Evaluation Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

As we were inspired by successful thriller movies, we also borrowed, developed and challenged some conventions of the thriller genre, in order to increase the professionalism of our project.

Conventions are typical characteristics, traits and elements of the particular genre of film. In terms of thriller genre, some conventions include:

• Unknown killers that are not revealed until the end of the film

• Non-linear timelines, which means events have been put into a non-chronological order to confuse the viewers about what's happening when

• Circular narratives- when the film starts as it ends

• The use of flashbacks to scramble the story line

• the killer protagonists have flaws or some type of physical or mental illness

The most relevant convention that we had to ensure we used in order for our movie to be considered as the thriller, was the plot complexity. We developed our plot into a non-linear timeline to make the audience uncertain of what is happening. The complex story line that is full of mysteries is a primary element of many thriller movies.

Our story also consists of unknown factors and the viewer has to concentrate to try and reveal them. However, in our film we have challenged one of the main conventions by revealing our killer right at the beginning of our film, which breaks the convention of many thrillers as they usually keep the killer unknown until the final stage. In our starting sequence, we built up tension by showing some parts of the villain and functions he does whilst preparing for his killing e.g. having shower, dressing up, packing, waking up. Due to our non-linear time sequence this comes after we have revealed the killer, but the audience does not know who he is killing or when it fits in the timeline. Because the killer has been revealed early on, so the we need to leave other aspects unknown to keep the audience watching and interested until the end. These reasons for keeping the audience interested is to find out why he is killing his victims, what happens after and if he gets caught. This is similar to some of the Hannibal films which also challenges this convention.

The killer in our film wears a suit which is also a regularly used convention by many directors while presenting their killers. The costume of a suit is a symbol of a male strength and dominance, many popular protagonists

like: James bond (007 series), Hitman (Hitman), Sloan (Wanted) or Joker (batman) are presented as wearing suits to appear more serious and professional. This costume also gives the killer a plain and calculative aspect that doesn't give much away.

In thriller films victims are never shown as strong, powerful and dangerous. They are always rather vulnerable and weak, highlighting the superiority of the killer creating a contrast and involving more feelings of sympathy. We have used this convention in our film by making our victim a vulnerable teenage girl who is in her house alone. Some other factors that made her vulnerable were that she had just woken up so she is still wearing white pyjamas which makes her seem unaware that anything is wrong. She is wearing fur slippers that are very childlike and also add to the contrast between the formally dressed killer and the casually dressed victim. We also used a high angle when the victim is lying dead on the floor as even though she is dead she still look vulnerable, leaving the audience thinking the killer is dominant and powerful.

Evaluation Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our film opening represents different groups in different ways, the main social group represented in our film is the vulnerable, teenage girl who is easily preyed upon by the killer in our film. We made her seem vulnerable by having her in the film as being in her house alone. We also had her in a sate of relaxation as she had just got up and was still wearing her pyjamas, this makes her more defenceless as she is unsuspecting of anything bad happening. The cosutme she wears also connotes her childlike nature which further enhances her susceptibility. This is typical of many horror and thriller genre films, so we continued this stereotype as it has proved effective in the past. Examples of films that use this stereotype are some of the victims in the horror film Tormented and Seven.

The killer in our film is a teenage boy who is undertaking his first murder as revenge for his sisters death. His sister was killed by a group of friends before the time the film is set. The group of friends aren't shown together in the film, but will be killed off by the killer individually one after the next. This group of friend are not dominant in the film but are the key reason as to why the killer has taken actions to commit these murders. So we are representing this teenage group as being bullies and killing a teenage girl of their own age after the bullying gets out of hand. This is the reason our killer is cast as a teenager, which goes against conventions of stereotypical thrillers, however in a slightly similar way to ours the killer in Tormented is the ghost, or spirit of a teenage boy who committed suicide after being bullied by his peers.

Evaluation Question 3: what kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

After producing a film, it gets assigned to a distribution company that then produce the film trailers and posters. Since our film is more of an independent thriller film witha low budget and more low key actors, the large distribution companies would not be likely to want to invest their time on such a small scale, low budget production that isn't substantiated by any big name actors. Therefore we would be more likely to distribute our film using a smaller, more independent company like 'Entertainment Film' who are a British distributor of independent films in the UK and Ireland for various production companies. Although being more independent they have distributed numerous well known films including some big films in the horror/thriller genre such as the Saw films, Seven, and the Final Destination films, so they would be a good choice for the distribution of our product.

