Thriller Evaluation

As we were instructed to create an opening to a thriller movie using specific devices and techniques from conventional thriller films, our group took influence from a few well known thriller films. We first created a digital story board and a ‘dry run’ of our initial ideas for our thriller ‘DeathWalk’ and views on how we want the finished product to look.
The final look of the main character looked similar to The Ring (2002):Thriller films usually contain certain factors that increase tension and suspense, some of these factors include; isolation, a hostile atmosphere and unpredictable events to ‘shake’ the audience and keep them interested. Some examples of thriller openings that contributed to our film idea include; 28 days later and Arlington road. In the opening to 28 days later the feeling of isolation and seclusion from reality is highlighted, for example when the main character finds that there is no one in the hospital, he then leaves and walks around London to find nobody. I wanted to produce the strong sense of isolation as our piece is a suicidal dream sequence.

However re-creating this environment was difficult when there is no sufficient financing. We decided that a big park would be the best location to try and re-create the impact of seclusion. Some devices used in the opening sequence to Arlington Road were useful techniques and ideas that we included in our work. This included a low ankle shot of abrupt walking and foot movements.
We found this technique abstract and unique and as we were portraying a dream sequence, it was vital that we took and abstract and ‘strange’ approach toward this project to fulfil this effect.We chose to use conventional ‘thriller’ film techniques so that we could merge and develop elements from successful thriller films to create a memorable and hostile atmosphere.
The sound in our final piece was also similar to many conventional thriller films, it consisted of a simple piano melody but was high pitched and minimalistic. The unpredictable events and tension was heightened by the music and added extra hostility and anxiety to the overall sequence. An example of a similar style but with string instruments is the opening sound track to the shining.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDR4OJUPG6A
The product shows the protagonist to be a young female and the piece represents typical subconscious teenage issues of trying to find identity, feelings of isolation and misunderstanding. We decided to use a female as the protagonist because many thriller films use females so that the audience can empathise with their fears and worries. Stereotypical characteristics of a female protagonist in a thriller films are - vulnerability, emotional instability, restlessness and anxiety. These characteristics are mainly used in thriller films, as they are stereotypical connotations of females thus making females be seen to deliver more sentiment to the audience and highlight the tense atmosphere that is being created.Some examples of female protagonists that influenced our work into proving that a female could perfectly portray the role created for our thriller opening are; What Lies Beneath (2000, Michelle Pfeiffer), The Others (2001, Nicole Kidman) and The ring (2002, Daveigh Chase).

We didn’t want our main female to represent a particular race or for the audience to be able to pinpoint a specific social class. When deciding how to represent our views on the protagonist not belonging to a specific social classification we conferred ideas on costume and make-up. Our final idea was a girl to be dressed in a dressing gown and have her face covered up by hair we took a few test shots to see if it would work and we all felt that it looked appropriate for the narrative.

The overall social group I feel that our work represents is teenagers focussing mainly on females and aiming to toward the target audience of working class to middle-class teenage girls.
Our media product is more likely to be a mid-budget Hollywood blockbuster as it follows the conventions of typical thriller movies and uses many elements of previous successful thriller movies. As our thriller includes many intertextual references to other films mentioned previously (28 days later, Arlington Road and The ring), these films were mainly mid-budget blockbusters resulting in our piece being of a similar financial criteria. However 28 days later and The Ring’s production costs would be higher than what the budget we would aim to have due to these film using busy and well known locations to film. By using these locations it creates more financial dilemma as roads may have to be blocked off and police officers to guard the area causing traffic. Possible distributors of the film may be Warner Brothers with the specification being Domestic Theatrical Distributor. Warner Brothers is a successfully established distributor and contributed with Domestic Theatrical distributor to distribute The Shining (1980).

The release of the film would either come out around a specific occasion (e.g. Halloween or Friday 13th) or a school holiday period where teenagers over the age of fifteen will be able to go and see it. The film will also only be showing after 21:00 in the cinema and special late night showings would also be available to increase the ‘thrill’ of going to view it at the cinema.
The main target audience for our media product would be teenage girls as the film idea as a whole covers many teenage issues of depression and isolation. We chose this as a target audience as it is our age group and therefore we decided to create something that would appeal to us. Raising teen suicide rates a turning to be an increasingly big issue amongst society so tackling such a sensitive subject for people around our age group was hard but yet in some senses mentally and emotionally fulfilling.

