Final Edit of Captive.

Evaluation.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Our media product uses several of the classic conventions of an opening sequence for of a thriller. The main ones are: Opening credits, Establishing the antagonist, using female victims, establishing the narrative and finally it's able to draw in the audience's interest. The opening credits last throughout the first half of the sequence, usually they might last slightly longer in a thriller but we wanted this to take up less time so the audience can get straight in to the film. The female being the victim is a vital choice we made as it is absolutely typical of thrillers, it is extremely rare for the victim to be male so we wanted to keep this aspect. However, we have also challenged the typical conventions of thriller openings. The first part of the sequence is filmed in broad daylight which is not common in thrillers. Also instead of showing everyday life for the majority of the sequence we actually instantly turn the characters lives upside down, throwing the audience straight into the action of the film. Finally we have a small amount of dialogue in the sequence which is actually not so common in the opening sequences of thrillers. How does your media product represent particular social groups? Our media product represents young females as vulnerable and slightly naive. I would say this because they are walking alone in a forest and a male on his own manages to kidnap them. This represents them as weak and helpless and we wanted them to be represented in this way so that they were portrayed as typical damsels in distress. The villain of the thriller is represented as a twisted and negative person. As well as this he seems powerful and in control of the situation. The representations would be typical in a thriller movie for example, in the film Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) The female victim Marion is murdered by an unknown male. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? A low budget independent media institute would be most likely to distribute our media product. This would be a company such pathe as it distributes British films. An example of a film recently distributed by them would be 127 hours (2010, Danny Boyle). This movie is of the same genre as our film captive therefore it is a possibility. Another smaller production company that would be more likely to distribute our film is Momentum Pictures, they have also distributed films of a similar genre e.g. Limitless (2011, Neil Burger) and Control (2007, Anton Corbijin) An alternative to a distribution company would be to advertise our thriller on the Internet and make it into an Internet film as it is aimed at teens between 16 and 19 and the Internet is widely used by this age range. I could use 'Youtube' for sneak peeks and trailers too.

Who would be the audience for your media product? The audience for my media product would preferably be 16-19 year old of a working/middle class. The main reason for this would be the fact that the characters in the thriller are 17 years old making it easier for our audience age range to relate to the characters. This website National Statistics Online, it presents me with a graph showing what age range visits the cinema most. It says that the age range which visit the cinema over once a month the most is 15-24 therefore this audience is more likely to watch our film if it were to be diostributed to the cinemas in Britain. I would not think that our film would be appropriate for people under the age of 15-16 because some of the ideas may be disturbing for them such as the kidnap/abduction and the idea of a stalker.

What did you do to attract/address your audience?

There are many aspects of our opening sequence that are deigned to attract the attention of the target audience. Such as the mise en scene, there are lots of quick cuts of things such as: close-ups, running from the front and behind, feet/hands close-up and throughout all of this the situation is becoming obvious to the audience. The music also attracts the audience as well as interacts by setting the tone of the of the film. It begins quiet and calming before building up with more sounds and volume causing a bigger atmosphere. This draws the audiences attention because it insinuates that something is about to happen and they want to be enlightened and find out whats happened, how its happened and why.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

During the construction of our opening sequence i learnt how to fluently use 'Adobe Premiere Pro CS4' which is an editing programme. The skills I picked up from this consist of importing and exporting film, changing thew order and size of film, adding in effects such as cross dissolves and sound effects, I also learnt to import music and how to create titles using this programme. I have also learnt how to embed videos which enables me to present them in my blog. Finally i learnt how to use all of the camera equipment such as the tripod, the camera itself and the way to import the film on to the computer. After learning all these skills I feel that in my second year of A level Media I am well prepared if I needed to use this programme again.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Since we did our preliminary task i have learnt a lot of useful things. Our preliminary task felt very rushed and this meant that it wasn't finished to the best of our ability. Also we had some problems with members of the group. One person who just wasn't committed and this caused problems for everybody else. We also did not use the different types of shots well whilst filming which would have lowered our grade if it had been the final thriller piece. Luckily as it was just the prelim task this enabled us to sort out all of these problems for our actual thriller. We were much more organised with our timing and scheduled our filming and editing. Even though we didn't totally stick to our plan it still worked well and we were not rushed. Secondly, I made sure that the people i worked with were dedicated and would not leave all the work to one person or never turn up. This was a huge help as we did some really good teamwork. Finally, we used a number of camera tecniques to get good shots such as, close-ups, panning and two shots.

