The main (key) conventions of thriller are: suspense, tension, plot twists, red herrings, anticipation and enigmas. In thrillers there are normally common characters found and these can be: the protagonist who is normally the person placed in dangerous situations, the antagonists who are normally criminals of some sort, innocent victims who normally lose their lives and police officers who normally try and solve the crime. However some characters depend on the subgenre of the film. For example in an espionage or a crime thriller you would normally see detectives solving mysteries or on a mission to solve crimes such as in James Bond movies or Agatha Christie’s Poirot.
Furthermore there are common tense scores in the backgrounds that build up suspense, tension, drama and anticipation. The editing techniques that are used in thriller films are zooms, cross cutting and montages (of close ups) which help to build excitement. This is how we used a Zoom and a montage of close ups.
The main subgenres are mystery thrillers, erotic thrillers, psychological thrillers and supernatural thrillers. The common locations that are used are places that people are used to seeing because these can surprise the audiences as extraordinary events can happen in ordinary locations. Lighting is also important as this can help to create the mood for the audiences. For a thriller film the lighting would be quite low especially for the important sequences as it makes it look more suspenseful and to create a dramatic, tense atmosphere.
The main conventions of opening sequences are: enigmas which are in most opening sequences, this is because it creates anticipation for the audiences and makes the audiences think what is going to happen in the future of the film therefore engaging the audience, very little dialogue as it has a lot of impact, this is an important convention because in Alfred Hitchcock‘s films there was very little dialogue and only when it was important; the reason for this is because it keeps the audiences attention on the film and makes them think for themselves and keeping their minds going. Titles such as the productions, main cast and crew and the title of the film are also shown in the opening sequence and one of the most important things is to show the conventions of the genre as this meets the audience expectations. Some existing texts that provide examples are From London to Brighton, 28 Days Later, Psycho and From Russia with Love which are the relevant opening sequences we analyzed for our research, the media texts mostly had the conventions mentioned before.
In our media product which was a two minute opening sequence for a thriller film (we called it 'The Phoemix Affair', we used forms and conventions of real media products. In the opening sequence we used a montage of close-ups. In thriller sequences there are many close-ups used to create suspense and build tension which is what we tried to do at the beginning of the sequence when we have many close-ups of props used in the first scene. We developed the idea of close ups by keeping them after each other using flash transitions and synchronised sounds as well, these were heavily influenced by the opening sequence to Saw.
*Saw opening sequence*
We did this to keep the audience engaged from the beginning and make the sequence look interesting. We created enigmas for the audiences which were: (near the beginning of the sequence) why is a character walking away when there is another character lying on the floor dead?
We tried to create a plot twist which is a convention, we placed pills next to the person dead (Arthur Foster) to make it look like a suicide but we also make a person walk away from the scenery to make it also look like a murder which would create enigmas and confuse the audience.
*Walking Away- door*
Later on in the film the audience would realize that it was indeed a murder hence the twist, which is similar to the enigma presented in the opening sequence to From Russia with Love.
*Part of From Russia with Love*
However, although we developed some forms of thriller sequences, we also challenged some forms. We did this by, one of the main characters/protagonist (Jimmy Fox)
*Arthur Foster*
kills the head teacher (Arthur Foster) along with his dad Michael. Normally the protagonist would be the good person who prevents something like this from happening. Furthermore, they get away with the murder and normally the criminal is caught and gets a punishment. Although there is a punishment, it’s not brutal. In addition there is normally a happy ending however in our film there is not much of a happy ending. Our setting was in a school with a young protagonist which also challenges established conventions as normally you wouldn’t see a school boy playing one of the main characters especially not a murderer. Our particular sequence has many classic conventions. The reasons for this are because we had a male protagonist. We used classic conventions to meet the audiences’ expectations' and so they can easily identify it as a thriller. Our score that was used was also quite classic, including the voice over narration at the beginning of the sequence which is very 'film noire’. Also because it’s a proven successful formula because the conventions were used in good thriller films. However we also have some conventions that are contemporary because of the locations used (the garage that had graffiti) and they type of characters we have (such as the young hackers).
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2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The main social groups which are represented in our film are young people; this is because we have mostly young people aged between 16-18 playing the characters of the film. The main character Jimmy is 16; he is a student that goes to The Phoenix Catholic School. His friends who are around the same age are hackers who hack into the school finance system.