To attract my target audience I would use a range of promotional campaigns starting with traditional techniques and leading to modern ways of advertising and promoting the film ;(e.g. the internet). Starting with the traditional ways of marketing our film I would promote through:
• Paid trailers on television- Trailers showing on mainly terrestrial channels between popular programmes within an adolescent audience such as; Desperate Housewives (Channel 4), Skins (E4), Shameless (E4),Gossip Girl (ITV2). These programmes are aired after 21:00 in the evening and by using the advertisement breaks between parts of the programme it will capture the attention of the audience. A full trailer may also be debuted after midnight on a terrestrial channel (preferably Channel 4).
• Paid trailers on radio - Radio trailers will air after 20:00 so the audience will be aware of the genre. The voice over will be of a deep male voice making the trailer sound gritty and thrilling. A few sound effects could be used to represent the unpredictable events that occur in the film.
A recent television trailer; http://www.theunbornmovie.net/
Some modern ways to promote the film towards my selected audience:
• Viral Marketing – As young adults have evolved with technology and become accustom to using the internet as a source for entertainment the trailer will be available on film specialist websites and cinema websites. A few cinema websites that the plot and full trailer could be viewed at are; http://www.odeon.co.uk/ , http://www.showcasecinemas.co.uk/ and http://www.empirecinemas.co.uk/. Leaks from film websites may be put onto such sites as www.youtube.com are still a means of free advertising and can only have a positive outcome in the lead up to the release date.
Other ways in which the film could be promoted in the run up to the release date:
• Billboards – This would include advertisements on buses, in the tunnel of trains/subways and on the side of roads and motorways.
• Short flashes of a certain memorable detail from the full trailor in-between programmes on television.


Although we had been briefly introduced to the software used to construct our final piece, I felt that when using the software and trying to perfect a specific detail I had trouble witch tackling the intricacies. However after taking another hour to familiarise myself with the uses and features of the software (Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro) I felt much more confident within the group and was able to help in trying to portray our work and deliver the intentional effect and devices.
I found that once I had created a basic structure or a ‘rough cut’ of our two minute opening sequence it made it a lot easier to change, perfect and make use of the roll range of shots and clips that we had.

In hindsight I feel that as a group and personally, the finished product has exceeded my expectations and yearns to create a successful final piece. Sometimes when you are trying to think of creative ways in which you manipulate your shots when editing, you feel as though you have a ‘mental block’ which can be frustrating.
Although I feel that the end product was successful if I was to re-do or for future reference toward this type of work, I would definitely stick to a more vigorously planned and precise schedule prior to filming dates and start editing before we have got all the shots as it would have been easier to add and perfect once all the shots were done instead of starting once all the filming had been done.

Half Term Filming and Editing

13/02/09
Filming in Finsbury park
It was vital that even though we did not have a college on the Friday before half term, we would of have a 3hr lesson in which we could finish our filming. As we didn’t have that our group made a decision to film on that day anyway as we were already behind because most groups had finished filming. We filmed solidly for about three hours and got alot of footage, probably more than we needed but it means that we have a wider choice when coming to edit next week. I think the hanging scene will we quite effective, when watching it back I felt quite relieved that we’ve now nearly finished.
Myself and Yvonne (another group member) plan to do a the girl tossing in bed scene at her house on Sunday (15/02/09), all in all a productive day filming and a relief into knowing that we will finish on time.
15/02/09
Filming bed shots, Myself and another group member filmed the tossing and turning bed shots in her house we experimented with lots of different angles and shots and used things like boxes and pillows to make the perfect level and get a ‘head-on’ shot of the girl.
16/02/09
Some of our group members came into college on the first day of our holiday to log and capture our footage and make a start on editing. We have around 25minutes of footage which should be more than enough to work with. Myself and Yvonne devised a rough cut of the sequence around 5minutes long so that we will have a basic outline to work with when we return from half term.

First day of Filming

31/01/09
After going to a nearby park in lesson hours, our group was prepared to start filming. Just as we were starting off the parks warden told us that we would need special permission to film in the section of the park and we had to leave. We headed back to college and decided on asking our teacher what our next move was. Would we have to change our whole film idea?
Our group and teacher tried to think of other locations what were not too far away as we had to shoot in the lesson time if we didn’t want to be behind. We find a nearby church yard that had a wide road with a squeaky gate (conventional mise-en-scene for thriller. Once we got there we got a lot of footage that we may or may not use for our final piece but starting somewhere rather than waiting for another week to film was a good idea and the shots we got may come of use at a later date. Although the location wasn’t perfect we now have a stronger idea of what we definitely want and now we have a found a location to continue filming next week. I will go to Finsbury Park and find a tree that suitable for our narrative and filming next week should hopefully be a success.