Another factor in distribution of films is advertising. An easy way to advertise our product to our specific target audience would be to advertise on social networking sites and other online websites such as Youtube, as well as conventional TV trailers, where there are large communities of people to impact on. One huge benefit of advertising on social netweorking communities like Facebook and Twitter is that you can target a narrow demographic by their age and hobbies etc. This means we could directly advertise to our target audience of 15-24 year olds. This would be an effective way of promoting our film as lots of people in our target bracket use social networking regularly.

Evaluation Question 4: Who would be the audience for your media product?

We profiled our target audience as 15-24 year olds as our film would most likely be rated and certified as a 15 age certificate by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) complex psychological aspects, scenes of violence and expletive language.

We would also aim our film at this age group because this has been reported as the largest consumer of this film genre, also predominantly males. The evidence we received from our questionnaire supports this statement as we questioned people in this demographic and we based our film on aspects they said they would like to see.

Evaluation question 5: How did you attract/address your audience?

We chose the teenagers to be our target audience. The advantage is that we already knew from our own experiences and personal taste what to use in the project. We also conducted a research on existing products for that specific target audience and learned what not to do and what to do more successfully. Another significant way of gaining the ideas was a questionnaire with general questions about the thriller/horror genre and it's aspects and elements.
Results we got were very useful while we could not decide whether to create a traditional thriller or gory horror. Most people claimed that they rather like to watch the traditional thriller than the bloody, brutal and violent and senseless gory film. Many people stated that they like the element of mystery that builds up their tension therefore as in thrillers' nature we included the scenes that are not clear straight away like for example the preparation of man that later appears to be a killer when he puts the knife into the bag.

Sometimes people incorrectly think that teenagers only prefer to see ruthless murders and dead bodies, many of them have different needs than are generally considered.

We wanted to satisfy the wider amount of audience therefore we used the elements that were mostly preferred in the questionnaire e.g. house setting that is more likely to be fearful, engaging plot requiring the concentration and some of the camera shots that are

particularly liked by the teenagers and can be usually found in the movies like Tormented, these are: jerky camera movement that creates the impression of disorder and instability or instant and rapid zoom out from the killer's eyes.

Such shoots add a bit of effective disruption to our production however perpetuating it's traditional style. In addition, all of our casts are teenagers which makes easier for audience to familiarise and sympathize with.
We have also included the death scene but unrevealing the actual action of killing, however girl is shown dead after the attack surrounded with blood and is being dragged away leaving the blood mark effectively linking to the title. Many younger audience may appreciate that also as this is something fresh and makes the murder scene still effective and touching even if it was not shown fully and detailed.

Evaluation question 6: What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

As our project was a opening sequence of a movie. First thing in terms of technology, that comes to mind are cameras, however we were already experienced with using the cameras from previous years and private actions.
Therefore we did not encounter any difficulties and problems with them, the only significant change was shift from the tape camcorders to the modern ones supporting the SD storage that is more convenient and friendly. Biggest change to other years was using the apple computers and it's software like iMovie or 'The Garage Band' that required us to get familiar with, as they are fundamentally different than the traditional Windows-based computers and many of us did not have contact with such computers or software before. Furthermore, the inexperience with iMovie sometimes aroused problems like e.g. importing the footage from the camera that required the knowledge about the software and the different camera modes. However with help and advices of teachers and trial and error methods we finally got to know most aspects of available editing software. Moreover our skills and knowledge started developing with time. Therefore now when our project is in the final stage we are fully aware of most aspects of apple Mac computers and it's software like 'The garage band' or 'iMovie' that we used to work with our movie. The transfer to new technologies certainly was positive as current computers have better performance than previous, which is crucial while working on video editing, they also provide us with big space available to store the longer footage with better quality. Some software available on on the Apple Macs, such as iMovie sometimes seemed very simple, however, for most things we realized that we did not fully understand how to use and find, or engineer some techniques that we wanted to use. However, compared to the software we used at GCSE, Ulead Video Studio 8, as it was much faster to process and import footage.

