Questionnaire

What our peers were to fill out whilst watching our thriller opening.


Age: Gender:

1. What would you rate this film between 1-10? (10 highest)
2. Could you suggest 2 improvements for the film and your reasons?
3. What features of the film did you think were the most effective and why?
4. Do you think that the music was effective in creating a sense of tension?
5. Has the opening of the film convinced you to watch more?
6. How realistic and reliatable did you find the characters in the film? How could they be improved?
7. How did our film compare to other professionally made thriller films?
8. How effective were the fonts and transitions in the title sequence? How could they be improved?


These were the responses we received :-

Editing with my personal contributions

The process of editing proved longer than filming. With so many options and special effects available on the Apple Macs, its tempting to test everything out on our piece. We worked as a group when it came to editing and we then decided on different parts with seperate opinions to help. This especially was the case with the font style, as we all had different opinions on what was 'thrilling text'.
I decided that we go for a bland font that would not appear to be predictable or look amateur in anyway.
The pace of our opening was important also, as with a time limit we didnt want the opening to appear rushed, so i decided on spacing out certain scenes, such as the close in shot of the house, and shortening others such as; the movement from Living Room to Kitchen.
The music fitted perfectly but i felt to be effective we should have the music played continiously throughout the opening, and even with a phone call in the middle of our scene, to have the music subtly behind the speech, i felt would be a good way to create tension and it did.
Also the decision of how the titles were to appear on the screen had to be decided, i thought maybe we should have it appear slowly on the screen, and appear slowly. We found a transition on the Apple Mac in which we could have the text crawl onto the background image of the house in the dark. I felt this would help keep the atmosphere chilling as it crawls as if it were crawling in front of you like a creepy animal.
Keeping the audience believing the opening was important, as it was always a priority that this did not appear like a low-budget student film, when in fact it was. With my opinions and everyone elses opinion it helped make editing alot easier. I made the end decisions in most cases as our group deliberated, i became the final word in most of the changes and chances we took when editing our opening.

THE PLOT- UNTRACEABLE

Our film starts with a scene of a babysitter, Jenny Anderson, in a job while at someone elses home, we decided to make the film start at this position with these specific characters to disguise the plot that is coming. As the audience begins to believe the plot will be focused around a babysitter when infact the babysitter symblolises the parents are elsewhere, and the parents are the centre characters in the entire thriller plot. Our babysitter encounters a strange phone call from an unknown male which creates mystery and tension.

The parents are out for dinner at a restaurant. A normal scene is created, busy restaurant. Food being passed around. The wife leaves to use the bathroom. After waiting the Father realises she hasnt returned. Asking the waiter where his Wife may be, the waiter insists that the Father dined alone. Whilst seeming desperate pleading to the disbeliefing staff, even the chef who insists only one meal was made for their table.

His Wife whilst at the bathroom was a victim of an organised abduction. The plan constructed by a previous business partner who was owed a substancial amount of money from her husband, which he couldnt pay back. Holding a ransom for his wife and had paid various public members(including restaurant staff) in order to convince the Husband that he was going insane.

The reason for her disappearance is discovered at the end of the movie, although hints and flashbacks are given throughout the film to create mystery, suspicion and questions in the audiences mind.

The Husband is placed through mental torture when a various scheme of unexplainable events occur, such as; Photographs of the family from their home go missing. This makes the husband question whether his Wife really did exist at all.

Nearing the end of the film, the Husband begins to become more instinctive, and after talking to the babysitter about the strange phone call recieved at the beginning of the film, and being tipped off from an old business collegue. He realises whats going on.

Going straight to his Business Partner, who denies straight off that he had anything to do with his crazy ideas. The Husband grabs the business partner and gives him an ultimatum whilst having a gun stare him straight in the face; "Tell me where my wife is or I WILL kill you". Under pressure the man finally reacts and tells the Husband all about the scheme, after hearing this the Husband kills him regardless.

He goes to where his Wife is being held,fighting through men guarding her, he finally rescues her. Then the family are re-united once again.

THE EVALUATION

The ways in which my media product uses and challenges forms and conventions of real media products.