Thriller evaluation

After watching a couple of example thriller films from the year before we decided that we would be different and challenge the normal thriller conventions. Rather then having a ‘bog standard’ thriller with normal conventions, like an action thriller or a political thriller we thought to create a supernatural thriller. Our way of being creative we used conventions borrowed from the horror genre. We used ideas from other thrillers but then modified them to make them more original.

The conventions of a normal thriller are:
· A race against time
· Contains a lot of violence
· An obvious antagonist
· Lots of guns explosions
· Large elaborate mise-en-scene for the action to take place





The conventions of a supernatural thriller are:
· A conflict between the main character and a super natural force
· Combines the tension of a action thriller with basic instruments of horror like ghost



So for our opening we decided to have a supernatural force battling with our main protagonist, our protagonist being a teenaged female. Rather then a male one, which we usually see. In our opening instead of having the female portrayed as a damsel in distress as they usually are, we have made ours the lead, and given her all the power. But she is heavily isolated so it takes this feel away from the opening, and she seems weak once again.

Another film with a female protagonist

The target audience for my Thriller will be teenagers to young adults, from the age of 16 to about 25. It will appeal highly to them because our film is very similar to a horror/ sci-fi. A typical person who would see our thriller is 18-year-old male Luke, who spends all week working part time and at UNI, on the weekends likes to relax by going out with friends and frequently visits the cinema.



Promotion of films can be the biggest downfall to most films so here are the best ways for our film to get the best advertisement:
· On TV, the Internet via pop-ups & online trailers, the films official website
· In cinemas before bigger name films start showing a trailer
· The radio also could be used
· Posters could be placed around advertising the film, at bus shelters, on busses, billboards etc.

Our video has already been placed on the Internet at http://www.vineo.com/
Because the Internet is available to everyone this means we increase our target audience as people will see our film and then inform friends about it.
We could use social networking sites along with video sites to promote our video. A successful film which was 1st advertised on a social networking site was Adulthood, everyone knew about the film 3 months before it was due to be released in the cinemas thanks to their site on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/adulthoodthemovie
Teenagers and young adults use social networking sites a lot to communicate with and make new friends. Our target audience, sometimes on a daily basis, uses them frequently. So this is the perfect way for us to reach them, it is also free for all to use, so anyone on these sites could find out about our film. The main sites we will use will be Facebook, Myspace & Youtube.



In order for our film to be the best it could we had to make use of all the equipment available to us, from digital cameras to the colleges Apple Mac PCs. We had to get used to them all very quickly, and all the media terminology, so we could name all the shots we used and all the effects so we could describe them. We focused on using pans to elaborate on the protagonist isolation as she’s walking though the park.


This shot is like the opening of 28 Days later when their main protagonist is walking through the empty streets of London.




We start to use more low angle shots as the opening draws to an ending.

This shot is like the one at the start of Arlington road, were the boy is walking but his vision is blurred and it focuses on his feet, we decided to use a zoom blur here.


We had already planned most of the shots already and some were changed when we actually started filming as you can see.



The Apple Macs we used to put our films together already had the programs we needed to do it built in. they were all relatively easy to use, they were Soundtrack Pro & Final cut Pro.


We used Final Cut Pro to get our different shots from the camera to the computer, called logging and capturing, this is the easiest part of this process. We then had to put all the shots together with good continuity; we also had to use different effects to make the film look professional and everything to work together.
This is our final film in Final Cut Pro, after we have added the soundtrack; this is before we have added the end shots of the main protagonist hanging, we also got the idea of the collection of fast shots with the white effect from Arlington Road.
















My Group also made use of soundtrack pro to create our own soundtrack. I wasn’t really good at this so the other group members took over. There was a wide range of sounds to choose from and in the end they settled for a slightly minimalist drone going throughout the duration of the film.