Sound source & Plan for re-filming.

Source for our music: this here http://soundbible.com/tags-spooky.html is the website that we used to find the 3 songs featured in our sequence.

Plan for re-filming: Today I wrote up a plan of everything we need to re-do before we can start to edit again. I also completed the credits so that all we have to do is put them in the right place once all the film is in place. We will need to bring in the same clothes that we wore when we first recorded our draft on Monday so that we can go ahead with the recording and get it done as quickly as possible so we are not behind and have plenty of time to do our editing.

Feedback on our Draft Edit.

We have been given some feedback from a small audience on our draft edit, this is to help us improve our draft in the ways we already wanted to and now even more in the eyes of the audience. Firstly our audience commented on the credits, they thought that the placing of the credits was strange as Tom's looked out of place in comparison to mine and Rosie's. They also said that they thought it would be a good idea to add in some production company names.
Secondly they commented on the fact that their is no music in the edit, however we did pick out 3 different tracks that are supposed to run throughout our thriller but when we uploaded it to youtube their was some sort of problem and the tracks do not play. This is something we will definitely have sorted for our final draft. Another issue raised which we had already noticed ourselves is that part way through the video Tom's thumb is in front if the camera slightly and so we are going to have to re-record this part as well as several other things. One of the other things we are going to have to record again is when there are close-ups on mine and Rosie's faces as we run through the forest. This is because we are running and then when it cuts to a close-up we are standing still. Therefore we will have to change it so that we are also running on the close-ups. We will start our improvements next lesson.

Draft Edit.

Editing.

During the editing period I edited the last half of the sequence. In the last lesson for editing I uploaded all of the 'hostage' footage. I then deleted the stuff we didn't need and began to order the scenes. once I had got the right ones in the right order I then shortened two of the scenes and alternated between them so we saw the garage door opening as well as Rosie panicking as she helplessly watched it open and this switching between scenes lasted for a few seconds.

I did this as it builds up the anxiety of the audience and is a thriller convention. I then added in the title 'Captive' and put in some transitions between the title and the footage it was followed by.

Once I had done this I had to choose the tracks we were going to put in as we misplaced the sheet with the pre-decided soundtrack on it. Tom helped me to choose the three tracks we used and I then edited the size of them and placed them with the appropriate scenes. Finally I added in the 'Starring' titles over the first two scenes which show the forest. It took a lot of shuffling all of the scenes and resizing but I finished it and I am now going to upload it ot youtube so I can post it onto my blog.

Filming.

We spent around 2 hours recording our footage. We were going to film in Bramcote woods followed by Tom's Gran's house, however, we made the decision to record using closer surroundings such as the woods just outside the school grounds. So we recorded all of the clips that were set out in the woods. We did about 5 of each shots so we could look at which was best to use once it had been loaded on to the computer. We then used Rosie's garage for the last part. We did a number of shots here where the actors had been captured and held hostage, the setting fit really well with this idea. During in filming we used close-up shots, panning and two-shots. We were going to try and record in a nearby abandoned building however we struggled to get inside of this building and therefore used Rosie's garage. This was a set back for us and we were running a few days behind on filming. We soon caught up after using about half an hour editing time to finish off all of the recording.

Filming Schedule.

Date: 4th March 2011
Location: Bramcote
Props needed: String, Tape, 3 Chairs.
Actors needed: Myself, Rosie, Tom.
Order of shots: We are going to film all of the outside shots first in an order which is easiest for us. We will then do the inside shots also in an order best suited to us.

Risk Assessment.

Actors.

