Thriller Evaluation: Grove Park

For our own Thriller Opening, the ideas and conventions we used were from studies of the conventions of Thriller movie openings, ‘Watching’ film openings documentary, ‘28 Days later’, ‘What Lies Beneath’, ‘Collateral’ ‘Seven’ and ‘The Shining’. We used the idea of the book from the opening of ‘Seven’ and ‘The Shining’ was just a thriller full of suspense and a film which made me literally sit at the edge of my seat.

Se7en - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY
The Shining - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw23KM3-Ry8

When we were shown these openings, my group and I had instantly decided that we wanted a scene where the audience was shown no faces. This was because the opening of ‘Se7en’ was awesomely done without showing any faces but just by the use of mise-en-scene, the props and hands. We similarly used this convention in our stabbing scene, where the murderer’s face was not shown, also in the beginning the audience can only see a girl researching in the library.

The idea of the titles had also appeared from the film ‘Se7en’. Lipi had come up with his idea, and then we put it into action in our thriller opening. Also the quick effects and transitions were taken from the film ‘Se7en’. The way the film had quick shots had inspired us to keep our film opening short and snappy.

Another convention taken from the film of ‘Psycho’ was the relentless stabbing. We looked into this scene and decided that we were to just film shots, close ups of the knife constantly stabbing the victim, which I found worked effectively in our Thriller Opening. The fact that in the scene where the victim is killed, the face of the murderer is not shown works very effectively. I think this works as this shot and scene gets the audience to keep thinking ‘Who is the killer?’

If our product was to be distributed then it would’ve been for small Independent UK release. This is because the production is small and doesn’t require expensive sets or props or actors. It would’ve been released perhaps on TV and on Internet, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, etc.

Our film would have been amongst the films such as ‘Hot Fuzz’, ‘Shaun of The Dead’, ‘London to Brighton’. These films have been a hit in the UK and the USA for the reason being that they were appealing to mostly UK, young audiences (12+). ‘London to Brighton’ is a film by Paul Andrew Williams, writer and director. It is a Steel Mill Pictures production. Paul had written the storyboard of this film over one weekend, it had been filmed in three weeks. As this was a small film, Paul got £60, 000 from a private investor. It had been film in Hackney and Brighton, UK. The cast of ‘London to Brighton’ was Johnny Harris, Georgia Groome, and Lorraine Stanley. The film had six wins and six nominations. It was distributed in 3 cinemas, in one week in the US box office and all over the UK. ‘London to Brighton’ was released on the 1st December 2006 and released on DVD on Monday 30th April 2007. Similarly our film would’ve been distributed in the cheapest possible ways and perhaps on DVD too.

Paul Andrew Williams

Our audience for our media product would’ve been for youngsters from the ages of 12+. Mostly mainstream audiences and ‘aspirers’ as I believe small films is a good beginning for film writers and directors. Our thriller may be shown to pupils for example who are studying Psychology and also it would be a good film to show to victims and youngsters who have experienced knife crime. This is because our thriller is based on a possessed girl and also we have the characters of a victim of knife crime and a murderer. These sort of issues relate to our younger generation more often.

To market and promote our film we would most likely advertise our film through firstly the genre, thriller and through billboards, posters, leaflets, magazines, trailers, e.g. T.V, Youtube and social sites e.g. Facebook. This way we would be attracting our audiences as youngsters are more likely to watch it as they are out and about and have their eyes peeled to upcoming films.

Throughout the entire journey of constructing this product from creating our preliminary thriller to our final product, I believe, personally I have learnt a lot. Before creating and performing tasks I hadn’t a clue of what Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro was, neither did I know the proper way of filming and editing professionally. Through filming I have found out things such as using a 5 second gap before starting to act and role camera, also logging and capturing, which was a mission and learning different shots and angles when filming. Using blogger has helped me to see how I have progressed throughout this process. Also, releasing our thriller onto Vimeo (a video-centric social network site) had given us the opportunity to watch our final product along with other thrillers created by the other media students.

