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

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

 

 

 

Technologies that I have learnt to use and helped me during my research, planning and production:

Blogger- blogger is a website in which I can upload all of my course work, it is easy to upload different technologies to blogger so that all of your work is in the same place. I can upload different technologies easily as it allows me to add embed codes from different websites. 

Research

Artofthetitle.com- this website was useful when looking for thriller openings to analyse. The website allows you to watch openings to movies, this made it easy for me to find thriller openings to write about in my research.  It also helps to show effective openings

imdb- you can use this website to find basic information on the film eg genre, actors and a basic story line. I mainly used this website to research film genres and find thriller movies, it is also good if you are looking for the film trailer or clips from the movie. 

bbfc- this website helped me a lot when I was researching age ratings. the website explains out all of the age ratings and the specifications for each one. You can also search for a films on the website and it will tell you it’s age rating and why it got that rating. 

Youtube- youtube is a good website as you can find clips of thriller movies when researching to then go on and analyse.

Planning

Prezi- prezi it good for creating presentations and presenting information in a fun more interactive way. you can also combine images and videos with text. Prezi helps to make your presentations look animated and more interactive.

Scribd- this site will convert your power points and word documents so that you are able to post them on to your blog. This is useful when you have large amounts of text to post. I found this website useful when uploading our pitch to my blog.   

Powtoon- allows you to present information and add animations alongside. It is similar to

powerpoint so you can also add a lot of text on a slide.  

slides- a lot like power point but comes with a lot of different layouts and transitions. 

Glogster- allows you to create online posters, good for adding a lot of information in an interactive way.  

Kizoa- allows you to put pictures together and create a presentation.  I used this when I needed to present multiple images on one post, It created a slide show of presentations for me.    

Padlet- allows you to put a lot of text into a presentation good for large amounts of text and you can also add pictures and videos to go along side with it. 

Production

Cameras- to film our footage we used two different characters; iphone 5c and a canon camera

Sony vagas- sony vagas was useful when editing our video footage and creating our ident.

Audacity-  when creating the sound montage we used audacity, it also helped to add effects to the sound.

Youtube-  to upload our final production we used youtube to make it accessible for people to watch. 

 

 

Production and camera work

During production and filming we used the canon E0S 100D and the cannon 1100 D both of the cameras are similar and shoot similar quality.  We also used a tripod to make sure that the cameras were steady, this made it much easier when filming shots such as tracking shots, we needed to make sure that tracking shots were steady and the camera wasn’t shaky; to do this we had to earn how to use a tripod. The tripod easily attached to the camera and meant that the camera was easily movable and we could shoot steady footage. We mostly used the tripod when shooting long and mid shots as we usually needed the camera to be still for a longer amount of time when shooting shots from longer distances.

 

 

In these shots you can see the use of tracking shots and how by using the tripod we were able to make it a steady shot. We also felt that the use of natural light in this shot was effective, as we followed the girl the sunlight was shining on her giving her an angelic look and showing her innocence. We also stuck to the rule of thirds for this shot to make the girl the focus point of the shot.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When filming to create and effective shot we needed to learn how to focus the cameras as this would make the footage of the shots a much better quality and better footage. To focus the cameras there was a button that needed to be pressed to help so that the cameras could be focused and the footage would be clear. Once you pressed the button a green box would appear on the screen and you would need to allow the camera to focus on the screen.  This was especially useful when filming close up and extreme close up shots as it made sure that the shot was really clear. When doing this we also made sure that we stuck to the rule of thirds as the centre point of the shot is the main point and what you want people to look at is in the main point of the screen.

When using a camera we also learnt lot about framing, we needed to make sure that when filming everything we wanted to be in frame was in shot and that there was nothing in shot that we didn’t want to be there.  When filming footage outside we had make sure that there was nothing in the background eg dog walkers, we often had to wait for people to pass as we wanted to make the audience think that the girl was alone and helpless.    

