Monday 29 June 2009
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Evaluation Part 2
I forgot to add this peice of information to my evaluation and did not want to edit the blog today in fear of loosing marks, so i thought my best option was to post it as a seperate blog.
We went to the cinema 'Vue' located in Angel, Islington's N1 Centre.
It was ironic as people who were our target market for our thriller were the most likely people to visit this type of cinema, rather than independent cinema's that mainly focus on showing British made movies.
Monday 23 March 2009
Thriller Evaluation
After watching examples of thriller openings we were given an idea of the conventions which were used in real thriller movie openings. As we watched clips to help us gather ideas on creating a thriller of our own, we made notes on how the genre of the thriller was shown, what was suspenseful, how was suspense created and why it was so effective. Suspense is an essential ingredient when creating a thriller opening, as a thriller is all about creating tension and suspense. From watching the clips of thriller openings, I identified that the key element in creating suspense was sound. I realised this when watching the opening of ‘The Shining’
where the non-diagetic sound starts off low and gradually becomes louder when the camera is following the car. I believe that the use of sound in my thriller has created the perfect tense mood, as were we listening to the feedback from our class after watching our thrillers; we were told that the non-diagetic sound in the opening shot made the fan seem like a cage. This worked really well with the concept of our thriller.
I think that my media product could attract any type social groups, ages ranging from 16 to late twenties, however, people older than that may also find it interesting to watch.
After our audience feedback, I think that our male audience may be much larger than the female as the majority of males seem to find supernatural and sci-fi thrillers more interesting than females. I do not think that my thriller is aimed at a particular race or class as it can be an interesting thriller for any kind.I personally believe that my thriller would be released over the internet and after having thousands of views it would be recognised by media institution giant like Universal Pictures.
I believe that it has the potential to attract a lot of different types of audiences and would be distributed around the world. It would then later on be released on DVD and I am sure that it would sell record-breaking figures. Another technique I would use to use advertising to attract my audience for my thriller would be advertising very short trailers on television towards the later hours of the day, (after 7pm) as younger children may find the trailer scary as it is based on a supernatural figure. I believe that the use of broadcasting my thriller trailer towards the night would be even better as that is the approximate time that our target audience would be watching television or simply scanning through channels.
After seeing my thriller being shown in the cinema (Vue) on the premier of all the groups’ thrillers, I was very happy to hear the positive comments being shouted out in the cinema. A few comments include; ‘Oooh’, ‘Nice effect’, and ‘Good sound effects, I thought they were real’.
If I were to describe the main type of audience which my thriller would attract it would be;
- Mainstream
- Demographically described as an ‘aspirer’
- George aged between 17-19
- Watches supernatural and sci-fi thrillers
- Enjoys going to the cinema with friends
- Studies something related to the media
- Plays video games on his PS3
- Dresses in H&M like most average teenagers
To attract an audience I would make sure that I would be advertising on particular sites such as; Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and Youtube. These sites are known to be used by mostly teenagers, I would make sure that I would also create a fan club page on the most popular site, this would help attract more and more audience as it would attract people’s attention to why people are signing up, it must be a good film and so on. At first, to create some sort of commotion, I would only use 3 different shots each about a second long for the advertisement without the title (Dis-Connected).
This would make the reader want to know what the advertisement is about and what is happening in the shots as they are very short. I would firstly advertise this on Facebook where Facebook users can see it and start talking about it and word of type would help spread the word and add onto the publicity. Also, another way which I would ensure to attract a large audience is by using well known and recognised actors and actresses. For the role of the doctor I would use Will Smith and Julia Stiles as the supernatural character as they are both highly recognised and would attract a very large audience as it would be a contrast of two successful actors in the same thriller.
In the process of constructing my thriller, I used software’s and new technology I was not so familiar with. I was not so familiar with was the Soundtrack and Live Type software however, it got easier as I started to use it more frequent.
I did not find any difficulty when creating the soundtrack and the opening credits for my thriller. Knowing more about the software made me more confident when we were faced with some difficulties i.e. when the soundtrack did not match the action. The soundtrack was ultimately the most important element in my thriller as it was the key ingredient to create a tense mood and suspense. To ensure that the action and soundtrack of my thriller flowed smoothly in unison, I had to make sure that not only the seconds matched the action but also the milliseconds. I found minimal difficulty when using the Final Cut Pro software as I had previous experience, this helped a large amount. Using the camera was also not such a difficult task but we did however, experience quite an embarrassing moment. While we were out filming the last few shots of Selma in King’s Cross,
what we thought we had been filming wasn’t being filmed. After we watched back what we had filmed, we realised that when we thought the camera was filming, it actually wasn’t, therefore, there were many shots where I come into view directing Henok on what angles he should use the camera and film what parts of Selma to create suspension and that the audience should be able to assume or identify that there is something slightly unusual about her and her actions.A process that I thought was quite difficult was logging and capturing, it needed a lot of patience and time as there were so many shots that we had taken. I particularly found logging and capturing more difficult than the other processes because if we did not log and capture the shots correctly, not allowing enough time on shots, it would not make sense when they were all put together and made into match cuts. Another process I found quite challenging was blogging everything about the progress of my thriller online at www.blogger.com, for this reason internet played a big role in this project. The blogger site was used as an online diary to continuously display information on what we had done and how far we had come. I found this challenging at times as sometimes I forgot to blog about my lessons and found it even more difficult when trying to catch up and remember all the things we had done to blog about it.