There are only four charcacters in our sequence. They are the villain, and three victims. We see the two female victims before they are captured and when we see them tied up in the room they are with an additional male victim who is already tied up when they arrive. The villain is a male but is barely seen throughout the sequence. Victim 1 - Rosie plays one of the two female victims. She is called Rosie in the film and she is best friends victim number 2, Daisy. They get captured whilst walking through the forest one day. Victim 2 - This is Daisy the second vistim who is played by me. She is the bestfriend of Rosie and also gets abducted. The villain - This is Tom and he plays the villain, he abducts Rosie and Daisy and holds them captive in an old abandoned room.

Props.

We aren't going to use very many props in our thriller as we would like to keep it more simple and we don't need many anyway. The only things we may use are chairs, rope and if possible a portable tape recorder similar to the one above. We will need these things all in the same scene when the victims are being held hostage in a mysterious abandoned room.

Costume.

The costumes of the victims would be something usual like the clothes to the left. This would be to show that they are just normal people in their everyday life. We don't want them to stand out in anyway yet we don't want them to look strange.

This would be the type of outfit for the villain. Something very dark so that he would be hard to see and if he was to be seen people may fear him at night.

Location.

For our location we strongly agreed on an outside location preferably in the woods. We want it here because it's the type of setting that can be spooky and isolated. The woods that we have chosen to use is Bramcote woods as it is an accessible location and has space for us to move around and record. It will also look great when it is a bit darker and with the contrast changed after editing. We are also going to be using another location, this location is a room in Tom's Grans house and we are using it because it is a bare room with nothing other than a lightbulb in the ceiling. We think this will pass off as an abandoned building and suit our plot well.

Thriller Research.

There is a very fine line between a thriller and a horror movie. However there is more to a thriller movie as it is more in depth. There is always a lot of suspense to keep the audience on the edge of their seat.
More often than not the victim in a thriller would be a female and the villain would be a male as this is the stereotype.
A thriller usually starts off portraying a realistic day with normal things happening before something bad and mysterious takes place. The settings can be anywhere from a house to a field.
Some newer thriller films would be 'Inception', '127 hours' and 'I am number four'.

Storyboarding.

Today my group and I completed our storyboard. We decided on our final idea and created a detailed storyboard. To make it easier when it comes to filming, next to each picture on the storyboard we wrote a brief description of camera angle, what was happening in the scene and around about how long the scene goes on for. At this stage we are all happy with our storyboard and are going to try to keep it as similar to the storyboard as possible.

Brainstorming.

Here is an image of our brainstorm...

We brainstormed about all of the different aspects of what needed to be inluded in our thriller. We listed some sub-genres such as action, mystery and crime. We thought that we would like to use the sub genre of mystery as it is typical of a thriller. We included some different locations we could possibly use and I believe we are going to use the woods and also an abandoned type builing as we have access to these areas for filming and they will fit well with our ideas on plot. The most common ideas for the plot that we came up with were chase, torture and death. For our plot we would like to have a chase leading to being held hostage. We also thought as a typical convention of thriller it would be best to have female victims and a male villain. To make the sequence more dark and mysterious we would like to have little lighting and we may change the contrast during editing to make the film look strange. The costumes of the victims should just be everyday clothing and for the villain mainly black to represent that he is bad. For props we may need to include a weapon or an audio tape as these are very common in mysterious thrillers.

Questionairre.

1. Male or Female? Male-6 Female-4 2.How old are you? 10-20-6 21-30-3 31-40-1 3.Do you enjoy watching thriller films? Yes-4 Sometimes-4 No-2 4.What is your favourite sub genre? Action thriller-3 Mystery thriller-3 Psychological thriller-1 Crime thriller-2 Medical thriller-0 Sci-fi thriller-1 5.Where do you like opening scenes to be shot? Woods-3 Abandoned building-4 Streets-1 River/Lake-0 Unrecognisable places-2 6.What would an opening scene consist of? Crime-1 Murder-3 Mystery-2 Abduction-3 Other-1 7.What type of shots do you like to see? Short and fast-pace shots-4 Long and slow pace shots-2 Action filled beginning-1 Calm beginning-0 Combination-2 Other-1 In our questionairre we asked both male and female all of the questions to see if the answers varied depending on gender. When we asked what their favourite sub genre was, the majority said either action or mystery thriller, this means they like to have a lot going on in the film and like to be stringed along in a mystery and we will take these points into account when creating our opening sequence. We were also interested in which sort of setting was most popular so we gave some options and abandoned buildings and woods came out on top. We would like to try and incorporate both of these settings into out sequence. From looking at the results overall I think that we need to ensure our opening scene is in a mysterious location and there is plenty of things going on keeping the audience interest and fulfilling their idea of a thriller.

