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

The main conventions of a thriller:

The thriller genre exists in  literature, film, video gaming and TV programmes. It is normally used to create tension, suspension and excitement. Thriller films dramatically change the viewer’s mood by making them more anxious, heightening suspense, terrifying them and growing their anticipation. Fight/chase scenes are very common in thriller films as well as the ‘cover-up’ of important information. Thrillers range from crimes e.g. kidnappings to mystery e.g. investigations. A thriller normally involves the audience being on ‘the edge of their seats’ due to climax built up during the film, programme, etc. Tension is usually created by the character(s) being in some sort of danger, perhaps leading towards a death or a crime being committed to build the danger.  

The dictionary’s definition of ‘Thriller’ is;

“Exciting or sensational story, play, etc. Involving crime or espionage (spying/spies)”

In thriller films there are certain conventions which are expected to be used such as typical camera shots, editing techniques, mise-en-scene, sound, sound effects and narrative. At the beginning of a film it needs to make the audience want to carry on watching, so the way the opening is put together is important as it is almost the decider for the viewer of whether the film is good enough to carry on watching.

The main camera shots that are usually used in thriller openings are;

- Close ups/ Extreme Close ups these are used to show facial expressions, reactions and perhaps to focus on something important.

- Long shots/Extreme Long shots these are used to show the location and to set the scene.

Editing techniques that are likely to be used are;

-Transitions to move from clip to clip, this may build tension.

-In thrillers the transitions that are usually seen are slow passed ones. These may be cross dissolves or blurs as they also help to make the piece tenser; they also help to blend the clips together to make them smoother.

The use of mise-en-scene is important, it is used to;

-Set the atmosphere, most thrillers are tense and mysterious.

-Set the scene, usually abandoned houses or somewhere where there isn’t many people around.

The usual type of sound used it;

- Either a slowed paced, monotone piece making the piece mysterious, tense and almost creepy.

-However, it may be upbeat and at a fast pace making it more action packed and quick.

-Also sound effects that may be used can be screams, heart beats, breathing making it tense.

The opening to The Bourne Identity, used a variety of camera shots, and mainly establishing shots so the scene was set for the audience, characters were also introduced. The scene used is unique compared to most thrillers as it begins on a ship; however the weather makes the piece more tense. To help create the weather, sound effects are used such as wind, thunder, creaking of doors and waves. Throughout the opening the music builds up, it starts at a slow pace but the tension is built up quickly as the music suddenly speeds up to create a dramatic effect, once the music has built up more sound effects of thunder and wind are used, adding more suspense to the piece.  

In class we studied the opening to No Country For Old Men;

 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kqoJevTIIQ) this really inspired me and Emily in producing our piece. We really liked the slow pace throughout the opening and the way it built tension and suspense. This really influenced us in the way we put ours together; ours is very slow and creates huge tension. The opening to No Country For Old Men is very unconventional as it doesn’t fit the thriller conventions such as the camera shots such as close ups or extreme close ups. The opening also doesn’t use the obvious location, it is set in a desert which is usually seen as a positive place rather than a negative which it is expressed as in this film. We also liked the variety and wide range of location shots, we also tried to doing this in our piece by using many locations shots, long shots as well as close-ups, this meant the scene and atmosphere was set and the audience were able to create an image in their head. We were also influence by the opening to ‘The Strangers’, the use of slow pace music which stayed the same throughout the piece, made it stick in your head and made you feel tense, we wanted our audience to have the same feeling. So this helped us to decide on the choice of music.                               This is the music which influence us from 'The Strangers'.

The two images on the left are from No Country For Old Men as you can see some of our shots are similar to our piece. Not only did we use a variety of location shots, but also many landscape shots and we also included a sunrise.

In our piece we use a variety of camera shots. We use close ups throughout the piece, which helped to show emotion and helped the audience to relate their feelings with the characters. We also used close ups when shooting location shots, this gave the audience more of a feeling of the set. Long shots were also used to show the location, we also zoomed in and out on certain parts of location, usually slowly making the piece tense.

One camera shot is the pan used at the end. We panned along the body this shows sadness and makes the audience really think about what happened. We chose to use an almost abandoned barn, which featured farming equipment. Many psychological thrillers use abandoned locations so our scene fitted perfectly. As the location was surrounded by fields this helped show that is was in the middle of nowhere and no one was around. We also filmed a sunrise to show passing of time throughout the titles this was also filmed in an field area. Throughout the piece we used the same sound track, it was a simple piece but still very effective. It had a slow pace to it and at some points an almost crackling sound, which helped add tension; we think the music really worked with our piece as our opening flows at a very slow pace. The only other sound used in the piece is the girls scream, we were able to use the audio from the video and it worked really well, we also repeated the scream at the end when the girl has gone. We used many transitions to move from clip to clip, we used blurs to make the movement more smooth. We also used cross dissolve which worked really well especially in our titles; we really liked the outcome of using cross dissolve in our piece. This helped our clips flow from one to another it also made our piece more tense due to the slow pace. The transition from the metal bars to the hands gives suspense it represents her being trapped. Our titles were our strongest part, the use of sunrise and leaves help to represent the location as well time passing on (sunrise). We believe that in any opening to any film the titles are extremely important so we wanted to make sure our titles played a big part in our piece. Finally, the title appears at the end, a cross dissolve is used to combine the title in with the body before blurring out again.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Finally, I think that this image represents many things. It represents the feminine, young victim. But the bright red nail varnish is almost the focus of the picture. The colour red is associated with evil, so I think that the red nail varnish helps to represent the evil, darkness and danger of the story. 

