Evaluation

For my coursework I had to work in a group to create a 2 minute opening scene to a thriller. The idea of our thriller was a man being released and going to get his own back on someone.

Evaluation

By choosing to produce a crime thriller instead of your average horror thriller with blood and gore helps make our thriller stand out from other existing thriller films. By creating a different storyline to the original walking through the woods and getting lost make the audience want to see our film more, as they don’t know what’s going to happen as it’s not your typical storyline. By using more upbeat music helps add more of an atmosphere different to the typical cheesy scary theme tune at the beginning of a thriller for example Psycho. In addition to this young teenagers like to watch films they can relate more to as they feel it’s more realistic. This will help our film be successful as there’s not many films like it, meaning there won’t be much competition to compare to. However we have still included credit in between scenes to make it recognisable as a real film.



Our opening scene to our thriller represents a particular social group such as a stereotypical youth ‘gangster’. By wearing a hoodie, trackies and trainers as the costume emphasises the genre of a crime thriller and will appeal more to our target audience of young teenagers. Youths today are known to be trouble makers so by having a teenage lad coming out of a youth offenders, dressed in a tracksuit with his hood up suggests to the audience that he’s the bad guy looking for trouble hence the title karma. By using different camera angles to disguise his face let the audience make their own minds up of what the characters like. By having upbeat tempo music builds to the atmosphere of the lad walking through the corridors building suspense of where he’s going and what he put underneath his hoodie.



The media institution that could distribute a film like ours are production companies such Stealth Films Limited, Cipher Films and TMC Films; these are the production companies which made the film Kidulthood. Kidulthood could be linked to our opening scene as we have used a stereotypical youth storyline which could be compared to Kidulthoods stereotypical youth protagonists who are known for getting in trouble on the streets and aims at the youth culture today.



I feel the opening scene to our thriller fits in with the target audience aged 15. We chose to certify our thriller as a fifteen as we researched into the different target audiences and decided that our opening scene related more to a 15. A main reason for this is because we have not used very graphic scenes that an 18 certificate may possible use. Also we have also not encouraged or shown language, violence or drugs in strong detail along with sex and nudity. Also by looking at the online survey we created I can tell that the target audience aged around 15 prefer crime thrillers too horror and prefer the new style of thrillers which is very similar to ours. General research also shows that most people that want to see a thriller can’t because their under the age of 18, therefore by choosing to certify my film as a 15 I know we will attract a wider audience.



I have learnt that it’s a lot harder than it looks making a film, putting the sound over a moving image and making sure the timings right and that it all flow wells. There are lots technologies you have to get your head round including camera work using a tripod as well as the editing software the finish off your film. We encountered some minimal problems with technologies as went along but the filming all seemed to go well, it was the editing that caused us some issues. This was because we could only access the movie clips on one computer as we had imported it into movie maker. This meant that we could not import and edit our sound as easily as we would have liked as we don’t have access to YouTube or mp3 sound clips on the schools network. To resolve this problem we had to access the sound clips on our teacher’s laptop and import it through a USB stick.



By comparing my final piece to our Preliminary task I can see how much we have improved. We have more complex camera angles and techniques helping our final product look more interesting, as well as being able to successfully produce to amount of film required for the task, as in our preliminary task we encountered a lot of problems with the software Adobe Premiere Pro. Our timing and narrative flow is a vast improvement, the use of different editing software such as Windows Movie Maker helped reduce the camera shake we came across when editing our preliminary task. Overall by comparing the two you can see huge improvement in both technical and practical use of skills. The music really finished off the film by choosing a suitable unknown sound clip which fits perfectly within our genre.

Preliminary Task Video

Brief

The brief is to produce an opening scene of a thriller. It should include titles and credits and should be aimed at an audience aged 15. The maximum length should be 2 minutes.

We have already started filming parts of our opening scene, and have decided to post our storyboard with still shots taken from the final piece.

Monday 23rd March- We have finished filming our opening scene for our thriller. We have also uploaded and edited it today. We have added in titles, all we need to do now is add sound. We have chosen our sound already, we just need to convert it to an mp3 file.
We have completed out opening scence to our thriller, we have added out sound clip 'Haunting Dream' to our film and another sound clip at the end of car tyres screeching. We are now in the stages of saving it to disk uploading and prepare to write my evaluation.

Our storyboard:



Our Main thriller task video:

Research and Planning for Thriller

Definition of a Thriller:

A Thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, television, and gaming that includes numerous and often overlapping sub-genres. Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villains. Devices such as suspense, red herrings and cliff hangers are used extensively.

Thrillers often take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, Polar Regions, or high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently "hard men" accustomed to danger: law enforcement officers, spies, soldiers, seamen or aviators. However, they may also be ordinary citizens drawn into danger by accident. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common; for an early example see Sigourney Weaver's character Ripley, in the movie Alien, 1979.

Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories, but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. In a thriller, the hero must thwart the plans of an enemy, rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements. While a mystery climaxes when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeats the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others. In thrillers influenced by film noir and tragedy, the compromised hero is often killed in the process.