< style="WIDTH: 200px; HEIGHT: 150px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585147209427408834" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c47eXjQMrV0/TYJty6wvV8I/AAAAAAAACjI/VWSp3MgsUmQ/s200/Hackers.jpg"> < Hackers
The messages that are being communicated shows that the youth is ‘bad’ as stereotypically young people are normally shown committing crimes. Furthermore, the hackers are young, wearing hoodies, they are boys, black and in a location where there is no one around and graffiti in the background showing they are up to no good. This further emphasises the representation that the youth cannot be trusted especially young males. We assume our characters are heterosexual; there are no references in the sequence that show otherwise. The audience would also think this because they are young and male; stereotypically most teenagers would be in a relationship (boyfriend/ girlfriend) at that age. The characters, the hackers and Jimmy Fox are in school uniform (wearing school ties and white shirts). This also shows they are students therefore in the working class and the audience would realize this straight away. The head teacher Arthur Foster is in the middle class hence he has a higher social status than Jimmy. However, we have cast someone (Mr Selwyn Booth) who challenges the usual stereotype (because he does not wear a blazer/ suit), which is what a head teacher would look/ dress like. This makes it easier for the audience to understand that he’s not like a normal head teacher as expected.
This clip shows the hackers scene with our stereotypes
This clip shows the Head Teacher's appearance
It is good to use stereotypes, this is because we had a limited time for the opening sequence and as the audience would recognize the characters, it is easier to get the message across about them. However, using stereotypes can also be a bad thing. The reason for this is because it encourages people to believe the stereotypes, such as for our film it encourages people to think that all youngsters commit crimes even though this is not true for everyone, it may also encourage young people to behave this way which would not be good.
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our film would most likely to be distributed by an independent media institution. The reasons for this is because our film was low budget, there were unknown and untrained actors playing the characters. Our location was local and there was nothing particularly brilliant that could be compared to a Hollywood blockbuster. Furthermore, we had limited equipment to help us develop the film.
In a mainstream film there would be a high budget (millions of pounds/dollars); there would be A- list/ well known actors in the film who would also be highly paid. Mainstream films tend to have commercially acceptable themes which is why many audiences are attracted to them. Films are normally targeted for the mainstreamers/conformists because it the largest section of the audience and this is a good way to categorize audiences into these psychographic profiles and to make a huge profit they would need a well presented film for this audience. This also makes the production company famous with its name and it could become recognized worldwide.
There are different ways films are distributed; there are different types of cinemas which are major chains such as cineworld which would distribute blockbusters/ high budget films. There are also cinemas for independent films some examples of studios are ‘Lion Gate Films’, 'Film4 Production' and ‘Palm Pictures’ (Independent). There are also art house films which distribute independent films with serious/important issues/messages for niche audiences; some examples for these are 'Fox Searchlight Pictures', 'Artistic License Films', and 'Tiger Film'. There are some film festivals and competitions that they can be entered into such as London Film Festival (however it would be unlikely that our film would be distributed in that way) or a local film festival at Watermans, we may be able to enter our film as it is local to us, the internet which is currently a good way to distribute films because it’s a good way to show everyone what you have created. This is because mostly everyone has access to the internet and also it‘s a free way to distribute media work therefore a wide range of audiences can access the work. There are many websites where we could do this such as YouTube and as even big production companies use this website, Facebook as there are approximately 500 million users on this social networking site.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
The target audience we identified for the film we were creating was males between the age of 16 to 25. Therefore we created an espionage thriller film (opening sequence) because during our research we found out that males between those ages prefer to watch espionages because of their conventions such a dominantly male cast (the protagonist and detectives) and props used such as guns which are more masculine and appeal to men. We believe that we have created a product that is suitable for our target audience. We think this because we our cast consists of young people aged 16/17. This helped the audience to relate to the characters therefore it was suitable for people between 16-20. We also believe that it is suitable for people between 20-25. This is because even they would also be able to relate to characters as it would have only been a few years since they left school/college. The theme and narrative appealed to our target audience because it had the concept of murder, a male cast of a young age and the location was set in a school (a place where everyone has been at some point in their lives).
5. How did you attract/ address your audience?
We made our film attract our audience by casting young characters this helped because everyone could relate to the characters and as our initial target audience were males, our cast was also males. We kept our location in a school we is somewhere where everyone has been or goes to which again everyone can easily relate to. The theme was about corruptions and blackmailing which would attract our target audience as it is something that still happens in society.
We showed our opening sequence to the class and mostly got positive feedback. They liked the way it was edited together and the way the titles appeared throughout the sequence with the names of the cast appearing with the characters. However with the titles there was no consistency as some titles appeared bigger whilst others appeared smaller, the font was different and the way they appeared on screen was also different. We made changes by making them appear more consistently in size and font; this helped to make it look more professional.
This is a clip with our changes to make consistent title as much as possible.
