In our evaluation our group decided that we actually worked really well as team . Although we lost a member of our group, Charlotte and I co-operated well together and worked very well as a team. We found that we took on bored each others ideas and decided the positives and the negatives about those particular ideas and then made them into our thriller. Charlotte is a very intelligent girl and I had a lot of fun working with her , she gave many great ideas for the storyboard and interacted with the camera when we filmed our thriller.
There were many roles me and Charlotte decided to give each other. For example my particular roles were Director and Editor. These were very big roles as I had to consider the best ways in which would help create the suspense and tension when filming and adding edits into our thriller opening scene. Charlotte was costume designer and producer in which we both decided what costumes to wear to make our thriller look more realistic for the audience. By Charlotte being producer she made the final edits and cuts to our opening scene which when then uploaded onto YouTube for our rough cut edit. We had feedback from the class whichever as very good, name there are some things we can improve on. As we lost Freddie during the course, Charlotte and I gave eachother those specific roles as they are what suited us best. Despite the roles, we helped eachother with everything and made sure that the other was comfortable doing one piece if work whilst the other focused on another. I learnt from my role that there was a lot of responsibility to take hold of. Despite the great deal of responsibility on my shoulders, I believe that I coped well and could turn to my team member to help me if I struggled with the amount of work. As a whole, Charlotte and I worked very well as a group despite the changes with Freddie. All the other groups did have the extra member so me a Charlotte sometimes struggled with the work load, but because we cooperated very well together we pulled through and had a great time working as a pair. We were very efficient and understanding of the genre on a thriller and the conventions, and took on board one another's idea, in order to make a productive thriller opening sequence.
I think that we have made a good thriller opening sequence, as we always related to the codes and conventions of a thriller. We included low key lighting which added suspense and tension throughout. We included typical female and boy victim (young teenagers) as when analysing other films we noticed that teenagers were seen to be the most vulnerable to be attacked. We also included a relatable genre for the film, which made the audience relate and more scare as it was very realistic to everyday life. Another convention we used was the weapon used to kill the victims. We used a knife as the murder weapon as we believed it was the most conventional to a thriller and the most realistic. This made the audience relate to it as when we made it scrape along the side of the kitchen it created suspense and tension.
The most typical generic conventions to a thriller would be that a young blonde girl gets innocently murdered or tortured by the killer. We have seen this happen in many films such as, Saw, Paranormal Activity, Drag me to Hell, Physco and the Human Centipede. These were all very successful thriller films as there genre was very relatable for the audience. It made you think that bad things are always going to happen, when for example in Paranormal Activity when the clip slows down and the low key lighting occurs you know you have to prepare yourself for the worse; it as us at the edge of our seat. Our thriller we compared it to Scream. This is because we have shown the murder weapon as being a knife with the hidden identity of the murderer like in Scream. The genre of the film is to scare people into thinking somebody is behind them and to warn people that wherever they may go something might happen, and this is what we had to make sure we included in our thriller.
The main characters in our film included a young teen couple who were together in the young boys home. The young teen had a previous boyfriend whom in which she ended the relationship with to be with the boy. Unfortunately, the ex boyfriend took it the wrong way and wanted his revenge, as he is a very possessive and overpowering boy he ends up convincing the girl by force to help in murdering her current boyfriend. We included the young girl as she was pretty, young and innocent and this is what we have seen throughout the entire analysis of different films. We twisted the usual story line in which we made sure the young girl wasn't murdered and that in fact she is made to killer her own boyfriend, but in our opening scene we do not actually see this and we are led to believe it is her when it could be the murderer himself. This obviously added a effect to the audience where we left them in suspense. We included the young boyfriend as we believed that there obviously had to be a victim but not necessarily a young female. He was the initial victim so that the story could be a mystery as the young girl goes missing after the murder takes place, and he is how the plot continues after the opening scene. We finally have the ex boyfriend who is the murderer. We made sure his identity is hidden as it is never revealed until the end but we made sure we see some sort of action from him in the opening scene. This added the suspense to the scene as we as the audience we cannot see the identity of the murderer so it remains a mystery which therefore intrigues the audience to continue watching the film and find out who the murderer actually is.
