By researching various thriller openings as a group throughout both the planning and filming stages of our task, we gained a great understanding of what the typical codes and conventions of thriller films are. When I initially researched 'The Shining", "Kill Bill", "Inception" and "The Butterfly Effect", I realised that several key and effective conventions of thriller openings were. - Lighting used to convey the tone of the opening (eg. high key to make the audience feel comfortable before a climax or fill light used to create silhouette-like feel)
- Eerie music gradually quickening in tempo, fast paced heart-beat foley effects
- Fast paced cuts between shots to disorientate the audience but to also show them lots of the action within a short space of time
Inspired by the opening credits of 'The Shining' which show as the camera pans the landscape, I decided to take a similar approach with our titles as our film opens with shots of the surroundings, like 'The Shining'.
The boldness of the font which I chose is also a convention of typical thriller openings. However, the majority of thriller films which I looked as faded the background the black whilst showing the film title, as this draws attention away from the storyline being shown through the shots and towards the name of the film only. However, what's being shown on screen whilst the credit text is coming up is key to the story and is important to develop the beginning of the plot and so I chose to instead of fading the background to black, I kept the background as the shot an instead, faded the text away.
When looking at lighting in the researching stage, I noted that a popular lighting technique in thriller films is to highlight the main focus of the shot, such as in the opening of 'The girl with the dragon tattoo'. We did our own take on this by using two LED lights to highlight the main character's face during CU and MS sequences. The outcome of this was very effective and also gave the film a professional look.
2.How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Using mise en scene, we presented our characters as typical stereotypes. The female character represents a typical young adult of her gender, dressed in a current trends (a leather jacket) and a short skirt. This representation is further reinforced by her makeup and hairstyle. Her Tshirt is white which gives the audience connotations of purity and innocence, which immediately creates sympathy for this seemingly vulnerable character.
In the present day scenes, the female character has been stripped to her tshirt and tights. The red of the blood stains on the white tshirt creates a contrast between the innocence we associate with the colour white and the death/danger that we associate with the colour red.
Again, using common stereotypes as a basis, we dressed the male character in a dark hoodie branded ‘Thrasher’ (a known skating brand). We chose this to give the male a ‘thuggish’ appearance as people generally associate boys in dark, ‘skater’ clothing with violence and crime. This means that because of the costume choice, the audience will immediately be suspicious of this character which is the intended effect as it will create further suspense.
We used camera angles as a way of conveying the power balance of the two characters. The man has the clear dominance as is demonstrated through low angle POV shots from the female’s perspective which establishes her vulnerability.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The film I have created is an independent, low budget British film. Because of this, there are only really two main ways of distribution.
The first is being taken up by an independent film distribution company. To do this, the distributor will go through 3 stages.
- Firstly is film production, the actual making of the film.
- Secondly is the film distribution; securing a place for the film in the industry
- Thirdly is film exhibition; finding where it would be viewed, for example cinemas, Netflix, lovefilm
British independent film distributors that I would consider approaching include:
- Studiocanal
- Pathe
- Picturehouse
- Momentum
- Metrodome
- Lovefilm
This method of distribution has one major advantage, being that it's likely to become more well-known and make more money. When a film is released in cinemas across the country, the film will generally become popular and will make more money than a film not released in cinemas. Generally, films show in cinemas for up to 4 months, depending on its popularity. The follow step is DVD release, which generally follows 2-4 months after the film has stopped showing in cinemas. After this comes the release of the film onto such platforms as Netflix and Lovefilm which are VOD. This means that the audience can watch the film whenever they please and this is generally released after around 6-12 months of the film not being shown in the cinema.
Another method of distribution would be to market the film myself. Due to the increasing popularity of VOD and websites such as youtube, online platforms are becoming a common way to successfully distribute films.
Being able to access the film anytime and anywhere on devices such as phones and ipads is a popular selling point in the new digital age.
