question 6-What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question 6:What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? on Prezi

Jess Gell-Question 5-How did you attract/address your audience?

• 

  Certificate Rating '15' information from the BBFC

  Before we started deciding on what to include in our film, we had to check to BBFC Certificate Ratings to make sure that we didn't include anything that was 'inappropriate' for our audience, as we were including implicit references to violence, and alcohol use. The certificate rating didn't particularly restrict us, as we weren't intending on showing swearing, drugs or nudity in our film.
  We made sure that our film offered the audience pleasures conventionally offered by thrillers, such as giving audience a thrill from being scared, and giving them the opportunity to be 'detectives'. For example the burning of the photos of the policemen offers audience pleasure, as the psychological element of it might even scare them. Additionally, the fact that the main character is marking 'x's on maps and burning photos might make the audience try and guess at what he is going to do later on in the film.
  
  

  

  Title of film

  As our audience had varied preferences and tastes it was quite difficult to appeal to every one of them, however we still tried to appeal to some elements of these preferences. For example:
  ·         Genre: There was an interest in crime and gangster films, so we made our film a hybrid of this genre and thriller. The title 'Vice Vendetta' reflects this aspect, as 'Vice' refers to the 'Vice Squad' in the police force, and 'Vendetta' suggests that there is going to be some sort of revenge and violence/crime.

  

  Inclusion of Black/British and White/British characters

  ·         Ethnicity: The ethnicity of our audience was predominantly White/British and secondly Black/British, so within the pictures of the police force we used pictures of black and white people.
  ·         Soundtrack: Our soundtrack originally comprised of just piano and strings, as we thought it fitted the sinister element of the film well. However we later added atmospheric synthesisers. As well as adding an eerie atmosphere to the soundtrack, we also felt that it would appeal to our audience, as one of the modal preferences in music genres is hip/hop, where synthesisers are often used.
  
  
  We also wanted to make our film aesthetically appealing and engaging to the audience through sound and visuals, because an opening to any good film should intrigue the audience and make them want to watch the rest of it. To engage our audience we used the following techniques:
  ·         Visual effects: In post production we added visual effects such as reversing and changing the speed of shots, using the 'cutaway' technique to overlap shots, and finally using the 'grainy film' and 'x-ray' effects to change the appearance of shots.
  ·         Frequent cuts/ varied shot length: The length of the shots in our film were originally too long, and after getting some audience feedback on them, we realised that we needed to make the film cut more frequently between different shots so that the audience didn't get bored of looking at the same thing for too long. Although thrillers such as 'The Birds' use lengthly shots to create tension, I felt that the shorter length worked just as well, as it was more dramatic.
  ·         Variation of shots: Again, the variation of shots made sure that the audience had an array of different things to focus on in the film. Furthermore the constant movement of the shots made sure that the audience weren't stuck in once place.
  I think that our audience research should have featured more questions about what the audience would want to see in a thriller film, as it was more of a general questionnaire. If we had firmly established at the beginning of the questionnaire to our audience that we were definitely making a thriller film, I think it would have been easier to know what to include in our film that would appeal to them.

Jess Gell-Question 4-Who would be the audience for your media product?

1)Creating the questionnaire
To find out who our target audience were, we created a questionnaire. We wanted our questionnaire to give us a general view on our audience's demographics, psycho-graphics and lifestyle, and also about their consumption of media products and what their general interests were. Our questionnaire featured more closed questions than open ones, as we felt it would easier to collaborate the results onto Microsoft Excel after they had been answered. However it also asked questions about their favourite artists, directors and films so that we could decide whether we had to appeal to a mainstream or independent audience. We decided to include questions about things like their preferred mode of transport, or preferred method of communication just in case we were going to feature any of these things in our film. If we were going to include things like that, we wanted to make sure that our audience could relate to them.

2)Distribution of the questionnaires
We distributed our questionnaires to a variety of people in our school to get a range of answers, as we thought that the wider the variety was of the results, the more freedom we would have in our film to experiment. I think next time we create a questionnaire, it would be good to experiment with online survey programs, as it would enable us to easily store the results digitally, and send the questionnaires to our audience via Social Networking/ emails.


3)Results
Once we had collaborated the results we realised that a variety of answers in fact meant that we had to make our film appeal to a very wide audience, which was quite difficult, as we had to carefully consider each aspect of the film so that would appeal to our audience. To display our results, we used Microsoft Excel to create pie charts, which gave us a more visual way of viewing our audiences demographics and interests.
Our questionnaire results showed that we had quite a mainstream audience, as they were interested in mainstream films and music. We also found out that the main ethnicity was black/white British, and that our main audience was aged from 15-20.

Jess Gell- Question 3- What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Our questionnaires showed us that our target audience's preferences were quite mainstream. (such as their interest in pop music and dance films) Therefore we felt that Universal Studios were an appropriate distributor, as they are a mainstream company. We felt that our film was more appropriate for a mainstream audience, as it explored universal themes such as murder, crime, death and obsession. These aren't themes that could only be understood by a niche independent audience. We felt our film would be appropriate to distribute to a mainstream audience as the narrative and visual codes conformed to the straight forward conventions of the thriller genre. Although the narrative was quite complex, as (if we had made the whole film) it would have been non-chronological , we didn't feel that this necessarily meant that it would therefore appeal to an independent audience, as a great deal of thrillers distributed by mainstream companies have complex narratives, such as Inception.

