Preliminary task video

Questionaire

Our group formulated a questionaire so we could have a further understandingof want people wanted from a thriller so we could develop our own thriller. We went into woood green  and enfield town cinema and gave out a 100 surveys. we got back some intresting information


 

    

Storyboard for opening of our thriller

preliminary task

1. mid shot of the library door as it opens
2. 1st character looks nervous
3. 2nd character walks to chair we use a macth on action shot for this
4. same as no.3
5. 2nd character sits down oposite 1st character
6. wide shot of the two characters opposite each other
7. shot of 2nd character as he begins to tlak about a package he needs money for
8. reverse shot of 1st charcter as he replys weakly
9. mid shot of 2nd character as he points  at 1st character and gives a warning
10. close up of 1st character's worried expression
11. wide shot as 2nd character leans forward and grabs 1st character to give a final warning

Evalution

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

•Our thriller takes its inspiration from other thrillers such as Black Mirror, and also we have a slow start in our thriller much like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.  Directors such as David Fincher and Alfred Hitchcock have inspired our thriller and we have  murderer who has no motive behind his murders similar to the film, Seven. 

        My media product does use very generic forms of conventions in thriller films, one being that we keep the character's facial features hidden beneath a dark hood. This creates an enigma around the characters identity and also leads the audience to believe that he is the villain. We make sure there are close ups, also a convention from thrillers but these are always from behind and never revealing the facial features. We also used eerie music to set the scene. We muted  the  phone conversation  again to provide a sense of enigma around who the phone call was from and what it was about. There wasn’t much we did to  challenge the conventions of thrillers, but we did try to challenge stereotypes, for example the misconceptions that people have of young people.  We kept the opening slow rather than fast paced and heart pumping to focus on the enigmatic factor rather than the thrill and to provoke the audience with unanswered questions. Our film doesn’t really follow any of the narrative theory as there is no clear villain.  Everyone has their own reasons for doing what they do, so the film doesn't really follow Levi Strauss's theory of binary opposites or Propp’s theories on characters within the narration. It does however adhere to Todrov’s theory of there being a sense of equilibrium which is disturbed by an outside force being the murders.  There is then a disequilibrium and then the hero must overcome the outside force  (the detective must find the murderer).  Finally there is a new sense. of equilibrium ( nothing can ever be the same again after the situation)

Tzvetan Todrov

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

•In our media product we try to go against the stereotype of social groups. We do this through  making the detective a young man, who although young is married, and having marital problems.   This goes against the convention of a young detective is reckless, aggressive and out of control.  Our detective is calm and calculative although he is stressed  by his job and his outside life, somewhat similar to the convention we usually see in senior cops. Our cast is mainly male, however no particular member of the cast is shown to have dominance. The victim in our media product looks weak throughout despite being a male , the killer is shown to have a defiant sense of dominance however there are signs of weakness such as his It does challenge the stereotype much like Samuel L Jackson’s character in Unbreakable where we see the disabled character have an intellectual dominance over the more abled bodied characters. The detective doesn’t show much dominance as he has to listen and follow his superiors decisions. The cast is a mix of races so there is no stereotyping of a race or ethnicity such as the black character being a thief or immigrant

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

Finding a media institute for our film was difficult as we had to look at what we wanted from our film . Obviously we wanted the film to do well, we wanted it to challenge and entertain the audience however we did not want it to be just another summer blockbuster but maybe a film that would pick up a few accolades and get good recognition. We decided our tactic would be similar to se7en, whereby we would put the film out during the Christmas  holiday. Just before the award season.

 We thought our film could be very similar to Phone Booth because the film is based around a killer who uses a phone as his weapon of murder.  There are also similarities with the film se7en because our film has a maniacal serial killer who has no personal vendetta but rather a more sinister plot.  Because of the similarities we looked at these film's distributors but decided not to go with them because there is more of a  British feel to our film. We then remembered the success of the Kings Speech and Woman in Black and had a look at Momentum Pictures.  It is a vertically integrated conglomerate distribution company. This was perfect for us as it meant they could us pick up the accolades and/or recognition and also they would give the film a British feel but also a global appeal as it is owned by Paramount Pictures.

