Script: Draft 6

Script: Draft 5

Script: Draft 4

Script: Draft 3

Script: Draft 2

Script: Draft 1

Questionnaire Feedback for our Target Audience

We've concluded in having a target audience of ages between 17 to 45. We discovered that people only enjoy watching thriller films, depending on the genre. Unfortunately, we asked an age range of 16-17, which is our classes age range. We could have asked other people with different age ranges  to expand our target audience. People think thriller films should be aimed at adults with a rating of 15. Reflecting on our results, we will aim our film at a target audience of 17 to 45. 

Questionnaire

We created a questionnaire to find out who we are aiming at for a target audience. It would be a huge help from you if you put your ideas in the comments below. 

THANK YOU!!!

Here is our questionnaire!

Institutions

An institution is an organisation or company, public or privately owned that produces and/or distributes media products.The most common type of this media is film and television and many of these products are the big budget films that we all enjoy on a day to day basis. These institutions provide the budgets for big films and often will invest multi-millions in order to make profit from the film on cinema receipts and box office money that comes from people watching the film. These institutions often advertise and market the film in order to make the best profit they can as investing heavily in a film can always be a gamble for the company.

Examples of Instituations:

Paramount

Warner Brothers

New Line Cinema

DreamWorks

Lionsgate

Universal
MGM
20th Century Fox

 

 

Austin Powers (1997)

The film opens with non-diegetic, sinister music reflecting the evil villain that opens the start of the film and makes the audience believe the film is going to be tense. The audience are lead into thinking that the film is going to be a lot darker than it actually is. The music dramatically changes when the protagonist appears, the music becomes a lot lighter and more cheerful. This reflects the attitude of the character and reassures the audience that everything is okay and the villain can be overcome with humor. This also implies the comedic factor that will be prominent throughout the film as well as the action and thriller elements that are also featured. The protagonist or lead character opens his part in the film with dancing and enjoying himself, in contrast to the villain, antagonist, who opens his part by shouting at his workers and actually murdering them.

Apart from these aspects, this film was the inspiration for my initial ideas of a comedy thriller hybrid. Some similar aspects would include the comedic spy and villain who are incompetent but dangerous. Also some various areas where they make mistakes unintentionally which begin chain reactions of comedic errors.

Treatment: Roulette

Our Roulette Treatment

In modern day England, tensions role high between the Russian Mafia and authorities, with the government dying for a way to infiltrate the illegal organization.

A young boy barley 21, has found himself in with the wrong crowd. Engaged in an affair with the wife of a senior member of the Russian Mafia, he has learned a lot about the organization and all is good. 

Until the husband finds out and has his wife killed framing the boy. Now on the run from the cops, who want to use him to reveal all the organizations secrets. Bounty hunters and assassins, after the hefty price on his head.

 The boy struggles to prove his innocence whilst trying to stay alive. With his life ruled by chance, he never knows if he will survive till the next day, always wondering when his number is up.

Blog Review 27/11/2015

GHEM Review 27/11/2015

Well it's been just over a month and we decided to have a quick review, just to see how far along we are. We currently have 36 posts at the time of this review and we can only go up. We were really proud of the amount of posts we have. We would say that the presentation of the blog is quite good, we loved the photos and images as they brightened the blog. We checked the basic guidelines that we had on our content, and we found we had extra content.

However we decided that we needed to go into extra detail on our target audience, thoroughly research it as a group. We need to also start looking into Institutions. What they are, where we can find them and what we would chose to show our film.

Editing Practice (Transitions)

Continuing with my training to become a successful editor before we get round to filming our own thriller, I decided to try adding transitions to my small clips on Corel editor.

I originally found the process of adding a transition difficult as I found it difficult to drag the transitions to where they were needed. Originally, I was trying to drag in a transition before I had two clips next to each other, not realizing that the project had to have two before you could add any effects. Once I had worked this out I added a basic fade transition between the two clips and played it to ensure it was working correctly, and it was so perfectly. As seen below, I have the two clips together with the transition effect included. With this I have learnt how to add these effects, which I’ve realized, will be particularly when editing our own thriller film.

With editing our own film, transitions will be particularly important for us to show a smooth, professional transition between shots, likely helping us to achieve the highest grade possible while also entertaining our audience.

Ellis and Matthew's Past Experiences in Media

We both did GCSE Media Studies and the task we did is similar to our brief for this year. We had to create the opening two minutes of a thriller film, including the opening credits. Everything was done as a team and doing so made us successful.