However I believe that the use of blogger on the internet can really create an enormous audience as the majority of our target audience is known to use the internet and that we can upload our video onto it where people can see it. A few other sites where uploaded videos may create a big audience would be; Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, and Vimeo. These sites are all known to create the most publicity which can widen the potential of my thriller even more.Looking back at my preliminary tasks before being given the task to create a two-minute thriller opening, I believe that I have learnt an enormous amount in the process of it.
I especially learnt a great about match cuts and the use of Match Cut Pro software. Through my experience with using Match Cut Pro, I have learnt that everything has to be in its perfect order and getting the timing correct is absolutely essential. Before being taught about match cuts, I did not know that they used two similar shots and put them together to ensure a smooth flow. I have learnt that creating even two-minute opening sequence needs a lot of time and effort, a lot of planning and storyboarding. Another skill that I gained from creating my thriller opening is to work well together as a supportive team.
Evaluation
Media Evaluation
After all the hard work and the constant editing we finally finished our thriller clip, we had our final clip to send off to the examiner. We definitely made sure there were no mistakes and made sure if there could have been improvements, no improvements were needed as we were very sure this was the best it could be. We definitely created an effective piece, we all put our ideas and teamwork which was a great outcome. Everyone completed their thriller clip, and we all watched each others clip to get feedback from the other group to help us with our evaluation and get different views about the clip and to see if they understood what kind of effects we were trying to interpret in this clip.
To help us understand the whole concept of what makes a good thriller film, we had to watch different type’s of thrillers and what made it so effective . We had to make our media product seem real, make it seem like a real and professional piece, we watched movie openings of thriller films like “the shining” , “ what lies beneath” etc and brainstormed why the genre was a thriller how it created the tension and suspense and why it was so effective, there were a lot of ideas to choose from to make a great thriller film, there are so many different aspects of a thriller film, you have to be careful with every technique you use and try to include the main features needed for each shot . Everything is important in the scene, everything within that space of the camera play an important part to create a thriller and make it suspenseful, e.g. the setting, props, lighting, make-up, shot angle etc. in lesson we watched a documentary about thriller films and how it can be portrayed in different ways in the opening scene.
We didn’t want our thriller film to be targeted at older people over their 20’s it was kind of difficult to represent that social group because the actors were young, we preferred to target the “teens” to have more of connection with the that certain social group because we understand what teenagers prefer in a film, and how to attract them. The genre is supernatural thriller, very freaky quite chilling, and this is what teens want in a film, this is what their interested in, they like high levels of suspense and guessing what’s going to happen next, and why this is happening, their curious in knowing these things, and for them to find out these things they have to carry on watching the film, and this is how we pull them into watching more and more of it.
We tried to make out thriller film seem as real as possible like the thriller films on television which are distributed by big Hollywood names and are worldwide. This was the general idea for our film we wanted it to be big and worldwide, if we was able to show it, I would want to be bigger then just a little UK film release, I would want to release this film in cinemas and advertise it everywhere and then release it out on DVD. Personally I think if it was released in the UK, the film would turn out well but not as successful as it would be if it was worldwide, and to make it worldwide it would have to be released in America as well, that’s where our film would succeed and be recognized by big Hollywood names.
Vs. 
By attracting our audience we have to understand them for them to understand our film, even though we don’t have a big star in our film, we don’t need one, our film is fresh , it really connects with our targeted audiences, and for them to see how we are trying to reach out to them, we would advertise as much as possible for example adverts/trailers on TV ,billboards on buses, but I wouldn’t suggest advertising our film in MacDonald’s because it would ruin the whole atmosphere of our “thriller” film, people wouldn’t’t take it seriously and were not targeting children under 12 years, so we have to be careful with how we advertise it, we have to reach out to them by thinking how they find film’s and where they watch it, we need to use the same technology they use like the internet and TV and advertise our film in places where they are more likely to see it.
Even though it take’s a whole lot of experience to be a professional film maker and be in the media industry, I have learnt so much in just making a 2-3 minute thriller which really taught me things I didn’t know about, it gave me a taste of a whole different side to media and how difficult it can be to create an effect you need in a film, you have to be careful with every little detail and give out the right idea to the audiences. Everything played an important part in making a thriller, the camera; using a lot of different angles, shots, effects, I didn’t really use the camera because I was one of the actresses so it was mainly another person in my group but I still manage to take time and understand how to use the camera with the tripod and without and shoot some angles to understand and see what kind of effect each shot gives. We used IMAC computers and made edited out film on final cut pro, it was quite a challenge for me because I have never used final cut pro and I found it difficult to understand how it works, but as lessons went pass I learnt something new everyday. I started to understand how films were made, it was interesting, I had a completely different idea on how films were made but now it is clearer to me, you have to put a lot of hard work in to it. Overtime technology has improved and it is much easier for filmmaker’s to create any effect they want. Each lesson we would have to write about on the internet and blog them, and explain everything we did and talk about everything we learned, just updating everything we done and how far we have gotten, blogging really did help, if we didn’t understand something we would do our own research and learn more. The internet is an essential technology to the media world nowadays anyone can be discovered by using You Tube, vimeo and blogs, you can just post your videos on them which is simple and easy, this is part of advertising a film by using the internet, and especially our film is targeted towards teens. Teenagers use the internet a lot; this is what is needed to be discovered and to get feedback from the wide range of audiences, who use the internet.
