Evaluation of Thriller Task

Q1. When producing our opening to a thriller film, it was important, that we looked at other thriller films, to influence us on certain areas, when it came to our film.

First off, costume. As our thriller is based on a mystery genre, we had to make sure that the costume fitted this genre, and related to what theme we wanted to get across. When it came to costume, the ‘troubled’ protagonist, wears a simple grey t-shirt and jeans. This simple costume blends into the character and reflects the fact that the character has switched worlds, and has no knowledge of the one he is in. The costume shows this, as it is quite messy and tatted. We thought that it would be better to have something simpler, then a suit or a specific stereotypical costume as the current costume would work with the themes of our film and the whole ‘low-contrast, dull colours’ we were creating for it.

Our locations had to be urban, and it was quite an important decision to make. It had to match and create the effect of a world that was broken down, and had to be mysterious, yet a place the audience could relate to. We picked a car park, and several other areas around the school (such as stairs, an alleyway), etc, that was at our sixth form. The car park was decrepit and open spaced and this allowed us, to make some of our camera shots, very effective. By chance of filming on the day that we did, the weather was especially dull, and it had been raining, and that, tied into the dull location, made these areas we filmed, murky, and opaque, and so they fitted in with the colours, we wanted to create. Some of the images that we created were inspired by the fim ‘Blade Runner’, as in this film; the landscape is quite gritty and cloudy, and this is exactly what we created in our film piece.

One of our key scenes that we had made, were the flashbacks. Some of these scenes were filmed at a house, as we were creating the impression of the characters normal, usual, everyday happenings. We wanted to create another world, that was normal, but this was the world that the protagonist had been in, but was very blurred to him (as shown with the effects in the film). We tried to base our flashbacks around the flashbacks that we see in the film ‘Bourne Ultimatum’ as these flashbacks scenes are very different to the rest of the film and so set apart two worlds from each other, in this.

The soundtrack was a little difficult, as we couldn’t put any old song into our film. It couldn’t be copyrighted and it needed to properly fit in with the film. So ours was mostly made up of sound effects. These would stretch to the loading up of a gun, to the sudden change in music and pace during the flashback sequences. We also had tense music, which ran along the whole piece and gave the feel and emotion to the film. We wanted to base our soundtrack with the sounds we heard in ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ as our films genre is very similar to the genre in this film. The sounds in this film are faced pace and are very mysterious and ‘trippy’, and fit in with the themes of our film.

The camera angles are another part of the process that makes our film successful. Our camera shots are done according to certain actions in the piece. When it came to the protagonist getting to his feet and surveying the surroundings of where he is. We built this sequence up with a lot of extreme close ups and long shots. The extreme shots, pointing into his eye is to emphasis him waking up, and the long shots show him getting to his feet. We used most of the close up shots to make out some of the objects and places that signified certain things in the film. For example the close up of the gun when it is in the protagonist hand – this shows his understanding that he has the gun, and what he will do with it.

The overall plot to our film certainly relates to the tv drama ‘Smallville’ as we based our protagonist on him. We also based out film on again, ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’, and so tried to fuse together an Espionage genre with a mysterious, unusual, plot line.

Q2. Our film doesn’t have any ‘pick out’ stereotypes as there is no recognition of any typical femme fatal or a adrenaline driven officer, which are the typical characters, in a general thriller film.

In our film there is a gender bias as the film is dominated by a single male who is ‘young and troubled’ and is slightly confused of his whereabouts, so this is a fairly conventational representation of a stereotype. It does, however, fit the stereotype of a male dominated role, as there is no women in this film whatsoever and by default, the male is more dominant here.

Gender is only represented minimally in the use of a contemporary figure of males and the character us represented more through the plot, then the actual stereotype.

The only social class that the young boy represents, is a typical boy with a lot of confusion, and seeks this help through his understanding of the ‘other world’ through the flashbacks, that the audience see.

