Evaluation
We have been working on a project that involved us creating a thriller film opening with the duration of two minutes. We started by settling on an idea of a thrill being the emotional build up of tension, mystery, anxiety and suspense which is the expectation of something going to happen without knowing what or when. Next, we learnt about the sub-genres of thriller films for example psychological thrillers and espionage thrillers. We also looked at conventions of thriller films such as low key lighting and different types of film openings such as flash backs, instant arousal, classic slow approach and title sequence approach. We analysed the lighting, the use of camera (movement, angle and distance), music, editing, setting and characters, from films such as collateral, 28 days later and Arlington Road. Further into our projects we were pitching, filming and editing our work which seemed to fly by rapidly. The deadline came which meant it was time to review our work on the big screen at the Vue cinema in angel, on our AS cinema visit which would allow us to have an audiences point of view when evaluating our final outcomes. In this evaluation I am going to analyse the way in which our thriller opening challenged conventions of real media products, the representation of social groups, possible distribution and much more.
My thriller opening an instant arousal and it was very successful in the way it uses thriller film conventions. Some obvious conventions of thriller films are the vulnerable child, demonstrated in the Shining, the low key rooms demonstrated in Arlington Road and out of focus shots demonstrated in 28 days later, which my thriller film uses to strengthen the audiences knowledge of the intensions of the character. A classic film opening that my film was originally going to have was a flash back which is the film starting with the ending. It would have worked really well with our idea of two teenagers within the flashback which we would have shown with the characters in school uniform, revealing vital information for the storyline which results in the climatic death of one character. During this time we experienced horrific weather conditions of heavy snow which interrupted our filming this meant we could no longer waste our crucial time and decided to change our idea. Since the second pitch of our idea our opening consisted of the introduction of an arsonist which was an instant arousal approach, this is a way in which our film used conventions of real films that are either worldwide or UK releases. I believe that the real film conventions used within my thriller made it realistic. One aspect of conventions that my film did challenge was gender by having a female main character. I think this because psychological thrillers usually have male characters as the lead role demonstrated in Arlington Road whereas in our thriller we had a female character acting highly suspicious which we thought worked well when trying to create fresh suspense and the feeling of uncertainty.
I think our film represents the social group of working class woman as pressured, stressed people. I think this because her presence revealed her attitude and showed her frustrations that many middle and upper class people wouldn’t feel because of their stereotypical happy lives. The character within our film opening was a rebellious woman driven towards fire and committing arson attacks, much like other villains she has a secretive dark basement in which she can retreat to and scheme on her planned attacks. What didn’t get revealed is if the woman had a accomplice or if she was working for someone else which I think left the audience asking questions and in suspense whilst waiting for the answers to be revealed, this is what we intended with the type of opening we had chosen. The woman was roughly 24 years of age which is what we thought would be appropriate for her to be unsuspicious to the public but highly suspicious to the audience since she is expected to be in higher education at her age.
There are many distribution companies such as Buena Vista and Disney but I would like my film to be produced by one of the well known, big six conglomerates, these are MGM and United artists, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. They are responsible for 90% of box office takings in the US, Canada and UK. Differences between small UK released films and worldwide released films, are UK releases having smaller budgets, local locations and more than one film Company’s financial support. I would also release my film on DVD some time after the cinema release, I would put it in time with a holiday or gift giving period such as Christmas, and this is yet another factor that would increase overall revenue made from film.
Our chosen audience was 15+ for cinemas instead of 18+ to maximise the amount of views received at the cinema which I think is a smart move because it would result in more revenue for the production companies and actors. The main target audience is 18+ because they can understand the concept of fires started deliberately and maliciously being a serious crime and wouldn’t need an instant arousal opening to catch their attention instantly to keep them interested in the remainder of the film. A typical person from this audience would be someone in higher education, aged 23, likes to drink alcohol when having a laugh, and goes to the cinema as a cheap alternative for a date. I think this type of person definitely fits into the mainstream which is good for the number of views and total revenue.
Attracting an audience strongly involves advertising which can be costly depending on how well you want to reach your target audience. Generally, advertising for films is done through media such as TV advertisements, billboards, and posters at bus stops, phone boxes and on the side of buses. Therefore, I would advertise my film in the same way and also on websites and before other thriller films at the cinema. I would do this because it would ensure that the correct audience is being targeted, we know this would be successful these are the type of films that they are interested in. My target audience was the age group of people aged 18+ therefore sponsoring an alcoholic beverage would be specific to that target audience. It would be a good way to market the film and also make the alcohol more popular.