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

The primary target audience for 13 would be males aged  16-40  , this is because the genre of thriller and especially crime and physiological thriller has a mass appeal to males , also the cast is predominantly male.  However by using popular or attractive actors we could also entice a female audience, like the use of Daniel Radcliffe in Woman in Black. We  wanted the audience to be challenged yet entertained while watching our  film, thus appealing to the older members of the audience as they prefer something which has a clever storyline rather than endless scenes with  chases and explosions.  As many of the cast are young this would have a further appeal to young members of the audience as they will feel as if they can connect with the characters. Looking at it from a media perspective we would probably  fit our film under  a b-d audience for the income bracket theory, reformers and succeeders for young and rubicam and thinkers for VALs theory

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

•Plot: we attracted the older audience with our plot . It is filled with twist and turns and a surprise twist right at the end .  We try to keep the audience  on the edge of their seats and always presented with a new question at each turn of the movie.

•Characters: our characters are all young in the opening so this may attract a younger audience as they may feel a connection with the characters. They are also complex and not always easy to understand so that the audience is kept on its toes trying to work out the motivation of the characters.

•Mis-en-scene: there is quite a contrast in mis-en-scene  between the victim who is wearing t-shirt and jeans in an average flat which gives quite a casual look,  and then we see the detective in a modern office dressed smart in shirt and tie . This will help the film apply to a wider audience as the ere is a smart looking man who may be middle class and there is a casual looking victim who is working class this means both middle class and working class people can relate with the characters

•Dialogue: there isn't much dialogue in our opening only the detectives phone conversation which would be rated 15 as there is swearing in it

Question 6 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this products?

We were provided  with all the equipment by the school who had got it from the Delta Media Centre. It was a basic 5 mega pixel camera which was slightly disappointing and a memory card that didn’t have enough memory.  Fortunately we had other memory cards we could use. We were also given a tripod which was very useful as it kept the camera on a steady base and made sure the footage was steady and the pans were clean . We kept running out of battery and had to use the charger we were given at school.  For one clip we used an iPhone 4 which was ok and even had a better picture . 

I didn’t learn that much from camera work just because I’d done it before. However I did learn a lot using I movie and editing. It was difficult at first but after a while I got a knack for it and it was really enjoyable putting the clips together and seeing our opening coming together. I learn how to cut clips together, how to add music to a clip and also how to split a clip. Overall I did learn a lot doing the opening and had fun at every stage from planning to filming and finally editing the clips together .

Question 7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
•I have to say that I've learnt a lot and I hope my group have as well. I have had experience of filming and planning before and it is always a difficult,   but I'd say the thing that struck me really hard were the deadlines .MEETING DEADLINES IS KEY. This is one of the most difficult things for me to understand as to tell the blatant truth I am  lazy and therefore don’t always meet deadlines. It is difficult to run a project like this with only three people as the less people you have usually means less motivation especially when your team is made up of three lazy teenage boys. We didn't put that much effort in to the preliminary task however we did go all out with the opening as it meant something to all of us and hopefully it shows in the final product. I've also learnt that blogging is difficult and takes a lot of effort. Group work was OK as we were all relatively on the same page as each other and did try keep as much contact as possible.  I also did a massive amount of research on the thriller genre and learnt a good deal and it has now become my favorite genre of film. I finally learnt the basics of editing which I can hopefully use later in life. It was a long and difficult journey from our preliminary task to our final project but it was worth it and fun at the end