Final Cut Pro Soundtrack Pro

Looking back at our preliminary task and comparing it to our final product, there is a major difference. I believe our team skills has become more co-operative and reliable. Our filming and acting has improved, storyboarding has helped as we had planned every shot before filming. And also editing has improved a lot. I now know how to function Final cut and Soundtrack Pro fluently. This has helped me to understand how editing really works and how time consuming it may be but also the fact that the labor is worth it at the end. All our lessons, ‘Match Cut’ lessons and ‘Introduction to Sound’ have been put to test in our final product. Using mise-en-scene helped a lot too, as we used quite a few props in our thriller. Also, we have learnt to use the previous lessons effectively. I had used Windows Movie Maker which included effects and transitions, therefore understanding how to use effects and transitions to make shots sequential was quite straight forward. Credits and titles were new to me as previously I haven’t done any up to date editing on Windows Movie Maker. I enjoyed creating and editing the titles, moving them around the screen but I must say it was hard work!

Over all, after watching our thriller along with everyone else’s thrillers in the Vue cinema made me realise that there are many different ways to convey thriller films, whether it is through actors, props, camera work, editing or sound. I felt a relief after watching our thriller and receiving positive feedback from students, teachers and staff. On the whole, I am delighted that our hard work has paid off positively and that I can use the lessons and editing in the future!

Editing Our Final Thriller Opening

Lipi and Myself sat infront of the screen in the Mac suite for over seven hours editing our thriller. Susan and Elelta arrivied later on. Today we firstly finished cutting and keeping the correct shots needed to put the film in order. Keeping in mind that hte film is only to be two minutes we got down to using effects and transitions to make continuity in each scene.

We hadn't used much effects nor transitions. We thought it looked beeter simple. We used fade in and out transitions to keep continuity throughout. We had also used effects such as blur on the corners of the screen during the scenes when Susan was seeing the dream. Also slow motion towards the end when Susan was scribbling on the articles. This was done to create an effect of maddness of the character and her actions. The most difficult part in the entire editing was the titles. As we have made the titles appear and juggle around the screen the editing of that was very hard. We firstly made a black box then wrote names in the text box, we then cut the box in pieces. We then had to place each cut piece of text in the place within the screen of where it was to move about. Towards the end we realised we hadn't changed the font and size of the titles. This lead to further delay as we had to go back to each and every title which was cut up and had to change the font and font size.

We then created the soundtrack. Lipi had used the Soundtrack Pro software to come up with different background sound and also sound effects to match the titles whilst I had finished editing the titles quickly. We then had finalise the film and add the sound. We dimmed the sound when Mickey's news report came on, the sound later was rised after the news report ended. We had also used an effect which appears with the Title of our film towards the end. The sound effect starts off slow and expands with the exansion of our Title 'Grove Park' The title was also a last minute.com option as I decided on 'Psych' short for psycho, then some of the team members disagreed, we came up with 'Frenetic' and then finally agreed on 'Grove Park' as the killing was in a park. Literally 5-10 minutes towards our deadline time we put together the title, sound and film and blogged it just on time.

Stabbing Scene - Last Filming

The last scene was done quickly as we had less time. We decided to shoot in our college park which was the closest place to film this particular scene and also because we had used a real knife and a fake blood as a prop of mise-en-scene we needed Mary to supervise us. This scene was the girl (Susan) seeing the murderer stab the victim (Elelta) in her dream.

The first shot was a medium long shot of the victim walking past the camera and the murderer/possessed girl walking onto the camera from the left hand side of the camera. This was also the establishing shot as we had shown the park in the background while the victim walked past. The shot follows with a low angle shot of Susan killing Elelta, whilst Elelta screams. The shot continues with a match cut as we have a low angle shot of a tree in the back with Susan’s holding the knife still stabbing Elelta, although Elelta is not shown on camera. The shot follows with an over the shoulder shot of again Susan still stabbing Elelta in the stomach. The shot comes to the end as we see Elelta’s hand covered with blood and the bloody knife lying beside her. The shot finishes from the point of view of Elelta, the camera is used as Elelta’s eye, and the camera is tilted with Elelta’s hand in front of the camera whilst Susan walks away. The reason as to why we never showed a glimpse of Susan’s face in this scene is because Susan is seeing herself do all this but is unaware that it is her.

Filming The Bedroom Scene

Today was the shooting of the most important part of the opening for our film. We took the equipment to Lipi’s house. In this scene the girl (Susan) is in bed having flashbacks of the event taken place last night, which is the possessed girl stabbing another girl (Elelta).