The filming process will be an experience that i will remember, with the changes and quick pace decisions needed to be made it was all interesting to figure out in our own way. After evaluating and analysing different thriller films, that would follow a simular media format to our presentation. In our own individual film we used a few conventions including:- A crime at the core of the narrative- We have a small occurance that happens at the centre of our opening in which our babysitter character, gets disturbed by a mysterious door opening. Within the general plot of our thriller there is the crime weaved within the plot concerning the parents absent from the house- in which there is a conspiracy kidnapping. Extrodinary events happening in normal sitations- The door opening whilst the girl is alone in the kitchen...or so she thinks. We used this particular convention, as the extrodinary event happening within a normal sitation is what seperates a thriller from any other calibre of film. We also challenged these cases also, as the character in which you see at the beginning, in our opening, is not a protaganist within the plot of the thriller at all. The important and significant characters are shown later on within the story, as the real plot unravels as you get further and further into the story. Through the conventions you can identify that our opening would be of the Suspense Horror, as there is alot of suspense within the plot, and with the element of horror twisted into it also. After watching the thriller, 'When a stranger calls' we definetley used that film for inspiration for our own project, as we used elements also used within that, as we started with simular tension-building music, with the opening scenes establishing a phone call, in which you hear the voices but cannot see the faces. This is very simular to the opening of 'When a stranger calls', but we used our own twist to make it our own.

Any social groups represented or shown in thriller opening?

The social group we addressed would be a teeange age range, as the first character we are met with is a young teenage girl, she is of White British origin meaning it will be a standard English family.I think it also looks out to young women aswell, because it seems to be every young girls nightmare to be put in a situation where you feel under threat, alone and in a strange house. This could be seen as quite a stereotypical view, but when creating a thriller for a certain type of person you have to think of a group of people in a stereotypical way. This helps link into our target audience of the teenage age group of 15+. In the thriller i evaluated, we used conventions of ' When a stranger calls' as we used phone calls and music to create tension in our opening, making the woman babysitter character feeling stereotypically vulnerable.

What type of distribution might distribute my thriller opening?
A distribution would see our opening as very promising i would think, as there is very little difference between the way our film opens, and other thriller films that are simular. We use the same techniques and conventions that are seen within the thriller genre, including music, screen and camera shots that all show the same/simular styles. It would most likely be a made for TV movie, as i could imagine the style being shown on Hallmark or a simular movie channel. It seems like the type of film that would have been made, as you could include franchises and merchandising, through sneaky systems of clothing worn by main characters, drinks in the kitchen. Infact, Diet Coke is shown and used within the first sections of the opening scene. With the mise en scene, the visual style of our thriller is quite dark, but gradually gets to a low tone artificial light within the house, considering the light it seemed appropriate to have light to establish what was occuring within the scene, but also a sense of darkness to help create the mystery.

The audience for my media project

The audience for my media project, was considered to be 15+, as it has features throughout the film such as parent kidnapping, and babysitting which are sitations that teenagers of that age can visualise and understand. Having a young character within the opening enables the teenagers to sympathise and see the sitation through the characters eyes. Which would make it more scary for our audience as they would have the babysitting scenario, which they themselves could have been in. Having a target audience in mind really helped structure the project, as it was close to the age groups of ourselves so if we found our plot and opening gripping so would our target audience.

Attracting and addressing your audience

Using different camera shots including zoom and match on action helped, it seem to the audience as if they were in the kitchen with her, making the moment when the door springs open, seem even more terrifying to the audience, they are enabled to witness a fly on the wall sitation. As mentioned previously, we looked at 'When a stranger calls' which has a simular feeling to our production. Looking at other influences have been films such as; 'The Fog' and 'Taken' where we took the dark opening from 'The Fog' and our idea of a kidnap from 'Taken'. We may have taken small ideas from these films but we always managed to add a twist to it, to enable it was an original idea for our group.

Showing our peers would be the true test as to whether we had attracted our target audience. We showed our thriller opening to a selection of 16-17 year olds, who tend to be the hardest audience to please. We created questionnaires enabling us to throughly see what people thought of our thriller opening. In response to our questionnaire it seemed majority of the audience were impressed with our filming technqiues, and the plot behind it also as they felt it was realistic to everyone. The feedback was helpful and gave an insight into what we could have improved on.

During the process of constructing the product i have learnt about technology...

From first shooting our preliminary piece, being able to deal with cameras and the different equipment was a task. There was the ability to create different camera shots, through a simple zoom mixed with editing. We filmed our first bit of our first piece, but after watching it on the APPLE MAC computers, the lighting from the camera was too dark and grainy. We had no option but to re-film the scene. After creating more light, we found the issue of the grainy screen disappered after, whilst editing we had the new issue of managing our way around the APPLE software system using the imovie programme, so through trial and error we managed to create our final piece using some effects in the MACS, which helped our mise en scene as it enabled us to have dim lighting without being unviewable. As for our soundtrack, we had to search for music which had no royalties attached to it, which is not an easy task. In the end we found a website of a man who creates royalty-free music, especially for films, in which we searched the thriller genre and found our piece of music to use.

