Final Evaluation

Thriller Evaluation.

By Grace Herbert.

^{For the past few weeks in media studies, we have been working on our practical unit: 'Making a thriller film opening.' We were given video cameras and tripods to go out and film with and had to log and capture our footage onto the Apple Macs in school and edit our sequence into a short 'film' My group consisted of me, Lauren, Bien, Vikki and Rashpal. Firstly for this unit we had to sit down as a group and discuss possible scenarios for our film opening. We brainstormed all different aspects of our film e.g. The target audience, the genre (thriller- horror etc.), the story outline and so on. Once we had found an idea which we wanted to further we started to plan properly. We storyboarded our idea and listed the various different shot types we wanted to use in our film. Once we were fully prepared with the planing we went out and filmed our opening. We made sure we filmed too much footage, took too many takes and used the 5 second rule for all our clips. We also used our experience from our past practise practical work to make sure our mise – en – scene stayed consistent throughout our filming. Once happy with the footage we had shot we edited our film, inserted slugs, credits, transitions, edited the speed, and applied a soundtrack onto it. We then uploaded it on to our blogs, which we have been writing in throughout our whole practical work.}

^{We started our thriller opening quite slow and built up tension as it went on. Below are some images of our opening, showing some of the skills which we learnt during this task.}

^{Here we have a long shot of our main character walking through a deserted arch early in the morning. As you can see we used the light to an advantage, as it became dusk we decided to shoot as you get the same feeling as if it were dawn.
Here is a match cut of Lauren walking, as you can see from the image above there was a pillar in the way of the camera, by match cutting this shot our audience could view her walking still. As you can also see we have varied our levels and shot types and distances.
The above images show one of our most effective shots during our film also know as 'The Red Flush.' This part of our sequence is the part where you can first tell there is something not right going on and to emphasise this signal we slowed the footage down to cause more of an impact on the viewer. I particularly enjoy this shot as the sound effects on this adds that extra piece of sheer suspense, commonly seen in thrillers.This image consists of one of our slugs and credits, which we designed in live type. I choose this particular slug to show as it shows a fault that we made whilst in the editing process. All of our other credits have each persons second name imprinted on them but this slide doesn't. We did spot this mistake during the process of editing our film but we were too far along to change it (we crossed it during the last day of editing) With our slugs we used the transition dissolve in order to help merge the two images together effectively.
The image above was by far the most complicated, complex shot which we had to film but was again one of the most effective. Without this shot I am not sure that our film would be the same. To shoot this shot we had to experiment angles by laying on the floor, using hand held cameras and manual focus, framing the shot to perfection in order to see both hand and face and getting the lighting exactly right in order to make our red tinted water be portrayed as blood. After a good long time of fussing around with the angles we had to stack tables on top of each other, place our bowl of blood water in-between them and shoot from the bottom of them.
This image shows both footage and credits combined. We mastered this technique by using both Live Type and Final Cut Pro.}

^{Our thriller opening is consistent with the thriller – horror sub-genre as we have a vulnerable young lady on her own walking a deserted street into a solitude café where she discovers the remains of a human in a toilet cistern. This is conventional as it has a vital thriller film character and follows a 'traditional' storyline. I know that this is conventional of a thriller film as we researched media texts and films from the thriller genre before hand. Films that we observed before our practical work included The Shining by Stanley Kubrick and What Lies Beneath by Robert Zemeckis. We looked in depth about how they build up tension using sound effects and different camera angles. We saw from What Lies Beneath that a simple idea can be very effective as the suspense in it helps bring the audience to the edge of their seats. We also learnt that sound effects are very useful for building suspense, tension and fear as there is a shot in the opening where you see the 'ghost' first but jump when you hear the sound effect added on to it. This is also true in the shining as the loud drum sounds when the scenes change make it highly uncomfortable for the viewer as it is actually scary. Also The Shining shows us how effective not only sound effects are but also the diagetic sound of the film. For example when Danny is driving around the deserted hotel in his toy bike the diagetic sound of when he drives from carpet to wooden floor gives an eerie effect which makes the viewer feel uneasy and uncomfortable. During the build up to us making our openings we watched a documentary about openings to thriller films called 'Watching'. This documentary incorporated various thriller openings including Seven, The Shining, A Touch Of Evil & Casino. From witnessing these openings we learned, as a group, that we could start from the end (as in a Casino), and even entwine it with bold images, unrelated to the understanding of the audience (as seen in Seven). This documentary was extremely helpful as it outlined to us that the opening of a film must give an instant arousal, it must entice its audience into continuing in watching the film itself. Although this is the plan that me and my group had decided on, instant arousal, there were some risks in doing so, as stated in the documentary. Jean Jacques Beineix stated that the main risk of instant arousal was that 'after the first bit of excitement, its hard to keep the audiences attention at that high'. This statement did effect mine and my groups intentions for our opening, as did the whole documentary but we overall decided to add an event that would grab our audiences attention and make them want to view more, as in Casino.}