Final day of editing

In our second day of editing we did have a few problems. we had got more use to the software which made the rest of the editing that needed to be done a lot easier however put the music onto the product was a lot more difficult than we thought it would be, we kept having trouble sorting out the length of the music for each scene we did finish our product in the end and we were very impressed with the final product after many weeks of planning and filming and editing, it was finally finished we were all quite emotional (LIES!) . It would have been better if we added all the stuff we wanted to add but then our clip would be like 5 minutes. We decided that our production name would be something that rang true to us and so came up with the name ' LAZY BOY PRODUCTIONS'

editing day 1

The first day of editing consisted of a 5 hour session in which we got about to editing our clips together . It was very difficult at first as we had troubles putting all our products onto the imac and the start a project up in I movies. We had never use imovie before so none of us really were expert at this but we dealt well with it and got most of the editing done. shortening the clips were fairly simple but we realized some of the other things we wanted to do  such a s add pictures from the internet were pretty hard to carry out and we ended up leaving them out but overall it was a good day of work it would of been better if we settled down quicker and also if we had some experience but we did what we could with what we had.

Like the imac we used 

imovie -the editing software

Our Opening

our opening to our thriller will start with a phone call to an unknown none the wiser victim who answers the fall we do not hear the phone call we just see the victims face drop. we then black out and come back two weeks later to see a mysterious hooded man enter a phone booth we then cut to the previous victim at the beginning to see him hanging out with his friends he gets a phone call his face drops and he begins to walk to door very slowly with the phone still to his ears. he then opens door and drops his phone before throwing himself over the stairwell to plummet to his death . we as the audience are unaware of why he has done this but only sure that it has something to do with the phone and the mysterious figure in the phone booth. we then cut to a police station in central London to see a young homicide detective going over a string of supposed  suicide cases. he then gets a phone call from the chief telling him to attend the suicide scene. he puts the phone down and exits the room we then end on the number 13 written on the board and the title sequence rolls

The codes and conventions of a thriller are usually easy to tell. you first have the technical techniques which are:

• Use of tracking
• Quick cuts 
•  Extreme close-ups/ close ups
• reveals (track in/zoom in)
• dramatic angles 
• eerie, tense music
• off screen sounds
• low key lightning
• strong directional lighting
• over exposed or color manipulation

You then have the narrative techniques which are:

• plot twists and turns 
• multiple lines of action 
• flashbacks
• red herrings
• chases/pursuits
• misdirection
• deadlines
• principle of concealment
• mysterious characters

Music I was thinking of using for our opening

Music

At first I was looking for up tempo music like U2's beautiful day or Frank Sinatra's come fly with me. as i felt the death scene and the opening as a whole should have an asynchronous feel to it like the shinning's opening scene in the which the happy family are driving through the beautiful countryside however in the background you can an eerie string quartet playing . this way our opening would have an unnatural feel to as if the deaths were not quite right and  as if there was something was not right but my group as whole decided against this as they felt some people  may not get this straight away and it may confuse viewers.

We decide to go for this

we went with this as it had an eerie and sinister feel to it as the acoustic guitar starts it up gentle and harmonious rather sad as if something bad may happen it then increases tempo as the victim is about to kill himself and the electric guitar comes in and the audience begin to wonder what is going on and realizing something sinister is behind this 

Preparation and Planning

This is one of the things we needed to work on more we had quite confident throughout the group because we were confident in our research our idea and what we were going to do however we did plan on the little things and draw a list/schedule of what we needed and what we were going to do regarding time. one problem which was minor but still could be seen as a problem was the fact that we traveled a lot and we did spending a substantial amount of money topping up our oyster cards, this isn't really something we could have avoided as going by bus to these locations would have taken to long and would be waste of filming time however we need to have just put ten pound on our card  at the beginning of the week to avoiding the trouble of fiddling around with the ticket machine in the stations
We also should have made sure we had enough space on the memory cards and made sure we charged the camera however it was a disadvantage having only three or four batteries o share between the class. the filming went well however even though we cut a few ideas we had just because it did really look well camera such as the killer leaving a note in the phone booth  but at the end of the day there was not much i would change, the locations were perfect, we got some really good shots and we had a good time .