I have progressed since my preliminary piece....

The progression of our preliminary piece was easy and to enable our understanding of how to use the equipment efficiently. With the planning of our preliminary we were unaware of how much time it would take, to film and then edit. We managed to finish filming our preliminary piece in one lesson and were then able to edit in the next lesson, so we tried to keep to a simular planning pattern when shooting our thriller, but keeping in mind that we had more to plan effectively for our thriller piece. In regards to Camera shots we played around slightly in different zooms and shots, such as match of action and shot reverse shot, when in conversation. We could then perfect these skills and adapt them onto our final thriller piece. So when we did use these screen shots we were able to perfect them to make them clearer in our final thriller opening piece. After our prelimiary piece, we had 2 sets of filming to get through as our first attempt did not go as planned. Our first filming session after the preliminary, we were admittedly still not 100% accurate with the equipment and were still trying out different aspects and using trial and error to see what would fit and what needed cut out. However, learning from our mistakes we found the second time much more easier, as we knew how to function the camera straight away and were able to focus more on our new plot- as we had the skills of functioning the cameras properly straight away as to testing out different shots, as this time we knew what would work. I feel extrememly proud of our finished piece, after looking through all the planning, difficulties and changes we faced. We managed to adapt and resolve these issues. When watching our final edited piece i could visualise our opening in the beginning of a genuine thriller film. Looking back on what was asked of us in this task, i feel we have met and exceeded all our targets.

Target Audience

For our thriller, we decided that the best target audience to aim for, would be those to a simular age group to us. Therefore it would be easier to fill a plot with what would interest us, with a style following the pattern that would fit in best. When doing research for what our target audience, we watched films that my group ourselves had watched. While looking at these films, we analysed the features and strategies that made us enjoy the thrillers, we also asked fellow class members, 'What makes you enjoy a thriller film?' in which they gave simular answers . The results included music, slow action that built up to the tension and characters you could relate with. So when creating the idea for our opening we considered these factors, as we wanted to suit and appeal to our target audience.

In regards to film certificate rating, our film would fit the 15 certificate bracket, as we are looking to entertain people of our age range being 15+, but not gruesome enough to be an 18. We looked at the grading for being a 15 certificate, and with our film plot this fitted accordingly.

15 Suitable only for those aged 15 and over.
Nobody younger than 15 can see a 15 film in a cinema. No-one younger than 15 can rent or buy a 15 rated VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, UMD or game.


TIME MANAGEMENT

This was an important issue to deal with, as when shooting the opening we had to always keep in mind the maximum opening time was 2 minutes, through our editing we could of course, cut scenes and shorten lengthy action shots. To create a tense and dark atmosphere and establish a plot within this short amount of time, was a challenge but also manageable. When planning, we spend a long time debating over different plot ideas, locations and potential props. We took our preliminary piece as an example and saw how simple and straight forward that task proved to be, so we took the same approach with the opening and tried not to overcomplicate the opening sequence.

We spent a total of 2 weeks, planning thoroughly what we were to film. We met outside of lesson time to try and complete this task as successfully and smoothly as possible. Our first attempt on filming with our previous plot was done, we used the surroundings around us to try and create a dark scene, we had alot of video footage to play with to create a good opening using the APPLE MACS. However looking back on our footage it was not to our satisfaction as the lighting was too dark and plot had not been well established- this set us back in what we thought was our quick process. We had to re-plan our plot and rethink any changes, we decided not to make it too dark, and simply establish a normal sitation that would cause tension. We re-filmed a week later, we were always on top of schedule and never failing for time even though we had to re shoot. After this successful filming, we edited for a week after and finally had a finished piece we were all proud to be part of. Throughout the difficultes we faced (including heavy heavy snow) we always managed to keep on top of time, and finish our filming before deadline.