Q3. The kind of media institutions that would distribute the product would be online websites like Youtube. Youtube is a site where you can upload videos for free, for people worldwide to watch it. This would be a good opportunity to take, as it is a free way of advertising your videos, and a good base to share your video with other people. You could also enter into any sort of short film competitions; these can be researched and found on the Internet. As well as this, we would be able to put them on certain social networking sites, to show the film to different audiences. Our film is challenging and original for the main fact that we do not have high special effects such as CGI, and we do not have a budget, of which to go by. We do not have a-list actors or big budget locations to use. All locations that were filmed were in reasonable distances of which we were able to get to. This would make us able to have it funded by mainstream film company’s (such as Warp Films) and it could be developed further. Thus certain cinema outlets could be possible, and as our thriller is a mystery/espionage genre it would be able to appear in an art house as it a complex/subversive Thriller.

Q4. Our target audience is 15-24 year old males, who enjoy a gripping story and faced paced action. The film is influenced by a few mainstream films, especially the film ‘Bourne Ultimatum’, which we based our flashbacks, characters and action, and general look on, we aimed to make the effects of the flashbacks, a lot like they are in this film and the plotline was inspired by the one in this film. We also based some of our other visual landscapes on ‘Blade Runner’, as our film has an espionage genre to it. This would appeal to this audience, because it has a mystery element to it and has action in it, which keeps the viewer, hooked, and doesn’t waste time with jumping into the plot when the opening of the thriller starts. It had to connect with the findings that we got from when we carried out our research into what age range, this particular audience likes. We came out with espionage/physiological thriller as the genre most people liked.

Most of the locations had to be quite gritty and dull and fit in with the films themes. It had to link into the plotline of mystery so we could have the full package of the espionage genre. 

  

Q5/6. When creating our opening of a thriller film, we used various media products, which made the making process of the film, a lot easier. These were:

A Digital Video Camera – This was used to film the entire opening and was the base around the recording of the scenes we created. The camera was easy to use and it was something to use to film the scenes with.

Adobe Premiere Elements – This was the editing software we used to edit our film, and was the base of putting the film together, putting in sounds, video, and effects (if necessary).

Dafont.com – When making the title sequence of the film, we needed a font that was both interesting and different, and not some average font that looked boring. This was the site we went to find a font we liked. There was a collection of fonts on the site that we could choose from.

Freesound.org – One of the important rules we had to follow when making our film was that we couldn’t use any copyrighted music and couldn’t insert any in. So we were given a collection of sites where we could get un-copyrighted sound effects to put into the thriller. This was one of the sites we used, and we found a range of sounds, going from flashback sounds to sounds of the rain.

Adobe After Effects – This was the software that only I used in our group as I wanted some realistic effects in our flashbacks, and Adobe Premiere Elements, only had basic, premade effects, that just weren’t going to work. This piece of software was a more advanced approach at creating a very good effect. Through tweaking various contracts, lighting and colours, I ended up making a really good, dark, flashback scenes, that had flickers and patches that made it look like it was in a film.

YouTube – This website is a video embedding site, where, when we’ve finished making our films, we can upload it onto the site for people to go and have a look at the finished product.

Blogspot – Connecting to the Media Studies course, this is where we upload our work. It is a multimedia page, where we put, pictures, videos and just general word documents onto for our teachers to see. This is where we will put our embedded version of our Thriller film.

With new technologies coming out every few years, the bar for creativity has risen significantly. You are able to have a lot more freedom on some of the media projects that people make, that were once made so simple through average media software. If we took Adobe Premiere and compared it to Adobe After Effects, If I were to make a movie with just Adobe Premiere it would be pretty basic, and would just be a movie with film, text and few bits of music in it. Without after effects, I wouldn’t have been able to put in high quality effects, which make the movie more ‘professional’ and actually look like a real movie. I also wouldn’t have been able to change the colours, contrasts, transitions and made the film, as a whole, a lot bolder. 

What I have learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product is that that are a wide range of available media products, that make movie making, a lot easier to do. Instead of using a basic movie making software, such as Windows Movie Maker, there are products that can take basic transitions, to as far as creating your own transition and making your film a hell lot more interesting. Also, as video-editing software has improved over the years, you are able to have so much more impact on how you make a film and what you are capable of doing with it. With advanced products you can edit your own sound and video making it a lot more interesting then just an average drag-video-onto-timeline, and stick an effect on it.

Another helpful advantage is how the user can choose the video format for your video. You can change and pick the video format you want your video to come out of, depending on which video player you have, so that you can have high resolution/high quality videos where you can watch without settling for an average windows media player format.

