Evaluation

The task we were given was, in groups, to create an opening sequence for a thriller. It had to include opening credits and music as well as a short sequence of action.

The first stage was planning out idea. We decided on opening with a spinning bike wheel in a puddle of blood with bloody footprints leading away from the scene. We would then zoom into a close up of a news paper showing the date. This would then cut to the next scene where we see a paper boy and another close u of the date, showing it was 2 days prior to the original date. This, we hoped would create suspense. To create more tension we used music, camera angles and credits.

Our genre was a mystery thriller. The main aspects that help convey this area were the music and the emptiness of the first scene. There are only inanimate objects in this scene but from the way the wheel is spinning and the blood shows that there was a person here in the not so distant past, to help with this theory there are bloody footsteps which would have been washed away if they had been there for any prolonged period of time. Other techniques that we used to build up mystery and suspense were quick cuts between different shots which broke up some of the slow zoom in or outs. Also the cuts from the changed colour to the real colour, this is effective when showing shots of the blood. We used fake blood that we got from a costume shop to add to the effect, we tried other thing such as ketchup and soup but this worked the best.

The media institution used to distribute films are production companies. We feel that that the production company for phone booth would be perfect to distribute our film, this is because in our film, like phone booth, there is someone that we cannot see but we know is there or somewhere near. We would also aim our film at the same age range, older teenagers and adults. Also they use the mystery genre so they would know how to promote our film. This is Fox 2000 pictures, we could use them to advertise the film and also create trailers that could be shown before other films as well as distributing the film worldwide.

I think that the overall result of our opening sequence is effective. It builds up suspense with the lack of people. I like the range of camera angles we used. There are a lot of low angled shots, this makes the viewer feel like he is watching over the scene, they can see the whole picture. The fact that there is no one in the opening sequence meant that you could clearly see that this place was isolated and that you would get no help, this helps create suspense and makes people come to their own conclusion to what has happened to the person riding the bike, the footprints can back this up as well. I also like the eye opening this, I feel, is an effective way of introducing a character and if I were to re do this piece I would have this section at the beginning so that this is the first thing you see

I think that we could improve on a few things, this includes we could have put more emphasis on the date, because I feel at the moment it is hard to follow and people may not know what is going on, it looks like you are just looking at the news paper, we could have found some way of making it very clear that the date is the important part. Also I feel at some points it feels more like a trailer for a film instead of the opening title sequence to a film this is because it is not always clear what is going on, there are a lot of jump cuts which are less common in films than in trailers that do not need to follow a time line. The music is not suitable I don't think, this is because it is too slow, it does not build up a lot of suspense, if there were a base line that was more apparent and it got loader and faster when something dramatic happens this would have been more in tune for a horror film.

Compared to the preliminary task I feel this is a very big improvement. I feel that we have put a lot more thought into this piece, also the editing is better. We did not have the same equipment during our preliminary task so were not able to edit it as well. There was also the fact that in our final piece there were not as many actors, so there was no dietetic sound meaning we could use a soundtrack.

In conclusion I think that overall the task was a success but there were some major areas for improvement such as the editing, we could have used a more comprehensive editing software. Also I think that if we changed the music it would change the feel of the piece and would make it seem like more of a horror movie than what it does at the moment.

once we had filmed we needed to edit the footage and find some music, the music had to be suit what we were doing. We used Windows Movie Maker to edit the film, this works well as a basic editing software but it's not very good for advanced functions, so if i were to do it again i would use a better editing software.

Here is our first draft of the final piece, it did not have titles on it so we changed it as you will see in the final draft.

There are no titles in this sequence above so we had to then change it so that it looks more like the opening sequence of a film.

Our final piece!

we didn't really deviate from the storyboard that much, we kept the order the same as we thought this worked quiet well, however there were a few problems with this and we need to change this, these include;

The music does not suit a horror film, so this needs to be changed

The credits need to fade over the action and not fade to black first

The order also needs to be changed, the eye opening needs to be at the beginning and the spinning wheel after this section,

Finally the dates need to be clearer on the news papers

Production meeting 1

Jamie
Dan
Tom

Today we started expanding on our ideas for our final piece. So far we have decided to start with a close up of a bike wheel with no one around. We then had to decide how to make it clear that it is it two days earlier without having a subtitle of “two days ealier” appear. We decided to pan to either a newspaper or police report with the date clearly visable and then cut to black. We would then open to an alarm clock with the date showing and you now know that it is two days earlier.