We successfully learnt how to apply filters into video clips and adjust the speed, contrast and brightness of the clips to specifically enhance or portray a particular emotion or atmosphere. For example, i added the filter 'Dream' to all of my flashbacks to emphasize a passing in time.

Evaluation Question 7: Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have leant in the progression from it to the full product?

When we filmed our preliminary task we practiced a number of techniques to help us develop ideas. This task also really helped us gain knowledge on how to use the equipment and we also gained a little more expertise in the execution of our camera work. It gave us an insight into what shots are useful in what situation i.e. shot-reverse-shot is used for conversation but also the 180° rule should be used unless you are trying to create a reverse shot.

As mentioned before the 180° rule is a very important editing technique if dialogue is used between two characters. We did not carry this technique into our final edit as no dialogue appears in the opening of our thriller.

Another very useful technique that we practised in our preliminary task was match on action and continuity editing. This is important as it makes a scene look more realistic. For example we filmed sombody opening a door and using a second camera filmed the person coming into the room from the front view. This is more realistic than showing somebody enter the room from behind as this doesn't show the audience what somebody would see if they were in the room when the person entered. We also used continuity editing in our opening to smooth transitions between shots where most of the aspects remain still but some parts of the shot move. For example in our thriller we used match on action editing to cut from an over the should shot of the girl getting something out of the fridge to a 2 shot of her seeing the killer apper from behind the fridge door. To do this we made sure to match the position of the fridge door to match to the ssme position from both camera angles. Otherwise the fridge door would have jumped from being wide open to almost shut.

The preliminary task also helped us familiarize ourselves with the editting software, specifically we larnt how to cut and split clips, only keeping the clips we wanted ans how to crop a video clip like when we noticed that the vey bottom of the second camera tripod was visible in the shot.

Another factor that helped us was using wo cameras, it meant we had to plan our shots more carefully so neither of the cameras were visible in the other cameras shot, however it was also far more convenient than refilming the whole scene from a second angle as this is impossible to get exaactly the same and creates continuity errors.

Overall, I think our final piece has beenm edited to a much higher standard due to the practise and expertise that we gained by undertaking a preliminary task.

Age Rating

The age ratings of films are rated and classified by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) they classify the films while considering issues such as language, violence, sex and drug abuse and discrimination in films, DVDs and video games.

I think our film would probably be rated as a 15 age certificate meaning you have to be 15 or older to watch the film in a cinema and nobody under the age of 15 can buy or rent a film rated with this certificate.

We think this would be the most fitting age rating as complex psychological plot-lines can sometimes be disturbing to younger audiences and "There may be frequent use of strong language" and it is possible that this could feature later on in our film. Similarly "Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable." This will also fit with our film as during the main scenes of violence the violent act will not be shown directly but using inconspicuous camera shots and angles, such as when we showed the victim's blood dripping on the floor indicates she is being stabbed but does not show the actual violent act of the knife entering the victim's body as trying to make this look realistic would be very difficult and also spoil the tension of the thriller. It would also probably have to be an 18 rating if violence was to be shown in this way.

Final cut

Filming Process Evaluation

As we processed to the filming of the rough cut version we have taken the pictures showing our filming behind the set and evaluate our decisions in order.

Dead girl shown

Very first scene of our movie was showing a dead girl on the floor surrounded with blood. A beginning of this kind already establishes the genre, and provides excitement right from the beginning. It also effectively prepares the viewer for further content. This shot will be long as the scene goes from the extreme close up on the girl's face to the long shot by slowly zooming out. This scene will be interwoven with the flashbacks of the actual killing scene.

Killing scene shown by flashbacks

This scene starts with the view through the window as a girl comes into the room, however, it is not the killer's point of view because he is already inside, as you will find out later in the scene. This view is effective when we want to show how defenceless the victim is and that she is in danger as looking in through the window from the outside give the impression of her being trapped.

The next part of the killing scene was the victim taking a plate from one side of the kitchen to another, this is shown effectively by a panning shot. When she reaches the fridge and opens the door, the killer is already behind it to scare his victim and kill her when she shuts the fridge and sees him.

Victim is stabbed to

death

As the killer appears behind the fridge door it fills the victim with a paralyzing fear. The music will be synchronized with this action . She cannot react in any way as the shock is too huge, she

can

only look at the killer frozen with fright. This short moment is shown by two shot.

