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

Real thriller openings are all designed to build up suspense and have the viewers asking questions. I think that our thriller opening does have viewers asking questions because they will want to know who the characters are and will also want to know why they are chasing each other, and why they are in the places they are in.

Some thriller openings use music to set the tone and atmosphere of the film. Bond films always have a theme tune and a lot of them are quite similar they all set the air of mystery that is always in a Bond film. For thriller opening we wanted a fast paced song to go with our action packed footage. The song we chose was Brianstorm by Arctic Monkeys. We felt that this song was very good because of the high tempo of which it is played. We also added a heartbeat sound effect to go with the torture scene in the opening. We feel that this will create tension and add mystery.

Many thriller films set in the modern era have a car chase or something similar, since we knew we would not be able to recreate a car chase we decided on doing a chase on push bikes because that was as close as we could get to a car chase. In doing the bike chase it did enable us to focus more on the characters costumes and props. The reason I had wanted to do a chase of some sort is because of car chases in James Bond films such as Die Another Day and Casino Royale. Although our chase sequence is much more basic than these it is stillhighly effective in capturing the atmosphere of the opening. Casino Royale car chase

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller opening the character that I play is wearing very scruffy clothing such as a pair of tattered jeans scruffy trainers and a Dangermouse hoody. I think that this does make the character look like he comes from a poor social background. The danger mouse hoody may suggest that he is still a young person. The hood on the hoody is up and in the scene we never see his face. This could be because he is hiding is identity or hiding injuries that may reveal a hidden past. My character is in the role of a villain. He is in a criminal gang.

In the opening No Country for Old Men the audience cannot see the face of Anton Chigurh. This character is dressed very differently to ours however as it is set in a different country at a different time. The fact that his face is concealed builds up the tension because we do not know who he is.

In thriller openings props are very important. In our opening we used three bikes, a cricket bat and a crowbar. The fact that the characters are on bikes shows that they are from a poor social group and may not be able to afford cars. The use of cricket bats and crowbars as weapons suggests that they are very violent people. In our opening the three characters on bikes are all always filmed in a long shot or a mid-shot.

The two settings for our film were an abandoned house on Morton fen and Bourne woods. The abandoned house was used for the torture scene. We chose to film there because the abandoned house was a dark place with not a lot of light; this fits in very well with the mood of our thriller. The house also suggests that the characters are from a poor social background and live in a deprived area. We filmed the bike chase in Bourne woods because we felt it also helped enhance the dark mood of our opening.

The music we chose for our thriller opening was a song called Brianstorm by Arctic Monkeys. We chose this song because it is a fast tempo song and our opening was also fast tempo. Arctic Monkeys are a band from a working class area of Sheffield this reflects our characters who are also from a poor working class social background.

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

A media institution is an organisation that creates and distributes their own productions. There are many different media institutions the biggest of which are Universal and Warner brothers however both of these companies are based in the United States of America. The biggest British media organisation is Film4. Film4 is a company that I admire because it has made many great films. Such as The Inbetweeners and Attack the Block. Film4 have produced many gritty British dramas both on Television and on the big screen. Because of this I feel that our media product would be a film they could distribute.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our thriller opening will be mainly teenagers aged 15 or older and anyone who is interested in gritty British thriller films. I feel that the costumes we chose for our characters reflect life in small town Britain. In many towns across the country there are people who wear similar clothes such as hoodies, jeans, tracksuit bottoms and scruffy trainers. We handed out questionnaires to people and the feedback we received suggested that the type of movie people would like to see is a thrilling and edgy British drama. The most recent examples of this are The Sweeney and Attack the Block.

The BBFC classifies every film or DVD released in the United Kingdom. They classify each film after careful consideration based on things such as language used and violence. We feel that because the opening of our film includes a scene of torture and violence that our film should be rated a 15. We also feel because of the violence that our target audience may lean more towards males than females. People living in urban areas may be more interested than those living in the country side. This is because the setting for the thriller is mainly in urban areas. Also upper class people may not be suited to this film because it does not relate to them. People in lower classes will be able to relate to the characters more and therefore may be more interested in this type of film.

A typical viewer for our film may also be interested in watching TV programmes such as Shameless and Ashes to Ashes. They will also be very into British popular music of and genres such as rap and British indie. Our film is similar to Shameless and Ashes to Ashes in that they are all British dramas set in lower class areas and all focus on people from lower class backgrounds. Shameless and Ashes to Ashes both use dark humour as well.

How did you attract/address your audience?

While in the process of choosing which idea of the 3 that we had we gave out a questionnaire to people asking them which kind of films they would be interested in seeing.