Soundtrack

Along with a good plot, with clever filming, you need a strong soundtrack to accompany the filming to create a thriller atmosphere. Its hard to find music online, as there are many copyright and patent acts which make it hard to find fre music samples. On the Apple Mac we used some of their sound effects, such as; phone ringing, dogs barking. There was a need for music to cover the rest of the filming to create what we wanted, through searching and searching we found a website of man, who creates specifically movie music for free, Kevin Macleod:-
http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/ - this was his website, it proved very useful.
We found a perfect piece called, Spider Eyes. It fitted perfectly with the movement of the screen shots and the action within the filming.
It was a task trying to find a website in which music was given for free, but with much trial and error I found the website in which we used, creating effective background music for our thriller opening.

Dialogue

Firstly, we had an original script in which there was a computer and phone involved, this fitted in with the plot we had originally planned but then changed. We had an online messenger conversation taking place, which we had planned to establish the setting and what the situation was. The conversation went like this:-

Lauren says: Hey

Jenny Says: Hey

Lauren says: Can you come to that party tonight?

Jenny Says: No sorry im babysitting

Lauren says:Oh, babysitting? Having fun?

Jenny Says: The parents are out, the kids upstairs, house is bit big. quite creepy

Lauren says: okay well be careful haha x


Following this would be a phone call, in which strange noises would be heard, after re-watching this scene we decided it would be best to not use this.


In our final piece, we wanted to create a brief phonecall conversation between a man and the babysitter over the opening credits.

(phone rings)
Babysitter: Hello?
Man: Hello is Ms. Sampson there?
Babysitter: No sorry, im just the babysitter
(line goes dead)
Babysitter: Hello? Hello?

In our final piece this proved much more effective than what we had experimented with before, as it sets a chilling atmosphere which is what we were aiming for.

Characters

We had multiple characters planned at the beginning of our planning process, we thought of eccentric personalities, such as old women and strange looking men all to add to the thriller theme. We quickly remembered we were simply producing an opening, and we didnt have time to hold a casting for these characters either. Once we'd settled on our opening plot, it was easier to decide what type of realistic characters we could produce.
We decided upon the babysitter, which needed to reflect a normal teenage girl. Who better to play a teenage girl, than an actual teenage girl. We delegated on friends we knew who could play the part, but with conflicting schedules we decided it would be easier for everyone if one of our group took on the role.
At first we had a plan of a babysitter, experiencing a strange phone call, in which I took on the role of babysitter. Once filmed and evaluated we decided it wasnt a very clear or thrilling scene so we decided to re-shoot. In our new opening in which the phone call was exchanged with a door opening itself, Lauren Hunt of my group took on the lead this time. After emulating perfectly a teenage babysitter, this is the scene we eventually decided would be our final piece.

In regards to naming our characters, we didnt create a name for the babysitter as she, later in the plot, is not integral to the plot of our thriller. So we remained calling her 'babysitter'. In the long run we created names for the family, where a continuing plot was concerned.

Main male character

Mark Sampson is a family man, in his 40s,married to Kate. Living in a suburban area everything seems very convential and picture perfect for this family. However after numerous failed business ventures, the family are in alot of debt giving them a background life of hassle and covering up his lies. However he is forced to face the truth when his Wife's life becomes in danger. Being an ex-army cadet, he betroves alot of skills which help him throughout the sitautions within the film he is faced with. He is a genuine, loving Husband and Father who just got himself into some unfortunate situations.

Kate Sampson, Mark's Wife is an innocent victim within this scheme. She is completely oblivious to the trouble her Husband has got himself into, until she falls into a gang abduction, in which she becomes very aware. She is a sensitive, quiet and optimistic type. She is a housewife and stays at home mostly tending the needs of their young child, Max and the upkeep of their home. She is not happy with this situation though, as she fantasises of bigger and better things for herself, but settles for second best as she stays at home and puts her family first.

David Steele, Mark Sampson's ex-business partner, takes the honouring role as villain within our thriller. Being a ruthless owner of a debt collecting company, he finds a sick pleasure in watching other peoples pain and misery. He ruined Mark's business career, as David bailed on him through a potentially successful joint business venture they both had. David has a reputation for being feared and violent. Not an ideal person to ever come across.

Storyboards

During our different processes we had different storyboards created with our different ideas.

Here our are storyboard planning for our Prelimary, Temporary thriller ideas and our final thriller opening piece:-





These storyboards were taken from our Preliminary task planning.





These storyboards were taken from the planning of the opening of our thriller, which we later changed.





These storyboards feature our planning for our final thriller opening. Throughout all our storyboards we wrote timings, visuals and camera shots with transitions everytime. As a group we were always very clear of the image we wanted to portray and kept with that.