According to the storyboard was shot was filmed. We set up the room and lights and also gathered the props needed for certain shots (mise-en-scene), we used blood, CDs, a CD player, pens, paper and the bed.
The first shot was a pan from Susan’s legs leading to her face in bed, in the background we have Mickey’s news report playing.

We had directed her to turns and toss in bed to show disturbance. The shot continues to a high angle, medium close up of Susan dreaming. The shot flows into a slow zoom out capturing quick close up of Susan awaking looking into the camera. This shot was done to capture the expression of the girl waking up from a nightmare. The next shot is a close up side shot of Susan huffing and puffing taking deep breathes. We then take a shot of the radio to show where the news report is playing. We made use of diegetic sound by using the news report and radio. The shot follows into a medium shot side shot of Susan still in bed looking at her hands. The next shot is a high angle shot taken from above Susan’s head, focusing on only the blood on Susan’s hands. We then took a mid shot of Susan jumping in her bed kicking the duvet off to get out of bed. At this point the news report ends. We then have a high angle, medium long shot from one corner of the room; this shot also establishes the bedroom. The shot continues with Susan jumping out of bed, walking backwards towards her cupboard, whilst Susan leans against the cupboard and drops down the camera also pans down with Susan. We then capture an over the shoulder, close up of Susan pulling out a few articles. We then get a match cut, medium close up from a high angle of Susan still dragging the articles. We then took a close up from opposite Susan scribbling on an article named “Demon Possession is it real or just a mental disorder?” We use match cut again here but from a high angle, close up of her still scribbling out ‘”Mental Disorder?”

Evaluation: Grove Park

For ideas and conventions for our own Thriller openings, we studied a variety of thriller films. We started to watch the thriller film ‘The Shining’ in order to get an idea of what thriller films are and how they work. This was a nail biting experience for me as there were many scenes with suspense. We also looked at many other thriller film openings, such as ‘Arlington Road’, ’28 Days Later’, ‘Seven’, ‘What lies beneath’ ‘Collateral’. Watching these openings was also very helpful as we explored different types of thriller films and its conventions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY

The opening of ‘Seven’ fascinated me and my group as it contained very good editing. It gave the opening a sense of mystery as there were no faces shown. Even though only close-ups of hands and objects were shown, the audience still got a message across about the way the character is. There were blurry effects to reflect the mental state of the character. There were many other effective editing such short cuts in between the credits. What really inspired me was the way the credits were shown; the black screen with the credits slightly moving and flashing. Our group decided to use this on our opening as we thought it was very effective.

We watched a documentary called ‘Watching’ where big directors, producers and film critiques of the film industry had a say on Films and their conventions. They talked about conventions of film production such as, the mise en scene, acting, camera, lighting, sound and editing. In the documentary Thomas Sutcliffe says films want their audience to continue watching the film. While there are types of seduction and temptation and irresistible instant arousal that will hit the audience. The temptation is to go straight to the action.

The documentary also showed the opening of the film ‘Seven’ by Kyle Cooper. This is an effective opening as it shows the obsessive mad nature of the villain.
As a group, we researched ideas looking at thriller openings in depth. We looked at some of the scenes in the film ‘Psycho’. We thought the constant stabbing scene was very affected, therefore, we decided to use it on our thriller opening.
This convention is used in other thriller films; it is an effective way of shocking the audience and getting them on the edge of their seats. It is known as a popular scene from the ‘Psycho’ film, therefore many other films have used it. Hitchcock used 78 cuts in 45 seconds for this scene. The stabbing is slashing towards the screen from many angles. Before the stabbing, there is a slow entrance of the killer. This is done in order to give the audience shock when the sudden stabbing starts. Our own thriller opening consists of stabbing; we decided to use the stabbing idea off the movie. Our stabbing also includes a series of shots from many angles from high to low angles and many more. However, in our thriller the killers face isn’t shown in order to make our audience more curious about our main character.

In our thriller opening, the main character is a girl who is suffering from possession. She murders another girl but doesn’t know she’s done it. Our main actress is a young middle class female, therefore it represents the younger generation. The victim is also a 17 year old girl, representing the teenage group. One of our props is an article about demons, these might reflect religious audiences. Our main character is a victim of possession; she is also a villain in the film. This is an unusual way of choosing roles for characters as in normal films; there are separate characters for the ‘heroic’ role and the ‘villain’ role.