Questionnaire

Age: 8-14 15-21 22-30 31-40 41-50 50*

Gender: Male/ Female

Do you enjoy thriller movies? Yes/no

What location do you like thriller movies being based in? Indoors/outdoors

What’s your favourite thriller movie?  _____________________

Do you like watching movies as a hobby? Yes/no

What makes a thriller opening to you? Slow tension/fast pace/gore

How many thriller movies do you see a week: 1 a week/ 2 a week/ 3 a week/ more

What is your favourite movie out of these 3 thriller movies? Goldeneye/28 days later/ Shutter Island

Why is it that you like this movie?

When we got feedback from people we decided on which idea we would use. From the feedback we received we learnt that people would like to see a thriller that is predominantly set outdoors. A few people also said that they would like to see a fast paced action packed opening to a thriller movie because they want a film that bursts straight into life. As well as using a questionnaire we also interviewed people and asked them about thriller movies they had seen and which one worked for them and which ones they didn’t enjoy as much. From this we also got the impression that high energy action thrillers are very popular.

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

Before the start of the preliminary task I had very little experience of using a camera and had no experience of using Apple macs and editing software. Since then I have used many different technologies and learnt a lot about them.

Cameras are very simple pieces of equipment and are easy to use but when using a camera it is important to consider angles and shots. It is also very important to consider lighting. When we were filming in the woods for the bike chase sequence we used many different camera angles and shots. We sometimes had the camera on the floor looking up at the action and on one occasion we had the camera high up looking down on us. Using a tripod was also very useful as it meant we could have the camera very steady and could have it at any height we felt suitable.

I had never used editing software before this year so that was new to me. At first I didn’t really understand it but after watching Alastair using iMovie to edit our preliminary film I got an understanding of how it worked. It was a very important tool for us. iMovie makes it very easy to edit our footage, we uploaded the footage from the camera we used this took a few minutes. After that we chose which clips from our footage we would keep and which we would use in our thriller. When we had chosen which clips we would use we than put them together in an order that we thought looked good. iMovie also allowed us to add music over the top of the film. We were also able to add effects and transitions so the film cross cuts from the bike sequence to the torture scene.

Other things I used in this project were Photoshop and garage band. We used garage band to try and make a soundtrack to go with the film. After several attempts at this we decided to use music that already existed. This saved us time as making a soundtrack could have taken a long time.

I also learnt how to import footage from a camera to a mac. This process is very simple and easy to do. I also learnt that when editing transitions are very important and can improve a movie massively. Another thing I learnt about when doing this project was Blogger this was a very important tool as it allowed us to post things on the internet and keep a log of all the things we have done in the process of filming the preliminary task and the thriller opening. It also allowed us to get feedback from people posting comments on our posts. This was useful in improving our product. 

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

At the start of the year before we started the preliminary task I had never done anything media related such as using cameras and editing software. After doing the thriller opening I have now used both of these and am confident I know how to use them effectively. I have also learned a lot of new terminology.

When filming our preliminary we had a problem with lighting. We had filmed in an empty classroom and the blinds were partially open and the sun was behind one of the characters this made them look more like a silhouette than a person. We didn’t notice this problem until we were editing. This made lighting something that we would focus on when filming our thriller.

When we filmed our preliminary we made sure that we didn’t have any continuity errors. This was important because continuity errors can ruin a film. We didn’t have any continuity errors in our thriller opening either. However when filming in Bourne woods we had a problem with people walking around in the background. We could not do anything about this because it is a public place. This did mean there were a few clips that we had to delete. In the finished thriller opening we only have one shot where there are people in the background, again we did not notice this until we got to the editing.

I have learnt about various things that can improve filming such as the 180° rule, match on action and shot reverse shot. The 180° rule is when filming a conversation between two people. There will be an imaginary line connecting the two people in conversation, it is important that the camera only stays on one side of this line. If the camera breaks the line this will mean that when the footage is played both the characters will be facing the same direction. Match on action is an editing technique in which on shot matches onto another shot showing the same thing.

180° rule

One thing we could of improved about filming our thriller opening is to become more organised when selecting our filming locations. We had problems with both of our locations. The abandoned house we filmed in had builders working nearby and this wasn’t ideal. Bourne woods was not our preferred location for filming the bike chase. Our plan was to film in the village of Swineshead on the outskirts of Boston; however we struggled to arrange any form of transport to get us and the three bikes there so we decided to film in Bourne woods.

Another thing we could of improved is the positioning of the camera. When filming the bike chase we had to redo some shots several times because the camera was ether too far a way to the action and did not get enough detail or the camera was too close to the action so we could not get a sense of what was going on in that shot.