I think we represented each of our characters well by using different lighting and costumes. We were then able to form three main characters a vulnerable, young girl and two killers, which are still a mystery as their identity was not really shown. 

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

Universal Pictures was found in New York by Carl Buttman in 1912 however it is now located in California US and is one of the oldest American movie studios which are owned by a larger media company called NBCUniversal which is a huge institution which deals with many media companies. Universal Pictures is globally known and has produced many famous thriller films such as Psycho, Skeleton Key and The Bourne Identity. They have also produced other films such as Fast & Furious, Scott Pilgrim vs. the world and Bridesmaids. Not only have the produced blockbusters films but also famous characters such as Mickey Mouse and his friends.

I think that Universal Pictures would be an appropriate institution to produce my thriller as it has produced so well known films and many brilliant thrillers. Our piece is very slow and is a psychological film, so is very similar to Psycho which Universal distributed. Also Universal is recognised worldwide so if they were to produce our thriller it would be recognised quicker as universal are so popular. Also as they are such a big company a lot of money is usually put into each of their films this would mean our thriller would be very successful as props, costumes ect could be purchased to make our thriller as good as it could be. 

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I produced this questionnaire during the planning process of my thriller; I asked a variety of people from age 10-60 about thriller films, mainly what they expect to see in a thriller from the location to the characters. From doing the questionnaire it helped me and my partner finalise decisions such as music, location and sub-genre.

We wanted to do a psychological thriller and our research showed that this would be a popular choice, so this meant we could go ahead with our ideas. Also after doing the questionnaire and analysing the results we then used the BBFC website to help us decide what age our piece would be aimed at. We decided to classify our piece as a 15 although our opening didn’t show much violence, sex or drugs it meant we would be able to if we were to create the whole film. By a piece being a 15 it would mean;

-      -Drug taking is allowed to be shown although it cannot in anyway promote a drug.

-      -Nudity is allowed.

-      -Strong threat and menace are permitted unless sadistic.

-      -Violence can be quite strong.

-      -Dangerous behaviour shown should not dwell on detail.

Our opening gives the impression violence is involved and by it being a 15 it would mean strong violence would be able to be shown.

Our typical audience member would be of either gender and of the age range of 15+. They would enjoy many thriller films mainly psychological and perhaps TV dramas. They may also like going on online social networks.

How did you attract/address your audience?

When planning, filming and editing our thriller we questionnaire results so we were referred to our creating a piece that our audience would enjoy best. For example when choosing our location we looked back at our results, as you can see from the pie chart that our audience would like to see abandoned houses or towns. We think we found a perfect location that helped represent this and really supported our narrative.  We also were influenced by our feedback to create certain characters, once again as you can see in this pie chart that most of the people we asked were interested in vulnerable people mainly but also detectives, villains or murderers. This helped us decide our main characters that would be introduced at the beginning, such as the vulnerable girl and the two boys which would be our villains.  When we were planning and once we began to edit our piece we struggled with what music we should use, so once again we looked back at our questionnaire so we could address our audience’s feedback. As you can see the pie chart clearly shows slow paced music is most popular so we were then able to work from there to find music to fit without piece, also slow paced music would work well with a psychological thriller.

We didn’t just ask our typical audience members via a questionnaire, we also asked a few people just simply what they expect from a thriller.

As you can see these are the results from some of the questions I asked. The results show that psychological thrillers are most popular; this also fits in with the music as most people expect to hear slow paced music which would flow with a psychological thriller. The last pie chart shows that the audience expect to be scared when watching a thriller.

We didn’t just ask our typical audience members via a questionnaire, we also asked a few people just simply what they expect from a thriller.

 What made our thriller appeal to our audience was the slow pace throughout it made the piece more tense. I also think that as there were many location shots shown this almost made the piece creepy and more suspense.

To find out what our audiences responses were, we posted our opening on the social networking site, facebook and this was some of the feedback we got back.

Leigh Sharples – “I like it, well done. The mood of it is good and makes you wanna find out what happened. Don't get too carried away with different transitions though, simple is best. Also, one of the first things I learned was to cut to the beat of the music. For instance when you see the body and cut to the close-up of you, if you cut it half a second earlier on that last high pitched beat, your reaction may be more effective (it may not though, I'm no expert). Its excellent though, keep it up!”