We used a variety of shots within our film, referring back to the codes and conventions of thriller films. We used a range of extreme close ups, close ups and long shots. An extreme close up is shown on the pan of the persons legs onto the mirror. A close up is shown when the detective is talking on the phone and a long shot is shown from inside the building, the point of view down the sniper scope, looking onto the detective. Here is our film :-) 

We used a limited amount of transitions. We used mainly fade and dissolve due to aiming for it to fit with the brief. If we used wacky transitions, the film would look silly and wouldn't fit with the codes and conventions of a good thriller film. Also, we used a lot of straight cuts and cross cutting to go from one scene to another. We also used shot-reverse-shot to show the conversation between the detective and HQ.

Final Destination 5 (2011)

The film opens with non-diegetic low pitched music, creating a mysterious, creepy atmosphere right from the beginning for the audience. This opening is used in order to give the audience a sense of what is to come for the rest of the film, and immediately hints at its thriller genre.

The opening credits appear with short, loud intensified music that is used to make the audience jump and create an even more mysterious atmosphere. As well as this, a visual technique has been used to make the screen that the audience are watching the film on appear to be smashing like glass. This has been used to not only create tension for the audience but has also added an element of shock and action, two conventions regularly associated with thriller films.

As well as the breaking glass effect, the appearance of some kind of blaze or fire implies an explosion, another effect commonly associated with thriller films and also adds an element of danger to the audience, making them more intrigued as to the actual plot of the film as well as scared of what they might actually find. As seen below, the visual and sound effects have been use in sync with each other in order to create a suspensful atmosphere and making the audience feel almost in danger, while also telling them that the film is a thriller.

What has George gained in Media? (Part 3)

Skills Learnt

I’ve learnt several skills whilst working on the set of Hidden Consequences. The first skill I learnt was always be ready to be called because I was needed to recorder half of the films’ sound because the primary came in drunk after a two hour lunch whilst the camera man had to set up the crane so therefore he was fired and I had be the boom mic operator for the interview scene and the teachers office scene. The second skill that I learnt was to be sensible whilst waiting in the green room otherwise the people running the site on that day will kick the whole team out of the building. And finally I learnt to have patience when working as a team because in our film that we are going to make we going to need to have a high level of patience on filming day because we may have one of our actors not being needed and the rest on set and also not to lose temper when we have to make a cut and redo one of the scenes.

Conclusion.

So what did you think of my film? We had several laughs on set and off set such as we had to do several outtakes in the postman delivery scene because I either didn’t know how to be a postman or not know where my positioning is on the set of that scene. I am currently looking to fund raise for the next film with Physical Folk which will be about another serious topic such as Self Harm. At the end of the day I loved working with the Jigsaw Project and I am very pleased to say that Hidden Consequences, as a film, was very successful and I have been given a contract with a local script writer to produce my own work. 

Analysis of George's Past Experiences (Part 2)

So we had several meetings to start off with meeting the director, Lance Phillips and some of the script writing team to discuss ideas and place characters etc. I was given the role of supporting cast and back up boom mic operator and back up camera man. We only had a day of working of set which was plenty of time for a ten minute film. We started at 10am and finished at 7pm. The first couple of hours of filming I wasn’t needed for acting because I wasn’t in the opening scene or boom mic operator because we were outside and the microphone would pick up too much wind.

Two Shots.

 However I did some of the camera work for example I filmed most of the two shots, as you can see below, we used two shots to show conversation (left) and also to show intimidation (right). 

We also filmed a two shot where the speaker is in the background, in this case the middle, which creates focus on the speaker, as seen below, at the time of 0:49 in the film (left) or at 1:51 where the focus is on the victim’s friend, when the she looks worried about the victim (right).

We can use two shots in our film easily. In Hidden Consequences we used a crane for the two shots the reason for this is because we needed to have the shot steady otherwise we might miss the characters’ faces. However we can use a tripod instead because it creates the same level of stability.

Close Ups.

The close ups needed a steady hand for it because we couldn’t use the tripod because we too close to the actors feet and we couldn’t zoom because the camera was in free movement so therefore the camera man took over and used his steady hand. We can use close ups with a tripod because we can make precautions with the actors.

We can use close ups to show emotion in our film like, I did for Hidden Consequences, for the teacher (top right above) she looks quite serious and angry, because at 5:00 she is! She has found out what the bully has done. Close ups can be used on objects to show that the object shows some form of significance for example the phone (middle) is the bully’s.

