Evaluation

To produce an opening scene for a thriller movie my group and I decided to produce a crime thriller. We looked at many different films including Psycho and Reservoir Dogs. We decided that we would go with a crime thriller as many people think of a scary movie (horror) when they hear of the genre thriller, so we wanted to try something different. We chose to pick a hip hop instrumental sound clip to add more of an atmosphere to our film which is different to the stereotypical sounds from previous thrillers. Even though we have chosen to go with a different type of thriller it’s still clear that it’s a thriller movie due to the use of camera angles and the pace of the storyline we have also used credits and titles to help add suspense.

We have used costume, music and the original idea of our storyline to represent social group such as stereotypical youths, this fits in well with our genre of a crime thriller. The whole scene has an aggressive tension, with the boy protagonist wearing a tracksuit and trainers waking in arrogant manor. By using these pieces of clothing for costume it conveys an image to the target audience very similar to themselves making them feel familiar to the surrounding of the film as if it were everyday life. This will help make teenagers and young youths want to come and watch the film helping boost profits and popularity. We have very carefully tried to use camera angles and transition so that the boy protagonist’s face is not shown to the audience. By doing this it makes the audience create their own opinion of what they think the character is like, whether he’s your average teenager or very mysterious person. The object which is hidden under the boys hoodie is not exposed which is constantly building tension and helping build up to a big climax later on. By doing all of these add to the genre of the film as expands of the title KARMA which means what goes around comes around.

Media institution used to distribute films is production companies. The production companies for Kidulthood would be good to distribute our thriller movie as they have similar ideas to ours of a social group of youths. The target audience would fit perfectly with whom we are aiming our film at aged 15 as its young teenagers normally getting in to trouble. This is because they believe they are old enough yet still not old enough to be able to go out or being legally able to drink or smoke, resulting in underage drinking and groups hanging around streets causing trouble and immature behaviour.

My group and I research in too different target audiences, looking at the content and terms and conditions of each age certificate. We decided we would certify our movie as a fifteen as we knew we could include crime and a sense of violence without going to the extreme of bad language, sex, drugs and nudity. We did lots of research including a online survey and class discussions to see if the target audience would be relevant. Our target audience and social group of the film fits with the age of 15 and many people say that when a thriller comes out at the cinema it’s normally certified as an 18 due to bad language or nudity resulting in a lot of people who want to see the films not being able to. So by choosing to certify our film as a fifteen more people can enjoy going to the cinema to watch it.

Through making this opening sequence for a thriller movie, I have found it can become very time consuming and not as simple as it looks. During making the main thriller I found it was very successful and we only encountered a few minor problems and these only occur during the editing procedure. Due to the problems that we had with premier pro we used Movie Maker however it meant there was not a large source of transitions that looked professional. Also when placing the movie over the movie clips it was quite tricky to fit it with the moving images to make sure it was all in time with each other. However we were very lucky as most parts did seem to link together. In addition to this the biggest problem we had was when we first put it on the computer. As we used movie maker you cannot save a permanent file until it is complete and as we had not finished during one process. We were only allowed to use that computer that the film had been captured onto. Therefore we had to make sure that computer was free when we wanted to work on our editing.

By looking at my preliminary task as well as my main thriller I can see a vast improvement in all aspects of our theory and practical work. Because we found a lot of problems with creating our preliminary task there are a few problems that were obviously not in our main task. I feel our camera skill has improved a lot and the choice of editing transitions and design of credits I feel it flows much better than the previous task. Also I feel even though we have not used a large amount of different camera angles and fancy transitions I feel the choices we have made have made it look more professional and shows the effort and time we put in to show progression. In addition to this I feel b doing a lot more theory side to the main task I feel we were able to get a good understanding on what were the best ideas and what worked best to make it all fit together without looking cheesy and predictable. The music I think also make a film therefore by using no dialogue like in the preliminary task and just use unknown music adds a more professional and dramatic final piece without a well known song overwhelming it .Overall, by comparing the two I am happy with what has been produced and the progression made.

Setting Brainstorm

Main Task

Brief

To produce an opening sequence of a new thriller. This should include titles and credits, aimed towards 15 or 18 certificates, and should be approximately of 2 minutes duration.

We all got together to come up with an idea and have come to the conclusion to base it similar to our preliminary task. We are going to show a youth leaving a youth offender and going to get his revenge. We have decided to call it KARMA.

Music

In our group we have all been looking for music that we can use for our main task. We have chosen the piece of music we want to use and this is the hyperlink to the website http://www.soundclick.com/default.cfm (MP3 music). The piece of music we have used is called haunted dream. In addition to this music we also used a sound effect. The hyperlink for this website is http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/ (Sound effects). The sound effect we used was a car screeching.

Progress

Stage one: Research into thrillers.

Stage two: Come up with an idea.

Stage three: Draw a quick storyboard.

Stage four: Find some music and carry out a survey.

Stage five: Start filming (night scenes).

Stage six: Finish filming.

Stage seven: Make storyboard with still images.

Stage eight: Editing.

Stage nine: Finalise editing and music including adding sound clip.