Narrative theory

We have also looked at narrative theory; this is basically looking at how most plots for films and story form.

We started with Tzvetan Todrov, a Bulgarian literary theorist reduced the concept of narrative down you a simple recurring formula:

Equilibrium           Disequilibrium               New Equilibrium

This says that a narrative starts with a state of equilibrium or life being normal. An outside force then disrupts this sense of normality; the character/s must then adapt and overcome this disruption and then come to a new sense of normality not quite the same as the first sense of normality

Our second theory was that of Vladimir prop a Russian critic and literary theorist. He studied over 100 Russian fairy tales and proposed that it was possible to classify the characters and their actions his typical character roles were:

.The hero (seeks something)

.The villain (opposes the hero)

.The donor (helps the hero by providing a magic object)

.The dispatcher (sends the hero onto his mission)

.The false hero (falsely assuming the role of the hero)

.The helper (gives the hero support)

.The princess (the hero’s reward but may also need protection from the villain)

This theory actually be found in many feature films such as star wars harry potter and james bond

We finally looked at Claude Levi-Strauss, a social anthropologist. He examined how stories unconsciously reflect the values, beliefs and myths of a culture. He was also interested in how much of the worlds were described in binary opposites. Binary opposites means two conflicting qualities or terms, e.g. light/dark, good/ bad  etc.

Learning about both narrative and audience theory has really helped give us a grasp on our own thriller and in truth we probably do have  afew examplles of the theories within our thriller however hopefully they are not ver conventional and predictable

Audience Theory

In  media we have been looking audience and narrative theory to help us develop our thriller.

 Audience theories are theories on ways for film makers to classify their target audience usually based on the viewers’ age gender and income bracket we have looked at the income bracket status theory. This is basically a way to classify audiences based on their class which is normally judged on the kind o job the main wage earner of the household has. It goes from A-E, A being upper middle class such as top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and i.e.  And E being people at lowest level of income. E.g. unemployed.

We also looked Young and Rubicam’s theory, the theory has four consumers.

Mainstreamers: they like being part of the crowd go for the safe Hollywood type films

Aspirers: they seek the status and glory of succeders and like anything which shows of this status

Succeeders: they already have status and control and so go for things which prove this status

Reformers: they seek self-fulfilment and don’t care what others think. They go for films which show off this independence and also something they really enjoy

We then looked at the values, attitudes and lifestyles theory. This is much like Young and Rubicam’s theory but more in depth.

Innovators: they are successful, sophisticated take charge people who   look for new ideas and are change leaders to others. Image means everything to them so the look for films which assert this sense independence, personality and self-expression

Thinkers: they are people who are mature and satisfied with their lives. They are very well educated and therefore look for a sense of realism and maturity within their films

Achievers: they are people who live very goal orientated lives which are routed around family, work and worship. They seek films which are short and sweet yet show their success

Experiencers: they are young enthusiastic people who are very quick to jump onto a new hype yet are quick to jump off as well. They look fool the cool, risky new stuff and this is reflected in thfilms they watch.

Believers: much like Thinkers are very conventional and conservative. They are very traditional and their lives revolve around family, religion, community and nation. They are very predicted in their film choice as they go for the familiar and established brand.

Strivers: They are trendy and fun loving. Money defines success for them. They usually go for films which boast and brag this sense of success

Makers: much like experience, they are motivated by self expression. They have very constructive skills and value self sufficiency. They seek traditional films which are also a little out there

Survivors: they live very narrowly focused lives with few resources. They seek films which are very familiar to them and believe the world is changing too quickly.

