Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions?

Q1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions?

When researching into a thriller we that the genre is on that looks to unnerve the audience and create high amounts of tension amongst the audience. We found that when looking into thrillers the use of violence and playing psychological games on the audience helped build the tension and we knew we had to use this in our thriller opening. The inspiration for idea came from researching the thriller genre in detail and watching thriller opening such as Se7en and Dexter and this helped give us an idea of what to expect and what we should include in our thriller opening. The use of researching and watching other thrillers helped us as a group to come up with an idea for our thriller and we took a lot of inspiration from other thrillers, especially Dexter.

The typical conventions the audience expects to see in a thriller opening are glimpses of what to expect in the film that follows and to do this we have to attract the audience by following the conventions and using things such as violence, suspense, tension, the unknown, weapons, anxiety and excitement. These are all convention that the thriller world uses in almost every thriller film and we have to follow these conventions to secure a high grade and achieve a professionalism feel to our thriller. This is it is important to do our research as we found out what our audience expects to see and from this we created an idea and felt it was vital to incorporate these conventions and our audiences views into our thriller to produce a likeable but professional thriller opening.

There are a number of sub-genres for the thriller genre, a lot of sub-genres that are associated with the thriller genre are: action thriller, psychological thriller, sci-fi thriller, crime thriller. For our thriller we chose the sub-genre of a psychological thriller. This is because our thriller used lot of jump cuts and fades to help create tension; this would help unnerve the audience. Our thriller has a psychological sub-genre due to the confusion of who the killer is and what his motive is and we created this confusion by using jump cuts. Also our thriller used these effects and it help create a sense of mystery, which is a convention heavily associated with the thriller genre. Although this mystery helps our products and helps portray the choice of the sub-genre which we chose is psychological; this is because the jump cuts and flashes we use in our production will keep the audience guessing and this will be playing psychological games.

Typical shots that are commonly found in thrillers are shots such as close ups, mid shots and extreme close ups. The extreme close ups are used to really add tension and unnerve our audience as they portray a lot of detail but prevent the audience from seeing the whole picture, it creates a sense of claustrophobia and creates the convention of tension. The shot used will show some sort of action on screen and will have clues linked to the thriller and will play the psychological games on the minds of the audience as they will be tense as they will be create scenarios in their heads of what to expect. The close ups in thrillers are used to make the audience feel uncomfortable as they show more detail and are usually used to show facial expressions and we used this to show our victim’s  facial expression and this shows the terror in his face due to the violence being inflicted on him. The mid shots in thrillers are used to show the movements of characters and action unfolding.

As for editing there are shots fast paced editing creating tension, Flashbacks and fade to black/white are often used as well these add tension because they show other action which helps to develop our narrative. Mise-en-scene in typical thrillers, the setting is usually quite secluded creating a sense of being trapped. The costumes in thrillers can vary depending on what type of character for example in the transporter films Jason Statham always wears a suit, this shows he is professional. A lot of the time victims wear white clothes to show their innocence and symbolise their purity. The lighting in thrillers is usually low key, with a lot of shadows this helps to create an atmosphere in the thriller. Also props in thrillers are usually dangerous and realistic, with some connotation to the narrative.

The narrative of our thriller is of a psychologically genre and an unstable killer who‘s making a everyday routine look sinister and then we find out the killer is sinister as he’s captured a young male but we don’t know what his motive is. This opening we created will give our audience a glimpse of what to expect in the movie as a lot of violence is present in the first few minutes and an exciting climax is building which will make the viewers want to watch to figure out the motive for this killing.

For our thriller opening we had to follow some rules and we learnt these rules in class and they were rules like the golden mean and rule of thirds. The rule of thirds, which can be seen above, is a rule that needs to be followed as it keeps the action in the centre of the screen to help draw the audience’s attention to the important aspects on screen. The other rule is the golden mean which we had to follow and this is where the action follows a line diagonal across the screen and this bring the attention of the audience to important features on the screen.