Lewis Simmonds – “Very good start to a thrilling story line the shots taken were very precise and very creative in terms of the angles and the projection on story itself, also I think the location and the scenery were appropriate. the music was well chosen for the plot of the story however I have to agree with Leigh with the beats of the music being just that slightly more precise to what is going on in the scene for more dramatic effect”

Kieran Hill – “Looks cool, tension is nicely kept and didn’t stray from the story, well done”

Ryan Doyle – “As already stated, I thought this was very good. Seamless between shots, good build up, good dramatic effects, was pretty creative too.”

Another way we got feedback from audience members was video interviews.

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

Through the process of producing our thriller opening I have learnt about a variety of different technologies, such as;

• Blogger- We used blogger to record research and planning that we did for thriller genres and our thriller opening. You are able to post images, videos and text. From using blogger it meant we could keep any work we did together and we were also able to look back at notes.

• Camera’s – We learnt how to keep a camera steady when filming as well as using equipment such as the tripods. Not only did we learn how to use the cameras but also how to create certain camera shots and angles such as long shots and close ups.  

• iMovie- When putting our piece together we learnt how to add different transitions, we also learnt how to change our footage contrast/colour saturation/ exposure to be able to add effect to the clip. By using iMovie it also meant we could change the speed, we sped up our sunrise so the clouds would move. Finally, we simply learnt how to put our piece together using the footage we shot and music.

• iDVD- We used this to finish off our piece after converting it. This software meant we could add other features such as a title screen.

• Search Engines- I used google and you tube to research thrillers. Google helped me to understand the meaning of the thriller genre, whilst you tube meant I could watch thrillers to help influence me for my own thriller piece.

• Youtube/Facebook- I didn’t only use you tube to watch thriller films, but to publish my thriller to be able to put it onto my blog. I also published my thriller onto to facebook so that I could collect feedback from viewers.

During the day of filming I learnt how to use the equipment effectively, by getting the best use out of them. We set up the tripod at various heights and angles as well as using the zoom on the camera. When we filmed a shot we made sure we filmed it at least 3 times so if there were any errors in the first we had 2 or more back-ups.

 We also used a wider variety of camera shots, we filmed many close ups to show emotion and to give tension, but mostly they were medium or long shots to show location, to help set the scene.

I was a lot more involved with the editing in this project than I was with the preliminary. I learnt and developed a lot more skills on iMovie and was able to produce a successful piece. I made sure I cut the clips at the correct parts and added transitions at the appropriate time so the piece flowed smoothly through out. I also altered some of the lighting so some clips were darker to help show the time of day. We also changed the contrast on the clip to help represent the flashbacks. Most of our transitions were blurs so the piece flowed easily from clip to clip without it being too jumpy.

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

I think what worked best about our preliminary was the variety of shots we used and that they flowed well from one to another. Which also is a strength in my thriller piece, as we also used a variety of camera shots and angles, however the way I have progressed from my preliminary to my thriller opening is the way we edited it. In our thriller we used more transitions which worked well with our thriller as the piece was slow and it made it flow from clip to clip easier. The transitions also helped to give tension, such as the cross dissolve which gave suspense in this part of a thriller mainly.

In our preliminary some of the footage unfortunately had objects in the background such as the apple and the PE lesson, so when we came to filming our thriller opening we were more aware of our surroundings, making sure no tripods or bags were in shot.

In both pieces we kept to the 180° rule. In our preliminary as we filmed the boys part on a different day to the girl approaching the bench, we nearly broke the rule but when we realised we made sure and luckily we hadn’t. In our thriller, we also managed to keep to the rule throughout the piece meaning it was successful.

These are the slides from our pitch to our class, this shows the location, costume, props and camera shots we wanted to use to produce our piece. We also used a wordle to show key words to explain our idea.

This is the story board we produced whilst planning our thriller opening. As you can see in our planning we wanted the girl which found the body to be a dog walker, however on the day of filming unfortunately the dog we were going to use was no longer available so we improvised around this and simply took the dog out. This wasn’t a huge disaster as we were worrying about the practicality of using a dog and being able to make it do what we wanted. 

The best improvement from our preliminary to our thriller opening was our titles. In our preliminary we used a freeze-frame and used the text on the iMovie.

However, in our thriller they were a lot more creative and fitted well with our piece and made it flow. Also the transition between the text and the sunrise also made our titles more unique and effective.

One part that worked best in out thriller was the range of shots and the way our piece has been edited together. I also think the speed of our piece makes it more tense and fits the psychological genre. When editing our thriller we became more used to the iMovie software and a lot more comfortable meaning we experienced more, for example we used more transitions which helped show our skills of editing such as the cross dissolve. However, when we came to editing our sunrise we wanted to speed it up but we were unable to have it as sped up as we wished, this meant the effect of the clouds moving wasn’t as effective as it could have been, however the slow pace fitted with the rest of the pieces pace. Another successful part was definitely our titles; everyone who gave us feedback thought they were really unique and effective to our piece. We were really proud of them and were pleased that they worked so well with out final piece.

Overall, to improve in our thriller we could perhaps use more than one piece of music. Most of our audience’s feedback has been to use different music for the flashbacks; this would give more of a dramatic effect to the flashbacks. However, not all of our feedback said this some people liked the same piece of music being used throughout as it added tension.