Q7. From comparing the preliminary task to the full product, there were a lot of differences and similarities, in different areas.

Firstly, and most obvious, both were filmed with a video camera, and made the experience really easy to do if you’ve never used one before. However, when editing both products, with the preliminary task, you didn’t have to edit so much, as you didn’t need to spend so much time putting effects and sound into it, as it was a basic task of video and titles. Where as the thriller, needed a lot of inserting, with sounds, effects, and titles, to make it a lot more interesting, as you were basing it on a genre and need to fit it.

When it came to technology, I used Adobe Premiere Elements for both tasks but I used After Effects for the thriller, as it had more advanced effects on it, and I needed that to make some of my scenes, a lot more interesting. Here, I was able to develop my media skills as I was given a tutorial onto how to make a good flashback, using after effects. I was able to discover certain points in the programme by changing certain contrasts or lifting up the colours. Even though I was given a tutorial, I was able to use this as a base for making a simple flashback, but I was able to use my own creativity to change it into a flashback that was mysterious and opaque and I was able to make it a lot more exciting for the audience. The prelim task didn’t need any effects whatsoever.

When planning both tasks, there was minimal planning when it came to the prelim task, as it was just a case of going out and filming it. But with the thriller, you need to plan a lot for it, as it was longer, and you needed to think about where you were going to film it, what location would work for your genre, what props you would need to use, what costumes needed to be right, and what was generally easy to do. Plans changed with the thriller, ad there would always be a complications with the locations, for example as it would be more difficult filming in a public place, then it would filming somewhere, where it is less deserted.

The challenge of the task had various aspects to it, the aims we were given were simple and could be completed but other things like weather etc, could get in the way and affect filming, putting you behind with it. There was a big difference in the freedom of the two tasks, we had a limited amount of time for both, but as the prelim had a set plot with what we had to do (somebody walking in, sitting down and having a conversation) and that was it. We had to put in a lot of research for the thriller task, as it was a case of planning what we were going to do, and how were going to do it, locations, filming, etc, whereas we needed none for the prelim task. We could pick our own genre for the thriller task (we picked a mystery/espionage genre for out thriller film) but we didn’t in the prelim as there were no genres, as it was set out what we need to do, and was a basic task of just filming it.

Media Questionnaire

My Name is Jamil Khan. My GCSE results are a C in Geography, A C in Drama, a C in I.T, a C in Sociology, A B in Religious Studies, a D in Technology, a C in English, an D in English Literature, a C in Science and a C in Additional Science.

My hobbies are listening to music, making videos for my Youtube channel. Playing the drums, and spending time with my friends.

The newspapers I read are The Sun, The Guardian and The Times.

I read the sun because it has all genres of news in it, such as Showbiz, TV and sport. I read The Guardian and The Times, because it focuses more on politics and the government where as The Sun doesn’t really focus on that.

I prefer to read the news online then buying a newspaper because on the Internet it’s easier to find news and lot easier for me then going to a shop and paying for a newspaper I will just look at and then never read again.

The Radio I listen to is Radio 1, I listen to this because it has a varies news and entertainment where as stations like Kiss for example I feel only reach out to one generic audience.

My favourite genres of music are Electronic, Dubstep and indie rock music.

I access music on the internet and I feel that illegally downloading music off the internet isn’t as bad as everyone makes it out to be, infact now’er days lots of people do it more, are you going to be able to capture every single person that downloads music? If your downloading a certain bands album, your downloading it because you want to listen to it and you like what music they play. And isn’t that what it is mostly about? Not money, but the love of music? Technically by the law you are stealing, but it doesn’t cause any great harm then other crimes. It’s the record company’s that get angry about it most, because they are the ones who are selling it and want to get money from the albums. Whereas an artist concern is that people are taking interest in they’re music and people starting to like it, having more fans perhaps? You may in the future go and buy there album because you like they’re music. But most of that money goes to corporations (record companies).

I think the music industry has an affect and influences a lot of people, I think how people dress, relates to what music people listen to as music can sometimes be a ‘lifestyle’ and people want to be a certain stereotype.  Personally it doesn’t affect the way I dress massively, but it does have a small affect.