This method could be very successful as it's a lot cheaper (uploading a video onto youtube is free) than traditionally distributing a film, and also a snowball effect could be created as the film could easily be shared across social media platforms such as twitter and facebook. Through creating an online fanbase, word of the film could spread across many countries and so its popularity would grow.
The two platforms which I would consider uploading my film onto are Youtube and Vimeo.
Youtube is the most popular platform as there is no upload charge and the uploader would be paid for allowing TrueView instant-playing adverts to play before or during the film. The uploader could receive further income from Youtube itself as if the channel received a lot of views and subscriptions, Youtube will pay more money for advertising on the page. This would be successful in targeting a world wide audience as Youtube can be accessed from most countries.
Vimeo however, could be another good choice of platform. Though it has no advertising which therefore means no extra income from the film, the website has a better reputation for being reliable and so this would increase the amount of viewers in my intended demographic.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience of our thriller film is young males aged 15-24 as this is a popular demographic for this genre.
We looked at similar film's audience profiles such as 'Robocop' and saw that the majority of it's audience were C2 males. After looking at other films profile's such as 'Non-stop', I noticed that typically the most successful audience for thriller films were males 15-24 of the C2 class.
I believe the target audience for our film / media product would range from the ages of 15 - 30, as our film will be classified as a 15 due to gory images, profanity and violence. The target gender for our film would appeal both to male and female, as the genre of film is classed as thriller / crime. The target social class of the watching audience would be mainly aimed at the C1/C2 class
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
The sexual undertones in the film may appeal to the target audience and the use of a young, attractive female lead in danger draws the audience in and grabs attention from the beginning. We avoided a lengthy introduction prior to showing the female character as we wanted the captivate the target audience's attention immediately. The intense storyline and graphic action will appeal to the younger male audience and by keeping it interesting from the very beginning will make the audience want to share their enjoyment and emotions towards the film with friends via social media, promoting the film. This is another good reason for targeting a younger audience as social media is an excellent platform of promotion and it's free.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
As my preliminary task was our first time working as a group to create a finished moving image piece of work, we were inexperienced and so many elements of the finished product such as the lighting and the sound could have been extremely improved upon. Comparisons between the preliminary and our final film demonstrate just how much we learnt and how vastly we improved our filming/editing skills as a group.
Firstly, in the preliminary task, we made the mistake of not planning ahead when deciding our location and so on the day of filming we decided to film in front of a large window. This had consequences as we forgot to adjust the white balance and so much of the film is too bright and washed out, making the film look unprofessional.
In our final film however, the location and the lighting were two of the first things we thought about and decided upon. We originally intended to use a suburban-looking street but however discarded this idea when we realised how noisy most streets were and how often our filming would be interrupted. We decided on an empty, long, countryside lane as it would be ideal to film in (as there would be no interruptions) and also the openness of the space meant that natural lighting along with hand-held LED lights would be more than enough light to give a professional look to the film.
The editing in our preliminary was very basic as our knowledge of how to use Final Cut was quite limited. Because of this, we didn’t vary the cuts between the shots at all and so every cut is a straight forward jump cut. In our final film, we varied the pace of the cuts and also used different transitions to keep the piece interesting or to convey a particular effect such as a flashback. 
Though in the preliminary we slightly varied our shots, including an ECU and match on action, for the most part the majority of the shots were the same/very similar. In our final film however, because we had researched so many other thriller openings we were more aware of the types of angles and shots that were effective in conveying the genre and so we made sure to include these, being shots such as worm’s eye views and long shots of the surrounding area.
There were many things of which could’ve been improved upon in regards to the sound in our preliminary. One problem we encountered when filming was that an alarm or siren was going off in the background of a couple of the shots, this too contributed towards the overall unprofessional look of the sequence. This could have been corrected by muting the volume of the shots in the editing process and recording the dialogue separately or by changing locations and re-shooting the shots. The non-diegetic background music we chose was an instrumental version of ‘Hometown Glory’ by Adele. This could have caused problems if used in our final film due to copyright issues. In our final film, we used two copyright free suspenseful-sounding pieces of music, which were successful in conveying the intended tone of the sequence.
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