As for sound in our production we spent a considerate amount of time researching into sound and what would make our thriller be a success. We found that the music needed to be fast tempo’d when the violence was present on screen to create the tension and build up fear amongst the audience. We found that often orchestral instruments created the best effect for short snippets of sound, followed by a loud impacting instrument like a drum. The sound that can be heard in our thriller was our own soundtrack created on Garage Band and is all non-diegetic sound. We felt this worked well as we didn’t have a substantial budget to work with to access a soundtrack or create the music from using microphones etc. I felt the use of Garage Band helped us as a group as we could use it to our advantage by making the soundtrack fit our production by creating tension by upping the tempo when violence was present on screen. This would help create tension amongst our audience as the upping n the tempo will make them suggest danger is present. We found this was used in other thrillers and helped us create the professionalism we wanted.

When researching into thriller we took quite a big inspiration from the film ‘DEXTER’. I found the narrative of the opening sequence very exciting and used many conventions of a thriller by using violence, sinister music and also the colour red which has strong connotations with danger. As the audience I felt it kept us guessing what was going on. The use of graphic matches help portray a psychological feel to it, take the shoe lacing shot for example, this was shown as the killer in Dexter tightly pulling the laces together and it created a thought of strangulation and the use of the non-diegetic sound of the sinister soundtrack helped tell us as the audience there was something more to this shot than just a shoe being tied. We took inspiration from this and incorporated the graphic matches to make a normal daily routine look/feel sinister.

The images that can be seen above are examples of what I think are quite similar shots from our thriller and ‘Dexter’. The shot on the right is from our thriller and the shot on the left is from Dexter, I felt they share similarities as they are both everyday routines that most people follow but the way they have been portrayed on screen make it feels sinister. The sinister nature is portrayed through the close ups which are commonly used in thrillers and the sinister feel comes from the tightness the gloves and they laces are being pulled.

In our thriller we stuck to the conventions of a thriller by using things such as flashbacks, close ups and midshots. We also used a lot of violence and excitement within our thriller as these are typical conventions found within thrillers. In addition in our research we found out about flashbacks, we liked the idea of the flashbacks with quick cuts as it helped develop the narrative, this was one of the conventions we studied in our research, we decided to use a fade to black in this section during the strangulation this helps show the life draining out of him, this is one of the conventions that we looked at and thought we should include. As for other things like camerawork we used a variety of shots but mainly mid-shots and close ups, close ups as shown are used mainly on the victim, this was because it helps show them being trapped and this brings across a sense of fear for the audience. This is seen in many films especially "Dexter" what we studied. 

In our thriller we did a lot of research and focused on mise-en-scene, the reason for this was we wanted to create a professional looking thriller. We used low key lighting by using the dim feature on the camera and this gave us a low-key feel to our thriller and made our shots darker which is a common convention of a thriller film. Also during editing we enhanced some shots to show only what we wanted the viewer to see, for example in the knife scene, we don't want them to see the identity of our killer so we darkened the background. Make up was used on Zak only, as you can see in this scene here Zak's face has blood on it, this was done using red food colouring and soya sauce which gave us very realistic results as you can see. Acting was difficult due to us all being very inexperienced but compares it with our prelim and you can see significant differences, overall I look a lot more serious and professional. In addition Zak portrays his weakness well due to his facial expressions showing his fear, but also his body language. 

When deciding our location we knew from our research that we need to have a location where it would be quiet and away from the public eye as that’s what a stereotypical thriller location is about. As you can see in the shots above a sense of entrapment as the surroundings look rather secluded and this will create a sense of claustrophobia amongst the audience as they feel as though they are trapped in the location like the victim.

When it came to deciding the costumes for our thriller we did a lot of research into the costume and the costumes of our victim and killer. As for the killer we decided to use of suit because we wanted to create a sophisticated look for him as we wanted to play the psychological games on the minds of our audience. We decided that for the killer we would use an all black suit as when doing our research we found that when referring to thriller the colour black has connotations with danger and evil and we wanted to create these messages for our killer. This is why the colour black was used as our audience can create assumptions on our killer and give them an idea of the type of character he is. The image of our killer’s costume can be seen below.