 

Editing

During the editing process I learnt a lot about how to create the final piece of film, as editing was something that was fairly new to me I learnt a lot about the editing process.  To edit all of our footage we used sony vagas and for sound editing we used audacity. The first thing that we needed to do when editing was filter through all of the footage that we wanted to use and put it into the right order.  We needed to make sure that the continuity of the footage was good and everything fitted and went well together.  We made sure when filming that we stuck to the 180˚ rule by only filming on one side of the actors and avoiding creating jump cuts so that when we began editing we wouldn’t have to spend time trying to fix continuity errors.  We wanted it to be fast pace and did this by making short fast cuts; we also made our shots short and this also helped in increase the pace

We also added some effects we used point of view shots and tried to give them a dizzy/ confused effect, to do this we distorted the images we then added fades which made it look like the girl was blinking possibly losing consciousness as she had been running for so long and was panicked. We did this by doubling the clip on a new layer, zooming in and lowering the opacity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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

Who would be the audience for your media product?

 

 

 

 

 

 

The demographic profile for our audience is:

Age- The age bracket I have chosen to aim my target audience at is 15-30 because they are more likely to be interested in thrillers and enjoy it more. Anyone younger may not be able to watch the thriller due to an age rating or may not find the thriller genre enjoyable as the content may not be enjoyable to them and be scary or not age appropriate. 

Gender- The thriller will be aimed at both genders as it will give us a bigger audience to aim it as and wish for it to be enjoyable to both genders. To do so we will include both genders in our thriller to make it more appealing.

Background- It will be aimed at people with an average background, as we have aimed it at a younger audience they may just be starting a family. They enjoy watching films in their spare time and visiting the cinema. Possibly just got their first house or living in their first house with a minimal income. 

Demographic- The thriller will be aimed at the demographic c2 down as we have chosen as we have chosen a younger age bracket they may still be students, just started a new job or in higher education. Although the thriller may appeal to other demographics

Interests- They may have interests in the thriller genre. Interested on film and often visit the cinema or watch films in their spare time. Films such as Man on Fire, Seven or Orphan .May also enjoy reading the thriller genre.    

Other media -Interests in other thriller media eg books games or tv drama. 

Psychographic profile- The thriller will be targeted at explorers, they like to try something new and the thriller genre is a fairly different and new genre. There are also multiple sub-the main target audience. Explorers are also typically younger people and we are aiming it at a younger audience. Thrillers also offer mystery and discovery which will be appealing to explorers as they enjoy new and different things. 

 

 

To identify our audience we created a vox pop asking people about what they like in a thriller and what they would like to see. We asked people that fitted into our audience profile and this helped us to identify what type of thriller to create and what they would like in a thriller. Before creating our profile we had to research what demographic and psychographic profiles we felt would best fit as our audience and who would enjoy a thriller movie the most. We felt that we wanted to make our opening appealing to a large audience but felt that c2 demographics would fit best as that is the younger age bracket and that younger people would find a thriller more enjoyable. Now we have finished creating the opening and got audience feedback I feel that it is actually more appealing and ‘thrilling’ for an older audience as younger people do not have a fear of their children going missing although younger people still enjoy the opening. The psychographic profile we felt would fit best is explorers as they enjoy trying something different and thrillers can be a very new different genre that they will enjoy.

When creating our audience profile we had to consider what age rating we would give the opening, to help us research this we used the bbfc website and looked at what the classifications are for each age rating. The bbfc website is helpful as you can also look at thrillers and see the justification for why they got the age rating they got. After creating our opening we decided that our thriller would be 12/12A it doesn’t show very graphic content although children may find it worrying, there is a small amount of ‘drug’  use and it would be parent decisions if they wanted their child to watch.

We felt that the film could possibly fit into the PG category but after considering it felt it would be more appropriate in the 12/12A category. PG stands for parental guidance meaning the film is suitable for all ages although some parents may wish to consider watching it with their child or if it is suitable at all for their child to be watching the film.  We felt that our opening would not be suitable for children of all ages and that is why we chose 12/12A the film does not feature anything majorly offensive or upsetting although any child younger than this may find it upsetting. The higher age ratings are 15 and 18 films with this age rating often feature very violent scenes, rude language or scenes of a sexual nature and as our thriller did not feature anything like this felt that the 12/1wA was the most appropriate rating to go with.