My favourite games are the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises. I like this game as I like music a lot, and it can be fun to play instruments., even if it is pressing a few buttons… Sometimes video games can have negative attitudes towards certain conflicts and situations such as violent video games. This has been a controversial issue as people think that the games can make people violent mentally, especially small children. But I believe that as young children it is up to the parents to teach children about what to do in conflicts and situations and what the ‘right or ‘wrong’ thing to do is.

I think that new technology has helped industry and people widely to be able to do more things easier and better. Like sending an email portably without going to a computer and doing it. Also being able to communicate with people has become much easier now especially having long distant conversation with people. Also being able to watch films, television programmes and listen to music has become a lot easier to do with technology such as mp3 players, iphones and ipods.

My favourite TV channels are Sky Sports channels, Channel 4, and the BBC channels. I like these channels as they have programming on it that appeals to me and that I like to watch. My favourite TV genre is Adventure, I like this because it never becomes stale, and its never the same old stuff you can predict all the time. Television programmes I would consider memorable would be, Lost and House.

I would say Lost as it was very unpredictable and it through surprises at you a lot of the time and could be quite confusing at times, but it kept you at the edge of your seat. I would say House as it very emotional, and had a lot of twist and turns in the programme.

My favourite film genre is drama as they are good in the series plot driven presentations that they have and how you can relate to plots, as they may be real life situations and realistic characters that are based on regular people. 3 films that I think are outstanding are the blind side, 500 days of summer, and The shawshank redemption. The blind side is an outstanding film as it is based on real events and comes a cross as an emotional piece of film. It has a great plot, good actors and good dramatization. The director shows the story in a unique way. 500 days of summer is another good film as the story itself is different and original. Its not your average film love story, it shows a relationship in a real way, it’s a story people can relate to. It’s honest. As it is original, the soundtrack that comes with it is common music that usual people like the characters in the film would be able to relate to. The director has used various clever techniques like split screen to not make the film to boring and give it some light and originality. The shawshank redemption. The writer of this film is very good, and has told a story very different to any story. The emotion the actors send across to the audience is perfect and the scenes in the film are great. It’s a good film that was made because of the message it conveys. It is one of eternal hope. The film has a different feel to it as the main character never gives up his quest to become a free man out of prison as he is in there for a crime he did not commit. Stephen is an incredibly good writer, but his adaption’s are always done by the best directors., and he achieves this. It is that good of a movie that one that will be appreciated in years to come.

I like to consume films on television and watching them in the cinema. I would prefer to watch them on television. I occasionally watch movies at the cinema if it is a film I am desperate to see.

My favourite cinema in Norwich is probably Vue. I prefer Vue because as I think the seating arrangement is better compared to others as it benefits me for how well I can see the screen. The seats are comfy compared to Odeon as they have pull down seats that annoy me easily.  Plus Vue is in the city centre so therefore it is nearer to me.

I would prefer to watch films on my own because if I were to watch them in a group, people in that group could keep asking questions about the film and that would be annoying if I was trying to watch the film.

When it comes to media production I am a producer myself as I have an online youtube show, which is a wrestling league. I have been doing that for about 2 years now and it is a big hobby of mine. I was first interested in doing something like that, when I saw people in American do it and I was watching there videos and thought that that could be a lot of fun, and I could have my own view on it and my own ideas for a show.

A media text that has interested me is Slumdog Millionaire. This is a story where most of the ideas that are in the film are from real life situations and events. The production of the film has had a lot research gone into the slums in India and the good message that it send across of that ‘you can win. Plus the film is brutally honest, all the social evils and practises that really happen in a country like that. No director really has ever been bold or brave to portray Mumbai for what it really is (especially for me who comes from a nationality like that.). The plot of an underdog rising through all kinds of ranks to win the game show was something, which left a good taste in everyone’s mouth. And now to see the massively global it has become it can make people think about how places are perceived and if it’s telling the truth or not.

I chose media studies because I like the practical and academic side to it. The practical side of things gives us the opportunity to express our ideas and ourselves and to take them and put it all together. I like the academic side of it as we can dig deeper into media texts and see not what’s just on the screen but why for example a director has used different pieces of lighting for a scene or why he chose to use a camera angel for a certain shot.