If our product was to be made in real-life, it would be a cheap budget film as it doesn’t need exotic settings or glamorous costumes. Our film has real-life setting and generalises to real life situations. What makes it a thriller is the gruesome killings and the puzzling storyline.
The film ‘London to Brighton’ is a small budget British film by Paul Andrew Williams, £60,000 was use to make the film. He drew the story board in one weekend and it took 3 weeks to film it. It was filmed in the streets of Hackney and Brighton. Our film is similarly set in the streets of London. Our film would’ve been advertised on the internet where it is cheaper and accessible for everyone. We would release trailers on YouTube and would distribute it in cinemas all around the UK and 2 or 3 cinemas in America.

Our target audience would be mainstream people, from different ethnic groups. Preferably younger generation interested in Psychological situations. Jennifer studies Psychology in college and lives in London, enjoys going to the cinema with her friends in the evening. She’s interested in films with Psychological theories and ideas as she enjoys the subject in college. In class she can refer back to films and documentaries to dictate to the class about the ideas.
Our film is targeted to ‘aspirers’ as our film gives out messages to society. There is killing and murders involved in our film therefore; it can give out messages to stop such crimes like that to our target audience.

We would use many techniques to promote our film, as our film is a British movie, It would be advertised everywhere in the UK. It would have been advertised on billboards and posters. There would have been a small trailer shown on ITV1 and available for viewers on YouTube. There would have also been reviews of the film on the internet and magazines. There would be posters of the film in stores like Borders and WHSmiths, on the ‘Psychology’ sections of the stores. This would increase our customers as the target audience are more likely to see the posters.

From the process of constructing this product, I have learnt to use many technologies such as final cut pro, soundtrack and how to use a camera. I learnt how to film from many different angles and produce proper clips. I also learnt how to log and capture the film onto the Mac computers. Getting use to the Mac computers was quite difficult as they are very different from the normal Computers that I use. However it was great fun as we got to explore many things during the process of blogging and editing.
Final Cut pro, was a very complex editing software for me. As I only had the experience of using the Windows movie maker software. However, from our small tutorials we learnt how to use the software. We learnt how to use different effects such as fade in and fade out, Blurs, Colour change and video transitions.
We also used the software Soundtrack Pro, where we processed the music we used for our clips. We had to produce it on Soundtrack Pro by searching many different sounds and selecting it on our timeline. We then had to import it on to Final Cut pro where our edited clips were ready to have sound added on to them.
We also used the internet thoroughly to collect our ideas and plans for our thriller. Youtube was very useful as we looked at different examples for both the context of our film and the conventions used such as camera angles, music, edits and etc. This helped very much as I came across this clip on YouTube, where I spotted out a tilt shot of a dead person. We decided to use this shot on our own thriller opening. Where our main character walks off after the killing, it only shows the bloody hands of the victim and knife. We did this by placing the camera on the floor, slightly tilted.
As I have never blogged before, this production has given me the chance to blog the whole process of making our film on to ‘blogger’. This was, I think a better way of presenting our experiences of the whole process of our film making. This is because we can see how we develop our skills slowly and observe each others progress on teamwork and commitment.

Looking back at all the preliminary tasks, they have use prepare for the actual production as it has built up our organisation and team work skills. We have got to know our team quite well and practised with them, as we knew it would be useful. It also helped us with production skills such as, camera work, lighting and editing. We also learnt new skills such as ‘Match cut’, where we had a whole tutorial and produced our own clip using Match cuts. Using Match cuts is very effective as a clip looks sequential and professional.
I have learnt many things from Filming making; I have learnt to plan thoroughly as we produced schedules that we had to stick to. I have learnt to be organised, as we had to be on time for filming and needed the right props. I have also learnt to produce clear story boards with the right shots and the timing.
This production has taught me a lot of useful things and has given me ideas of how the media industry constructs their work and what equipment they use. The amount of work they do and how the work could be both difficult and enjoyable.

Shooting the Library Scene

After planning the storyboard of the library scene and getting permission from the librarians to allow us to film, quietly, we started shooting with Dan supervising and helping us too.