I think that the distribution and production companies could perhaps have been thought about in more detail. As we focused a great deal on the narrative and how to portray it, focus was lost on the background elements of the film such as deciding on a logo for our company and deciding which distributers to use. However I do still think that the concentrated effort on the production of the film does show, and adds to the overall quality of the film.

Jess Gell-Question 2-How does your media product represent particular social groups?

'Dixon of Dock Green'

The main groups represented in our thriller opening were policemen and mentally ill/disturbed people. As we were trying to appeal to a mixture of mainstream and independent audiences, we made our characters both challenge and conform to their stereotypes. For example:

Policemen:

The weapon-clad Simon
Pegg in 'Hot Fuzz'

The traditional, perhaps more old fashioned stereotypes of policemen are that they are smart, reliable, trustworthy and law-enforcing, such as in the 1950s police drama 'Dixon of Dock Green'. However in later years some fictional policemen have had more active, daring roles, such as in 'Hot Fuzz' and the 70s police drama 'The Sweeny'.  However, although these policemen are slightly more daring, they aren't really corrupt. We wanted our policeman to be more corrupt such as in 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Bad Lieutenant', as there was more room for the psychologically damaged element of the character, which conforms more to the thriller genre. Although our main character didn't conform to the conventional stereotypes of a 'regular' policeman, he did still conform to the stereotype of the corrupt and mentally disturbed policeman. For this reason we felt our film was still a mainstream film as pose to an independent one as the main character was still a stereotype and not the kind of rounded and developed character that would appeal to an independent audience.

Mentally Ill People:

Daniel Craig in 'Dream House'

Admittedly, our representation of the mentally ill is not a very positive one, as it features someone who is psychologically ill plotting to kill his colleagues and burning their portraits, however, this negative stereotype of the mentally ill is typical to mainstream thriller films such as 'Dream House' and 'The Orphan', where the mentally ill characters cause the deaths of others.

'The Orphan'- Isabelle Fuhrman is
responsible for the deaths of many people

Jess Gell- Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The lighter suit of the innocent man contrasts with the
darker suit of the villain

1)The title of the film- We chose to have the white title against a black background as it reflects the contrasting themes within our film: injustice/justice, good/evil, and sanity/insanity. After conducting some product research, we discovered that contrasting colours are frequently used in thrillers to reflect some of these themes. For example in 'Strangers on a Train', the lighter suit of the innocent man contrasts with the darker suit of the villain. Black and white are also colours that are often used in thriller titles such as 'The Ghost Writer'and 'The Manchurian Candidate'. The contrasting colours suggest a sense of inner conflict, which is something that we wanted to convey in our film. We chose black as the dominant create a sense of darkness, fear and suspense.

The dark lighting in 'Brighton Rock' reflects the element
of mystery

2)Setting/location- The entire opening sequence was shot at a table under the stairs. This enabled us to have control over the lighting, as it provided shelter from the light outside which enabled us to create the conventional dark lighting that the thrillers we researched featured, such as Goodfellas and Brighton Rock. The dark lighting reflects the element of mystery and suspense in the plot. However, although we tried to block out the majority of light using black cloth, we still didn't manage to obtain the exact level of darkness we required, so we had to change the lighting in post-production on iMovie11 to make sure that our film still conformed to the conventional dark lighting of most thrillers.

3)Props

We collected a variety of props from different sources. Rather than explicitly using actors to show this violence, we wanted to create a symbolic opening, (similar to Seven or Dexter) so therefore the props were our biggest priority in production. One of the formal conventions of any opening sequence is that it hints at the narrative to follow, and so we were careful to make sure that every prop we used foreshadowed an event that would happen later on in the film.

A few of the props collected
from the Art department

For example:

 Photos of policemen: at the beginning is burnt, and later on one of them is covered with drops of red wine., This foreshadows that later on one of the policemen will be murdered through burning, and the wine represents blood, suggesting he will be shot/stabbed. We developed the idea of the violent symbolism in Dexter by featuring pictures of the victims.

Wine and cigarettes: in our opening reflects the protagonists' troubled mental state, as he has to resort to these things as a temporary escape. In many psychological thrillers, alcohol/mind altering substances are used to portray themes of obsession, insanity and depression.

4)Camerawork and editing

We wanted to make sure that there was constant movement in our opening sequence, so we used pans, tilts and tracking shots to ensure that this would happen. Using storyboards, we planned to shoot a variety of shots including medium-long shots, mid shots and close-ups. Inspired by Seven, we chose not to use too many long shots, as we wanted the viewers to be able to see the detail of the shots. Furthermore, the closeness of the shots also makes the viewer feel more involved, and even trapped.