As for the victim’s costume we did a lot of research into and we achieved the best we could from the victim’s costume. We found that a stereotypical costume for a thriller victim consists of very little clothing and if any clothing, it is very thin clothing. As for the costume we used for the victim was to be a casual outfit which is to show the link with the killer of the normality that is shown in our opening. The casual look appeals to our psychographics of mainstreamers by wearing an everyday look. This will give the audience something to link with and will also unnerve the audience as they will feel this type of violence can happen to anyone. Also we did our research into a typical victim’s costume and realised the colour white was used almost all the time. The colour white has connotations with innocence and purity and this shows the character’s innocence. Also the tears in the white shirt show that the character’s purity had been torn apart and had it taken away from him. Also the thin white shirt shows the character’s little protection and the use of the red trainers helped as the colour red has connotations with blood and danger and this will unnerve our audience. A picture of our victim’s costume can be seen below. 

Q5) How did you attract/address your audience?

Q5) How did you attract/address your audience?

When creating our opening sequence we took into consideration what our audience said and wanted to apply what they expect to see in our production from the research we obtained. From the research we obtained we gathered a range of expectations but also similar expectations. We obtained our research from asking our target audience via a Vox Pop. We found that our audience expects to see violence and some sort of excitement which is thrilling. We took this into consideration and ensured we included some violence and some excitement which would attract our audience as we wanted to make our film pleasing for our audience. It is important to please our target audience to improve the sales and reputation of the film.

From the images you can see on the left they are from the first scene and a graphic match is present. The graphic match is the car key to a knife and we felt this would attract our audience due to the knife having strong connotations with violence and this is presenting what the audience asked for. The shot type we used in this sequence was the midshot to keep the identity hidden of the killer, only showing his bottom half. This shows that the killer is still the same but it also creates tension and brings that thrilling

theme to the film which the audience expected to see. This will create the excitement for the audience as they will be itching to know the identity of who the killer is. When it came to editing we used jump cuts and flashes of black and white. This helped attract of audience as we gave them tiny snippets, around a second flash of violence. This is effective as the audience can sense there is something going on but they only see short snippets which will keep the audience excited as to see what is going on and also confused. This will create excitement for them as they will be looking forward to see the full story. We felt this was an effective piece of editing as it keeps the narrative exciting and continues to create tension as the narrative continues. The sound in this scene helped with the excitement and brings a thrill to the audience as during the flashes of violence the music would turn to a higher tempo. The costume in this scene will also help attract the audience as it is quite clear that the victim has torn clothing which makes the audience presume a torture has taken place. There is also blood that can be seen over the clothing which suggests danger and violence and also the colour red has connotations with danger and violence so this has worked to our advantage by pleasing our audience as violence is present.

The images on the left show the next scene and strangulation occurs in this scene and shows brutal violence. Throughout this sequence we wanted to keep the identity of the killer hidden till the end to keep the audience on the edge of their seat and excited to see who it is; so again we used a close up shot so his identity was hidden. In the top image on the left where you can see the strangulation taking place we added the sound effects of a man coughing during the editing stage and this was used to show him struggling. When researching

our audience likes to see violence and this was brutal violence on screen and this will please the audience. We increased the tempo of the music during this scene creating more tension. This will appeal to our audience as they asked for something to excite them and thrill them. The lighting we used in this scene was very well thought about; this was produced from the lights we used to bring the face of the victim to life. The picture on the left shows, the top of the two pictures, shows the shadow of the killer. This is showing a shadow of dominance and power which will strike fear into the audience, and the dark colour shows the danger the killer possess due to the colour black having connotations with danger.

One of the final scenes we have is when the killer is going into his boot to get the victim. This shot again is a midshot of the killer and is done in the victim perspective, known as first person’s perspective. The midshot is effective again as you can see the woods in the background of the killer. This is effective because woods are a place that is a stereotypical place of where a body gets buried in thriller films. This shows that we have done our research and carefully chose our location. The shot also shows the end of a weapon and this show that violence is expected and this will please our audience as the majority expect to see violence. During the editing stage we added the non diegetic sound of somebody breathing heavily. This is to show the fear that is present of the victim that is tied up in the boot. The use of the weapon that can be seen in the shot but the use of it being hidden as well as the killer’s identity helps create tension as the audience will be wanting to see what’s being used, how it’s going to be used and the use of it being hidden will help keep the audience excited and keep them watching.

