Everyday character, murderer ideas (made with mindmeister)

Chart to show Thriller viewers age ranges

From this information we decided that an audience of 14-17 age range along with possibly also an audience broaching into 18-24 would provide a fairly niche audience which would be a good basis to aim for as my thriller will be a fairly low budget production with a specific target audience.

The powerpoint that was used to help with our presentation to our media class

 

Real life version of storyboards

Props & costume

Tomorrow I will be going to the drama department at our school to ask about borrowing a prop gun from them for when we actually begin production on our main task. Other props like the pick axe, chainsaw and axe are things I already own, however things like the torch and fake blood will need to be acquired. The torch will need to be fairly powerful as the camera will need to be able to pick up all the video in a wood with little light. This is something i discovered yesterday when trying to take a picture of the wood location that we were going to be using for our project, as the camera would not pick up anything even with a fairly good torch. Our timing will need to be really good to account for the change in daylight on the day of filming. A red source of lighting will also need to be obtained for in the kitchen scene, something that will help connote a sinister feeling in the kitchen of the murderers house. Finally old clothing will need to be acquired for the actor, something that can be torn up and covered in fake blood to symbolize his injury after the kitchen scene.

Conventions and sub genres of Thriller Films

Storyboards (transitions couldn't be changed so pausing the window is advisable for prolonged viewing of each slide)

Our company idea

       

Creation of animatic from storyboards

Yesterday we spent a lunch time up in a wood near our school taking pictures of the frames of our storyboards to later either turn into an animatic or presentation where we can greater develop what happens in each different shot. We have also chose our actor for the role of the victim and we were going to carry on creating the animatic on Wednesday, however our actor Declan Berry cannot make it as he has to go to a dentist appointment. It would have been nice to have him in all the frames of our animatic, but continuity isn't imperative as this is only a ruff idea of our final piece. We have also decided our locations and I will be taking pictures of them on Wednesday at the appropriate time of day for each. I will try to obtain the appropriate red lighting for the kitchen scene by then but this may not be possible. We will be scanning in our paper based storyboards shortly.

Developement of ideas (mind map)

 

Plan for remainder of our time on research and planning (from 26th November):

Tuesday:  Develop our ideas in an online mind map/ plan our storyboards

Wednesday: Storyboard

Thursday: film the storyboard and turn it into an animatic

Saturday & Sunday:  Tom (audience theory applied to textual analysis/ other theory analysis/textual analysis) Dan (institution research/Secondary research (aka film review and Internet review)

Tuesday: Target audience, Company and brand development

Wednesday: Plans for shooting (i.e. lighting, costume, time, location etc.)

Thursday: Go into more detail with planning

Memento (texual analysis)

A convention of this thriller opening is that it is mysterious. It doesn’t reveal very much to the audience, only hints of a whole message. For example clues are left around the room to give you an idea of the situation, the narrators voice acting over the top of the extract tells the audience a great deal about the character and what he is dealing with and the camera movements hint at his general disorientation. Mystery is something that many thrillers contain and so we think that it may be a key aspect of our thriller opening eventually. Overall an active audience is best suited to thrillers with this element. Especially with this extract because it is very complex and sophisticated, but also because the information is almost thrown at your in bits and pieces by the narrator and so needs an active audience member to decipher it.

                 Low saturation of colour is used in the extract. The effect of this makes the sense of disorientation and confusion in the extract bolder and makes the clip seem even more mysterious. It also makes the characters life seem even more bland than it already is with the lack of colour. The use of this in our product may have a emphasising effect on the mystery and horror aspect of it, but just in case it turns out to be ineffective it may be worth editing the colour on one version of our product and not doing so on another. Then we could compare the two or even get feedback from outside our group on which is better.

                An extreme close up on the male protagonists face is used to start off the extract. This shows his empty facial expression really well and creates a good starting point in the process of understanding the character.  We may be able to make use of a shot like this at the beginning because we plan to use close ups of our characters facial expressions in our product as well.