We had decided that the possessed girl would go to the library to do research on possession. Our first shot was a mid shot of the girl (Susan) walking towards the books. We then get a match cut from a high angle of her arriving to the book shelf. The shot is followed by an over the shoulder, mid shot of her pulling out a dictionary from the ‘Mental Processes’ shelf. The shot continues with a low angle, mid shot from behind a plant which covers her face of the girl sitting on the floor in a corner. We then capture a zoom in, into her looking up the definition of ‘Possession Trance.’ This helps to give a hint to the audience of what the film may be about.

After two hours of filming we managed to get the right shots and angles with the help of the storyboard, Dan and co-operation from the team members.

Recording of "Breaking News"

In order to give the audience a clue of what the film was about my group and I decided to add a news report during the scene when the possessed girl (Susan) has flashbacks of the victim (Elelta) being murdered and then awakens. The plan was for Dan to record but as he had lessons we got Mickey to be our news reporter. We first scripted what Mickey had to say with the help of Mary. Mickey recorded the news report then burnt it onto a CD for us.

Next lesson we will be recording in the library, this scene will appear with the titles before the opening.

Stabbing scene - last

The last scene to shoot was the killing. We decided to shoot in the park outside our college as this was the nearest place and we were running out of time. We used a knife and blood as props. This was very hard as we attracted alot of attention to passers by. However, we had our teacher with us so there was no trouble.
We shot her stabbing the vicitim from many angles from high angles to low angles. This was done because we were influenced from the film 'Psycho'. The use of blood, made it look like a nasty killing. The last shot was of the victims bloody hands on the floor and the killer walking away.
It was quite quick as this scene is where she is dreaming, it will be shown in little bits.
This shooting was very quick and didnt take that long.

Bedroom scene in my house.

The bedroom scene is the most important scene out of all our scenes. Our main character is going to be in bed dreaming. I created a story board and included all the shots that we wanted to use. We gathered all the props and materials we were going to use for this scene. We used, blood, papers, CD player, a bed and pens.
We shot lots of close ups of her while she was dreaming, we directed her to toss and turn her head side to side. To show her dream was a nightmare.
This worked well as we used alot of closeups from many angles. We also have a zoom out as she jumps out of bed. Then there is an over the shoulder shot of her bloody hands. She then starts to panick and comes out of bed. She falls against the cupboard and slides down to the floor. She then represents her 'madness' by scraping the articles about possession with a red pen and starts to throw everything everywhere.
After finishing this scene, we went back to college. We did alot of work that day and everything went very well.

Recording our library scene

Our group decided to have a library scene, where the girl is researching on 'possession' as she thinks she is possessed. We had to get the libraries consent to use the area. They allowed it as long as we made no noise. This was very difficult as we had to whisper to eachother and it was hard to give our character directions.
Using the story board helped us film that day, Our first shot was of her walking towards the shelf. She picks up a dictionary and looks up 'Possession'. She sits on the floor, this represents her 'madness'. Normal people wouldnt sit on the library floor.
The first shot is a long shot of her walking along the iles. Then its a high angle shot of her still walking towards the shelf. After that and ECU of her getting the book. The next shot, is where she comes into the frame and sits on the floor.
It took us more than two hours to get it right and make it work. It was hard work but i enoyed this lesson as everything was well organised and our teacher Dan, had helped us.

Recording the 'breaking news'

Our breaking news is going to be played while our character is asleep dreaming. She awakes to hear the breaking news. We wrote a script and chose Micky to record his voice so we can put it in our film. This was done recorded onto a CD.

Thriller ideas.

There were many ideas me and my group came up with. Our first idea was to do with a psychotic peadophile and his obssession in children. However, after alot of discussions we came up with our final idea about 'possession'.
Wwe thought of having a young female character as the main role. Our story is based in a possessed girl who is unaware about what she has done. She dreams about what she really done the last night and wakes up to find her hands are still bloody. Her victim was stabbed brutally in a park area. The victim is a 17 year old girl.
We then as a group, created a schedule plan of what we are going to do. This was done so that our film is produced well organised.

The Last Three Lessons

The Last Three Lessons

1: In Mary's lesson we filmed our last scene. We shot this scene in the college field. This was the knife seen. Because of help and safety Mary had to shoot the scene with us as we used a real knife as one of our props.

2: My group and I attended a lunchtime workshop to beginning editing. We spent a couple of hours putting our clip together, even though it wasn't our media lesson. The workshop really helped us as we were running out of time.