 

 

 

 

 

question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the fill product?

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the fill product?

If you compare my preliminary task to the final product you can see clearly that the final production has come a long way compared to the preliminary. Our preliminary included all of the shots that we were asked to include and they were all shot well and you could see clearly what shot each was and why it had been used in a specific place. in the prelim we used a much wider variety of shot compared to our final production, although the final product uses appropriate shots that are more effective.

One thing that was very rushed in the preliminary task was the planning, we did a rough shot list and story board and began filming, we learnt from this that if we wanted to create an effective thriller and have an easy filming day we would need to plan things in much more detail. The planning we did for our final product was in much more depth and detail than the preliminary task, the first thing that we created was a schedule so that everyone in the group clearly knew what we needed to be done and when by; this made sure that the group would be on time and everyone would know what they are doing.  We also created a lot more thing when planning instead of just creating a story board and shot list we created

·         A story board

·         Mise-en-scene lists

·         Shot lists

·         Risk assessment

·         Consent forums

·         Actor auditions

·         Location scouting

·         Sound ideas

·         Opening sequence time line

·         Company ident

·         Pitch  

All of this meant that we were much more prepared when we were filming and had a clear idea of what we had to do and what needed to be filmed. The shot list and story board that we created in our preliminary was also a lot less detailed than the ones that we created for our final production, it was a lot easier to film with detailed shot lists and story boards as we knew exactly what we wanted and also made sure we had included all of the shots we wanted. We could also make sure that the continuity was good through the story board so that it wasn’t something that needed to be took into a huge amount of consideration when filming.

 

 In the preliminary task there were a lot of continuity issues that were hard to cut out or try and hide, when filming over the shoulder shots there was a continuity issue, in one shot the glasses are on the subjects face and the next on her head, this creates confusion for the audience as they didn’t see the glasses being moved. The quality of the preliminary task was also poor compared to our final production, our preliminary was shot on the iphone 6 which although has a good camera did not create good quality footage due to things such as the lighting and filming inside. When filming our final product, we wanted to make sure that the quality was better so shot the footage on a canon camera that shot much better quality footage.  We also made sure that we shot in appropriate lighting, most of the final product was shot in natural lighting so the footage was of a much better quality. 

Over all I am very pleased with how the final opening that we created turned out, one thing I felt was a success was the continuity of the opening, one way we were able to keep good continuity was by making sure we kept the 180˚ rule, this meant that it would cause less confusion between the audience. We also made sure that we kept continuity through costume, as we filmed some parts on different days and the opening was supposed to look like it is one day we needed to make sure that costume and make up were all the same; as we did this it also helped to create good continuity.  Lighting was another factor that we had to consider when thinking about continuity, if the lighting was to change half way through it would ruin the continuity. To overcome this, we tried to make sure that any filming in natural lighting was shot in one day and we wouldn’t need to go and re film anything that may change the lighting.  

I think something else that was effective and successful was how we created tension and suspense a lot of the feedback we got from our audience said they found it really effective and were quite scared by it. We created tension through the use of quick cuts and short shots they increase the tension by making it fast pace and the audience can only see what is happening for a short amount of time making them question what is going on and creating enigmas. We used a duel narrative which also really helped to create tension as you see each narrative and they then come together at the end; at the beginning the audience is left questioning if the narratives are related or not. We also tried to make sure that the editing fitted with sound if there was an action on screen we tried to make sure that the sound was edited to it. Overall I feel that the editing was a big success; the editing was very clean and everything was edited together very nicely. The editing also helped to create tension as we used fast pace editing. The time in which we edited it was also good as it was done very quickly and we could see any errors and get them changed quickly and respond to any feedback that people gave us to help make it the best we could.  

One thing that has really improved from the preliminary is our sound track, in our preliminary we just found an unsigned track and added it to the footage. For our final production we created our own soundtrack, we used a number of different sound clips to create a sound montage, we used clips of missing person phone calls. The sound is non-diagetic and asynchronous sound is does not match the actions in the screen, although it is relevant to the piece. The sound if effective as it really helps to create tension as high points in the sound match on screen. The sound also adds a scare factor as a child going missing is a parents’ worse fear and it almost confirms for people watching that the protagonist is going to be kidnaped and taken.