Stage ten: Upload to blog.

Our next stage is writing the evaluation.

This is our Main Task video.

Thriller Reseach AND Planning

Definition of a Thriller:

A Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, television, and gaming that includes numerous and often overlapping sub-genres.
Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villains. Devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliff-hangers are used extensively.

Thrillers often take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently "hard men" accustomed to danger: law enforcement officers, spies, soldiers, seamen or aviators. However, they may also be ordinary citizens drawn into danger by accident. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common; for an early example see Sigourney Weaver's character Ripley, in the movie Alien, 1979.

Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories, but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. In a thriller, the hero must thwart the plans of an enemy, rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements. While a mystery climaxes when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeats the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others. In thrillers influenced by film nor and tragedy, the compromised hero is often killed in the process.

There are all kinds. The legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, military thriller just to name a few.

Most thrillers are formed in some combination of the above, with horror, conspiracy, and psychological tricks used most commonly to heighten tension. Combinations are highly diverse, including:
Science fiction thrillers: The Terminator, I Am Legend, Blade Runner.
Science fiction/horror thrillers: Jurassic Park, Alien, Predator.
Techno/political/conspiracy/military/horror thriller: Predator, Robocop, S.M. Stirling's Draka novels.
Legal/forensic/psychological/horror thriller: Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs', Seven.

Our group has come to the decision to base our thriller as a Crime thriller. This particular genre is a hybrid type of both crime films and thrillers that offers a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes. These films often focus on the criminal(s) rather than a policeman. Crime thrillers usually emphasize action over psychological aspects. Central topics of these films include murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, and double-crosses are central ingredients. Some examples include The Killing, Seven, The Godfather, Reservoir Dogs, Inside Man, and The Asphalt Jungle.

We have decided to look at the above examples of this type of thriller to get some inspiration by looking at there opening scenes.

Age Certificates

Age: My group and i have all come to a decision to certify our clip as a 15. we have chosen to do this because it is a thriller and we will not be very graphic that an 18 certificate will have. We will not be encouraging or show the following in strong detail however they may be used to create a good effect and catching atmosphere to the audience
Language - we may use some strong language to give a powerful effect but we will not misuse the language term and not use them on a frequent basis.
Nudity, sex will not be used
Violence - we will use violence however not as advance as an 18 certificate which will be more graphic then a 15 certificate imitable techniques - the reason our clip is a 15 certificate is because we will not be using drastic Dangerous techniques i.e dangerous weapons weapons horror - menace and malice behaviour may be used but not gory images
Drugs - drug taking are allowed in a 15 certificates but it must not promote or encourage drugs

Theory's

One theory we have looked at was the Hypodermic syringe theory however we haven't linked it with our work as we don't believe people get influenced by what they see in a film and we don't believe its a film that can have that impact on people.

On the other hand we do agree with the Culmination theory because according to this theory, while any one media text does not have too much effect, years and years of watching more violence will make you less sensitive to violence, years and years of watching women being mistreated in soaps will make you less bothered about it in real life.One difficulty with both of these ways of looking at the media is that they are very difficult to prove either way. Many people have a general sense that the media do affect our behaviour and advertisers certainly justify their fees by working on this assumption, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to actually prove how much effect if any a text might have on an audience. In fact researchers have spent enormous amounts of time and effort trying to prove the validity of the culmination theory with no success- this of course does not mean that there is no truth in it as an idea.

Windows movie maker

The windows movie maker application allows us to do many things in order to make a film. It has clearly labelled step by step help, which allows us to:
· Capture a video straight from a video device
· Import video/music/pictures from devices or from saved documents
· Show all the videos/ pictures/ music we have on the screen
· Add in video/pictures effects
· Add in video/pictures transitions
· Make titles or credits using ready made settings which also allows us to change if we wish
· Save to a computer or CD
· Send to emails, web or a camera
· It is paired with windows Media player to allow us to view the film as a whole.
Show examples of effects we might use are cut, fade and iris.

Preliminary Exercise Task

I am in a group with Fran, Omar and Mathew
For our preliminary task we have come up with a plot outline of a man being questioned in a police interview.
Our brainstorm:
Small room and table
Never see suspects face
Dark lighting
Police officer
Suspect
we have to include;
-180 rule (Required aspect)
-Match of action (Required aspect)
-shot reverse shot (Required aspect)

My role is to choose the camera angles
This is the hand drawn version of my storyboard

During the filming my role out of my group was to direct the way the characters should be in the clip and also where the best place for the camera would be. In addition to this making sure we were keeping to the storyboard. We have finished filming and editing our preliminary task and are currently working on making a back up copy on DVD and uploading it to our blog.
However during our editing we came across a lot of problems with the software. Because of this it resulting in our video clip not being the full length required for this task. In addition to this the quality of the video clip has been affected with the problems as we had a lot of problems with Premiere Pro excepting the length and format even though other members of our class had the same format and had no problems. Due to these problems for my main task I will be using movie maker to edit it to prevent these problems occurring again.

Improvements for next time:

• no camera shake
• better use of lighting
• more suitable location