We had planned fully for the final film as are 1st two preliminary films suffered because of a lack of organisation. When you plan you know in advance what your doing, the type of shots your using so you can get straight down to it, when you plan ahead you can also improvise a lot and it will not affect your work because you already know what you want to achieve. We also had learnt to put our all in to the editing of the film because obviously this is the make or break point, you could have the best shots but the below par editing and your thriller wouldn’t look good and vice versa. We were told continuously by teachers and classmates we should of ended with a shot of the protagonist waking up at the end, but on the day we missed the chance to do it. That was the one major criticism we received. Our class and teachers alike complimented us on our P.O.V shot of the protagonist tying the noose on the tree. The fact that we never went over the top with our effects, they particularly liked the slow motion shot of the protagonist tossing and turning in the bed, and the speeded up section of her going through all the different stages. The narrative of her in the bed, and our‘dazzling’ end scene.

The Pitch

23/01/09

Today’s lesson consisted of pitching our final film idea to a panel (three teachers) . We would either receive the ‘green light’ or some constructive criticism toward our idea. Our very first initial idea was to do a chase between two characters similarly to a clip viewed in a previously lesson from the television drama series Torchwood. When discussing further into what we want to achieve in this task we decided to continue sharing ideas on what our final thriller narrative should be.

We then produced two ideas:
The first one is called ‘Downloaded’ and the idea is similar to an exemplar thriller created by one of the media technicians. With this I idea our group would be able to use a range of thriller techniques such as; computer ‘downloading percentage’ shots, the use of match-cutting to heighten tension and create a steady pace of the narrative and a smooth exchange of briefcases similar to a scene in the film Collateral.
The other new idea that our group created was ‘Walk to Death’ which was a dream sequence, based around the process of a girl committing suicide with a rope and a tree. Our ideas were to film the girl from behind without showing her face or any identifiable features using only point of view shots for the audience to empathise with her. We then wanted to end the sequence by having another character walk into the shot just as the girl is about to hang herself, making the final long shot into an over the shoulder shot.

We were in between the two ideas of ‘The Chase’ and ‘Walk to Death’, we asked our teachers for advice and the majority vote was toward the Walk to Death idea. Although we were told that it sounds too much like horror, we were given some guidance on how to make it less gory and more thrilling.

Once pitching both ideas ‘Walk to Death’ go the green light and we received support from our class peers on the idea as well. It reliving to know that we now have a final idea for out thriller film and we plan to do a digital story board with a camera next lesson so filming is not rushed and the speicifc shots we need are noted down.

Final Preliminary Film Pt 2

Final prelim Pt 2

20/01/09

In today’s lesson we finished editing our final preliminary exercise. The finished product in comparison to our previous prelim exercise clearly shows our expanding expertise within camera work and continuity.

After finishing these two tasks it is apparent that we have taken on board the advice and techniques out teachers have told us. I have learnt how the explore the 180 ̊ rule and use it to an advantage, by using this techniques it keeps consistency and gives the finished product a ‘neater’ overall without having to use effects and ‘mirror’ scenes to make them all in one direction. Another useful technique that takes a lot of time and effort to perfectly complete is match-cutting. However this technique is especially useful when in the editing process as it gives you a range of structure and frame sizes to work with and can also help with continuity and focus on a specific object, action or person.

This task showed typical elements of a thriller film e.g. smug characters, use of props such as; a brief case and remote, pulsating music and an unpredictable event. The sequence ended with the ‘less-confident’ character pressing a button on the remote and laughing. As the other character had just left the room with the briefcase the link between the two props was made clear through editing.

Every member of our group showed true skill in certain technical aspects when creating this product, we each have valuable qualities and contribution and the final thriller should hopefully be a successful task.

Final Preliminary Film

16/01/09
Final Preliminary Film

Using the techniques and learning from the errors made in the last Preliminary task our group were asked to devise another thriller scene. We were aware of the errors we had made last time (e.g. tripod leg exposed in final cut of piece, no sound due to deadline) and were determined to finish and create a piece of substantial quality.

Our first few shots were similar to our previous prelim task so we had an idea of the structure and framing that the shot should be. The continuity of the beginning shots I feel were effective and the progression we had made from the previous task to this one was significant.

It was clear that our group as a whole had exceeded our creativity and thought processes as we all had unique and quirky ideas to contribute when filming. We used new techniques such as turning the lights off on one side of the room when the character was walking into the room to use the shadow as a means of continuity.

We also explored different angles and shot sizes to build up tension and prolong the thrilling event, some of the angles we used were; high angle, eye-level angle, extreme close ups, over the shoulder shots and two shots.

By the end of this lesson we had around 25 shots to be cut down into sequence duration of a minute so editing this will be difficult but as we have all learnt from the last prelim it shouldn’t be too bad as we have a stronger idea of what we want our work to depict.