The Orphan opening sequence.

The opening sequence for The Orphan is very simple yet very effective. The production and distribution company logo's have been personalized to fit in with the film. By this I mean that each shot of the different companies flickers between ultraviolet and normal, there is splatters and strange drawings revealed in the ultraviolet light, this is to incorporate things that happen later on in the film and to play on the minds of the audience so they will have ideas flowing through their minds about what could happen later on.

The sound throughout the sequence is disturbing and strange, it is incidental and the sound changes as the pictures cut between ultraviolet and normal. When the picture turns ultraviolet the sound becomes slightly louder and is more high pitched and scratchy. This is to make the audience feel anxious and build the atmosphere. The transitions between the shots are fades to black and this could make the audience feel nervous of what is about to appear on the screen.Finally the title appears with a black background as it is the whole way through, it is a plain white font and it flickers with the ultraviolet light and we see a hand print and various other splatters. It is shocking and frightening for the audience to watch and it sets them up perfectly for the rest of the movie.

Research and storyboard.

Monday 7th February Today I did some research into an opening sequence, I did my research on the film 'Seven' (David Fincher 1995) I presented the research in a blog. This is to inspire me for my opening sequence. When I finished this me and my group started to come up with some ideas about what we wanted our thriller to be about. We all had ideas along the same line, something going on in a forest setting and we ellaborated from there.

Codes and conventions and opening sequences.

4th February 2011

Today in this lesson, we looked at a number of classic thriller opening sequences. Some of these were 'Vertigo', 'North by Northwest', 'Psycho', 'The Shining' ans 'Seven', these were shown to us so we could see the conventions of thriller and how some well known directors used them like Alfred Hitchcock. We then had some time to discuss what we thought were good typical thriller conventions.

Typical codes and conventions:

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  A narrative pattern that establishes enigmas in which the viewer expects to be resolved.


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  Quick pace with camera movements and sound.


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  Extraordinary events happening in an ordinary situation.


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  Titles often reflect pro/antagonist's psychological state.

Also we watched a opening sequence of our choice and annotated the location, props, mise en scene, plot, shots/editing and conventions used. Me and Rosie chose to annotate the opening sequence of the recent film 'The Black Swan'. Each of us in the class then travelled round the room reading eachothers annotations of thriller openings and then added to our own.

This lesson I feel that I learnt a lot more about what makes a movie into a thriller, some great thriller directors and also have some ideas of my own that I may like to use for my own thriller. Next lesson I shall choose a group in which I will create my thriller and begin to plan.

Alfred Hitchcock's opening title for 'Vertigo' (1958)

'Seven' opening credits

Seven Opening Sequence.

The first word that I would use to describe this opening sequence would be distorted. There is fast pace editing and cuts throughout the sequence and that create a sense of anxiousness and mysteriousness. So it sets the right tone for the rest of the movie. All of the credits, which appear between other more unpleasant shot, have been made small and the words are in different fonts and sizes. They are put on a black background which looks effective when watching it. I think they have been shot like this to show that something is not right and the black background gives a darker, negative feeling.

In the many shots that we see between the credits there is a lot of worn down machinery. Most of the things we see such as a close-up of somebody peeling off their finger skin and also a desk with a book and various other items on it tend to look very dirty and grotty. Amongst these very extreme images we also see a teabag being put into water and just a normal cup of tea being made. This makes me think that all of these messed up things that we see are part of somebody's normal everyday life.

The sequence most definitely creates tension. The audience can clearly see that something of great depth is happening but they have no idea what, it makes you want to know who, what, where and when and it very successfully does this through the opening sequence.