'Cutaway' Technique on iMovie11

In post-production, once the shots had been sequenced, we found that the movement in the shots actually made the film quite tedious to watch. As it is an opening sequence, we needed it to be engaging so that audience would (if it was a full-length film) continue to watch the rest of it. To overcome this problem, we used the 'cutaway' technique on iMovie to overlap shots, giving it more depth and therefore it became more interesting to watch. We also used fades to make the transition between some of the shots smoother.

'Mom's Typewriter' font

5)Title font and style

After researching a few different titles, we decided on an eroded typewriter font called 'Mom's Typewriter', similar to The King's Speech title font, which we downloaded from Dafont. I think that although we did a lot of research on titles before production, when it came to production they were left till last.

Title for 'The King's Speech'

Originally, we wanted our titles to be diegetic (similarly to our pre-preliminary task), and feature within the film rather than being added later in post-production. However, we ended up adding the titles in post-production, as during production we realised that including the titles diegetically required a lot more planning than we originally thought. Ideally, I would have liked to have created our own titles using an animation software on the Macs. I think that we should have allocated more time to the presentation of the titles so that they reflected the themes of insanity and conflict (for example if they were flickering/more eroded).

However, I do feel that our titles did reflect the generic conventions of thrillers, as the fade effect on the text reflected the element of self decay  and lack of control of the protagonist in the film.

6)Story and how the opening sets it up

As mentioned in Costumes and Props, we made sure that each element of our opening sequence foreshadowed later events in the film, to make sure that we conformed to the formal elements of opening sequences. For example the photos at the beginning show the policemen he is going to murder in order to avenge his brother. Also, the close ups of the protagonist marking Xs on the maps show that he is finding out where they live so he can hunt them down. The slow movement of the camera also suggests a gradual build up of suspense later on in the narrative, and the 'cutaway' effect suggests that there will be lots of overlapping of different stories and events.

7)Genre and how the opening suggests it.

Using our knowledge from the Prezis we created illustrating the generic conventions of the Thriller genre, we were able to make our film use conform to them. 

Wine used to reflect the sense of alcoholism/self destruction

We used many aspects of the Thriller Genre in our opening sequence for example

·         Wine /cigarettes: Reflect the element of self destruction and lack of the character.

·         Dark lighting to create a mysterious, grave atmosphere, and to suggest that there will be conflict later on in the plot

·         Contrasting colours (such as black and white) to reflect themes of  injustice/justice, good/evil and sanity/insanity within the film

·         Similarly to 'Transsiberian', we used atmospheric synthesisers and strings in the soundtrack to create suspense, and a crescendo of cymbals to create tension and a sense of conflict.

8)How characters are introduced

Iconic shot of Jack Nicholson in 'The Shining'

At the beginning, a tracking shot is used to show the victims of the killer, showing that he is psychologically disturbed and has an obsessive nature. This sort of character is similar to the main characters in 'Dream House' and 'The Shining'. The repetition of wine in the shots suggests that he is an alcoholic, and also implies that he has problems he must escape from using alcohol. If we had had more time, I would have liked to have developed the narrative behind each of the victims further by using more techniques that foreshadow their death, which would develop the idea of obsession and violence in our film.

9)Special effects

To add show that our main character was psychologically disturbed, we used certain effects in post-production to demonstrate this. We were inspired by the flickering effects used in 'Seven' when adding these effects.

Jump cuts: These suggest that parts of his mind are missing, and furthermore disorientates the viewer

Overlap effect in 'Se7en'

Overlapping clips: This suggests the different layers of thoughts that the main character is having

Flashes of x-ray/'aged film' effect: These flashes also disorientate the viewer and give a sense of flashbacks

Reverse effect combined with fast motion: Again adds to the effect of flashbacks and memories.

'Police' Photos

 We needed pictures of middle aged men to pose as possible policemen for our main character to be tracking down. We wanted them to look smart and to be against a plain background. We found these of the science teachers in our school, we asked permission of all involved and tracked down the school photographer for a digital copy of each. 

Lesson Plan 19/3/12

• Editing the shot we have got so far

Title Ideas

I have created a survey involving only our target audience and gave them a list of title ideas to pick from. These were my findings.

The titles that we brainstormed were relevant for our film, however some of them were symbolic and others were not.

Lesson Plan 06/03/12

• Decide on a final title for our film

Practice Shots

cThese are  some of the shots we took as practice for our final opening. We used repeats of the same setting as we are not sure of which one we prefer, this will make it easier for us when shooting our final piece.

We chose to film everything from left to right this way it creates that backwards and twisted effect. It also suggests at the narrative, as it is like the main character is travelling back in time to avenge his brother.

Lesson Plan 05/03/12

• Finalize practise shots for film
• Upload it onto blogger 

Lesson Plan 01/03/12

• Film practise shots of props
• Practise camera movements

Props

We created some maps by sticking four A3 sheets together with tape.
To make them seem more used and worn, we creased them before sticking them together, and then tore them in certain places.

                                                                                                                      We went up to the art department and borrowed some objects.

We also borrowed some dark, heavy fabric from the art department which we will use to cover light from the windows, and cover the table. This will help to create the gloomy mysterious effect that we want for our opening sequence.