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Before making our thriller we had to do some practical work and practice using the camera and doing different shots and learned about match-cuts, which I never knew about and when I learned about match-cuts I was able to absorb the information quickly and was able to do a great match cut scene on final cut pro after filming and logging and capturing, I learned how to edit and join shots together to make it run smoothly, every detail of a film is crucial, once we got that out of the way we practiced using storyboards to understand how we have to set out our film. Planning the whole thing was kind of hard because we couldn’t agree on an idea, all the ideas were great but too complicated, but then we all agreed on an idea which was a great idea, this shows that teamwork is important we were all able to co-operate with each other and listen to each others opinion we also learnt about working as a team. When we first filmed, we had the experience of using a camera from practicing so we was able to work quick instead of figuring out how to use the equipment. Editing was the longest part we had to log and capture then figure out what scene to put first and also remember the time limit, we had to use all the spare time we had to edit, and come to workshops, if it wasn’t for all the hard work and effort we put in to make this thriller it wouldn’t of been good as it should be it wouldn’t of reached it’s potential, but my group were very dedicated to the media work and so throughout this whole film process, I personally think I have achieved a lot and learned everything I needed to learn about film making and I would like to carry on media in the future to learn more about different film genres and how they create different effects for each film and coming up with new ideas.
After all the hard work and the constant editing we finally finished our thriller clip, we had our final clip to send off to the examiner. We definitely made sure there were no mistakes and made sure if there could have been improvements, no improvements were needed as we were very sure this was the best it could be. We definitely created an effective piece, we all put our ideas and teamwork which was a great outcome. Everyone completed their thriller clip, and we all watched each others clip to get feedback from the other group to help us with our evaluation and get different views about the clip and to see if they understood what kind of effects we were trying to interpret in this clip.
To help us understand the whole concept of what makes a good thriller film, we had to watch different type’s of thrillers and what made it so effective . We had to make our media product seem real, make it seem like a real and professional piece, we watched movie openings of thriller films like “the shining” , “ what lies beneath” etc and brainstormed why the genre was a thriller how it created the tension and suspense and why it was so effective, there were a lot of ideas to choose from to make a great thriller film, there are so many different aspects of a thriller film, you have to be careful with every technique you use and try to include the main features needed for each shot . Everything is important in the scene, everything within that space of the camera play an important part to create a thriller and make it suspenseful, e.g. the setting, props, lighting, make-up, shot angle etc. in lesson we watched a documentary about thriller films and how it can be portrayed in different ways in the opening scene.
We didn’t want our thriller film to be targeted at older people over their 20’s it was kind of difficult to represent that social group because the actors were young, we preferred to target the “teens” to have more of connection with the that certain social group because we understand what teenagers prefer in a film, and how to attract them. The genre is supernatural thriller, very freaky quite chilling, and this is what teens want in a film, this is what their interested in, they like high levels of suspense and guessing what’s going to happen next, and why this is happening, their curious in knowing these things, and for them to find out these things they have to carry on watching the film, and this is how we pull them into watching more and more of it.
We tried to make out thriller film seem as real as possible like the thriller films on television which are distributed by big Hollywood names and are worldwide. This was the general idea for our film we wanted it to be big and worldwide, if we was able to show it, I would want to be bigger then just a little UK film release, I would want to release this film in cinemas and advertise it everywhere and then release it out on DVD. Personally I think if it was released in the UK, the film would turn out well but not as successful as it would be if it was worldwide, and to make it worldwide it would have to be released in America as well, that’s where our film would succeed and be recognized by big Hollywood names.
Vs. 
By attracting our audience we have to understand them for them to understand our film, even though we don’t have a big star in our film, we don’t need one, our film is fresh , it really connects with our targeted audiences, and for them to see how we are trying to reach out to them, we would advertise as much as possible for example adverts/trailers on TV ,billboards on buses, but I wouldn’t suggest advertising our film in MacDonald’s because it would ruin the whole atmosphere of our “thriller” film, people wouldn’t’t take it seriously and were not targeting children under 12 years, so we have to be careful with how we advertise it, we have to reach out to them by thinking how they find film’s and where they watch it, we need to use the same technology they use like the internet and TV and advertise our film in places where they are more likely to see it.
Even though it take’s a whole lot of experience to be a professional film maker and be in the media industry, I have learnt so much in just making a 2-3 minute thriller which really taught me things I didn’t know about, it gave me a taste of a whole different side to media and how difficult it can be to create an effect you need in a film, you have to be careful with every little detail and give out the right idea to the audiences. Everything played an important part in making a thriller, the camera; using a lot of different angles, shots, effects, I didn’t really use the camera because I was one of the actresses so it was mainly another person in my group but I still manage to take time and understand how to use the camera with the tripod and without and shoot some angles to understand and see what kind of effect each shot gives. We used IMAC computers and made edited out film on final cut pro, it was quite a challenge for me because I have never used final cut pro and I found it difficult to understand how it works, but as lessons went pass I learnt something new everyday. I started to understand how films were made, it was interesting, I had a completely different idea on how films were made but now it is clearer to me, you have to put a lot of hard work in to it. Overtime technology has improved and it is much easier for filmmaker’s to create any effect they want. Each lesson we would have to write about on the internet and blog them, and explain everything we did and talk about everything we learned, just updating everything we done and how far we have gotten, blogging really did help, if we didn’t understand something we would do our own research and learn more. The internet is an essential technology to the media world nowadays anyone can be discovered by using You Tube, vimeo and blogs, you can just post your videos on them which is simple and easy, this is part of advertising a film by using the internet, and especially our film is targeted towards teens. Teenagers use the internet a lot; this is what is needed to be discovered and to get feedback from the wide range of audiences, who use the internet.