The editing has been thought into very much. There is a lot of overshadowing for example there are pages of a book and with the screen jolting around there is a shadow of something over the page. Another common thing used in the sequence is super imposing, a lot of shots overlap making it seem more sadistic the contrast is also lower whilst this transition takes place. The screen jumps around all the time so it's never just a still shot of something and I find this creepy and strange. The very first shot of the sequence is a huge old looking book. The book is the main feature of the sequence and the background is blurred with some hands turning the pages.

The fact that we see a person scraping off their fingerprints does not only seem brutal to us but it also perceives the idea that a crime has committed and therefore somebody really doesn't want there to be any finger print proof. There is also shots with very strange images such as some very aged and deformed hands I find this very random but fitting to the sequence. We also see somebody putting lines through random words on a sheet of paper full of writing and over the face of somebody in a picture. All of these images put together create a worrying image in the audience's head and they would start to imagine a very insane and mental character to behind all of this stuff.

Throughout the sequence the lighting is very dingy and dark. There are some images which appear very clear and easy to see however there are also a lot of blurred images that are darker and I think that this may be because the darker blurry things are what they don't want you to see and be sure of but the clearer things are important for you as the audience to be aware of.

Prelim Final Piece.

Friday 28th January 2011 Here is our final sequence... Overall our final piece turned out well, We got it completed and it met the basic requirements. It could have been better if we had a more functional group and spent our time more effectively on it. When we make our actual thriller opening I will slightly change the peopole I worked with and ensure that I manage my time properly.

Prelim Editing.

24th & 28th January 2011

At the beginning of this lesson we had a small problem in which we couldn't find our tape containing all of our filming. Within about ten minutes we managed to find it. We then had to upload all of our film on to Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. Once we had our film uploaded we began to edit. Me, Rosie and Tom found it really easy to use this programme so we didn't encounter many difficulties. We started by deleting all the scenes we did not need and were left with the important shots. We put all the shots into an order and then decided on the transitions we would use. For the majority of the sequence we tended to use straight cuts, we used these because the shots were of 'Dougie' from different points of view. We used one transition which was called cubespin (picture to left), it turned the screen. The first shot was somebody rejecting a call and after the screen turns it shows the other end of the phone call so we can see who is making it.

We added in some Titles and credits using dissolving transitions to begin and finish off the sequence. We created these scenes like the one to the one to the left using some tools on the editing programme.

To add in transitions such as the cube spin we simply dragged the desired one from a side bar in between the two scenes in the sequence that we wanted.

Prelim Filming.

Friday 21st January 2011 In today's lesson the first thing our group did was find a girl and a boy who would star in our prelim task. After we found the people we gave them a quick brief of what they needed to do for us. We followed our storyboard step by step to make sure every shot was as we wanted it. It took us a while to get used to the cameras. We took a few shots of each scene so we could choose the best one to use during editing. As a group we worked quite well and compromised about camera shots and the script. There were no big issues with our filming. We easily completed all of our filming in this two hour period and had a small discussion on editing at the end of the lesson. We were ready to edit in the next lesson.

Prelim Storyboard & Script.

17th January 2011 In our second lesson one of our group members was not here. However, the 3 of us that were there began to storyboard our sequence. Each of us had great ideas of what we could do. One idea was to have a 'rom-com' genre instead of just romance so we could add elements of humour. Another idea was for the main male character to be the hero saving his love who was being held hostage. However, we decided to use the idea of a couple who had fallen out and the man tries to get his girlfriend back, although he does not succeed in this. After we agreed on our idea as a group we wrote out the script and finalised it ready for the filming in the next lesson. After this lesson we were fully prepared to begin filming and that was the next step to be taken.

Prelim Introduction & Planning.

14th January 2011

This lesson we were introduced to the Preliminary task, we had instructions to follow and were told about camera safety. The first tasks we were faced with were: Who to work with, How many people to work with and also the task of planning.

I am in a group of four including: Rosie, Tom and Ellie. After being debriefed about the preliminary task and deciding on our groups, we started to plan our short sequence. Firstly we decided on the genre of romance. For the remainder of the lesson we brainstormed idea's.

For the first lesson I think the group worked well as a team and everybody had an equal contribution to the planning. Next lesson we will make some finishing touches to the plan and then go on to film the sequence.