For our media production we were aiming to create a thriller/horror however after the edit and are use of mise-en-scene it turned into a thriller opening sequence. Our piece contains the exact conventions of a Thriller:
We used a dim-lighted room and POV shots from our antagonist when establishing that he was going to murder. The dim-lighted room is a huge stereotypical representation of a serial killers bedroom in a thriller film.
We introduced violence into our sequence; the violence is merged with the detective finding a dead body and looking at the different parts, e.g. the victim’s shoe, then cutting to the victim tying his shoelace before being murdered. This is a convention of thriller films; to show the crime scene and the detective also usually looking at clues left by the killer too.
The antagonist left a clue behind at the crime scene, and from it the audience can infer that the killer is murdering out of vengeance and revenge, due to the keyword left behind being “Justice” this is again a convention of serial killer films, such as 'Se7en' (Fincher, 1999) whose serial killer has a specific motive and way of killing his victims, thus giving the audience an insight into the killers inner-workings.
Our film opening is in a linear narrative, and it shows two lines of action inter-cut, plus a small amount of scenes from a flash-back. We believed this is developing on the forms of real thriller film openings, as they usually show a flash-back at the start and then continue the narrative in the present, whereas our production integrates the flashbacks and main line of action into the same sequence. In order to establish that the flash-backs were in the past we edited them by putting a black and white colour wash onto those cuts to connote the past. This technique is again a common convention of Thriller films to show different time frames.
Click here to view our research on Conventions of Thrillers:
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Click here to view my research on particular social representations.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I feel that our product would most likely be produced by a conglomerate studio, and therefore be an industrial film. This is because our production conforms to many thriller conventions. Thriller films appeal to a mass audience of 15- 45+ as they feature action, appealing to the younger audiences, and mystery which appeals to the wider audience.
Our production is a conventional thriller film, so would be produced and distributed by a conglomerate, most likely New Line Cinema as they have created films similar to our chosen genre, such as "Se7en" and the "Blade: Trinity" including many other thriller films. Thus meaning that they have the knowledge of how to produce a Thriller and also invest heavily in Thriller films making it likely that they would be interested in producing our film.
Furthermore, using information from www.imdb.com the majority of the top 250 films in the world are Thrillers. Showing more evidence that thriller films are very popular in the current market and will always attract a large audience. Which will almost inevitably make the film profitable.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
- I have learnt how to use the HD cameras that we recorded our footage on for our production.
- Also I have learnt to use Adobe Premiere which we used to edit our footage by cutting, applying effects and organising our shots, which took time to get to grips with but eventually became second nature and I understood how much of a difference editing makes to productions. Furthermore I realised how time consuming editing is and that if one shot doesn't line up to the millimeter the whole sequence doesnt' work and either needs to be re-shot or cut down the clip a fraction. You could even add a blurring effect so that shots that don't completely line up correctly don't get noticed.
- Furthermore, we learnt to add titles to clips, which allows the audience to gain further insight into the film and allows locations to be discovered.
- Also using premiere, we cut and moved clips around allowing seamless editing and appears continuity edited.
- Also with Premiere, I learnt to both compress time and expand time using the time stretch tool, which allowed us to speed up clips or slow them down.
- Leading onto this we used special effects, which again gave our production a more professional look, helping with the forecast that this film would be picked up by a conglomerate.
- Lastly on Premiere, I learnt to put music onto a clip and noticed how much of a difference it makes and transforms a regular amature film into an opening of a professional film. The music builds tension and creates an suspense that helps to drive the narrative. It creates a dark atmosphere within our production.
- Also I learnt to use Prezi, a website which helps creating very engaging power-points, this enabled me and my group to create an interesting and exciting pitch, in order to get our opening green-lighted. Again Prezi took time to get used to but after practicing on on the website I became confident and able with the software. On Prezi I have made two PowerPoint's each very engaging and dynamic.
- Furthermore, I have also learnt to use "Slideboom"which is an online source that allowed my PowerPoint to be able to be uploaded online, and obtain an embed code. An embed code allowed me to post my PowerPoint onto the blog. This was a very helpful tool which I never knew existed, and is very simple to use.
- Another useful website that I have discovered whilst trying to get market research and audience research is "Survey Monkey" this website allows you to type in the questions that you want to ask your target audience and then converts the whole thing into an online survey which can be emailed around to all you contacts. The surveys can be answered online and once have been filled in and sent back Survey Monkey presents the results in a straightforward way and presents them in a graph form.
- Blogger is the website we used to post our progress and research whilst doing our media coursework. It was really helpful as allowed our group to communicate to each other and when we had an idea we could post it onto the website and see the other group members responses. It was extremely easy to set up a blog, and enable us to store important information.
- Freesound.org was a very important piece of technology that we used during the creation of our opening. It is a website which allows free downloads of sounds, e.g. SFX or backing tracks. We obtained the drumming and the booms on our backing tracks from this source. The sounds really changed our final product to an excellent piece of film.
- Youtube was also a site that we used. I had been on Youtube before but never to upload my own films. For our final product to be posted on the blog we needed to obtain an embed code and to do that it needed to be upload to Youtube. For a two minute film it takes about twenty minutes to upload a film to the site.
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