                The camera movements are very slow throughout the extract, the effect of which is the emphasising of the characters slow perception of his surroundings. Another way the extract uses camera movements to effect is when there are POV shots of what the character is looking at in his room. In Memento this is used to show the characters disorientation and overall thought process, justifying what is being said in his head through shots of what he is looking at. The way that we would use this technique in our piece is for the effect of this same disorientation, but as we are not using narration in our piece, we can’t use it to the same effect that Memento can.

Video of reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bragrpm50k

Audience Research (interviews)

Questions:

Do you like a thriller to be easily understandable or not and why?

Give an example of a feature in a thriller opening that you like to see?

Through what means do you watch thrillers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cq-Bbh6aPg

From these interviews I have inferred that there might be a mixture between whether people like to be a passive member of the audience or an active member. Although this is not conclusive information we decided that we will add an element of mystery into our Thriller introduction, but not make it too difficult to understand, so it will cater to both types of audiences.

        We also learnt a variety of features that would be useful to include in our Thriller introduction. For example music, flash backs etc. However the effectiveness of these features will have to be determined later on, because we do not yet know our productive capabilities or conclusive audience preferences in this area.

        Thirdly we found out through what methods our target audience views Thrillers with and how these thrillers are discovered by them. This information will prove useful later on when we work on other areas of research and when we are planning how we will advertise and distribute our finished product.

        Overall the information that we derived from these interviews was useful, if a bit inconclusive. 

Brief history of the Thriller industry

 

Thriller and Suspense Films: These are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Thrillers are often hybrids like for example action- or adventure- thrillers,  sci-fi thrillers (such as Alien (1979)),  crime-caper thrillers (such as The French Connection (1971)),  western-thrillers (such as  High Noon (1952)), film-noir thrillers (such as  Double Indemnity (1944)), even romantic comedy-thrillers (such as Safety Last (1923)).

 

In the 1950s Hitchcock added Technicolor to his still-brilliant dark and moody films, now with exotic locales and glamorous stars. He reached the peak of his career bringing out classic thriller films with this Technicolor on.

 

The spy film was most popular during the 1960s when the Cold War was in evidence, and audiences demanded more action/thriller-suspense pictures. The start of spy thrillers then went into James Bond in 1962. Beginning in the Cold War 60s (after restrictions on violence and sex were lifted somewhat), the slick, escapist Bond action/adventure spy films were appealing to large audiences with their exotic, travelogue locales, tongue-in-cheek humour and dialogue, nifty gadgets and ingenious toys to combat evildoers, fast-action suspense and audacious stunts, and gorgeous, scantily-clad sexy women.

 

More modern, complex, high-intensity political thrillers with paranoiac political atmosphere, double- and triple-crosses, threats to entire countries, spies, assassins, conspiracies, and electronic surveillance were then introduced in the 60's and are still going on today.

 

All information got from: http://www.filmsite.org/thrillerfilms.html

My group for the main task

For the main task in AS I will be working with Dan Hornigold. Neither of us have very much experience in camera work, however Dan has done editing in the past as he makes gaming videos for Youtube. Unfortunately the editing software on the school computers isn't the same as the software he is used to so he is bringing his laptop in so that he can use the software that he has experience with. I think that we will be a successful pair in creating our foundation portfolio.

Shots that we have practiced for our project

Evaluation of performance on Preliminary task

 

Preliminary task

Story boards for preliminary task

Preparation task

In preparation for camerawork that I would soon be doing, we did a task to practice different shot types with cameras. These are some of the pictures we took.

A long shot using the rule of thirds

A close up using the rule of thirds

Medium shot using leading lines

Long shot using leading lines

A second medium shot using leading lines

A medium shot using symmetry and patterns

And finally a long shot using symmetry and patterns

Introduction to my blog

I created this blog to document the development of my Media Studies skills throughout the process of this course. I am a beginner to the subject of media as I haven't had any previous experience in it and didn't participate in the GCSE level qualification of it. I am looking forward to it however as it is my aspiration in life to become a director of film, and I believe this is a subject I will find greatly interesting.