We also looked at the life matrix theory. It is the latest one from the field of market research. It defines ten audience categories based on values, attitudes and beliefs

1.         tribe wired : these are free spirited young singles always looking for new technology

2.        Fun/atics: they are fun seeking young couple who always aspire for achievement

3.        Dynamic duos: these are high involvement couples who are usually very hard working

4.        Priority parents: these are parents who are strongly dominated by the media  and place family values very high

5.        Home soldiers: These are materially ambitious people who are very family orientated and home related

6.        Renaissance women: These are influential mums who are very caring  and active

7.        Rugged tradionalists: These are men with very traditional male values who love the outdoors

8.        Struggling singles: these are people with high aspirations yet  have low economic status

     

video from filming day 2

videos on the the filming day 1

Day 3

On Friday 23rd March we had to trek up to Victoria to film the last scene in our thriller opening we left school at 12:20 as we had no lessons and took a 217 all the way to turnpike lane, we had to wait a while for Michael who we met at the station once we got there we too the the Piccadilly line to Finsbury park and changed to the Victoria line  straight to the Victoria the journey took a while and we got lost on the way to Michael's friends house but once we got there everything was sorted however Michael had the forgotten the fake blood for the death scene this was at first annoying however when we actually got the location i saw it benefited us as the floor aaron would die on was carpet and fake blood would be really hard to get out without the help of vanish oxi action, so i guess every cloud has a silver lining. Michael's friends were very kind they offered us food and entertainment and tried to help with the video so it was all cool. the location wasn't exactly what i had in mind but it was not so far away that we couldn't work with it. we got to michael's friends house at around 2:30 but dint start filming till 4:00 as we were distracted with entertainment (fifa 12). when we did start there was mainly problems with lighting and being able to see the date and time upon the phone as this was a key asset we needed to add to our opening after we fixed the problem it was then down to my shabby camera skills but once i got the hang of it we were on our way the filming went up until the point in which the camera ran out of battery but thank God I was too lazy to give the charger back to Mrs tatham we charged the battery and got on our way again but we then met with a different problem as the memory card kept running out of space so we deleted unnecessary pictures and clips and continued, we then ran out of batteries again and had to charge it we finally had to hurry the last bit of filming as I had to go home and look after my little brother but in the end we got it done and were happy with what we got despite the troubles we had come up against while filming, we done what we'd came to do and headed home. it was not the best day of filming but taught a great listen which is PREPARATION IS KEY and don't fifa 12 while filming .

Day 2

Day 2
on Thursday 22nd March we needed to film the detectives office scene this was difficult as we couldn't use an actual detective office however I remembered that my mums work place had a boardroom that would look perfect for the scene, so we decided to trek up to stratford we left school straight after school and caughtdthe 4:10 from brimsdown to tottenham hale and then the 4:27 to startford.I was the actor for this shoot again while Michael and Aaron co-directed and Aaron fixed the lighting. We got to straford pretty late and then my mum gave us two different rooms to use. one with a lack of natural light and another with windows and natural lighting , we went with the the second one because on the technical side it allows better lighting and a clearer clarity and also we wanted a modern looking room that contrasted with the death scene. the set up took a while as we had to put all the pictures and writing up on the board plus i had to change my shirt for the part. once we finished that it was about six so we had to work fats before it got really dark. the filming went well we had problems with the memory card space and the camera battery. we also had people looking through so we had to be aware of them  als we had problems with lighting but it all worked out in the end

Day 1

On Wednesday 21st of march we decided to film our first scene we did during the end of period 2 and the beginning of period 3 as we all had a free period and decided it would be a perfect to go to hertford road while it was relatively quiet , the time ranged from 10:30 to 11:30. we didn't really have a particular outlook on how the weather should reflect the scene. it could either be gloomy and raining to give the scene a dark and menacing feel however it could be nice and warm and mean filming could be done quicker and in a better manner . Luckily it was the second one we decided that to give it that dark feel we wanted,we would do the scene in black and white. we decided our roles for filming the we week, for this shoot I would be the actor, Aaron would be props and Michael would be director/cameraman. We decided to keep it only as us three doing all the roles because the more people we had the more we had to change around the schedule and have to deal with unreliability. we thought that one of our problems would be people milling around however it was the fact that hearing through the hood was very difficult so we had to do many retakes. \however at the end of the day we got the film done and pretty much flawless