Something that if I was to do again would be camera quality although we had improved the quality from our preliminary task I still felt that at some points the quality was not as good as we wanted. Some of this was due to team members’ reliability and not being able to make it to filming days, as some members owned the cameras that we wanted to use we relied on them to be able to provide the equipment we wanted. One filming day people were unable to come and this meant that we had to compromise and downgrade cameras. If I were to re shoot something I would change is probably considering members of the group.

After getting audience feedback I would possibly change the male actor some people felt that he looked more like an older brother rather than a stalker and did confuse some people, next time we should possibly use an older person or change is costume as people also said that they felt the backpack took away from his character and made him look younger.

Something that we may consider changing if we were to do it again would be the positioning of the titles; as we superimposed our titles onto the video footage it meant that we had to have the video as the background and this made it difficult to see the titles. Although the typography of the titles was a success and felt that it fitted well with the thriller genre.

 

 

 

 

Quesation 5: How did you attract/ address your audience?

How did you attract/ adress your audience?

 

Before we began planning our thriller opening we created a vox pop of what our audience like in a thriller opening. We created a vox pop to help us find out what our audience would like in a thriller and what would be appealing to them. For our vox pop we targeted people we felt fitted our target audience and asked them questions such as what is your favourite thriller? What type of thriller they enjoyed most and what conventions they like in an opening. After filming our vox pop we found that most people enjoyed mystery thrillers and wanted a lot of enigmas to be created.  People wanted a thriller that would keep them guessing and have them trying to piece together what is happening. This is how we decided that we should create a mystery thriller as it would be most appealing to the audience and make them want to keep watching. 

 



Its shots like this that have helped us to create mystery and enigmas, this is the first shot that the audience see and you are immediately asking questions, What are the tools there for? Is anyone hurt? It is shots like this that help to create enigmas for the audience. We then started to show more revealing shots to help them piece together what is happening.    

Thrillers that our audience liked were Orphan, Fast and Furious and Sherlock. They liked orphan because of its use of characters, they liked the orphan character and how creepy she was. This is what helped us to decide what characters we would use, although we did not choose to have the child in our thriller as the antagonist character, we still felt that the use of a child character was really effective. Children are more vulnerable characters and can really help the audience empathise with them and worry for the character more. 

 

This shot would appeal to our audience as child characters appeal to them and they would also be questioning what is happening in the shot and what will happen next. The shot helps to create enigmas but the audience will also worry for the young girl and want her to be okay creating empathy towards her.  

The fast and furious make good thriller movie openings through their use of fast paced editing and creating tension, our target audience really liked the movies and the way the pace of the movies. We wanted our opening to increase in tension and pace then come to a climax. To create this we made our cuts between shots fast, this helped to increase the pace. When creating the sound we wanted it to be something that would help to increase tension, we created a montage of sound using small sound bites that built as they went along. We made it so that when the main points of video footage were on screen the main parts of the sound were.  By the sound building also helped to increase the tension, it would slowly build and reached a climax. 

Once we had created a rough cut we made another vox pop with our target audience, we asked them what they liked and what they would want in it to improve it.  Overall the audience really liked the rough cut, they thought the video footage was clear and that there were a lot of enigmas created. One this they wanted improving was the sound; for the rough cut we had not yet created the sound and had used a unsigned artists track, most people liked the song but felt it could be improved. This is when we then created the sound montage and when we showed them the final cut they said it had really improved the opening.  Another thing they said after watching the rough cut was that the shots could have been a bit shorter as it made it long and didn’t create as much tension, so we then went through the shots a cunt them down much more so that each shot was only a few seconds long; we were then able to see a big change in the opening it gave it a lot more pace and increased tension. 

When showing our audience the final cut they were very pleased with it felt that it everything they wanted, it created mystery and enigmas. One thing that the audience also really like were the titles, as we had them superimposed we wanted to make sure that they didn’t take away from the action on screen and the audience felt that didn’t and the typography was really effective.    