Then in order to show the killing process and keep it mysterious and thriller-like we filmed a high angle shot of the floor which effectively shows the contrast of girl's bare feet and the killer wearing smart black shoes. Then we can hear a scream and the girl drops things she held as she sees her killer, namely a glass and some food. We intentionally used glass as it smashes effectively reflecting the girl's situation. View comes back to the floor and then we see drops of blood falling down.

The next shot is the girl laying on the floor surrounded with blood and broken glass. The camera is aiming on her head and shoulders by medium shot and high angle. Then girl is being pulled out of frame by the killer leaving the blood mark behind.

Killer wakes up

We don't know that this is the killer yet as the actions he does seem very ordinary and normal, except the time he wakes up. Later we find out he is the killer as we see his notice board with photographs and newspaper extracts. They say that his girlfriend was killed and abused and he swears revenge against the people responsible for her death.

Soundtrack

We chose to use classical music in our film because it is relaxing and calm, this ties in with what is being shown at the time. The music creates a calm and tranquil atmosphere, which substantiates with the images that we are seeing of a dead girl's body.

However, the music also creates an ironic and unnerving side to the film opening as you would not usually associate calm music with scenes of a girl, just minutes after and before her murder. This will intrigue the audience as to why the girl has been killed, and what the killer does next.

Audience Feedback

We asked a number of students in our class to watch the rough cut of our film opening and we then asked them for some feedback on improvements we could make.

We received these bits of feedback from people in our target market group of 15-24 year olds, and dominantly males.

• An obvious point made was that we needed to add music to our film
• Somebody pointed out that we needed to mute the volume of the sound on a few of our clips to keep continuity
• Somebody also pointed out that the red colour of one of the title fonts was brighter than the others

We made these adjustments as our final cut. First we imported the music that we had produced and then made sure that all video clips were muted. After this we added any non-diegetic sound effects such as the sharp cutting sound when the killer is about to be revealed behind the fridge door and some diegetic sounds like the alarm clock on the killer's phone going off to wake him up.

We also changed the colour of the fonts so that they were al similar, but it did not matter if they were exactly the same as it was meant to represent blood, so varying the colour of the fonts slightly added to the realism.

We also changed the production company shown in the opening of our film from 'Twisted Pictures' to 'New Line Cinema' as Twisted Pictures usually produce large blockbuster horror films and this did not fit with our film pitch. Therefore we altered this to a more appropriate company i.e. New Line Cinema. This company is more suited to our film as they have released and distributed some successful thriller films such as Se7en starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Rough cut

When editing the footage we got from our first filming session, we realised we would have to re-film some of the killer's preparation scene. As this was meant to be very early in the morning when there would be no sunlight, we tried to darken the room slightly to produce this effect. However although the brightness of the shots looked good on the camera screen, once they were uploaded to the macs we could see they were too dark to see enough detail. Therefore we re-filmed these shots using natural daylight. But this time to produce the night time effect we applied a 'day to night' filter on the clips which meant it looked darker but the actors were still visible enough.

After we had edited all our re-filmed clips we had something we were fairly happy with, but not completely finished and polished yet. We had yet to include music or sound effect on our rough cut so this was inevitably a large thing that we would need to add for our final cut. After getting feedback from our peers and teacher, we decided we needed to cut down our opening by about 25 seconds. Usually this is quite a lot to cut out if you want to keep all of the shot in a film. However, since our film used many slow motion clips for dramatic effect, we could cut a second or two of quite a lot of the shots without actually losing much in the way of content. We also decided to increase the speed of some of the slow motion shots as we didn't want to lose any more of the clip.

We also needed to redo the credits as we weren't happy with how they looked.

Titles- Credits

In the film Memento that we analysed in our theory lessons the opening credits were overlayed on top of reversing footage of a man killing his victim and then taking a polaroid picture of him.

We wanted to do something similar to this in our film. So we decided that superimpozing the film title over the top of the blood streaks that are left when the victim gets dragged out of shot in a 'blood dripping' font with a dark bloody red colour would be an impressive way of including the film title into our opening.

We will also use the same font for the other titles such as cast, music, director, producer and editor. We will chose a dark red colour to show it is meant to represent that the words are written in blood that is running down the screen.

Shot list

Shot 1

Black screen for 1s. with the classic music in the background it creates the nostalgic and miserable mood.