3: Finally on the last day of the practical we completed all the editing and named our film. We were really happy with the result and pleased to complete filming. It was not easy but it really helped us. We have learnt new skills and it is definitely an experience that we will ever forget. I don’t think anyone will. We learnt a lot from the whole practical I think.

Evaluation

In many ways, our media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products like:

• Having it not focus on crime but trying to build suspense and making the audience feel scared
• Our teachers influenced us not to use clichéd methods e.g. guys in hoodies following girls down the alley, because they’re predictable
  and not original
• Our group also used the shower scene of the thriller movie ‘Psycho’ to create the hand movement Susan used to stab me (image below). This was effective as it emphasised the intertextuality used

• Our class also studied from the thriller movie ‘The Shinning’ to help develop the conventions of our movie. My group used intertextuality from the film, in our last killing scene. In the part where I was lying dead with blood covered on my hand and the knife positioned next to my body, showed the similar act from one of ‘The Shinning’ killing incident (image below). However to show originality instead of showing the view of my body, we filmed only my hand on a camera tilt to illustrate my dead character’s point of view. This helped to create suspense

• Watching previous students’ thriller clips helped us identify what things we should and shouldn’t do when filming e.g. don’t use any dialogue because it looks cheap and too much edit can be exaggerated
• Also watching a documentary in class about film openings helped my group have an idea on how to plan as we acknowledged from it that "a good beginning must make the audience feel that it doesn't know nearly enough yet, and at the same time make sure that it doesn't know too little" because certain amount of information to the audience can limit their interest. This documentary was called ‘Watching’ and was beneficial because it mentioned about the different techniques used in the film industry to create that “instant arousal” of a viewer
• The lesson on how to edit with sound helped me develop my skills to use for ‘Grove Park’ as I was the sound editor. That session was very useful to me because using ‘Casino Royale’s’ clip to practice on, made me expect less on what to do. It also made me notice how including sound in a sequence can create a big effect in what the clip is trying to portray
• Due to our film being about someone who is possessed, our group clearly decided that the character would be a young female, as they’re more vulnerable. Even though this can be showed as a stereotype, it made sense to our film. The people in ‘Grove Park’ are young and black women, and so because of this our target audience is multicultural people from 16-26 years old. This represents an original movie created, as thrillers nowadays are played by white people.
• Our movie would be a big Hollywood Blockbuster distributed mainly around UK and USA because the narrative is very interesting and admired to see in both countries. This reason is because, you do hear many stories of mental individuals in mainly UK and USA news as the countries’ so diverse, a lot is experienced. Another reason why, is due to high popularity rates of other familiar thrillers like Gothika. We would begin by advertising on billboards with the trailer and movie release dates. Then the trailer would be publicized on television mainly during 6pm – 8pm to attract our target audience.

The audience of our media product is aimed at teenagers and adults, who are mainly working class males and females. An example of a viewer is ‘Michelle, 21, works in retail and studies psychology in University. Occasionally goes to the cinema’. Our film would attract both cinema lovers and frequent cinemagoers, as the audience are mainstream people.

I would attract my audience through many ways. One of which would be organising billboards put up in targeted places like shopping centres, popular train stations, on buses etc. This would be effective, as it would continuously remind the public when the cinema release date is. Another method would be to produce a trailer of what I think the audience would want to be influenced to watch. This would be effective as Thomas Sutcliffe said from the documentary we watched previously in class is that "Films need to seduce their audience into long term commitment. While there are many different types of seduction, the temptation to go for instant arousal is almost irresistible". In which, he means a way of attracting the audience's attention by making them want to watch the whole film, and therefore his technique can be used to produce the preview. It would also be shown on the internet to watch as well e.g. on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc.

From the process of constructing ‘Grove Park’, I have learnt the following on a practical hand-on level:

• Using final cut pro to log and capture different clips
• Using soundtrack pro to create our own sound from choosing from other different sounds
• Process of filming and making sure we used different camera movements e.g. pans, camera angles e.g. tilt, camera views e.g. handheld and most importantly capturing a ‘match cut’ view.