Question 3: What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

Question 3

A production company is a key part of filming as they are what fund the film; they also proved cast and directors. They help to make key discussions when filming and will also help to market the film to the public. At the start of each movie the production company will add its ident. One famous production company is universal, their ident has become very famous and they have produced films such as Minions, Ouija, Furious 7 and Trainwreck. They cover multiple genres so appeal to a wider audience and is a global company. The ident of universal is the earth and surrounding outer space showing they will proved an ‘out of this world’ experience and movie. It also shows that they have a global audience. The use of the globe also helps to show that they are a global company and their movies can take them around the world with all of their movies and different settings. The use of outer space is effective as it can show how they have created movies with whole new universes and worlds.

A production company that would be good to produce our thriller is Blumhouse 

productions they specialise in creating horror and thriller movies; this is useful as people would know what type of movie to expect and whether they will enjoy it. They are US based and this may be helpful as they may be able to market the movie in the US and UK. They have produced movies such as all the paranormal activities, they are a similar genre to the thriller we have created and people will expect a movie like that from this production company. Blumhouse is funded and owned by Jason Blum who is a film produces specialising in horror and thriller movies. The production company focuses on low budget movies which would be good for our thriller as we had a small budget and could be produced the film with a minimal budget as it doesn’t involve anything of great expense.

When creating our production company, we decided that we wanted a simplistic company name and logo as we found that was common in most production companies. The name we decided on was ‘Spotlight productions’ we felt this appropriate as it is a common piece of equipment in industry. The connotations of spotlight are also things such as the starring role and the main part making the company seem like ‘the best one’ or a big production company. Most logos featured a single image such as universal with the globe; as our name was spotlight production we chose to use an industry light as our logo, it was a simplistic image but could become easily recognisable. Production companies that we took inspiration from were summit entertainment and Touchstone Pictures, they both have similar idents to the one that we created, they both feature one image with a black background and the text alongside.

How we created our production company ident:

 

The first thing we did was create an image for our ident, we did this by using a mask on sony vegas. We created an image of a spotlight to go with the company name. once we had created the image we then had to animate it.






To animate the image, we used the pan and the crop tools. We created a path for it to move along and appear as if the spotlight was rising and turning on.   

Once the image was created and animated we needed to add the company name alongside of the ident. We chose a simplistic serif text, making the ident more traditional and welcoming font. Also appealing to a range of people unlike sans serif which commonly a more youthful and modern font. We also made the text fade in alongside of the image so they came onto the screen at the same time.  

We then added the ident to our final opening; we chose to have the ident before the video and titles so that when watching the opening people will know who has created the film.
We then had the titles superimposed on top on the video. We prioritised with the titles and put what we though the more important job roles first in the titles.

To fund a film like yours we could get funding from the BFI (British film institute) they fund small film in the uk through lottery funding. They have funded many small budget and short films in the uk. If they provided us with funding it would enable us to create a higher quality production, it would enable us to go to different location , better actors, make up, props, costume and just make everything slightly higher quality as we would be able to spend money and have more of a selection. We could also afford to use better technology eg more expensive cameras and editing software.

 

Institutional conventional opening sequences will include a company ident, titles and the title of the movie.  The titles will include the names of important members of the production team and key actors, the jobs roles that will be included will be jobs such as director, actors, editors, sound editors and props and costume creators. In our opening we chose to stick to typical titles that our usually named.  A film that we took inspiration for the titles from was seven; we used a similar font as we felt it was really effective. The font was a scratchy font and we felt it was effective as it helped to show the psychopathic nature of stalker character and showed his personality more.