--->
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Before making our thriller we had to do some practical work and practice using the camera and doing different shots and learned about match-cuts, which I never knew about and when I learned about match-cuts I was able to absorb the information quickly and was able to do a great match cut scene on final cut pro after filming and logging and capturing, I learned how to edit and join shots together to make it run smoothly, every detail of a film is crucial, once we got that out of the way we practiced using storyboards to understand how we have to set out our film. Planning the whole thing was kind of hard because we couldn’t agree on an idea, all the ideas were great but too complicated, but then we all agreed on an idea which was a great idea, this shows that teamwork is important we were all able to co-operate with each other and listen to each others opinion we also learnt about working as a team. When we first filmed, we had the experience of using a camera from practicing so we was able to work quick instead of figuring out how to use the equipment. Editing was the longest part we had to log and capture then figure out what scene to put first and also remember the time limit, we had to use all the spare time we had to edit, and come to workshops, if it wasn’t for all the hard work and effort we put in to make this thriller it wouldn’t of been good as it should be it wouldn’t of reached it’s potential, but my group were very dedicated to the media work and so throughout this whole film process, I personally think I have achieved a lot and learned everything I needed to learn about film making and I would like to carry on media in the future to learn more about different film genres and how they create different effects for each film and coming up with new ideas.
Thriller Evaluation
Our task was to create a thriller with the resources our college had. We had to try and make it as interesting, suspenseful and profession so that it can meet the conventions of real thriller movies. We had to do this in a certain period of time. We used lesson time and also workshops or our own time to complete the project. We also had to write a consistent blog for how we were getting on with the project.
Our thriller challenges real media products because I believe the certain elements that thrillers have on an audience are all included in my group’s thriller. Thrillers create a special type of suspense what gets your heart thumping and for a thriller to be successful, the opening sequence is vital in making the audience feel chills. I believe the unique opening of thrillers make them seem better because the audience are too used to the obvious and things that have been done and seen before does not cause a specific reaction. That’s why my group decide to take the risk of doing something new and not the basic stalker, stabbing or someone lost thriller. My group’s thriller was a sci-fi thriller which people don’t see many of. Even though this was a huge risk we still decided to go through with it because popular famous directors are always noticed for doing the unusual and out of the norm. Directors like Paul Haggis who directed “Crash” (2005) which was credited for its uniqueness, Christopher Nolan who directed “The Dark Knight” which was incredibly unusual in its own way like how he allowed the audience like the villain (the Joker) more than the hero (Batman), in the way how he portrays the joker when many films wouldn’t do this. Finally, there is the famous Alfred Hitchcock who was the master of making thrillers, as he brought us the classic “Psycho”. We also took into consideration of his article of “Let ‘em play God” which gave us an idea of how we wanted our audience to feel, in this case the same as Hitchcock and letting the audience to know more that the characters. This really helped because this way we knew that if our thriller did this then it would be very thrilling according to Hitchcock. We added this by making the alien character in our thriller not know what environment she was in and who was surrounding her by blind folding her (see below paragraph). The documentaries that our teacher showed us before we started the project also helped because we learnt the basic ways to create tension and suspicion but most importantly that the unexpected causes the most reaction and that there doesn’t always have to be a dramatic ending in the opening sequence to be thrilling and suspenseful for it to be successful which was hard to believe at first but when she showed us some examples, we understood how it did this, especially the thriller which confused many people. This gave my group many ideas and as we wanted to be unique, we decided to not have a huge dramatic ending to our opening thriller.
My media product represents many social groups as we thought about this before filming. Because we said in our pitch that we were going to appeal to a wide range of the population, so we decided to pick our actors carefully. I was going to act with my group member, Ola, but instead I decided to take the role of the director because we thought we should let Selma act so that the film would also appeal to the female side and not just the male side. In addition, because research tells us that many females don’t really watch sci-fi thrillers but this way because there is a dominant woman in our thriller, this would draw their attention. Also because both the actors are from completely different ethnic backgrounds, white and black, it cannot be classed a black or white film so the audience variety is widened. The age of the characters look young which is good because research shows that young people are the most spender and more likely to go and watch films in the cinema. Research also shows that sci-fi’s are usually watched by older people, especially the type of people who like star trek. This is good because the combination of the young characters and older watchers increases the audience, as there is no age limit on film. People have no excuse to say I am too old or young to watch this film. The way we conveyed the status class of the characters is interesting because the doctor is seen as a highly qualified respectable person in hindsight, but in our thriller, he is doing something suspicious and looks very evil. This supports the famous quote “the prettiest people do the ugliest things” which changes the audience perspective of the doctor from helping someone to doing something terrible to them. I think this creates a certain impact on the thriller because in theory, people would not think a doctor would do something opposite to helping someone. However, our thriller has one limitation on social groups as ours is a sci-fi thriller, many religious people may avoid watching it because they strongly believe that alien, magical or spiritual things are not true and that it should not be demonstrated on film. Beside this religious aspect, I believe my thriller targets a wide variety of social groups.