research

Recently I have been researching into which types of thrillers and movies are most successful. I first looked at http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0410/Movie-Genres-With-The-Best-ROI.aspx#axzz1p1hJf8sR  to find the most profitable film genres. It compared each genres ROI (return on investment to see which films made the highest income. The genres were action and adventure, drama, romance and comedies, documentaries and horrors and thrillers. From this I then went onto imdb to look at the top 50 thrillers. Pulp fiction by Quentin tarantino was rated number 1 with more than half a million votes, the top ten seemed to mainly consist of films which were rated 18 and most of them seemed to be crime thrillers this was interesting and very pleasing as we focused our thriller on being a crime/physcological thriller.

I then looked at the top crime thrilers pulp fiction yet again came at no.1 with se7en and reservoir dogs following at no 2 and 3. http://www.flickchart.com/charts?genre=Crime+Thriller

I then looked at the top physcological thrillers. Silence of the lambs was at no 1 and it seemed that physcological thrillers had to have a crazy villian driving the story such as hanibal lecter or travis bickle from  martin scorcesse’s taxi driver.  http://listverse.com/2008/06/23/top-15-psychological-thrillers/

Finally to get a character basis I looked at afi top 100 heros and villlians on wikipedia tosee what people expect of a hero or villian. The top hero was Atticus Finch from  to  kill a mocking bird and  the top villian was hanibal lecter from the silence of the lambs. It seems the hero had to be a man with a strong sense of moral and justice who must over come a great evil to protect what he holds dear. The villians seem to be  men and women who may have once been good but have however become twisted and corrupted. It also seems that a film with a strong villian may not always have a good hero and vica vesra

The research was very helpful and although it may not be very representative however it has given me quite a few ideas on how to construct our opening and characters

Our idea for our thriller was a crime/mystery thriller about murders which are all in the form of suicides each of them occurring after a phone call. a young detective facing marital problems takes up the case and is thrusted into a twisted game with an unlikely killer with no motive.

We have been looking at the codes and conventions of a 'thriller' and in particular we have looked at other thriller openings, mainly to give us guidelines and ideas on our own idea.

I looked at zodiac (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBu8BdhUnmE


zodiac opening is brilliant as the audience hear hurdy gurdy man in the background while  a couple drive to lovers point on the 4th of july yet it is dark and we see dark figures in cars. which is very conventional for a thriller. it is a brilliant asynchronous scene. The car park becomes empty  and then a dark car pulls in and turns off its headlights  the couple looked worried. this creates suspense another code of thrillers, pulls away, a red herring,then another car pulls up and an officer comes out he is dark and mysterious yet there is a sense of reassurance with the officer he then ruthlessly takes out the teens. a big twist right at the beginning of the film.

I have also looked at se7en (1995)
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4thzyFFdvVc


Se7en also has a very good opening as we get these scary and eerie sounds in the background as we see the killer s hands work away at a collage . It consists of lots of extreme close ups and quick cuts which all help to give the scene a rather creepy and twisted feeling. It shows a lot without giving too much away as we see some photos of people who may be the killers victims. it then ends with the killer cut out the word GOD from the american dollar which says 'In God We Trust' and a singer says 'You got me closer to God' which makes the audience wonder whether the killings have something to do with Religion. the opening is brilliant as creates the right amount of tension and mystery within the viewer.

I also looked at many other thrillers such as:

• Disturbia
• Eagle Eye
• The bourne Identity
• The bourne supremacy
• Inception
• The dark knight
• Strangers on a train 
• Physco
• The man who knew too much
• Memento
• Insomnia
• Fight club
• Cape fear
• Phone booth

I finally looked at some other examples of as media studies thrillers

I looked at the 'Living Nightmare'as an example

it showed many example of thriller conventions such as low key lighting , suspenseful music, closeups and canted shots to show the twisted feel of the thriller. There is a dream like sequence which also creates a lot of mystery and enigma around what is going on