Some technology that we used for our film process was the video camera when filming and logging and capturing the footage, Apple Mac computers with different software such as final cut pro and sound track and a specific website on the internet called ‘Blogger’. Without final cut pro our work would have been almost impossible to transform into a thrilling, suspenseful film opening, with fades and dissolves that we used to show the passing of time and to allow the titles to fade in and out especially since we were making a thriller in the style of psychological which I think is more based on reality whereas in a horror thriller most people don’t experience abandonment like in 28 days later. The beginning of our sequence consisted of a definition which gives you a taste of the plot whilst the non diagetic sound of a type writer occurs, it then fades into an establishing shot and pan of a house filled with diagetic sounds of footsteps, birds and cars, it then cuts to the shadow on the wall of the main character we did this to add suspense which we hoped would make people want to know who the person is, where they are going and why they are going there this is instant arousal because it makes the audience want to know more, at the same time our non diagetic sound track begins and enhances the feeling of uncertainty. The sequence changes to a low angle of the characters feet, there is now a clear indication that character is female because she is wearing high heels this where we start to give away some of the answers that keep the audience interested. Using technology is an advantage to the process of constructing a film because it is time and money efficient; it also allows you to work with great accuracy with fewer mistakes from human error. I found the software really easy to use once we had gone through the tutorials but when using the internet I have had experienced problems with trying to upload clips onto my blog but I did still manage to upload pictures. I would document what I accomplished and learnt such as how to build up sounds in sound track when creating a sound track. At first I didn’t enjoy blogging because it was something extra that I had to do after each lesson but it is a process that I have grown used to. When using the internet to post our film opening it was quite exciting because it automatically gives us a broader audience and could allows us to have many views worldwide. This means that the target audience can also be the type of people that maintain a blog.
I think the preliminary task was highly important to our projects because it allowed us to practice and gain experience with the equipment, also when storyboarding it gave us a chance to see exactly how different shots can make different impressions to the audience. We thought carefully about how to portray the characters, especially when allowing the audience to have an inside view that other characters wouldn’t have, this is used in TV drama soaps such as Eastenders, we used it to show the male characters feelings for the female character by using shot reverse shot, I think it worked well and was very effective. One thing that I learnt from the preliminary task that we used in our final film opening is that when filming footage from different angles you should always repeat the whole sequence again to have a better chance at gaining quality footage for match cutting. Through the process of making a film opening, I have learnt that it takes a lot of time to perfect each shot and edit it according to the impressions of characters that you are trying to portray, I think this is why real films take so long to complete.
Overall, I have really enjoyed working on this project whilst learning about the film making process. My favourite part of the process is filming and editing because you have the freedom to be creative with shot types, angles and you are able to manipulate the footage to create different meanings. My most memorable moment of the project would be the cinema visit because I got to see my friends and my accomplishments on a cinema screen. An improvement that I would make if I had the chance to do this project again is planning in much more detail to reduce the amount of mistakes and problems that we came across as a group. One thing I would keep the same is the amount of effort and determination that my group put into getting our work finish on time at what we thought was a good standard.
We have been working on a project that involved us creating a thriller film opening with the duration of two minutes. We started by settling on an idea of a thrill being the emotional build up of tension, mystery, anxiety and suspense which is the expectation of something going to happen without knowing what or when. Next, we learnt about the sub-genres of thriller films for example psychological thrillers and espionage thrillers. We also looked at conventions of thriller films such as low key lighting and different types of film openings such as flash backs, instant arousal, classic slow approach and title sequence approach. We analysed the lighting, the use of camera (movement, angle and distance), music, editing, setting and characters, from films such as collateral, 28 days later and Arlington Road. Further into our projects we were pitching, filming and editing our work which seemed to fly by rapidly. The deadline came which meant it was time to review our work on the big screen at the Vue cinema in angel, on our AS cinema visit which would allow us to have an audiences point of view when evaluating our final outcomes. In this evaluation I am going to analyse the way in which our thriller opening challenged conventions of real media products, the representation of social groups, possible distribution and much more.
My thriller opening an instant arousal and it was very successful in the way it uses thriller film conventions. Some obvious conventions of thriller films are the vulnerable child, demonstrated in the Shining, the low key rooms demonstrated in Arlington Road and out of focus shots demonstrated in 28 days later, which my thriller film uses to strengthen the audiences knowledge of the intensions of the character. A classic film opening that my film was originally going to have was a flash back which is the film starting with the ending. It would have worked really well with our idea of two teenagers within the flashback which we would have shown with the characters in school uniform, revealing vital information for the storyline which results in the climatic death of one character. During this time we experienced horrific weather conditions of heavy snow which interrupted our filming this meant we could no longer waste our crucial time and decided to change our idea. Since the second pitch of our idea our opening consisted of the introduction of an arsonist which was an instant arousal approach, this is a way in which our film used conventions of real films that are either worldwide or UK releases. I believe that the real film conventions used within my thriller made it realistic. One aspect of conventions that my film did challenge was gender by having a female main character. I think this because psychological thrillers usually have male characters as the lead role demonstrated in Arlington Road whereas in our thriller we had a female character acting highly suspicious which we thought worked well when trying to create fresh suspense and the feeling of uncertainty.