The order that our titles appeared is also similar to seven. The first tile that appears in the company ident and who produced the film, this is similar to our opening as we show our ident first, although seven chose to just super impose it onto the opening our ident was alone and came before any shots. Our next title is the same as seven as the director was the next title, this is because the director is the person who has the most involvement in the film. People sometimes will like a certain style of directing and will enjoy watching one director’s work so by putting the director first it can attract more people to watch the film.  Both of the openings then superimposed the names of the main actors, like directors people will often like to watch one actor and like the type of films they are in and their work so this could also attract more audience. It can also help to establish what type of film you will be watching as some actors are associated with a genre of film. Seven then added the title of the film where as we waited until the opening had finished to show  the title. After this both of the opening then went on to list cast members, each listing the more important members first, seven has a lot of well-known good actors in it so who did the casting was credited first we also did this but after this credited the same people but in different orders eg musical director, costume, editor.

Question 2: How does your media product represent particula social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our main character in our thriller opening was our protagonist; out protagonist was a young school girl, she was the only character that you fully saw throughout the opening. As she was out protagonist she was represented as a weak victim, we did this through the age difference in the characters; she was the youngest and it made her look the most vulnerable.

The costume and make up we used helped to create how we represented her, her costume was a school uniform this helped to emphasise how young she was and that she would be the weaker one out of the two. The makeup we used was a muddy effect; this showed that there had been a struggle and she had fallen and was getting flustered.

 

 

 

The representation of age was the man thing that was represented throughout the opening, the antagonist as a much older character and he was shown as that stronger more dominant character and the protagonist was a much younger weaker smaller character. One way we showed this was through camerawork and shots; most of the opening was shot at the protagonist’s level and the antagonist was cut out of shot making it more mysterious but also making him appear bigger as you never saw him fully in shot.  This is shown during the final shots when the antagonist final captures the protagonist, you see the protagonist’s full reaction and you can only see a small amount of the antagonist this adds mystery as you never fully see him or his reactions but also shows his enormity compared o the protagonist.

Another way that we were able to create a sense of vulnerability from the protagonist was through the setting ; we used the woods as out location to film this help to make the girl look small as the setting around her was so large compared to her. Also the setting doesn’t look as large when the antagonist is in the same setting as the protagonist; this then also helps to show how much more powerful he is compared to her.

 

A film with a similar character to our protagonist was Man on Fire, they are both young girl that are in danger of being taken and both eventually are, and they are in similar costumes and of a similar age. They are both represented in very similar ways; they are both shown as being defenceless, when someone is attempting to capture them neither of them can defend themselves nor prevent what is about to happen to them.

 

A film that represents age in a very different way is Orphan, in this thriller the young girl is the antagonist and the one everyone is put in danger by. The thriller first represents the girl as being innocent but then turns and it is revealed that she is not the small innocent child you think and is that she is someone who should be feared and avoided. We chose not to represent age is such a different way as we felt it may of confused the audience.

Thrillers often represent gender in a similar ways; they usually show females as being the weaker less powerful ones and males as the dominant ones. We also represented gender in this way as we had the protagonist as a female and antagonist played by a male. Our male character was the more dominant character and over powered the protagonist and we felt that this was more effective and emphasised how powerless the young girl was.

 

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

In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media production?

Thriller movies captivate their audience by creating suspense and tension. A typical narrative for a thriller movie will make the audience feel that the events could happen to them, it will often start with "norm” and shows ordinary life. Then an event will often happen that will 'thrill' the audience something such as a murder, kidnap or a crime. This then leads the protagonist on a mission to find the antagonist and solve any problems that may have appeared. This often involves fights, explosions and weapons such as guns and knives. Once the protagonist has discovered the identity of the antagonist he will seek revenge or resolve the issues. The setting for this is often in a city and different locations within the city; if the characters are taken to different locations this can often add more suspense, as it is often an unknown location so the character is unsure of what may happen.

                                                                           

There are different thriller sub genres including psychological thriller they often use people’s fears to create a tense atmosphere. Another type of thriller is a Conspiracy thriller this type of thriller often involves a mystery to be solved and can be historical and based on fact, this can create a scare factor as it makes people feel the even could happen to them. The sub-genre that we chose was a mystery thriller this meant that we needed to create a lot of enigmas and a mystery. We did this through the use of a dual narrative and the audience had to piece together what was happening. Dual narratives are quite conventional in thrillers as they can help to create the tension and suspense that they want in the thriller, they can be useful to create tension as you can see what is happening in two different places and keep cutting in-between them both. The audience can expect to always be trying to answer question throughout the thriller and be trying to piece together what is happening throughout and what the outcome will be.