Here is the storyboard that we created.

this gave us a general outline of what to include in our film and showed us how it may look. Although this is not all the scenes that we will include there are not many gaps and anything extra will not make a massive difference to the plot line of the story.

age restrictions

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), is the organization responsible for film, DVD and some video game classification in the United Kingdom.
 
(Uc)
universal child, suitible for everyone, but made specificaly for children under 7.

(U)
universal,
made for everyone specificaly for children under 12.


(12A)
only suitible for children over the age of 12 or anyone with a parent

(12)

only suitible for people over the age of 12

(15)

only suitible for people over the age of 15

(18) 

only suitible for people over the age of 18

(R18)

Restricted 18

Can only be seen or baught by people over the age of 18, also can only be sold, or shown in registered shops/cinemas.

We hope our film would be classified as either a 12 or a 15, this way we can make it scary enough so that adults want to see it but we do not restrict our audience too much by having it as an 18

Reaserch

Top 3 Horror movies

According to the imdb (Internet movie database) the third greatest horror film is The Shining (1980), the film is about the winter caretakers of an isolated hotel where Danny, the son, sees visions of the hotel's past using a gift known as "The Shining". Father, Jack Torrance, slowly slips into insanity as a result of cabin fever and former guests of the hotels ghost's.

The Second greatest horror film is Alien (1979) In this film a mining ship lands on a planet to investigate a suspected SOS, the whole crew are unaware of the terror. When a alien life-form attach's itself to the face of a crew member, the rest of the team act fast to try and separate the two organisms.

According to the imdb the number one greatest horror film of all time is about a woman who steals $40,000 so she can move away with her boyfriend. On her way to meet her boyfriend she stays in a remote motel where she is brutally murdered.

These are very different films but all have things in common, one of the main features is that they all involve death in some way, this death is usually followed by more people investigating it and then ending up dead themselves, there are often only a few characters so you get to know and relate to them and sometimes the murderer is someone you have got to know through the film.

Acording to another website the number 1 top rated thriller is the Godfather, followed by, The Godfather: Part II and the Dark Knight is third. This gives us a general idea of what people may want to see. Very Dark films with lots of suspense and twists.

Definition

Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, television, and gaming that includes numerous and often overlapping genres.

Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villains. Literary devices such assuspense, red herrings and cliffhangers are used extensively. "Homer's Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in the Western world and is regarded as an early prototype of the thriller." A thriller is villain driven plot, whereby he presents obstacles the hero must overcome. The genre is a fascinatingly flexible form that can undermine audience complacency through a dramatic rendering of psychological, social, familial and political tensions and encourages sheltered but sensation-hungry audiences, in Hitchcock's phrase, "to put their toe in the cold water of fear to see what it's like."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(genre)

Editing

To Edit our film we will be using Windows movie maker. This is because it is easy to use as well as being an affective editing tool. Movie maker makes it possible to capture video straight from the camera meaning you will not acidentaly import it in the wrong file type and not be able to edit it. This software also alows the use of transitions, effects, titles and credits. We would have been using Adobe premire but it was not working properly on the computers.

Auidence theory's

Looking at the 3 audience theory's "The hypodermic syringe", "The Culmination Theory" and "The two step flow" we decided that none of these really related to our piece, this is because for 1, we don't think that it is strong enough to "inject" people with our ideas, for the second theory we would be part of a larger group of films, our piece on it's own would not be able to influence enough people. However for the third thoery we would hope that people would discuss our piece, so if we had to pick one it would be this one.

preliminary

Preliminary task

Our Preliminary task was to create a story and then draw the story board. The plot we were given was "A man walks into a room, walks across the room and has a few lines of diolouge with another character" This is the story board we have done so far...