Over Shoulder Shots.

The over shoulder shots, used in Hidden Consequences, were used for conversation such as in the bulling incident flashback at 7:10 (left) or used to show an actors’ actions such as in the post man delivery scene at 8:04 (right). Both of these shots were used by a crane however we again create the same level of stability by using a tripod.

We can use over shoulder shots to also show an objects’ actions, such as a building being demolished, as well which can be used in our film if we need to. These shots can be implemented easily into our film because over shoulder shots are very easy to re-create because it doesn’t require that much positioning of the camera.

Long shots.

We also a few long shots of a place related to a school such as a main entrance (as seen below). This can be used for multiple effects such as to pass time, fade to black and to change setting. In Hidden Consequences we used a wide shot of the school front entrance to and faded to black to show that the day has ended and the film is moving forward in time.

We can easily use these types of shots for the same effects and others such as fade in from black, non-continuity cross cut etc. in our own film this will show that we can create a scene with only one shot.

What we can use from this film in our own?

We can defiantly use most if not all of these shots that were used to create tension among our audience, show character facial expression, reveal a key part to the plot etc. We can also use school sites such as this school used, Victory Academy, if we can’t travel as far as we intend to since this school is fairly close to ours. We can also use the cuts used to create a sense of time movement I.e. Midday to Midnight, Morning to Afternoon etc. The last thing we can use is the use of filters used in this film for example the flashback scene has a blue filter imported to it to create a sense that the characters don’t remember everything that happened I.e. what they were wearing, what hallway they were in etc. 

George's Past Experience with Media (Part 1)

I have been an actor for many short films in the past. These films are usually talking about serious subjects such as: Disability hat crime, under age sex, being homeless etc. These films usually last for 5-15 minutes. These films are provided through a series of charity movements such as Medway Youth Trust and Physical Folk. However the film that, I thought, I was the most successful in was my latest, Hidden Consequences, which only came out to the public a few days ago on 18.11.2015.

The aim of Hidden Consequences is to raise awareness to young people about disability hate crime this film is to be tour around the schools of Strood, Chatham, Gillingham, Rainham and Rochester. The reason why this film was created was because over the past decade, the Kent police force have seen an increase in the amount of young people committing hate crime in all shapes and forms. So therefore several charity organisations, Kent police and Medway Hospital came together to form the jigsaw project and starting recruiting young to write a script for the new film, act in the film and edit the film. Sadly I wasn’t asked to join the script writing team or the editing team but I was asked to act and help out on set with recording sound, camera work etc. We also had a premiere at the Britannia Theatre, In Dickens World Chatham. 

The Master of Suspense

Alfred Hitchcock was known as 'The Master of Suspense' due to the most well known director for famous thrillers like Psycho and Vertigo. He was born in August 1899 and died in April 1980 aged 80. He mainly focused on psychological and suspenseful thrillers due to him wanting to make the audience feel on edge and creating something different. His most famous thriller, Psycho, was seen to be terrifying in the 1960's due to it making the audience infer the happens of what is going on. Hitchcock also broke some rules in Psycho, for example, film makers couldn't show looking down the toilet or someone on a bed unless a foot was on the floor. Whereas, today, we wouldn't really take any notice. In my opinion, Hitchcock is our inspiration for creating our opening two minutes of a potential psychological thriller film.

Shots and Camera Angles

 

 

Longs shots are used to show where the scene is set or to show, if the character is on his/her own, how lonely the character is.

 

Medium shots are typically used for conversation purposes due to being what we would see if we were actually having a conversation with someone.

 

Close ups are used to show the characters expressions on certain features on a subject like a drip of sweat or a trigger on a gun. 

Music in Thriller Films

The overwhelming majority of films in the modern age contain soundtracks, pieces of music which try to tell their own side of the story that you are also visually experiencing.
 
This is especially true within thriller films, the genre we are studying, which will, like most genres, create unique sound tracks to reflect the genre that the film is intended to convey. Soundtracks usually include different tracks of music, for example in SAW the track “Hello Zepp” was made famous by the film and is generally a well-known piece of music because of it. The music was praised due to the chilling atmosphere that it created and this is no different for any other thriller film. The music will usually contain violins and create a ‘screechy’ sort of sound and normally is accompanied by a base line that comes in short, sharp bursts.