Plan, Plan, Plan

Location
Although many aspects of our film changed, being the main plot or who was filling what job, the one thing that stayed the same was our location.Firstly, we planned to work outside, but being Winter filming season, unpredictable weather quickly changed our minds after experiencing some heavy snowfall, we didnt know what to expect. Then, we thought that a house would be a perfect atmospheric place to set a thriller opening and convenient to use, as whatever the weather we could use it and it would remain constant. One of my group members, Lauren Rogers, suggested we film at her house, in which we all decided was the perfect setting for the introduction to our thriller, it was my decision to use a house as i personally felt that it would reflect the right atmosphere around this filming. We used inspiration from Thriller films we viewed for research, as it seemed the more realistic the location the more involved the audience began to feel and also the feeling of being involved with the plot and storyline as you can empathise with it.

Actors
It seemed a strong idea at the beginning to ask volunteers to participate in our opening, but with a time limit we decided it would be easier for one of our group to be the main lead character, our lead was acted out by Lauren Hunt. In our plan there would only be one chracter visually seen, so in order to get it done the way we had visualised.
There was a voice actor needed also within the opening, in which we got another member to complete the short script, a mans voice was preferred therefore Michael Burnett took on the role. Looking at the ages of other characters in thriller films, and the target audience the film is attracting to, it seemed the characters are of the same age as the target audience- this is used to create the realistic situations making the film seem so realistic you could see yourself in one of these surreal situations. We used this element when deciding on the character for our thriller.

Costumes
For our opening we wanted to create a very normal average situation as that tends to make a thriller more enticing, in which wanted our 'babysitter' character, played by Lauren Hunt to appear an average middle-classed girl. Lauren toyed with the idea of having our babysitter dressed dark in an attempt to foreshadow danger that would face her character. I decided a hoody and jeans would fit more appropriately, in which it did,as they would be easier to find, costumes were provided by the actor. Like characters it seems in thriller films the clothing is reflective of the type of character it is. More flamboyantly dressed for a confident person, very fashionable for someone more wealthier. For our character in particular we wanted a more casual, relaxed clothing choice- that any 16/17 year old would wear.


Props
In regards to props, we simply decided any household items would fit fine. Seeing as our main set was within Lauren Roger's household, this helped. For a section of our main events we used a kitchin, in which a refrigerator was used, therefore everything used within our opening was genuine. We made no props ourselves, but improvised with the ones that surrounded us within the house. A few ideas were given as to what props to use within the house, there was a suggestion of using a photoframe, to then have it smash on the floor. This seemed too messy. Also the use of kettle to create strong, loud noises but this all included too much re-filming as the noise appeared grainy through the video camera. So we stuck with the refrigirator idea. With having only a few minutes of footage props were not a huge aspect of our opening- but there were of course some objects used to create a realistic approach to our thriller opening, such as a sofa, refrigerator, glass, can of Diet Coke. So very minimal but still very much used.

Watching and analysing...

To give more inspiration to put forward into the editing and production of my thriller opening I watched a few film openings. This enabled me to understand more what was needed in the first two minutes of a thriller film.

The Fog



The main titles as the film starts are foggy, this coincides with the theme and main title of 'The Fog'. A variety of shots are used at the beginning which show different scenes, with tension building music accompanying the shots. Zoom in, Zoom out shot is used frequently as the zoom out shows the action surrounding them but the zoom in shows the reactions of the characters faces closer up. A dark background is show with white writing which contrasts light to dark effectively. Also there is a air of mystery created as we see only dark silhouettes, and no peoples features can be seen.


When a stranger calls



There is the sound of a phone ringing at the start, with a black background with white credits contrasting each other and creating an air of atmosphere. There is a variety of weird screeching noises, as the shot moves from a house to a fairground, where everything at the fairground continues on in a slow motion style. The shot resembles another persons view, as if someone were else were looking onto the scene- which also adds to the atmosphere and creates tension.

Bourne Ultimatum


At first you just see a black background with white writing, contrasting yet again. The next shot you just see feet moving with noises of sirens in the background. It establishes the tension by moving onto a scene with a man limping which gives a hint of danger, and an ill silence with small signs of water dripping which also creates the tension and an atmosphere.

Taken


Starts with a child laughing, accompanied by sad music with an analepsis of a previous point in their lives. The next scene shows the present day of which a man is in a dark room, but the sad music continues, leading on to a shot of a busy street- showing life outside this characters depression.