I believe my thriller has the potential to become a big Hollywood film because it looks professional, that even though my thriller was low budgeted, films like four weddings and a funeral was very low budgeted, and the profit went over the roof. It generated around 250 million and cost 6 million to help it. Even though mine is an opening sequence, it seems to lead people on and looks very interesting. Because we had a cliffhanger, this will convince people to see the rest. Perhaps our opening sequence could become a trailer for the rest of the film. The special effect we used could also help it to become popular because there has been a recent rise on sales for movies with unbelievable special effects as many people like to see these amazing things and how technology can help us do this. We tried to make full use of the technology because we knew we could do much on the Mac computers so we added a special effect at the end of our thriller. Thinking of marketing strategies, I would release the opening sequence on the internet like on sites like YouTube and view the ratings, then hopefully a big institution like Paramount would be interested in my thriller and invest in it so my group can complete the whole film. I believe this is the easiest, cheapest and quickest way for professional produce’s to scout people who are looking to make a career through film making.
I think I have a mainstream audience and not a niche audience because recent statistics show that sci-fi’s have become very popular. For example, the hit television programmes such as “Heroes” and “Smallville” are both sci-fi and these are one of the most popular programmes on television. In addition, childhood programmes like Marvel characters are being made into films rapidly and becoming smash hit films. These could be classed as sci-fi films because they all have a supernatural touch to them. Many people want to fantasise about having incredible abilities so this film will make them feel that they are in the characters position and live the supernatural life, which the film will do. This is good because the main reason people go to cinema is to escape their life for a few hours and be looking through someone else’s eyes and I think my thriller allows the audience to do this. This will be therefore aimed at aspirers. I have mentioned how gender will attract the audience in a previous paragraph but also the colours used could convince the audience like the red spotlight to illustrate some sort of danger and also because red is stereotyped as a confident man’s colour, like the “Hitman” wears a red tie, and the purple/violet contact lenses conveys a mysterious girl or woman, like in “The Incredibles” Violet’s, the daughter, power is invisibility. Much thought has gone into how and who the thriller appeals to. An example of one person who would definitely love to see my thriller Dylan Seale, a big fan of the supernatural programme “Heroes”, favourite film is “Eleventh Hour” a sci-fi thriller movie, his age is 26, has a long stressful job and takes any opportunity to go out. This shows that there is a huge audience for this thriller because most people are in his position, as they would want to at least escape their boring, over-working stressful life for at least a few hours.
The way I would market my film would be through the internet as this is the easiest way to for world wide exposure. My actors are highly rated upcoming British actors with a lot of potential. I choose for them to be British because there are not many big British actors at the moment who are know by the whole world. British people want to see their people making it big and receiving credit for their exceptional performance. Also that because recently, British actors playing lead roles in Hollywood smash films has become very popular, such as Dev Patel in “Slumdog Millionaire”. This achieved remarkable success. They will be upcoming because the concept of this new sci-fi thriller, it brings a fresh look to it which will reflect the new fresh actors. This will address the audience of who they are to the whole world. Perhaps I would allow famous directors and actors to watch it first and ask them to give a comment and a rating for how they thought the film was. The rating would be out of 5stars because if it was out of ten it would be harder for them to give a high rating and also would deceive the audience slyly. All the good comments would be posted on the trailer with their names besides it.
I believe this is a good technique because ordinary people look up to stars credited for their work and will motivate people to watch it and also because if the movie stars really like it, there might be a possibility they might want to work with me in the future which would be a huge advantage for me to carry on with this incredible filmmaking. I would advertise through television adverts so that everyone will see it at one point, certain billboards like at bus stops so that while they are waiting, they are slow persuaded to see and read what it is about and allow newspapers to write a review about it even though this is very risky. These would be all a good way of getting the film across to many people around the country. I believe that these advertisements should be first held in America because if the film becomes a hit their then it is very likely to be a hit in every other country.
I have learnt a lot about the technologies I have used in order to make an exceptional piece of work. The resources at my college were unbelievable; I had no idea could produce some of the things I did. The editing software was incredible as it had many different functions to choose from, which was good because this would mean that everyone will not all have the same sort effects and edits. The software we used to edit was Final Cut Pro, this was a very professional software what actual film-makers use and as soon as I started, I had no idea how to use the system properly, apart from the short tutorial we had before the project started. It allowed use to put everything together smoothly and cut shots so that we only use appropriate parts we needed. However, this did bring stress upon the group, as the software was sometimes too complicated for use to use making us miss simple things we could have used but the software was too advanced. After time progressed, we got more familiar with how it works so things became easier and quicker to do. Final Cut Pro was good for allowing certain parts flow with the timing as we could maximise and minimise the timing toolbar which made everything much easier, especially near the end of the project when everyone was rushing and particular shots did not fit each other or if they didn’t have enough footage. It was amazing what the software could do, but I was not surprised because I believe I was only scratching the surface of its capability. The second software we used was Soundtrack Pro. This was a hard to believe system in which we could add all types of non-diagetic sounds to our film. There was a huge range to choose from, including the supernatural sounds that we favoured as our thriller was a supernatural one. It was also much easier to use as the format was simple and putting the sounds on was very straight forward. The third and final software we used was Live Type. This was the most astonishing software I have ever used. The special effects were unbelievable and varied from matrix code style effects to black hole tunnels. Once I explored this software, it encouraged me to add the special effect called “Light Chase” which I used it for the when the camera zooms into Selma’s eye, and this would seem like it is going on a journey through her eye. The original colours was green and red but we change it to red and black as it would suit our thriller better because the colour coordination symbolises a certain effect. Also the credits were to be done on this software as well and the fonts and how they appeared on screen looked implausible. Once we had fully explored this software, we found everything we wanted to use and this made our production look twice as better.