I feel we did carry out what our audience expected of us as we created a very good thriller. We felt this as it consists of violence, thrills, tension and excitement throughout the thriller. We felt our narrative was exceptional after a rough time trying to figure out what to do. Although it was in fact our audience who gave us the inspiration for our thriller, they gave us a solid foundation for our production.

 I feel we did stick to the conventions of the thriller genre, by producing tense moments, using weapons, lots of violence and blood, creating moments of danger. We used the music of a thriller by using a fast tempo beat and used sinister sounds and louder sounds when violence was on screen as when researching we found this was common in thriller films. We also found when doing our research that the action on screen reflects the speed of the cuts. The use of jump cuts that were added during editing helped bring a fast paced look on the screen when violence was taking place. This helped attract the audience as it would build tension and excitement. The mise-en-scene would have attracted out audience, because of the use of makeup and costume. We used little make up but the use of fake blood helped shows the brutality of the torture and creates tension and unnerves the audience. The costume also would have attracted the audience, the victims costume is torn all over and this shows how brutal the violence has been and shows the power of the killer which will strike fear into the audience due to the authority the killer holds. We also think the killer’s costume will attract the audience as he is wearing a suit which creates a sense of normality and sophistication and it gives the audience something to relate to as they will not expect a killer to wear a nice suit. Also the colour of the suit will create tension as the colour black holds connotations with danger and evil which creates messages about the killer and the audience can hammer into this idea. 

Audience's choices on Actors - Vox Pop

Vox Pop DrIvE - Audience's thoughts

Q7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Q7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

When comparing our preliminary task with our final production I feel as a film maker I have come a long way and improved my skills and techniques. We showed some good strength within our preliminary task such as holding a steady camera and using match on action effectively. Although as a group we knew we could improve. Looking back now I feel we definitely improved and were proud of the film we produced as a group.

We took some great strength from our preliminary task such as the shots we used, the shot types and the quality of the shots worked very well. We learnt a lot from our preliminary task and from this we learnt how to create titles with after effects and how to edit our thriller. We learnt skills such as how to fade to black and jump cuts to make our thriller build tension. We used a canon 600D camera to help make our preliminary and our production. This helped us with the quality of shots due to the quality of the camera we had. The shots we used we felt were brilliant and really showed what we could produce in our real production; this was due to the variety of shots we used. We improved framing in our production with more quality and it helped our shots look professional. I also think for the first time editing it was quite a good job that we produced. We added sound and used match on action in our first attempt at creating a sequence. The editing skills we used in the preliminary were very basic but they helped us as a group get an understanding of how to edit a production and it helped us improve as editors and familiarise us with the editing side of things ready for the final production.  

The weaknesses from our preliminary task, a notable one, were definitely the titles. This was because we used hardly any titles and the titles we did use were very basic. We didn’t do much research before the preliminary task into the titles and we used very poor and boring titles which weren’t very exciting and something our audience appropriately picked us up on. We used this to our advantage to ensure we produced exceptional titles and definitely improved from our preliminary. We did this as our audience did pick up on the titles in the preliminary task and we was driven from their feedback to please them with exciting titles. One thing we did realise as a group when doing our preliminary task was the mistake of only shooting one shot once. This meant that we only had a small quantity of shots to work from making the preliminary look unprofessional and a bit messy. We took this into consideration when producing our final product by shooting every shot we did at least 3 times. This was very effective as we could use the shots and choose the best one and had a range of shots to work from to ensure our production look professional.

When producing our preliminary task we had to learn and stick to rule that are associated with the filming industry and a vital part of making a professional production; these are rules such as continuity,180* rule, shot reverse-shot and match on action. We had to ensure the continuity improved from our preliminary task as we felt the shots in the preliminary were a bit jumpy. Our aim for the final production was to ensure our continuity improved and kept it up throughout.

We did this by starting recording before action took place so we could get the continuity right and sharp. This helped us with our editing and shooting of shots as it proved we could have a real sharp and professional production without any long pauses which were present in our preliminary. When it came to the 180degree rule we didn’t know about it to start with but we soon learnt about its importance and that we had to stick to it to ensure we didn’t disorientate our audience. When reflecting on the 180degree rule I felt we did very well of sticking to it in both productions and I didn’t feel as though we broke it at all. We developed our knowledge of the 180degree rule by watching clips of the camera’s position and how the rule can be broken. We ensure we took in the information from these clips to make sure we didn’t make the mistake of breaking the rule.