You may also say that our thriller is a hybrid of a mystery thriller and a crime thriller; as a young girl is kidnaped and goes missing although I would not say that this is the focus point of the opening . The part we want the audience to focus on is the mystery element and trying to piece together what is happening and where the girl is now.

                                                                                                                                                      

To create an effective thriller we needed to make sure that we included conventions typical convention for a thriller such as:

 

Editing

conventional editing for thrillers is usually very fast paced, this helps to create tension for the audience. Another way they do this is through jump cuts this can disorientate the audience and make them question what is going on. Short cuts can also be used to help create mystery as the audience can’t fully see what is going on and will be trying to piece together what is going on. When editing a thriller you must also consider the continuity, you may want to try and disorientate the audience but they still need to be able to understand what is going on; you need to consider things like the 180° rule. When filming we had to consider the 180° rule, this is when you keep to one side of what you are filming, if not this can cause confusion for the audience and make them question what is going on or where they are. You can see clearly with these screenshots that we kept the 180° rule; the line we chose was to be directly through the actors and kept to one side of them so it did not cause confusion for the audience. Our editing was conventional as we also used fast paced editing to help create tension.  When cutting between the narratives we made sure that the cuts were fast and also that the shots were not on screen or very long so that the audience were also questioning what they just saw.
 

Sound

Different sub- genres of thrillers use different types of music; typically psychological thrillers will use string instruments to create sharp tense sounds that will build to a climax. Spy thrillers will use more base instruments; sometimes they use them to create heart beat sounds to show the fast pace. For the sound in our thriller I created a montage of non-diegetic sounds, I used missing person phone calls and reports, I then added a sound track to the background. I need to make sure that the sound built and matched the high point of the actions in the film. The sound was effective for our thriller as it helped the audience understand what was happening and also make it realistic and this also created tension as it would make the audience feel the events could happen to them as they are real missing person phone calls. The sound is asynchronous sound as is does not match the actions in the screen, although it is relevant to the piece.

Shots

Typical shots for thrillers are close ups and extreme close ups, they are used in thrillers as they create mystery, by not being able to view everything in shot the audience will begin to question their surroundings. A thriller opening that does this effectively is Seven, they use a range of close ups in there titles, you question what is happening and what the objects in shot are. This creates mystery from the start and is creating enigmas for the audience. In a thriller opening it may also be effective to use establishing shots or long shots; you are then able to establish the setting. In our opening we used a duel narrative and included a range of shots. To begin with we used a close up shots to make the audience question what is happening, we then moved to long and mid shots this made the audience more aware of what was happening; and they were then able to piece together the story.

 You can see that at the beginning we used close ups and you are unsure of what is happening. You can see the photos of the girl and the match being lit but this creates enigmas as to why all of the pictures if the girl are there.  You then begin to see the mid shots ad are able to piece together what is happening and see that they girl is about to be captured.