The internet has also played a large part in my process of producing this opening sequence as I have recorded everything I have done since the project started. Every time I do something towards the project, I record it on the blog so that I can see what I have already achieved. This also worked out as a timing schedule because the blog easily indicates to us that we needed to move on and start the next stage as other groups were progressing faster than us at the beginning but then we soon caught up and came back on schedule. Blogging was essential to gain marks because we needed to reveal what we have done, why we did it and how it has helped us in order to make our opening sequence just as good as it is. The uploading of our film on Vimeo can increase the amount of people to see it because it is a broadcasting tool like YouTube. This will widen the potential audience and hopefully entertain many people. Tools like Vimeo make me want to make more production as I like to entertain people and be rewarded for my hard work through praise. It can perhaps allow me to go many pathways with my film and can lead to a destination a have always looked for. Things like this inspired me to do this subject as I like to be a part of the amazing productions that can be done be my creativity and exploring many different things. Hopefully I can upload this on YouTube later so I can broaden my fan base as I have seen many things become known and very popular from just posting creative pieces of work through the internet.
I have learnt very much since the preliminary task stages. At that time it was only the beginning and I had no idea what I was in for. It made me realise how organised you have to be and how passionate about the work you are creating to make the whole project work to reach a high standard. The key aspect of storyboarding is precious to what we wanted to make even though it is highly unlikely we were going to do everything by the storyboard. This was the hardest stage for my group as we made around six storyboards because we were not satisfied with the previous ones, but this was only because we wanted to make an original piece of work. However, we knew our stress would become the audience’s pleasure and that is why we kept on going and did not waste time dwelling on failure. This encouraged our spirit and this made us learn valuable lessons that would help us in media, as well as in the real world. Filming was every exciting for me as I was the director of my thriller and I got to do some marvellous camera shots which are included in my film. I also took into consideration the match cuts we learnt at the preliminary stages and used this effectively in my final thriller. Editing was probably the longest and most stressful process but it all paid off as the production came out very well. As soon as we finished the opening sequence, my group and I were very excited to post my video on Vimeo because now the film would have worldwide exposure on the internet.
Finally the audience feedback was a warm applause and engaged with the film very well. Positive reviews were frequent to my thriller and the audience could see the work ethic that was put in. There was no negative feedback which was not very surprising because my group and me made every single piece of detail to perfection. One of the positive views was about the sound, as they liked all the sounds we used and they also thought the surgery glove slap sound and scissors cut sound were real but in actual fact, they were added by my group through Soundtrack Pro which they thought was amazing because the timing was exactly on point. The audience liked the special effect very much because it created a fantastic image on the screen and because not really anyone used an special effect like mine. Another thing was the CCTV shot because when the shot was on Selma, it illustrated that she was not human and was an alien because she did not appear clear on the screen. They thought this was very effective because up to this point , they did not know she was an supernatural alien but this told them everything they needed to know and by doing it this was much more stimulating then just telling the audience simply. Many things were mentioned, including the match cuts, editing, zoom into Selma’s eye and the astonishing introducing shot of behind the fan. Overall, I and my group were very impressed with the feedback and felt that we had achieved a lot.
The cinema experience made me very nervous because it felt like a real premier and I didn’t know how the audience reaction would be like. It was in Vue cinema in angel. This was the first time my production would be judged by people I don’t know. However, everything went well as I could hear people talking about how good mine was and the applause could have blown the roof off. Me and my group felt proud of our piece of work and the audience’s reaction told us everything we needed to know.
Our thriller challenges real media products because I believe the certain elements that thrillers have on an audience are all included in my group’s thriller. Thrillers create a special type of suspense what gets your heart thumping and for a thriller to be successful, the opening sequence is vital in making the audience feel chills. I believe the unique opening of thrillers make them seem better because the audience are too used to the obvious and things that have been done and seen before does not cause a specific reaction. That’s why my group decide to take the risk of doing something new and not the basic stalker, stabbing or someone lost thriller. My group’s thriller was a sci-fi thriller which people don’t see many of. Even though this was a huge risk we still decided to go through with it because popular famous directors are always noticed for doing the unusual and out of the norm. Directors like Paul Haggis who directed “Crash” (2005) which was credited for its uniqueness, Christopher Nolan who directed “The Dark Knight” which was incredibly unusual in its own way like how he allowed the audience like the villain (the Joker) more than the hero (Batman), in the way how he portrays the joker when many films wouldn’t do this. Finally, there is the famous Alfred Hitchcock who was the master of making thrillers, as he brought us the classic “Psycho”. We also took into consideration of his article of “Let ‘em play God” which gave us an idea of how we wanted our audience to feel, in this case the same as Hitchcock and letting the audience to know more that the characters. This really helped because this way we knew that if our thriller did this then it would be very thrilling according to Hitchcock. We added this by making the alien character in our thriller not know what environment she was in and who was surrounding her by blind folding her (see below paragraph). The documentaries that our teacher showed us before we started the project also helped because we learnt the basic ways to create tension and suspicion but most importantly that the unexpected causes the most reaction and that there doesn’t always have to be a dramatic ending in the opening sequence to be thrilling and suspenseful for it to be successful which was hard to believe at first but when she showed us some examples, we understood how it did this, especially the thriller which confused many people. This gave my group many ideas and as we wanted to be unique, we decided to not have a huge dramatic ending to our opening thriller.