Music is used in thriller films because of the overwhelming atmosphere that is created for the audience and heightens the experience for them as they are watching. While they view the film in a visual sense they, subconsciously, view while hearing as well. While making our own film, we will make sure we use the example presented by the films we are studying and attempt to emulate the successful soundtracks we have already made note of.

More Editing Practise

Well, I’m sticking to my promise! In my earlier post I described how I would be keeping the blog updated with my progress with editing. Happily, I can report that some progress has been made. Originally I only had some basic opening titles with no sound and no video, but now I have advanced my skills and in my previous study lesson and media theory class I was able to work out how to add some sounds and small video clips onto a black editing canvas.

I put this into practice and was able to add some music to my amateur opening titles, which I hope will serve as a template for our group at a later date, which added some significant improvement to them. I felt as if an effect had been added which overall improved the viewer’s experience, something I had previously underestimated. Music, as well as sound effects, actually appear to add an element of professionalism to the clip. I have not only learnt this editing skill, but I have also, in the process, learnt how important music and sound is and how quickly it can improve a short edited video.

When we are editing our completed film, I realise now how important it will be to know how to add sound and other audio clips. This can vastly improve any video, especially a completed film and could potentially improve our groups’ grade as a result. If I put this skill into practice regularly during the editing and post production it will make the film more atmospherically meaningful to the audience as they can pick up what the sounds, as part of mise-en-scene, are trying to convey within our film.

Ellis' Initial Idea

Murder at The Theater

In an abandoned theater a young woman finds a deformed body, that has been mutilated and set up like a priceless ornament. Trapped with a dead body and a murderer on the loose in the building. She endeavors to escape the building whilst on the run for her life. Aided by a freed slave she decided to bring the fight to the murderer. In their fight the police bust in and capture the killer.

Research Timetable

To organize our research posts, Ellis put together a timetable on when posts are due to be sent to him. The deadline for the weekly posts is on the Friday of that week during lesson.

Matthew's days for posts are Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Harvey's days for posts are Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday.

George's days for posts are Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.

Ellis' days for posts are Monday, Tuesday and Sundays. 

Ellis uploads ALL the posts of the week on Friday.

 

Signs (2002)

The sound in the opening scene is purely diegetic, creating tension among the audience as they are aware that anything could happen at any time.

The only sound of music is made right at the end of the scene, where sci-fi style music is heard, setting up the theme of the movie.

There is a girl screaming to create tension. We could implement this by using our editing software since none of our actors are female. This is a good diegetic sound because it shows that either the girl that has just screamed is in trouble or has died.

The opening scene ends with a bird’s eye view, aerial shot of the fields showing the crop circles. This creates a shock to the audience at the revelation of the discovery that heavily implies the sci-fi theme of the film.

The music as the aerial shot pans out is low pitched and creates a sense of danger and tension for the audience and makes them believe that something is very wrong within the plot.

Fade to black after aerial shot to finish off the introduction to Signs. This is used to make casual non-continuity cut to the next scene this shows the audience that the film is slowly moving forward in time.

Matt's Initial Idea

Roulette

A young boy Barley 21, has found himself in with the wrong crowd. Engaged in an affair with the wife of a senior member of the Russian Mafia, all is good. Until the husband finds out and has his wife killed framing the boy. Now on the run from the cops, bounty hunters and assassins, the boy struggles to prove his innocence whilst trying to stay alive. With his life ruled by chance, he never knows if he will survive till the next day, always wondering when his number is up.

Editing Practise

During the process of this Media course we have realized that it will be a necessary and vital skill throughout the creation and filming of our film. Therefore during my study periods during the week I have taken it upon myself to practice using the editing software on the computers in order to attempt to get a head start. As a student who has not attempted any media of any kind before, I feel as if it is important that I grasp a basic concept and can attempt a decent standard of editing beforehand so that I can keep up with the more experienced members of the group and class.

Editing will be important in this class because our film will likely require several hours of editing before we have a finished product. This means myself and the rest of the group must share the work fairly and so I should be attempting to advance my skills in editing as much as I can before it is actually needed. I will be continuing to practice, using the software we actually will be using, weekly starting from this week.

I will be keeping the blog up to date with any progress that I make on my skills in editing and media in general.

George's Initial Idea

My initial idea for our team’s film, is to create a scene where we have a man being tortured; interrogated etc, by another man. The man who is being interrogated owes the other man money. The room that we would use is dark with a single light being on the victim. It will be made apparent that the interrogation room will be Guantanamo Bay. My idea is that throughout the interrogation, there will be flashbacks to what happened, and the audience will wonder whether or not we will found out what's so important about the money and where it is. 