Although we didn’t use much of the internet during the making, I did learn how to do the following things:

• Release our film on Vimeo
• Blog each lesson of our thriller practical
• Add attachments to my blog e.g. images and video clips

Looking back at our preliminary task, I learnt that film making isn't as easy as it looks. From watching the films in class, other students thought it was worth watching and the narrative was easy to follow. Other comments also mention the good use of cuts. Within the film making exercise, I have learnt to use handheld views and match cut exercises. You can really tell from our preliminary film to our finish product's progress of camera skills. The planning and storyboard making was very helpful and clearly wasted no time for us. Also having a group plenary at the end of every session help build our team effort in planning what we would do next lesson worked effectively. During editing, I have learned how to make crucial judgements on what clips we didn't need and what was needed to log and capture. As a film opening consists of a short time. I have gained a lot of Mac computer skills that had me involved in sound making and editing.

EVALUATION

Evaluation

Our task was to produce a two minutes thriller clip over a period of roughly two months. There are many ways in which our media product use, develop, challenge forms and conventions of real media products. Before the practical we watched several examples of previous thriller films. In class we studies about the different conventions of thriller movie openings. The short films we watched of previous AS students were mostly good because they had a variety of different angles and good editing elements in their shots, however some of them had too many effects and made the clips seem rather badly planned and little time put in to the whole production and this really showed in their final clips. Our teachers discouraged us not to use clichéd methods like people wearing hoodies because it makes the clip seem a bit unrealistic. We also watched a documentary on Casino Royal; we learnt about sound and effects. I really think I benefited a lot from this lesson because I learnt how adding sound onto clips can make them very effective. Finally, we also watched clips on from watching these clips I learnt how to begin planning our own thriller, adapt ideas and techniques and so on from watching the documentary. The film that inspired our group was Psycho. For example, Intertextually from Psycho. In our clip we used this similar technique when we did the killing scene in the park. We applied it into a low angle shot and I think this made it very effective because it built a lot of suspense.



Our media product represents particular social groups. It features one person who is a young woman (me). It is quite unusual because in a sense I am both a villain and the victim which is quite unusual in real thriller films because the villain often has one character to play. I am seventeen and Black. I am a Christian but in terms of religion the context of our film is a bit negative because of its thriller nature. So it doesn’t really portray what I am supposed to be doing in my religion because it is against that. The kind of media institution that might distribute our media product is Blockbuster because it is something that you could to watch at a cinema and it has all the features a real film has. And our film could also be a small independent U.K release or we could release it via YouTube and on most networking sites because that way everyone around the world will be able to access it, as it is also for free. Like for those who cannot watch the film at cinemas they can just watch it online.



I think that young adults from the age of 16-21 both males and females would be the audience for our media product. Any class would be our audience but middle class in particular. Tasha 18 attends college and works part time in a youth centre and wants to address the dangers of carrying weapons. She is aware that knife crime has risen dramatically over the years and therefore worries that someone she knows may end up as a victim. She knows the consequences of carrying weapons as she herself used to be involved in knife crime. A person like her would be an idea of someone who would fit into our target audience.

There are many ways in which I could address my audience. Firstly I would promote it, to do this I will have to start by marketing our film. This can be done by advertising it on posters or posting clips of it online. And getting people to leave comments to say what they think of the film. Whether they would like to see it and so on. I would also market my film through its genre and I would advertise the trailers online. Sources like YouTube, FaceBook and MySpace because it is free and easy to market.





There are many things that I have learnt about technologies from the process of constructing our film. I learnt how to use final cut pro. It was not easy but it taught me new skills that I would never have imagined learning. The experience really helped me at most times to be positive and work at my best at all times. I learnt how to do work and have a deadline at the same time. Throughout the whole practical I learnt how to log and capture all the shots onto the Mac computers. Even though the Mac computers were a bit difficult to use at first, by the end of the practical I knew how to use them a bit better. I learnt how to add sound and how to cut scenes. On the other hand, we hardly used the internet as we were using the Mac computers to do all the editing. Expect when we had to write our weekly blogs. Watch lesson we had to log onto our blogs and write what we had learnt and done in that lesson. I had to make sure that I blogged regularly as it would have been difficult for me to catch up as there are so many things that you have to put onto the blog as well as filming at the same time. It was great that we were able to release our movie on Vimeo and on our blogs because it really made me feel like our thriller films were actually like real films. And to top it off the fact that our films were then showcased at the Local Vue cinema for all CANDI media students. The internet has widened the potential audience for your product.