Gender isn't represented in a stereotypical way as we see the boy for once in the vulnerable position instead of the young brunette. This makes her look powerful as she is the one who kills her boyfriend, but vulnerable as well as she is made to by her fierce ex boyfriend.
Our characters would appeal to the audience as they are realistic. Some people could of had bad relationships which have haunted them to this day, and they could see the terrible outcomes of sick and twisted mind corrupt another relationship. They would also appeal to the audience as they rating of our film is a 15 so the audience would be teenagers themselves and it would engage them more to see young teens like themselves on screen to make them more scared as they may think it could happen to them.
A target audience is important to consider as we need to know what things we can and cant introduce into our thriller. Without our target audience we are not able to plan and film our thriller as there could be things we are not allowed to show to for a certain age. The target audience gives us an idea of how much blood, sexual scenes, offensive language, gore etc we can put in as we are wanting to engage our audience to want to watch the film. We need to know how scary the film can be for the audience not to get bad vibes from it, they only need something that will scare them short term and not long. Our target audience is for ages 15 and above. This is because our characters are at a similar age and this will make the audience believe it is more relatable and that there is no sense of fiction what with the characters being the same age. They would be more engaged in the scenes and will be able to cope with the blood gore and frightening scenes that would occur. They are more likely to understand the storyline as well as it can be quite complicated.
Primary research was essential to our production as it helped us to analyse different films and to gather up ideas for our own thriller opening too. By doing the research we were able to see the positives and negatives to thrillers and find out what conventions are needed in a thriller create that suspense and tension it needs. We got to gather information of what mis-en scene is used and how we can portray and use that within our thriller, and how different opening titles effect the way the opening scene is conveyed. When researching we did a variety of things :
- Analysed films
- Carried out questionnaires
- Narrative theory's
- Age certificates
By analysing all these different things we were able to put together positives and negatives for thrillers and what we should and shouldn't include into them. The analysis of the thrillers were the most important as we got to see what is always used within a thriller. We found out that they always used victims especially female victims which was a convention to a thriller and they always used haunting music and low key lighting to add drama and suspense. Another primary research we did was the questionnaires we asked and filmed to the public. This gave us an idea of what the general public like to see in thrillers rather than what we expect. This was great research as we can then cater for the specific needs and ideas of our audience rather than think of something by ourselves.
We used many different technology systems and objects to help create our production. We used to create our research and evaluations of our thriller and other thrillers by using a system called Blogger. This helped us create blogs for all our analysis on different films, research, ideas for our thriller and it helped us keep track on all of our research and ideas when we needed to film. We use blogger for the research so we could jot down what we thought we had learnt when learning different things throughout this particular media course. It has helped us show our understanding of what we have learnt and also shown us how to use different systems. We also used a video camera and a tripod to help us film the thriller opening scene. We were obviously inexperienced a using all this equipment but this was another learning curve and then got to experiment with different camera angles such as high angle low angle handled etc.
We also used editing software on the Mac Computers called Final Cut Pro X, this helped us edit and fix our thriller into making something of an opening scene. We got to experiment with cropping, fading, blurs, sounds etc. For the sound we used a website call freesound.org this enabled us to type in any particular sound we wanted, download it, and import it into our thriller for where we could edit it if chosen.
We found it difficult to film high angle shots due to we could get the camera to stay still up in the air, there was also potential risk of either one of us falling and hurting ourselves if we fell off wherever we were standing to get the high angle shots in. To overcome this we only used one high angle shot in which we decided to get some help from another friend so that wherever we were standing we had some support to keep us balanced.
When editing I found out how to move footage onto each other so that one clip could play whilst the other did too. I also learnt how to move sound and footage around so that sound could be quieter when the scene is at a crucial point which would create suspense. Id say my strength when editing was the credits as I got them to go from different angles and different colours, and the feedback about the credits was very positive. A weakness of mine I think was trying to hard to make the scenes flow, this made some things go wrong and we had to start the editing again due to footage being cut out when I added things like 'blurs and fading' into the equation.