Harvey's Initial Ideas

My initial ideas include the creation of a comedy thriller hybrid film. My inspirations for these ideas were gathered from the Austin Powers franchise, a popular comedy series of films revolving around a spy and which included both aspects of thriller and satire humor. The film can mainly be based on action and creating tension for the audience with small jokes put in as well. I feel as if this idea is unique and unlikely to be attempted by any other group, which may lead to potentially higher marks. However, the idea will be difficult to execute, unless we work to the best of our ability.

Some humorous ideas I have are, for example, having a stereotypical evil antagonist turning to face the protagonist while stroking the air, then it being implied that a cat is not within the films budget. Subtle jokes can release some of the tension the audience has built up through the likely tense opening scenes. We can still include tense music and create a suspenseful atmosphere that will dominate the first few scenes and only make replace with humor as the film becomes darker. The target audience for this is likely to be the people in media classes like our own and other teenagers who enjoy both comedy and thriller.

Group Meeting 2: 10th November

Initial Ideas and Target Audience

After starting the meeting we began to divulge our initial ideas. Matt come up with the idea of a film called 'Roulette', where a young man is framed for the murder of a Russian mafias King Ping's wife. He struggles to prove his innocence whilst being cased down by cops, bounty hunters and assassins. 

We next heard from George, who's idea was called 'The Interrogation Room'. This is based around a prisoner being interrogated in Guantanamo Bay, where the prisoner is subjugated to torture. Will we know if he is innocent or guilty.

Ellis came up with the idea of 'Murder at the Theater', where a young woman finds a deformed body in the middle of an abandoned theater. Trapped with a murderer after her, will she manage to escape and alert the authorities? Or will she die?

Finally, Harvey admitted he had struggled to come up with an original idea but planned some jokes for a hybrid thriller, comedic thriller, which was our previous idea. 

As a group we discussed our target audience. After a bit of debating, we agreed that our preferred target audience were teenagers and young adults (15+).  

Cameo Roles

A cameo role is a character who has a significant part in the film but has been given a small role within the film itself. An example of this is Alfred Hitchcock, the director of the film, being a character who hasn't much importance in the scene.

Limitless (2011)

Narration by the protagonist explains the basis of the plot and what is happening to build suspense in the audience as well as jumping straight into the films plot.

Every piece of the opening credits is introduced with a boom or a knocking sound.

Whilst the booming sound is happening we can also hear people talking this makes the audience ask the question ‘what is going on?’ which in turn creates tension.

Cut to metal door trying to be knocked down to show that a possible antagonist is trying to reach the protagonist.

Whilst this is going we hear people saying “get this door open” whilst the door is still banging.

The security cameras in the apartment block are all broken or have lost signal. This adds to the tension to the audience and creates an atmosphere within the setting that suggests something is very wrong.

The shot showing the dead bodies lying on the floor shows the audience that something sinister has taken place, creating tension and a sense of dread among those watching.

Shot of apartment zooms out and then a CGI shot of an elevator like camera view going straight up. This creates tension by having the audience wonder what is happening inside the building. 

Group Meeting 1: 18th October

What Will We Do? 

We had the meeting other our Facebook group chat. Ellis had suggested we do a hybrid Thriller Comedy. This intrigued the group and Harvey agreed saying that we could pull it off if we worked hard enough and that if it is unique enough we could get A grades. Ellis responded saying we could make it based around crime if we could find similar films to research.

 

We find that using Facebook Messenger is extremely helpful, and makes communication outside of school much easier.

Music & Sounds

Jaws

Stephen Spielberg, the director of Jaws, uses a simple use of two continuous notes. The music has been adjusted to speed up to create an excited, anxious, scared feeling. All these feelings create tension within the audience. This makes the audience feel on edge even though we know what is likely to happen. When we hear the music we instantly associate it with Jaws. The music was the main feature of the film due to the association of the two basic continuous notes with a series of films.

Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock, the director of Psycho, uses a sharp tone to create a feeling which either makes the audience jump with excitement and fear or to create a feeling which shoots straight through your body. Before the sharp tone, there is silence until the antagonist strikes and then the sharp music attacks. This can help the audience infer that there is danger or violence. It makes the hair on your back stand up and when the film first come out in 1960, people literally were terrified of this film because it played with you psychologically.