We did use the shot reverse shot within our preliminary task and it could have been improved as the camera could have been placed in a better position. We did take notice of this and we were expected to improve it when we did our final production. Although we didn’t actually use the shot reverse shot in our production; although we have justified our reasoning behind that. We chose against using the shot reverse shot as when we did our research we found that the shot reverse shot was commonly used when a conversation or some sort of dialogue was on screen. We didn’t have any dialogue in our final production and found that dialogue wasn’t a common feature within an opening title sequence and this is why we chose against not using the shot reverse shot. Match on action was an important feature that we used in our preliminary and final production and found is a very tricky but effective feature. It helps the production in many ways as it can help show continuity and action and if the match on action is done correctly it will make the film flow and look professional and make shots link together. It really helps tie things together and bring a real professional look to the production.

An example from our final production would be when Liam (the killer) is walking towards his car and intends to get inside his car. As a group we decided that match on action would be appropriate to use at this stage. What we did was cut the shot as he approaches the car door, the first part of this shot is filmed from behind the killer we then cut the shot and placed the camera in front of the killer. This is where match on action occurs as we cut the shot and return to the action at the same point ass the action was in the other shot when the camera was behind him. This helps us a lot, especially with continuity and helps the film flow more and give it more of a professional look. Another important feature we used a lot in our production was the graphic match. From our research we found that the graphic matches helped build tension and that they can be used to symbolise some parts of the action on screen. We chose to use a lot of graphic matches to create a lot of tension and scare our audience and get them thinking of what’s happening.

When we were planning for our thriller we used a different range of techniques to obtain ideas and research. By doing this we used a Vox Pop to obtain information of what people looked for in a thriller, we gathered a range of ideas from a range of different people in our target audience. We then gathered all the information and worked out what was the best way to please our audience and developed our idea from there. We used the information from the Vox Pop to come up with an idea for our narrative and we found it difficult at first but the information we gathered from our target audience really helped to accelerate our thinking. When we had done that we decided on what sort of sound we should use and how certain things in sound changed the feel and atmosphere of the scene. We then split up the group and delegated jobs to a member of the group and all played our part in producing a shot list, filming schedule and storyboard.

In general I was very pleased in myself and the group in the final production we produced. I feel this because when we compared our final production with our preliminary we can see vast improvements and as a group we felt we had done a good job. A big strength we decided as a group which we felt was a great improvement from the preliminary was our titles. I extremely like the last title, the title of our production. To link the title to the car in the production which was where the idea of DrIvE came and also the words DIE within the words DRIVE helped us and to get the letters ‘R’ and ‘V’ to flash out really shows how far we came from our basic titles used in our preliminary. I felt the production kept to the conventions of a thriller extremely well and would really have pleased our audience.

If we were to do our thriller again there would be thing I would improve to make it better although I felt there weren’t too many improvements. The final scene for example, with the pick axe makes it look a bit odd, and a pick axe isn’t a weapon particularly associated with murders in thrillers. I would of use a spade as it shows the body is about to get buried and a spade is a weapon that isn’t always in a thriller but does make the odd appearance. Another improvement that I feel we should make is the scene when the killer turns on the music and the music of the background changes, it seems a bit random and doesn’t seem to work as well and that was something as a group we had doubts about.  

At the start of the task we produced a preliminary thriller, this helped introduce to use the different types of shots to use and introduced us to the editing side of things. This helped us get up and running and we developed these skills into making our thriller as good as possible. Although we used this preliminary task to receive feedback, we showed our preliminary task to a variety of people to find out what they thought. Although this was a very basic type of thriller and didn't aim to excite or thrill our audience straight away it still followed a lot of the conventions which we asked people if they enjoyed. We found people said the camera shots and angles helped develop the narrative which helped us in our final production as we knew to use a range of shots. I believe the preliminary task was a great way of helping us as a group identify our strengths and weaknesses and also our audience identifying them for us helped drive us on in making sure we corrected our weaknesses and kept to our strengths. As one big thing in our production that our audience was critical of in our preliminary task was our use of titles.  They were at a poor standard and let our preliminary down as a result of this, we took this into consideration and did research into thriller titles and we really worked hard to ensure our titles in the final production were as good as possible as we wanted to show progress and improvement to keep our audience happy.