There are all kinds. The legal thriller, spy thriller, action-adventure thriller, medical thriller, police thriller, romantic thriller, historical thriller, political thriller, religious thriller, high-tech thriller, military thriller just to name a few.

Most thrillers are formed in some combination of the above, with horror, conspiracy, and psychological tricks used most commonly to heighten tension. Combinations are highly diverse, including: Science fiction thrillers: The Terminator, I Am Legend, and Blade Runner. Science fiction/horror thrillers: Jurassic Park, Alien, Predator. Techno/political/conspiracy/military/horror thriller: Predator, Robocop, S.M. Stirling's Draka novels. Legal/forensic/psychological/horror thriller: Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs', Seven.

Our group has come to the decision to base our thriller as a Crime thriller. This particular genre is a hybrid type of both crime films and thrillers that offers a suspenseful account of a successful or failed crime or crimes. These films often focus on the criminal(s) rather than a policeman. Crime thrillers usually emphasize action over psychological aspects. Central topics of these films include murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, and double-crosses are central ingredients. Some examples include The Killing, Seven, the Godfather, Reservoir Dogs, Inside Man, and The Asphalt Jungle.

We have decided to look at the above examples in bold of this type of thriller to get some inspiration.

Age Certificates

Age: My group and I have all come to a decision to certify our clip as a 15. We have chosen to do this because it is a thriller and we will not be very graphic that an 18 certificate will have. We will not be encouraging or show the following in strong detail however they may be used to create a good effect and catching atmosphere to the audience
Language - we may use some strong language to give a powerful effect but we will not misuse the language term and not use them on a frequent basis.
Nudity, sex will not be used
Violence - we will use violence however not as advance as an 18 certificate which will be more graphic then a 15 certificate imitable techniques - the reason our clip is a 15 certificate is because we will not be using drastic Dangerous techniques i.e. dangerous weapons and horror - menace and malice behaviour may be used but not gory images
Drugs - drug taking are allowed in a 15 certificates but it must not promote or encourage drugs

Theory’s

One theory we have looked at was the Hypodermic syringe theory however we haven’t linked it with our work as we don't believe people get influenced by what they see in a film and we don't believe it’s a film that can have that impact on people.

On the other hand we do agree with the Culmination theory because according to this theory, while any one media text does not have too much effect, years and years of watching more violence will make you less sensitive to violence, years and years of watching women being mistreated in soaps will make you less bothered about it in real life. One difficulty with both of these ways of looking at the media is that they are very difficult to prove either way. Many people have a general sense that the media do affect our behaviour and advertisers certainly justify their fees by working on this assumption, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to actually prove how much effect if any a text might have on an audience. In fact researchers have spent enormous amounts of time and effort trying to prove the validity of the culmination theory with no success- this of course does not mean that there is no truth in it as an idea.

Windows movie maker

The windows movie maker application allows us to do many things in order to make a film. It has clearly labelled step by step help, which allows us to: · Capture a video straight from a video device · Import video/music/pictures from devices or from saved documents · Show all the videos/ pictures/ music we have on the screen · Add in video/pictures effects · Add in video/pictures transitions · Make titles or credits using readymade settings which also allows us to change if we wish · Save to a computer or CD · Send to emails, web or a camera · It is paired with windows Media player to allow us to view the film as a whole.

Examples of the effects we might use are cut, fade and iris.

Setting brainstorm

Road – busy traffic.Run down building – Close up on window.
Changing rooms - School.
Corridors- School.
Gates
Car

We have decided to use these locations as they are easy for us to get to and we can safely film what is needed at them. We are going to set the beginning out in the dark, then the focus of the man in daylight as if it were the next day.

Preliminary Exercise Task

Me, Rosie, Omar and Matty are in a group to produce a movie and storyboard for our coursework. Our plot outline is a man being questioned in a police interview. Brainstorm: Small room and table, Never see mans face, Dark lighting, Police officer, Suspect We need to include; -180 rule -Match of action -Shot reverse shot Storyboard will be added shortly. My role so far has been the editing of the storyboard.

We have successfully filmed our movie and are now in the process of editing. My role was the play the part as a Police Officer and question Matthew.

We have successfully included 180 rule, Shot reverse shot and Match on action which was required in this task.

When filming our Preliminary Task we encountered a lot of problems with the software Adobe Premiere Pro CS3. It kept saying we couldn't upload our film as there wasn't enough memory on the computers, it also took a long time for the software to work on the computers; at school as there were alot of ICT problems with the network. Eventually once we had got it uploaded on the computer it wasn't hard to edit. However its shorter than the required length as the software was playing up and did not allow us to upload the whole film. To prevent these problems happening again i will be using Windows Movie Maker to edit my Thriller so i don't have any issues with the software. It is also a lot more straight forward to use.
Improvements we will work on for our next task is camera shake, lighting and better location.

Preliminary task: Complete