Shot2
Dead Girl shown by the extreme close up constantly zooming out into medium shot with spinning. This is the longest scene as it goes throughout most of the opening. However it is split into several parts and they are put in between the flashbacks. Sound is the classical piano

Shot3 FLASHBACK
Flashback, victim goes through the door towards kitchen.

Shown by the tracking shot.

Shot4 FLASH

BACKFlash

back, victim continues going to the kitchen, however she is shown from the other view, through the window with zoom out when she comes in. Classic music continues

Shot5
One of the segments of Shot 2 appears with constantly progressing twisting zoom out from the extreme close up, also the subtitle appear.

Shot6 FLASHBACK
Continues the Shot#4 however with zoom out therefore we can see that this is the view through the window.

Shot 7
Interwoven dead girl shot continues with another subtitle

Shot 8
FLASHBACK
Shot #6 continues with progressing zoom out, shows girl reaching something to prepare her dish

Shot9
Come back to the zoom out, we can see more and more blood, soot slowly changes to the over the shoulder shot


Shot6
The victim is preparing her dish, moving from one side of the kitchen to another shown by panning shot.

Shot7
another segment of Shot 2 with dead girl with constant zooming out and spinning and another subtitle

Shot8
Victim sown by the over the shoulder however from behind while opining the fridge.
Classic music continues however another sound is added, which is a dangerously growing lauder and harder adding the tempo and tension to the scene creating expectation that something is going to happen

Shot9
another piece of shoot#2 with progressing zooming out.


Shot10
Critical moment as the killer appears, shown from behind of the victim. Classic music continues however is dominated by increasing sound effect that reaches its loudest point

shot11
Another point of view on the killer appearance, this time is by the two shot

Shot12
short black screen after the crucial moment for the emotions to calm down and to represent the time that passed until the next scene.

shot13
Glass and the egg crash on the floor shown by high angle and close up.

Shot15
Last scene of the victim dead, at this moment she is dead in the flashback as well as in the current action.

Shot16
Come back to the view on their legs, we see glass all around and now the blood starts dripping.

Shot17
Girl is dead lying on the floor surrounded with the blood, glass and egg pieces. This is the high angle shot from the perspective of the killer who is standing over the victim. In this scene the subtitle with tile appears, also the non diegetic sound of alarm clock can be heard in the background.
Also another sound is added which grows and becomes loud with time creating tension and expectation that something is going to happen.

Shot18
Man opening his eyes, dramatic zoom out, from extreme close up, alarm clock is still in the background. Increasing sound from the previous shot continues and reaches its dramatic point when eyes are open.

Shot 19
Man is getting up and leaving his bed. Shown by close up.

Shot 20
Then he is taking shower also shown by close up

Shot 21

Another close up of another action showing us the daily routine of the man




Shot 22
Close up showing another function, Notice that killer is never shown fully creating expectation and mystery

Shot 23

Panning shot showing the man's bulletin board with pictures on and newspaper extract.

Shot 24
Extreme lose up on the newspaper extract as man reads it.
Extract cover whole frame.

Shot 25
Ma moves the extract from the camera uncovering what is behind,

Shot 26

Man prepares for something, as by close ups we can see things he puts into the bag.

Shot27

Finally when we see as the man puts the knife into the bag we find out that he is a murderer and he

is somehow connected to the scene of dead girl.

Shot28

As camera is behind the bag, when man closes it, then whole frame goes black which is very effective ending, and good place to insert the subtitle.

Filming schedule

Filming schedule

As students we had to make sure we will organise our meetings so we can together work on our editing. We however had to consider each other's lesson times and find the free time that we could share.

We divided our work on blog so we could do it at home or any free time without need to consult. In case of questions we also used the telephone or Instant messaging.
We also wanted to use few shots from outdoor but we struggled with bad weather and short day times and we had to reschedule our filming on different days and we finally succeeded. We wanted to do all filming on one go, unfortunately we had to re-film some footage because of the rough cut feedback.

Animatic

After this we took photos of each frame on our storyboard and turned it into an animatic using iMovie. We used the Ken Burns effect which involves zooming in/out and panning from a still photo. We did this so that we could use this as a tool when filming and editing to remind us of what shots go where and what effects/ camera movements we would undertake on each shot.