Eye into Roulette Wheel

We got inspiration for our cross cut from George's eye to the roulette wheel from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Hitchcock zooms into the blood flowing down the drain and then cross cutting into Marion's lifeless eye. I think this is a good technique to use because it shows that we have taken inspiration and using techniques to show our skills.

Other People's Blogs

To get an idea as to what other people on blogger post for their blogs, I researched other blogs by going onto our own blog and clicking the “Next Blog” tab at the top of the page, which sent me to another person’s random blog page.

The randomness of this process was positive because it allowed me to research several different types of blogs rather than purely blogs in the media genre. The first thing I noticed is that other blogs contained more YouTube video links which we could use more of, for failed takes for example.

The next aspect of the other blogs I noticed was that most of them contained background images or graphics, which I thought added a professional touch to the blogs and made them, look better, generally, than blogs that didn’t contain any. Bolder and more vibrant colour schemes also made the blogs more eye catching and intriguing for a audience. I think we should use some brighter colours in our blog in order to make people notice it more.

Copyright

Copyright is the exclusive legal right, given to a creator, to copy, distribute, publish, perform or record material of an artistic, literary or musical nature. Copyright is often used by content creators to give them and only them the right to use it, meaning only they can receive credit for it.

Copyrighting is something our group had to be aware of during our production process as we had to ensure we didn’t incur any legal situations with content creators online. Specifically, we used images of movie titles, cover etc. from the internet and therefor had to be extremely careful not to use any material which had legal protection.

To do this we checked the sources of all our images’ sources to ensure the creator had no copyright over the image and in turn, no obligation to request permission to use them on our blog and avoid any legality issues. If we had faced this problem, however, we would have researched and found the source of the image and contacted them about using their image for our blog post. Same would've been applied to any music we wanted to use.

Film Title Sequence: Timeline

Distributor 

Production Company/Producer's Name

(Responsible for Making the Film)

 

 

A Film by (Director's Name)

Staring...(Optional), Followed by Other Actors 

Other Actors

Casting by

Music, Composer, or Original Score

Production Designer

Followed by Makeup, Costume or Visual Effects

Title Sequence

To start off I researched popular T.V shows and popular Video games opening sequences.

The Last of Us developed by Naughty Dog Productions. (Video game).

It starts off with a black screen showing names of people involved in bold white text it also show molecular cells of blood, since this game genre is thriller, the way the sequence tells us the roles is telling us the voice actors names first then the behind the scenes crew (i.e. programming) the tells us the managers of the game at the very end. 

Grimm by the NBC. (T.V show)

Title appears before the behind the scenes crews names are shown similar to The Last of Us but the show the actors names in the first scene of each episode in order of appearance. The opening scene also shows previous action scenes from previous scenes.

 

Now I’m moving on to AS media products.

‘Never Again’ by Team 7 Productions

The opening sequence is the first scene. It introduced everyone that was a part of the film in first 30 seconds. The crew use establishing shots with a slightly tinted dark filter to create trepidation. Then we have the footage cutting to and from black screen to a boy running in time with the music. Has quite fast passed action music.

The following by Flora day

Has establishing shots and again introduces everyone that was involved with the film in the first 30 seconds. Has quite slow techno music. Uses red text to relate the film to blood and also suggests that the film is a thriller.

Friend Request by Skyline Productions

Has establishing shots of first scene and introduces people that were involved in the film in the first 30 seconds. The music has a slow piano solo playing to make it feel eerie. Has boom sounds when introducing parts of the antagonist. Uses a dark filter so we can barely see the antagonist to create the scare factor.

Suggestions for our film.

Use a dark filter to create our scare factor. As regards to the text I would suggest if we a dark background use white and for a light background use black text, we could also use red text for any type of background and it also represents blood. As regards to soundtrack we need something with a high tempo because the main character is almost always running. We should use establishing shots as well.

Memento, Ellis' Homework

• At the start of the opening credits it is silent then music slowly fades in creating suspense.
• Slow, low pitched, long notes played by an organ. Then violin slowly comes in to create more tension.
• Extreme close up of a hand and a picture of  a murder scene.
• Writing is blue to make the words stand out.
• Must be going back in time because the picture is fading away.
• The crime scene is going in reverse.
• Silence and then a scream is heard.
• The audience wants to learn more and to find out who killed this man and why.
• The music is the highlight of creating suspense.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.