^{During the build up to our practical we had a preliminary task where we learnt how to match cut. This exercise was extremely helpful along with our other filming task as it gave us a clearer incite into how to make our scenes make sense and not look amateurish. It also helped us to get acquainted with the cameras properly and how to add soundtrack onto our piece effectively. Another positive function it had on us was that we were able to film our final piece quickly, filming more footage that we actually needed, which is vital as once coming to editing the piece with a lot of footage it makes it easier for you to sync two scenes together. We also learned from doing this task that storyboarding and planning the film thoroughly is key to making an effective piece which is able to grab your audiences attention sharply.}

^{Our media product represents the vulnerability of young teenage girls. Our opening showed a teenage girl wondering the streets in the early hours in the morning on her own. By doing this we informed the audience that something could happen as young girls are defenceless to older males and are usually assaulted on their own in unpopulated alleys and streets. We portrayed to our audience the normal assumption as women as the victim but we showed this our narrative with a twist. Our young female wasn't herself assaulted, abducted or hurt but was still the victim as she found the bloody remains and became traumatised by her discovery. (As seen in the image below)}

^{Our media product would be distributed in the film world to only a few arthouse cinema's, with only a few screenings on each, due to the low budget and lack of magnificent special effects. Also I think an arthouse cinema would be the best for our film as we would have a niche audience because our film is particularly aimed at teenagers rather then adults. It is also aimed at a more working class audience rather then any other class as the content and the gritty-ness of the film reflects antics and actions of working class bodies. I would also think we would find that both genders could enjoy this film as it feeds into the lives of both. In this way it is like that of British films and their content. I also think that we could publicise mainly over the internet as our main audience is that of the cyber generation. We would have to research which social network is most popular in order to generate a wider response from our target market. I also think that it should be on DVD release as if it has a viral reaction, people would only be able to watch the film on DVD accept for the few that viewed it on a big screen. This would maximise profits and hopefully build a greater response to the film. We could also market our film by advertising not only on the internet but by messages, radio and even TV channels such as MTV, MTV Base etc. I think this would be a good idea as our audience have mobile phones, they listen to the radio and these are the most popular TV channels known for them.}

<sup>During the process of constructing our final project I have learned both a hands on approach to the film making e.g. Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Filming, Editing etc., and a more layed back approach, by using the internet with such sites as blogger to capture the elements and steps taken whilst producing our opening sequence. Using Final Cut Pro I have learnt how to log and capture footage, how to select in-points and out-points, merge two shots together, create slugs for credit sequences, slow down the speed of clips, use transitions such as cross fades and overall make a film. I also Learned from this task how to place a soundtrack onto the film. Doing this helps to build tension and suspense for the audience and helps them to be put into the mood of the film. Using Blogger and Vimeo, it has shown me that blogging and uploading videos onto Blogger/Vimeo are a good method of communication and make this site similar to all social networking sites. By using both of these sites I have learnt that the internet could help to widen our potential target audience.

Overall I had a lot of fun making our thriller opening, even though it required a lot of work to be put into it. I am happy with the way that my groups film has come out and the response that we got from class members, whilst watching it in the classroom, and the year group, when we visited VUE cinema, was all very positive and constructive which portrays to me that the opening was able to generate a feeling of excitement and suspense and thrilled the audience which was our main mission, and we completed it.</sup>