THRILLER TITLE SEQUENCE FINAL EDIT

Evaluation-What kind of media instituition might distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/adress your audience?

Here is a video clip of myself and another member of my group. In this video we are discussing our marketing skills and how we would promote our film.

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

As you can see through the two main clips. You can see that my skills have improved allot. For example our camera work has become more stead it also know establish shots from a variety of different angels. I have also learnt how to make the shots more continuous for example now the shots flow more easier and they connect to next shot. You can also tell that my skills have improved is due to the fact that now i have now learnt how to add a sound track to my clips. Because my first clips did not have a soundtrack it had audio. Another skill that has progressed is the type of lighting used. In my first clip there are many different lighting levels however in the second clip the lighting stays the same throughout the whole clip to make it look much more professional. However one thing i could improve on in is my editing skills.This is because even though my final cut of my thriller title sequence looked good at the beginning i believe that towards the end some of the cuts were not slick enough and happened to fast. On a whole though i believe that i have done very well and that my opening looked quite professional considering the time scale i had to do it in. You can also clearly see that my skills have improved extremely.

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

Evaluation-How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In my thriller title sequence opening it did not have any particular representaion of one person. This was because we did not show the characters faces or body, we only showed the Voodoo girls hand. We did this because we did not want to constrate on a character we wanted to build and create a tense atmosphere which would make the audience want to know more. Even though we did not show a sterotypical chracter, we represented a social group by using our props and mise en scene. The social group we tried to portay was african witch craft/Vodoo. Our shots of the alter represented how some people have sterotypical belifes. For example; if you are african then you must be able to do vodoo. Our shots represented a jealious young girl being a typical witch doctor/vodoo impress. We showed this by having strange props such as the traditional african material and the voodoo bowl with all the different ingeridents going inside it. I believe through our camera work,mise en scene & sound we managed to portray the sterotypical voodoo impress and that she was doing something mysterious & evil. Here is image of the type of chracter we was trying to create =]

Evaluation- Who would be the audience for your media prouduct

Here is a presentaion that i created to show what type of target audience my film was to have if it was shown in major cinemas such as the Odeon,Vue or Imax.

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

This is shot in my Bitter Sweet title sequence follows the same conventions as the feature film "Seven". Here i thought the following shots looked similar due to the fact that they are both close up shots of books. This is also because both of these shots come from a low angle shot, which looks really effective rather than having a normal close up shot of a prop. In addition another feature that both of the shots had in it was that the pages were being flicked by a hand. You could not see who's hand it was so that created more of a tense atmosphere.

Evalution- Audience Feedback and comment

In my lesson today we all gave each other feed back on how we thought the other groups in our classes "Thriller Title sequence" went.The image below is a word cloud which we created on: www.wordle.net. Here I put in all the feedback that the other groups wrote about my thriller title sequence, then the computer created a wordle of all of all of the important words that appeared in everyone comments about our work. This was just another useful way of presenting my work rather than having to much writing, it highlighted all of the key words and phrases.
















The following clip below is a feed back video of what some of our different audiences thought about our thriller title sequence "Bitter Sweet".

Match cut task

In today’s lesson we had a task which was to create a clip which had the following shots within it; one shot reverse shot, one 180 degree shot and one match cut shot. I thought this task was going to be easy but I underestimated it at the beginning, and found out in the end, that it is hard to get all of the shots perfect and for them to all link within one scene. Before we could start shooting me and my partner Shekira had to come up with an idea of what the scene was going to be about. First of all we brain stormed a few ideas that we both had. Then we both put our ideas together and formed a storyline. The concept of the storyline was an angry young male going to meet his girlfriend who had something to tell him. After we decide on the storyline we immediately started to plan the mise en scene for the scene and started planning the type of shots we were going to have and how we were going to incorporate all the shots we had to include into the scene. We did all our planning by story boarding what was going to happen in the scene step by step.

Once we finished all our planning we started to film our shots. In the scene I was the boy actor therefore I didn’t get to do a lot of filming. However I had a lot of input in how the shot should be taken. For example I and my partner would record a one shot from one angel a few times, then we would watch back one the clips, then discuss how it looks. After that I would give my opinion of the shot and we would film exactly the same shot from a different angel or with different lighting. I think that the match shot we did, when the angry boy walked through the door was very smooth and vey professional and was the easiest shot to film out of the film. Then I believe that the shot reverse shot between the two characters arguing worked well. However I believe to make this work better we could have made the shots a lot shorter and quicker therefore it would have made the conversation a lot more realistic. Finally I think the hardest shot to film was the 180 degree shot, this was simply because we did not understand what a 180 degree shot was, we thought that it was more like a panning shot from one character to another. Then when finished editing our shots and putting them together using “Live Type” a video editing programme. We found out that our shot that we thought was a 180 degree shot was incorrect. Then we were told what a real 180 degree shot was, which is a basic guideline in film making that states two characters/other elements in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. This was useful to me so that I knew the true defection of 180 degree shot and to make sure that I don’t make the same mistake in future filming sessions.

