ning 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. 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 situati
ons. 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 adver
tised 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.
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