There was one scene where the audience felt it seemed to drag on because there was no score on top of it. Therefore we also added a score to the office scene with Arthur Foster. This also helped to make a ‘normal’ scene appear tense.
The office scene after we added a score to make it better/improve.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We used different technologies throughout the process of creating our film. Firstly we used the internet; this was to do our research about subgenres, history and the conventions of a thriller film. We also used the internet to do other various parts of the opening sequence which was to look for copyright free music using a particular website; on the website we found the scores which were relevant to our film. We used the computer to watch opening sequences to analyse them. We used the blogs to share the research that each of us had done. This helped us to work together and create a good script and ideas for a good thriller film so everyone could contribute.
To do the filming for the entire sequence we used DV (Digital Video) cameras. This is because of the low budget therefore DV cameras were very affordable, we had them and it was practical because it was a simple to use and upload onto the editing software. The DV cameras gave it a slightly grainy finish and washed out colours which add realism to the whole sequence; this is what is used in soaps and documentaries. Whereas in high budget films the celluloid cameras give a glossy, glamorous finish with vivid colours which is less realistic. However, the poor microphones on the cameras affected the final outcome because for the hacker scene we can just about here the character speaking over the score and during the editing it was the highest volume we could raise it to (for the dialogue) and the lowest for the score.
In this scene, the sound quality is poor.
To do the editing we used a non linear editing software which was iMovie. This helped us to continue developing our product because we were able to move clips in different orders, experiment using different styles to create an original opening sequence and we could continue to develop our ideas during the post production phase. In addition, we did not film in the order of the film because of the different locations that were needed so this made it easier to change the order of the clips. Using iMovie, we could edit the sounds by adding sound effects, we also filmed our own sound effects of wind and other ambient sounds to enhance the sequence and we were able to place it into the relevant places by extracting it. To continue we also added titles in the different scenes throughout the sequence. First we had a range of different titles, and then we were able to edit them and make it more consistent so it looks professional and so the titles doesn’t take away the attention from the film.
We used mobile phones to take pictures of our location, and then we were able to upload them onto the blogs. We also used a mobile phone to use the lighting of the camera. This is because for one part of the sequence (jimmy’s character talking directly to the audience) we used a dark room with no lighting and because of the darkness the image did not appear well on the camera therefore we used the camera light from a mobile phone to bring some light on the character and to be able focus the audience on the character.
This is when we used the light from the mobile
Using technology has helped and influenced our project. It has helped us the reason being it has made things more easier than people who used to make films by editing film reels; we were able to film in a non linear sequence. Technology influenced our project because we were able to experiment with shots and enhances the sequence (by adding title and sounds) compared to in the past when they used film reels even for the post production stage.
7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
For our preliminary task, we had to do a match on action sequence of a person opening a door and a shot reverse shot of two characters speaking to each other.
This was our Preliminary Task
Before filming our preliminary task we made a storyboard of how to film the sequence but we didn’t conduct any research, this affected our preliminary task sequence because the final outcome wasn’t as good as we hoped. We faced some problems during the preliminary task which was to find a free room in the school which took a lot of time therefore reducing filming time, in addition, the dialogue that was said did not make sense; this is because we didn’t plan the script well and due to the lack of vital research.
This is the shot reverse shot where the dialogue does not make sence.
Furthermore because the location was not entirely suitable as it was an open set we had limited time to complete the task. During the editing stage, there was a little jump cut because we were unable to put the scenes together that well because we did not film long enough to be able to cut it in the right place.
There were many things we learnt during filming the preliminary task. One thing was that when we filmed the shot reverse shot of the characters speaking there were big windows in the room and the sun was directly coming through, therefore the character appeared in a silhouette, so we tried not to repeat the mistake and therefore by always researching locations in advance we could plan the practicalities of filming.
For our final media product we did a lot of research to make it look like an interesting thriller opening sequence with relevant key conventions. We planned a good script so that the dialogue between characters made sense and the audiences understood- however we kept the dialogue to a minimum which was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock who is the master of the thriller genre. When filming we made our opening sequence we made sure the rooms were available, that we knew where we would be filming (so we do not waste a lot of time) and there were no other people (closed set) and so it looks more professional, we also made sure the length was good so we could easily edit it on the iMovie editing software. We made a shooting schedule so that it was more organized and planned carefully. We developed some editing skills during the post production phase, we learnt how to add different scores and trying out different ones to see which fits best/ most suitable (however, we were limited to content which was copyright free), to extract sounds which was for the narration. The camera skills we developed during the shooting which was to keep the camera steady whilst filming using the tripod.