My media product represents many social groups as we thought about this before filming. Because we said in our pitch that we were going to appeal to a wide range of the population, so we decided to pick our actors carefully. I was going to act with my group member, Ola, but instead I decided to take the role of the director because we thought we should let Selma act so that the film would also appeal to the female side and not just the male side. In addition, because research tells us that many females don’t really watch sci-fi thrillers but this way because there is a dominant woman in our thriller, this would draw their attention. Also because both the actors are from completely different ethnic backgrounds, white and black, it cannot be classed a black or white film so the audience variety is widened. The age of the characters look young which is good because research shows that young people are the most spender and more likely to go and watch films in the cinema. Research also shows that sci-fi’s are usually watched by older people, especially the type of people who like star trek. This is good because the combination of the young characters and older watchers increases the audience, as there is no age limit on film. People have no excuse to say I am too old or young to watch this film. The way we conveyed the status class of the characters is interesting because the doctor is seen as a highly qualified respectable person in hindsight, but in our thriller, he is doing something suspicious and looks very evil. This supports the famous quote “the prettiest people do the ugliest things” which changes the audience perspective of the doctor from helping someone to doing something terrible to them. I think this creates a certain impact on the thriller because in theory, people would not think a doctor would do something opposite to helping someone. However, our thriller has one limitation on social groups as ours is a sci-fi thriller, many religious people may avoid watching it because they strongly believe that alien, magical or spiritual things are not true and that it should not be demonstrated on film. Beside this religious aspect, I believe my thriller targets a wide variety of social groups.
I believe my thriller has the potential to become a big Hollywood film because it looks professional, that even though my thriller was low budgeted, films like four weddings and a funeral was very low budgeted, and the profit went over the roof. It generated around 250 million and cost 6 million to help it. Even though mine is an opening sequence, it seems to lead people on and looks very interesting. Because we had a cliffhanger, this will convince people to see the rest. Perhaps our opening sequence could become a trailer for the rest of the film. The special effect we used could also help it to become popular because there has been a recent rise on sales for movies with unbelievable special effects as many people like to see these amazing things and how technology can help us do this. We tried to make full use of the technology because we knew we could do much on the Mac computers so we added a special effect at the end of our thriller. Thinking of marketing strategies, I would release the opening sequence on the internet like on sites like YouTube and view the ratings, then hopefully a big institution like Paramount would be interested in my thriller and invest in it so my group can complete the whole film. I believe this is the easiest, cheapest and quickest way for professional produce’s to scout people who are looking to make a career through film making.
I think I have a mainstream audience and not a niche audience because recent statistics show that sci-fi’s have become very popular. For example, the hit television programmes such as “Heroes” and “Smallville” are both sci-fi and these are one of the most popular programmes on television. In addition, childhood programmes like Marvel characters are being made into films rapidly and becoming smash hit films. These could be classed as sci-fi films because they all have a supernatural touch to them. Many people want to fantasise about having incredible abilities so this film will make them feel that they are in the characters position and live the supernatural life, which the film will do. This is good because the main reason people go to cinema is to escape their life for a few hours and be looking through someone else’s eyes and I think my thriller allows the audience to do this. This will be therefore aimed at aspirers. I have mentioned how gender will attract the audience in a previous paragraph but also the colours used could convince the audience like the red spotlight to illustrate some sort of danger and also because red is stereotyped as a confident man’s colour, like the “Hitman” wears a red tie, and the purple/violet contact lenses conveys a mysterious girl or woman, like in “The Incredibles” Violet’s, the daughter, power is invisibility. Much thought has gone into how and who the thriller appeals to. An example of one person who would definitely love to see my thriller Dylan Seale, a big fan of the supernatural programme “Heroes”, favourite film is “Eleventh Hour” a sci-fi thriller movie, his age is 26, has a long stressful job and takes any opportunity to go out. This shows that there is a huge audience for this thriller because most people are in his position, as they would want to at least escape their boring, over-working stressful life for at least a few hours.
The way I would market my film would be through the internet as this is the easiest way to for world wide exposure. My actors are highly rated upcoming British actors with a lot of potential. I choose for them to be British because there are not many big British actors at the moment who are know by the whole world. British people want to see their people making it big and receiving credit for their exceptional performance. Also that because recently, British actors playing lead roles in Hollywood smash films has become very popular, such as Dev Patel in “Slumdog Millionaire”. This achieved remarkable success. They will be upcoming because the concept of this new sci-fi thriller, it brings a fresh look to it which will reflect the new fresh actors. This will address the audience of who they are to the whole world. Perhaps I would allow famous directors and actors to watch it first and ask them to give a comment and a rating for how they thought the film was. The rating would be out of 5stars because if it was out of ten it would be harder for them to give a high rating and also would deceive the audience slyly. All the good comments would be posted on the trailer with their names besides it.
I believe this is a good technique because ordinary people look up to stars credited for their work and will motivate people to watch it and also because if the movie stars really like it, there might be a possibility they might want to work with me in the future which would be a huge advantage for me to carry on with this incredible filmmaking. I would advertise through television adverts so that everyone will see it at one point, certain billboards like at bus stops so that while they are waiting, they are slow persuaded to see and read what it is about and allow newspapers to write a review about it even though this is very risky. These would be all a good way of getting the film across to many people around the country. I believe that these advertisements should be first held in America because if the film becomes a hit their then it is very likely to be a hit in every other country.