Q6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Q2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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Q2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

When casting our killer we chose Liam from our group to be our killer. Although Liam may not look like a stereotypical killer due to his age but we had a limited budget and limited time and we deemed it suitable just to have Liam as our killer. This is because Liam shares similar characteristics to a stereotypically killer in a thriller movie. We can see this as Liam has a large physique for his age which is similar to killers in real films. Although Liam didn’t quite fit the typical conventions of a killer we decided to go ahead with using Liam as we only had a limited number of actors and we have Liam’s identity hidden through careful framing and focus for a lot of the film so the physique of Liam is all we needed and he fit that stereotype of a killer’s physique.

 

From this screenshot we have got above we see Liam as our killer and it shows his rather large physique which is stereotypical of a killer and we know he is a killer due to him holding the axe and the determined look on his face. The shot of Liam on the upper left is the only shot where the villains’ identity is shown to the audience and this occurs right towards the end of the film. This shows our use of camera shots as we lowered the tripod creating the low angled shot to show Liam’s power and dominance. The camera shot shows the audience looking up to Liam which suggests he’s more superior to us as the audience.  We didn’t give away the identity of the killer which keeps our audience guessing as they don't know what the killer’s aim is and doing. We also created suspense as they will want to see who he is and tension will be building to his identity being shown. The costume selection we did a lot of research for. We looked into a villains costume in thriller films and we felt it was suitable to use a suit for our thriller due to the sophisticated nature and the normality our thriller brings. The suit helps our narrative of bringing a sense of normality to the killer; this will help the psychological effect we have tried to create. We have link Liam as our killer to an actor like Jason Statham due to the similarities they shared.  We went for a similar look and attitude and the sophistication of Jason Statham created a link with Liam in our thriller as they share connotations such as their violent ways and brutality when it comes to violent scenes but also the sophistication in the way they are portrayed, the costume is a main feature of this.

When deciding our victim we chose Zak out of our group. This created a similar problem with Liam being the killer as I am a male and the stereotypical victim is commonly female. The problem that choosing the two actors created was that we didn’t get the subverted conventions of a victim and a killer. Although we had limited actors we chose me to play the victim due to my smaller physique compared to Liam and I can be seen as a weaker character than compared to Liam. We just had to work with me as the victim as best as we could and tried to make the thriller look as professional as we could.

The costume used for the victim was to be a casual outfit which is to show the link with the killer of the normality that is shown in our opening. The casual look appeals to our psychographics of mainstreamers by wearing an everyday look. This will give the audience something to link with and will also unnerve the audience as they will feel this type of violence can happen to anyone. Also we did our research into a typical victim’s costume and realised the colour white was used almost all the time. The colour white has connotations with innocence and purity and this shows the character’s innocence. Also the tears in the white shirt show that the character’s purity had been torn apart and had it taken away from him. Also the use of a thin white shirt shows the character’s little protection and the use of the red trainers helped as the colour red has connotations with blood and danger and this will unnerve our audience. There aren’t many male victims in thriller films and that is why it is hard to compare our victim to a real victim.

The camera shots we used in our thriller were very effective and I felt the shots we used for our characters were very effective for the professionalism of our thriller. For the victim we used a lot of close up shots and we felt this was an effective and appropriate shot to use to show the brutality of the violence that had been inflicted upon the victim. Also the close up of the victim also showed the facial expression and this helped put across the fear the victim had to the audience and this would have created tension and sympathy amongst the audience. Another shot used was the 1^st persons perspective shot that was used in the victim’s eyes to see the killer with his weapon. This would put the audience in the shoes of the victim and tension would be created as the audience would be anticipating some violence. The camera shots we used for the killer was the same camera shot used throughout which was the extreme close up and this was used to not give much away to the audience and keep the killer’s identity hidden.