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.

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.

Grove Park (Thriller Film)

Day1 - Recording Our News Reporter Speech

In Mary's lesson, we prepared and gave Mickey our 'breaking news' speech to record. We told him the narrative of the story in advance, so he could think about the pace and accent of his voice. In the film, this recording will be played during Susan's nightmares of killing a girl. We planned to receive this next lesson on CD. Whilst this was being processed, our group planned our storyboard and production schedule. This helped no time being waste in the making of out thriller.

Pitching Our Thriller

In Dan's lesson me and my group brainstormed ideas on our thriller. We came up of a script about a possessed girl that finds out she is the killer of Susan's death.
As a group, we pitched our ideas to our teachers, as you would to a film producer. They thought it was successful which meant we could begin our thorough plan. My group and I discussed that in next lesson we will ask Dan or Mickey to be our news reporter. Their role is to voice record the 'breaking news' speech we prepared in class.

Editing Our Match Cut

In Mary's lesson, we continued and finished editing our match cut clip which is shown on the other post. The mise en scene of the diegetic sound showed the theme of the clip is more of a 'gangsta' thriller based on the count of beats. The narrative also help create this as the meeting between the two are serious and very private. Although comparing to our previous film making, I prefer the other one. This reason is because, i believe the overall use of edit wasn't enough and could have been better. However all experiences count.

Filming our Match Cut

In Dan's lesson, my group filmed our match cut on the corridor noticing the establishing shot of London. We followed out storyboard which was beneficial as no time was wasted. All had gone according to plan as usual. The only prop we used was a pen and paper to help show the narrative of the clip. These props illustrated the meeting being based on confidentiality.

Preliminary Match Cut Exercise

Storyboard Tutorial & Match Cut Exercise

In today's lesson, Mary was absent although we was given an exercise to do in pairs. I worked with Susan, and we created a short list of shots if we was to create a sequence to show "East London. 3pm. A man chain-smokes as he sits at his home PC. He copies confidential computer files and plans to a CD. He packages them and is seen posting them." In doing this, Susan and I considered on what shot types to use, camera actions and camera angles. Our sequence had to have no more than 20 shots. When finished with our plan we watched the real clip made by Mickey to help contrast what parts we had right and what parts we could of improved on. Concluding with the lesson we began our storyboard to our preliminary film and the synopsis is: 'A character opens a door, walks into a room, sits down opposite another character and they share a few lines of dialogue'. Next lesson, we was going to film this.

Watching Film Openings & Analysing Previous Student's Work

In today's lesson with Dan we watched a documentart about film openings abd learnt the following:

• Thomas Sutcliffe says "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 irrestistible". He means a way of attracting the audience's attention by making them want to watch the whole film
• According to the director Jean Jacques Beineix, the risk of instant arousal are what comes after. Sustaining the audience's attention
• "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 amout of information to the audience can limit their interest
• Critic Stanley Kauffmann described one film opening as classic because of the effective use of the camera zoom into a skyscraper
• Kyle Cooper's title sequence to the film 'Seven' is so effective because it shows us the obsessive mad nature of the villian
• The phrase "a favourite trick of Film Noir" means the ending of the film is shown at the beginning. E.g. like in 'Casino' we want to know why the character is killed
• The opening of 'The Shining' creates suspense by the camera's movements acting like a predator by hunting the car from a distance

We also analysed previous students' work on their choice of location, camerawork, editing, lighting, and their use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound. My favourite video was Video5 because as the audience, i felt i understand what the film would be about as it gave me enough information to influence me in watching the whole of the thriller. I liked the way the opening was set in two locations (police office and essex road station) because it showed they gave a lot of thought. I also enjoyed the way there was no diegetic sound being played as the non diegetic sound created more of a suspense. I liked their use of edits because parts of the sequence were in slow motion. The thriller that i disliked the most was Video6 because their poor planning showed through their insufficient footage. I also didn't like the dialogue they used and thought the clip looked far from being a thriller movie.

Editing with Sound

In today's lesson we used a program on the Mac computers to experiment how the different use of sounds can set the scene in a particular sequence. We used parts of the film 'Casino Royale' to help do this. The aim of the lesson was to learn how important sound plays in a film, and we gained this objective also by watching documentary clips that was part of the program we used itself.

Different Thriller Types

In today's lesson with Mary, we brainstormed the different types of Thriller. We found the following:

• Thrillers with action like 'Speed'
• Horror thrillers
• Innocent on-the-run plots
• Stealing someone's identity
• Supernatural thrillers
• Political thrillers
• Comedy thrillers
• Psychological thrillers (thrillers 'playing' with the mind)

As a classs we then analysed six clips from Thriller films. Whilst watching these clips we learnt a new term called 'intertextuality' and refers to how different kinds of films incorporate aspects of other films.

Editing our Thriller

In this lesson, Dan was absent and so we had Tony as our cover teacher to help continue edit our thriller. In this lesson, we used a software called 'final cut pro' to log and capture our specific scenes and then organised them on the time line. Whilst doing so, we added a few edits to make it more effective and 'Hollywood' style. For example, the fast zoom in my character's face presented the unexpected outcome of being shot. We also included sound in the clip to help build suspense. We used the software called 'soundtrack pro' to do this. The choice of sound we used related to each scene.

Second Lesson

I was absent ):

First Lesson - Filming our Thriller

For this practical, we had to record and edit out own Thriller clip using up to 12 shots and some props. In our first lesson we were put in to groups. My group consists of Susan, Lipi and Amrita.

Each group was given a camcorder and we had to watch a presentation of using it. We learned the basics e.g how to insert a tape and how to manually focus. We also learned the responsibilities, what not to do and what to do when using the camcorder.

After the demonstration clip, me and my group created a storyboard. As a group, we decided me and Susan to act while Lipi and Amrita recorded. We also used a table, two chairs, a deck of cards and a gun as our props. This was effective as it emphasised the thriller being a bit 'gangster'.

Our clip begins at a low angle and slowly tilts upwards to Susan's body to show the audience that she's the main character and in this case, the killer. Then, there was an over the shoulder shot as she was about to sit down. This help to see Susan's view. The extreme close up of the deck of cards presented the two characters gambling and the extreme close up of me and Susan's face showed our serious expressions. There was also a close up of Susan pointing straight in front of the camera to help build suspense as it was recorded from my view. The shot recorded from Susan's view, of a close up of me clearly showed i was scared, with my mouth wide open and my arms held high. The last part of the sequence was an over the shoulder shot of Susan throwing the gun on the floor whilst i was lying dead. This was effective as it created suspense and makes the audience wanting to see more. Unfortunately, we couldn't record the way Susan killed me because it's only a practice and we didn't have what was need e.g. fake blood.

What Scares Us

The things that scares us when watching a thriller movie are:

• Blood
• Weapons
• Screeching and screaming noises
• Flashes
• Quick cuts
• Sharp editing
  
• Drumming noises that relates to a deadly scene
• Plughole scenes that are intertextuality
• Shadows
• Dark light
• Scary locations like suburbs