Finally looking back at my preliminary task, I feel that I have learnt a lot in the progressions from it to the full product. I learnt how to work in an under pressured environment. I learnt how to work in a team and most importantly within a group. From the match- cut exercise to actually making the film I feel as though I took this more seriously and really put an effort in. Previously we learnt how to adapt shots from our match-cut exercise into our actual short films. It was really challenging but helpful as we had had a bit of practise. We squeezed every shot in our two min clip. Including match cuts, 180 degree, over the shoulder, close up, point of view shots and pan cuts and many more. The film making process let us explore a lot of things; ideas, different methods, different technologies. Doing a storyboard really helped us because it gave us a base for us to begin filming, because we knew we had somewhere to start. It was like putting our ideas onto paper. From filming I have learnt how to work with the camera and do things within a sequence. At first I was shy to work with the camera but I adjusted and felt a bit more comfortable filming. I had to make sure that everything I did worked with the kind of character I was. And finally, the editing and posting production kind of stressed me out a bit because there were so many things taught me how to always maintain a positive attitude even when it is hard because we had a bit of problems within our group. Some people were not showing up to workshops to edit and not putting in enough effort, so it put a lot of pressure on the group. I wish I had dealt with the situation much better, rather than let it make me feel like everything was going to go wrong. It’s about not letting things get to you. It made me want to work harder on the editing because it felt like I just had to look past all the problems and do the important thing which was to complete the film and all the editing. Overall I have had a great experience and learnt a lot of skills and built some really good relationships with my group members.

Day 7 - Last Day

Me and my group planned to come in the morning to finish editing our thriller. As i was responsible for the sound, i used 'soundtrack pro' to create what was used. I used sharp, annoying sounds to help understand the narrative and a collective bang at the end to emphasise our title 'Grove Park'. Coming to an end, we began to think of a title as we before began with the name 'Possessed Girl' at the beginning of our practical but thought it was too obvious. So we all decided to come up with individual titles that we should grouply judge on. Amrita thought of the name 'Psych' short for 'Psycho' but didn't like it because it wasn't original. So i came up with 'Frenetic' as it means 'distraught with fear or other violent emotion' which relates to our film. But my group members disagreed because they thought the audience wouldn't understand the term. Therefore instead of a word we decided to use a location, in which Susan thought of 'Grove Park' because it represents where my character was killed.

Day 6 - Editing Our Clip at Lunch

Even though this wasn't our media lesson, the group and I attended a workshop at lunch to begin editing our sequence. We used much of our time to meet our deadline and the workshop was very helpful as it was here where we completed our log and capture shots on final cut pro.

Day 5 - Filming The Knife Scene

In this lesson we filmed our killing scene in the college garden. Mary was supervising us for health and safety reasons as we were using a knife as our props. We also used fake blood. Here, we used intertextuality twice in different occasions. In the first part was when Susan's stabbing movements represented the bath scene in 'Psycho' and in the second part was where i was lying dead with blood in hands represented one of the killing scenes in 'The Shinning'. The use of mise en scene help set the mood with the help of natural lighting. The best part of today's filming was the tilt of my character's point of view shot whilst Susan was walking away. This is because it was very effective.

Day 4 - Filming The Bedroom Scene in Lipi's House

In Dan's lesson, we was at Lipi's house filming the bedroom scene. Here we used lost of props, these included fake blood, pens, articles, bed, and the stereo. We also used lots of our camera skills. We recorded a pan of Susan's body in bed and another pan of her side view. We zoomed into her face when she woke up to show her instant reaction, we used a tracking shot as she gradually drops to the floor where lots of camera tilts were of her crossing words out of a heading in an article to create a sentence stating: 'Demon Possession is Real'.

Day 2 - Filming The Library Scene

In Dan's lesson we began filming our first scene in the library. In this part we used the dictionary as our props, it was used in when Susan took from the shelf and read the term 'possession' through her finger. We took numerous of shots under the library's rules of keeping quiet. Even though it was more difficult to communicate, it was more of a challenge. We took long shots, close ups and a particular over the shoulder shot where Susan was reaching out for the book. This was very important as we used a technique in notifying the label of the shelf stating 'Mental Processes' to help the understanding of our narrative. Also to consider, is the low angle shot with the plant representing the mise en scene, help create Susan's character as abnormal as she sits on the floor instead of normally sitting and reading on a chair.

last thriller lesson

the next lesson was on tuesday with mary. we filmed our last scene then the next lesson on friday we edited our film!