I found that our editing process was very easy because we had a variety of shots to choose from that connected the storyline together. One thing that I think we could have improved on was the connections between different cuts to make sure the clip run smoothly. However on a whole I believe that we did quite well for a task we were given only a few hours before having to plan film and edit it all in one day. I was really proud of the clip and it made me aware of my weak and strong points within filming and editing. I also liked the use of our creativity at the end when there is shot of a blank screen and you can only hear the boy’s voice in the background. That shot was such a simple shot but very effective.

What is suspense? (Lesson 1)

In the first lesson of we were looking at film thriller title sequences. In this lesson were looking at the different genres that a thriller can have and what they all have in common. One of the main features that we realised that they had in common was the use of suspense. The definition of suspense is a build up to a climax. Normally suspense happens slowly throughout a film or even a TV drama. Suspense is an emotional build up when a person doesn’t know what is going to happen next. An example of suspense is the sound in the feature film Jaws “Duh Nuh Duh Nuh”. Suspense here is used to create an airy atmosphere and to tell the audience the shark is about to appear. Below is a link to an example of the suspense in Jaws:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMLFO6TsFM

Photo Activity

The following shot is a wide shot of a mysterious scene.

In this shot we see a young girl on the phone and behind

her we see a boy with a hood watching. Although this is

not an original shot it is a good way to show mystery. I

believe this shot works very well because the girl is

oblivious to what is going on. I also believe that it represent

Mystery, due to the facial expression on the boys face. The

scene looks as if the boy is stalking her. This shot also looks

mysterious due to the boys body language and the mise en scene

used. By the shot being in a empty hallway it creates an mysterious

and strange atmosphere. In addition i believe that the shot was

effective and demonstrated a mysterious atmosphere.

My favourite thriller film opening?

My favourite film opening is for the film “The Silence of the lambs”. The film is a psychological thriller which was made in 1991 and directed by Jonathan Demme. In the film, Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, seeks the advice of the imprisoned Lecter on catching a serial killer known only as "Buffalo Bill". However Lecter is in prison because he is Cannibal.

I like the film opening for silences of the lambs because I found that it created a lot of suspense and made the audience want to watch the film. The first shot we see is of an airy Smokey forest. Straight away this got me intrigued and made me ask myself questions. Another reason why I got intrigued is because they have unusual airy music playing throughout the opening scene making the target audience believe that a climax is going to happen already. In addition you see a young woman running through the woods. This adds to the whole thriller theme and makes me wonder if she is running away from something/someone or were she is running to. I also believe that the camera following her from a birds eye view very slowly creates a stalker atmosphere. I liked this opening because it did not have a lot of special effects init like all the majority of 21st century films have in it. I also believed that it worked very well because all the editing was clear cut and was smooth.

How is suspense created in “The shining”?

In today’s lesson I watched the film “The Shining”. This was the 1980 psychological thriller film directed by Stanley Kubrick. The film was about a man called Jack, who takes a new job of looking after a hotel for the winter while it is closed. Jack moves into the hotel with his wife and his son and that is when all the strange behaviour starts to happen. Jack`s psychic son “Danny” sees horrific things of what happens in the hotel. The hotel is haunted and is built on an old Indian burial ground. In the end Jack goes crazy and tries to murder his wife “Wendy” and his son Jack.

Throughout the movie suspense is created in many different ways. The four main ways
that suspense was created by using the four different elements which are; camera, mise en scene, sound and editing. In one of the scenes, Jack violently hammers down the bathroom door with an “axe” trying to get to his wife. This scene creates a lot of suspense’s due to the fact that each time the door is getting hammered we can see Wendy’s reaction to it. This scene creates a lot of tension and keeps the audience glued to the film, due to the fact they know a climax is going to happen soon. The banging on the door is also very effective due to that fact that it makes the audience sit on the edge of their seats and want to know what happens next.

Sound also helps to create tension within the film. It does this by playing airy music in the background throughout the film. Then at key moments it makes the music a lot louder to create the sinister effect. This happens in the end scene were jack is chasing after his son in the outside garden maze. As he gets closer to Danny the music gets louder and the paste of the music increases and becomes much faster.

On a whole I believe that suspense is showed many different times throughout “The shining”. In addition I believe that without suspense being used in the film, it would make the film less effective and make it harder for the target audience to understand. Below is a link for the film, it is a part of the film were I believe that suspense is showed very well.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TVooUHN7j4