Mise-en-scene

Costume
A Typical costume for a thriller is usually casual and natural clothing. This makes the event happening seem more realistic for the audience. Clothing will usually be dark colours to reflect the mood such as black connoting death and danger. You can see clearly here that the antagonist’s in Panic Room and dressed all in black and this helps to show that they are bad and mean harm on the people in the house. For our thriller we had a young girl in school uniform, this made her look younger and more vulnerable, the stalker was in all black, this helped to show his danger. Lighting
Most thrillers use low key lighting, this creates mystery by creating things such as shadows. Low key lighting is also creates mystery by hiding things; if the setting is dark and not everything in shot is visible the audience will question what they can’t see.  Most of our thriller was filmed in natural lighting; this meant that the quality as the footage was much clearer and prevented grade. Natural lighting is effective as audience could clearly understand what was happening as they had to piece together what was going on.
Actor
The protagonist (victim) in most thrillers is usually a weak person to show their vulnerability, and this is a common stereotype in most thrillers. Antagonists are usually a more dominate character, they are mostly males and this may make them appear stronger, we also chose to use a male actor that was an older that the victim, this helped to show that he was much more powerful than her and showed how weak and vulnerable she was.     
Makeup
Make up in thrillers will usually only be something like cuts or bruising on the protagonist; this shows they have become weak and are struggling. The only make up that we used was add a mud effect to the protagonist's face after she fell over, this just showed how frantic and panicked she was.   
Props
Most props for thrillers will be weapons; weapons for thrillers will usually be more small sinister weapons than something like guns in action movies.  For our thriller the props we used were gloves, rope and a drug like substance; we only showed the antagonist holding them like he was preparing for something and it was only suggestive. This helped create mystery as the audience would never know what was going to be done with the props.
Setting
Thriller settings are usually realistic settings this makes the events happening at the settings more realistic and could make every day setting scarier for them. Some settings are often more deserted to show that the characters are alone and that the protagonist is isolated. Our thriller was set in a wood, we chose this setting as it shows that the antagonist is alone and protagonist is provided with space to hide to sneak up on the victim. The woods can also show isolation as the protagonist is all aloe creating a sense of fear from them as their is no one there to help them.

 

A thriller that helped inspire us for characters was Man On Fire, we felt that the use of you a young girl was really effective, it showed how innocent she was and that she needed protecting. In Man On Fire the young girl has a body guard looking after her, we felt that for her to make her completely alone  and helpless would be more effective and the audience would become more connected and worried for her.

 

Soon The Darkness is a thriller that inspired us for story line and setting, Soon The Darkness is a thriller about to girls on holiday, while in the woods they get separated and soon discover someone is following them. Our thriller also follows a similar story line, you see the girl being followed and eventual being captured. We felt a tory line like this was effective as  it creates as it creates a lot of enigmas and mystery.  As you do not know a lot about either of the characters and you do not know why one is tying to capture the other. We also found that the woods was a good setting as it also could create mystery as it can create enigmas by not knowing what is around the corner. Another thriller that inspired us for a setting was cabin in the woods, we felt that the setting of he woods made it really eerie and helped to create mystery.

For typography a titles we really like the typography of Seven. Seven used a scratchy font and we felt that is was very effective it made it look very psychotic and that is the type of character we wanted the antagonist to come across as and we felt reflected his character well. The titles just slowly faded in and out when appropriate. We showed names such as director first as they were what we thought more important jobs, and what the audience would want to see first. 

 

The thriller we made was quite conventional and we create a typical mystery thriller, we made it conventional by the use of shot type. We used a lot f close ups and extreme close ups, this helps to create a feeling of claustrophobia and feeling trapped for the audience making them feel uncomfortable; it also helps to create mystery as not everything is shown in the shot. We then started to show more mid shots and long shots this then helped the audience to piece together what was happening. we called the thriller Missing as we felt it would have the audience already questioning what or who is missing and how will it be resolved. The typography used for the title was the same as the titles, we used the same scratchy font as we liked the psychotic effect. When we showed the titles we also showed a missing poster of the protagonist and this would then show the audience who is missing, and possibly answer and questions they had from watching the opening.  

 

The costume was also conventional as it was just every day clothing, the antagonist was dressed in all black this connoted he may be a dangerous character. The protagonist was in school uniform this helped to show the age different in characters and also the she was the weaker one, and it wouldn’t be difficult for her to be captured.  The props used were also typical of a thriller, the props were mostly weapons or things that could be used to capture the protagonist, we chose not to use weapons such as guns as we did not want it to seem to much like an action thriller. The location was a wood and we felt that woods were a good location as they can allow for more mystery as you do not know what will happen as you may not know what is coming or going to happen.

When editing we ensured that it would create tension and it’s typical for thrillers to do this. The editing was fast pace and this meant that the audience would be able to see how fast pace it is and a scene of urgency, and that the girl needed to get away as fast as she could. To help build the pace we made a montage of sound clips that built on another and made the tension build. The montage of sound it made up of phone calls and missing person reports, this helps as it reflects what is happening on screen.