I think our film represents the social group of working class woman as pressured, stressed people. I think this because her presence revealed her attitude and showed her frustrations that many middle and upper class people wouldn’t feel because of their stereotypical happy lives. The character within our film opening was a rebellious woman driven towards fire and committing arson attacks, much like other villains she has a secretive dark basement in which she can retreat to and scheme on her planned attacks. What didn’t get revealed is if the woman had a accomplice or if she was working for someone else which I think left the audience asking questions and in suspense whilst waiting for the answers to be revealed, this is what we intended with the type of opening we had chosen. The woman was roughly 24 years of age which is what we thought would be appropriate for her to be unsuspicious to the public but highly suspicious to the audience since she is expected to be in higher education at her age.
There are many distribution companies such as Buena Vista and Disney but I would like my film to be produced by one of the well known, big six conglomerates, these are MGM and United artists, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. They are responsible for 90% of box office takings in the US, Canada and UK. Differences between small UK released films and worldwide released films, are UK releases having smaller budgets, local locations and more than one film Company’s financial support. I would also release my film on DVD some time after the cinema release, I would put it in time with a holiday or gift giving period such as Christmas, and this is yet another factor that would increase overall revenue made from film.
Our chosen audience was 15+ for cinemas instead of 18+ to maximise the amount of views received at the cinema which I think is a smart move because it would result in more revenue for the production companies and actors. The main target audience is 18+ because they can understand the concept of fires started deliberately and maliciously being a serious crime and wouldn’t need an instant arousal opening to catch their attention instantly to keep them interested in the remainder of the film. A typical person from this audience would be someone in higher education, aged 23, likes to drink alcohol when having a laugh, and goes to the cinema as a cheap alternative for a date. I think this type of person definitely fits into the mainstream which is good for the number of views and total revenue.
Attracting an audience strongly involves advertising which can be costly depending on how well you want to reach your target audience. Generally, advertising for films is done through media such as TV advertisements, billboards, and posters at bus stops, phone boxes and on the side of buses. Therefore, I would advertise my film in the same way and also on websites and before other thriller films at the cinema. I would do this because it would ensure that the correct audience is being targeted, we know this would be successful these are the type of films that they are interested in. My target audience was the age group of people aged 18+ therefore sponsoring an alcoholic beverage would be specific to that target audience. It would be a good way to market the film and also make the alcohol more popular.
Some technology that we used for our film process was the video camera when filming and logging and capturing the footage, Apple Mac computers with different software such as final cut pro and sound track and a specific website on the internet called ‘Blogger’. Without final cut pro our work would have been almost impossible to transform into a thrilling, suspenseful film opening, with fades and dissolves that we used to show the passing of time and to allow the titles to fade in and out especially since we were making a thriller in the style of psychological which I think is more based on reality whereas in a horror thriller most people don’t experience abandonment like in 28 days later. The beginning of our sequence consisted of a definition which gives you a taste of the plot whilst the non diagetic sound of a type writer occurs, it then fades into an establishing shot and pan of a house filled with diagetic sounds of footsteps, birds and cars, it then cuts to the shadow on the wall of the main character we did this to add suspense which we hoped would make people want to know who the person is, where they are going and why they are going there this is instant arousal because it makes the audience want to know more, at the same time our non diagetic sound track begins and enhances the feeling of uncertainty. The sequence changes to a low angle of the characters feet, there is now a clear indication that character is female because she is wearing high heels this where we start to give away some of the answers that keep the audience interested. Using technology is an advantage to the process of constructing a film because it is time and money efficient; it also allows you to work with great accuracy with fewer mistakes from human error. I found the software really easy to use once we had gone through the tutorials but when using the internet I have had experienced problems with trying to upload clips onto my blog but I did still manage to upload pictures. I would document what I accomplished and learnt such as how to build up sounds in sound track when creating a sound track. At first I didn’t enjoy blogging because it was something extra that I had to do after each lesson but it is a process that I have grown used to. When using the internet to post our film opening it was quite exciting because it automatically gives us a broader audience and could allows us to have many views worldwide. This means that the target audience can also be the type of people that maintain a blog.
I think the preliminary task was highly important to our projects because it allowed us to practice and gain experience with the equipment, also when storyboarding it gave us a chance to see exactly how different shots can make different impressions to the audience. We thought carefully about how to portray the characters, especially when allowing the audience to have an inside view that other characters wouldn’t have, this is used in TV drama soaps such as Eastenders, we used it to show the male characters feelings for the female character by using shot reverse shot, I think it worked well and was very effective. One thing that I learnt from the preliminary task that we used in our final film opening is that when filming footage from different angles you should always repeat the whole sequence again to have a better chance at gaining quality footage for match cutting. Through the process of making a film opening, I have learnt that it takes a lot of time to perfect each shot and edit it according to the impressions of characters that you are trying to portray, I think this is why real films take so long to complete.
Overall, I have really enjoyed working on this project whilst learning about the film making process. My favourite part of the process is filming and editing because you have the freedom to be creative with shot types, angles and you are able to manipulate the footage to create different meanings. My most memorable moment of the project would be the cinema visit because I got to see my friends and my accomplishments on a cinema screen. An improvement that I would make if I had the chance to do this project again is planning in much more detail to reduce the amount of mistakes and problems that we came across as a group. One thing I would keep the same is the amount of effort and determination that my group put into getting our work finish on time at what we thought was a good standard.
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