I have learnt a lot about the technologies I have used in order to make an exceptional piece of work. The resources at my college were unbelievable; I had no idea could produce some of the things I did. The editing software was incredible as it had many different functions to choose from, which was good because this would mean that everyone will not all have the same sort effects and edits. The software we used to edit was Final Cut Pro, this was a very professional software what actual film-makers use and as soon as I started, I had no idea how to use the system properly, apart from the short tutorial we had before the project started. It allowed use to put everything together smoothly and cut shots so that we only use appropriate parts we needed. However, this did bring stress upon the group, as the software was sometimes too complicated for use to use making us miss simple things we could have used but the software was too advanced. After time progressed, we got more familiar with how it works so things became easier and quicker to do. Final Cut Pro was good for allowing certain parts flow with the timing as we could maximise and minimise the timing toolbar which made everything much easier, especially near the end of the project when everyone was rushing and particular shots did not fit each other or if they didn’t have enough footage. It was amazing what the software could do, but I was not surprised because I believe I was only scratching the surface of its capability. The second software we used was Soundtrack Pro. This was a hard to believe system in which we could add all types of non-diagetic sounds to our film. There was a huge range to choose from, including the supernatural sounds that we favoured as our thriller was a supernatural one. It was also much easier to use as the format was simple and putting the sounds on was very straight forward. The third and final software we used was Live Type. This was the most astonishing software I have ever used. The special effects were unbelievable and varied from matrix code style effects to black hole tunnels. Once I explored this software, it encouraged me to add the special effect called “Light Chase” which I used it for the when the camera zooms into Selma’s eye, and this would seem like it is going on a journey through her eye. The original colours was green and red but we change it to red and black as it would suit our thriller better because the colour coordination symbolises a certain effect. Also the credits were to be done on this software as well and the fonts and how they appeared on screen looked implausible. Once we had fully explored this software, we found everything we wanted to use and this made our production look twice as better.
The internet has also played a large part in my process of producing this opening sequence as I have recorded everything I have done since the project started. Every time I do something towards the project, I record it on the blog so that I can see what I have already achieved. This also worked out as a timing schedule because the blog easily indicates to us that we needed to move on and start the next stage as other groups were progressing faster than us at the beginning but then we soon caught up and came back on schedule. Blogging was essential to gain marks because we needed to reveal what we have done, why we did it and how it has helped us in order to make our opening sequence just as good as it is. The uploading of our film on Vimeo can increase the amount of people to see it because it is a broadcasting tool like YouTube. This will widen the potential audience and hopefully entertain many people. Tools like Vimeo make me want to make more production as I like to entertain people and be rewarded for my hard work through praise. It can perhaps allow me to go many pathways with my film and can lead to a destination a have always looked for. Things like this inspired me to do this subject as I like to be a part of the amazing productions that can be done be my creativity and exploring many different things. Hopefully I can upload this on YouTube later so I can broaden my fan base as I have seen many things become known and very popular from just posting creative pieces of work through the internet.
I have learnt very much since the preliminary task stages. At that time it was only the beginning and I had no idea what I was in for. It made me realise how organised you have to be and how passionate about the work you are creating to make the whole project work to reach a high standard. The key aspect of storyboarding is precious to what we wanted to make even though it is highly unlikely we were going to do everything by the storyboard. This was the hardest stage for my group as we made around six storyboards because we were not satisfied with the previous ones, but this was only because we wanted to make an original piece of work. However, we knew our stress would become the audience’s pleasure and that is why we kept on going and did not waste time dwelling on failure. This encouraged our spirit and this made us learn valuable lessons that would help us in media, as well as in the real world. Filming was every exciting for me as I was the director of my thriller and I got to do some marvellous camera shots which are included in my film. I also took into consideration the match cuts we learnt at the preliminary stages and used this effectively in my final thriller. Editing was probably the longest and most stressful process but it all paid off as the production came out very well. As soon as we finished the opening sequence, my group and I were very excited to post my video on Vimeo because now the film would have worldwide exposure on the internet.
Finally the audience feedback was a warm applause and engaged with the film very well. Positive reviews were frequent to my thriller and the audience could see the work ethic that was put in. There was no negative feedback which was not very surprising because my group and me made every single piece of detail to perfection. One of the positive views was about the sound, as they liked all the sounds we used and they also thought the surgery glove slap sound and scissors cut sound were real but in actual fact, they were added by my group through Soundtrack Pro which they thought was amazing because the timing was exactly on point. The audience liked the special effect very much because it created a fantastic image on the screen and because not really anyone used an special effect like mine. Another thing was the CCTV shot because when the shot was on Selma, it illustrated that she was not human and was an alien because she did not appear clear on the screen. They thought this was very effective because up to this point , they did not know she was an supernatural alien but this told them everything they needed to know and by doing it this was much more stimulating then just telling the audience simply. Many things were mentioned, including the match cuts, editing, zoom into Selma’s eye and the astonishing introducing shot of behind the fan. Overall, I and my group were very impressed with the feedback and felt that we had achieved a lot.
The cinema experience made me very nervous because it felt like a real premier and I didn’t know how the audience reaction would be like. It was in Vue cinema in angel. This was the first time my production would be judged by people I don’t know. However, everything went well as I could hear people talking about how good mine was and the applause could have blown the roof off. Me and my group felt proud of our piece of work and the audience’s reaction told us everything we needed to know.
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