Media A level- Thriller

 

How did my production skills develop throughout this project? (Prezi) How does my product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? (Canva) 

  Event Name: ________________________________________________________   You’re name: _____________________________________________________   Date of event: _______________________________________________________   Beginning in time: ________________________ Ending time: _________________   I understand that I am going to be working around potentially dangerous props and must be responsible when filming: ______________________________________________________   Event location: ________________________________________________________   Phone number: ________________________________________________________   Chosen parent or guardian that is responsible for you: ________________________   There contact number: _________________________________________________

 When we edited our thriller, one of the stages was to add titles to our thriller, we had to make sure that the titles we used were appropriate for a thriller and suited the conventions well. When I analysed thriller film openings, this helped a lot with what we needed to do as we could see how other popular thrillers used titles effectively, for example, the timing of how long each title was going to be on screen for, where on the screen to put them and what order to put the titles in. Also what font to put the titles in. Therefore I researched into fonts and found out about serif and sans-serif fonts that were popular in thrillers. We used this establishing shot to open up our title sequence. We thought this would be good as it shows the location but also gives a date so the audience knows when this happened.  This is our main title where we present the name of the film to the audience, this occurs right at the end of the opening sequence, it pops up in the middle of the scr...

 Initially, my first idea was to film in a woods or forest as I thought that location fitted a thriller opening scene best, as a forest gives off the feel of the conventions of a thriller e.g. Scary, mystery, anything can happen. However after my research and watching a few thriller openings I realised that filming in a woods isn't the best idea as it is quite genereic and can be difficult to film in the woods as lighting and sound is not the best. After I did my location scout I found that filming in an empty room where the lighting, sound and space would be perfect and would still suit the conventions of a thriller, especially with the props we used. We also used an antagonist character as it is key to have one in a thriller because it also fits the conventions of a thriller. We used camera shots and angles that we had seen been used in the thrillers that we analysed, this was too make sure the audience knows that the main genre was a thriller. We also needed to make sure we made...

 From the survey I made I found that the majority of our target audience will range between ages 15-18, therefore the conventions we use need to match their preferences. This is going to help me find out what kind of demographics and psychographics people have that will watch our thriller.  Gender- Male Aged- 15-18 Education-  Student/ 6th form Media preferences- Youtube, social apps (snapchat, instagram) TV, Films Likes: Thrillers, cinemas, music, TV, follows trends Socio- Economic group- lives at home, goes to school full time, enjoys going out with friends to cinema, has part-time job on weekends Psychographic group- Likes TV series, follows the crowd,  This is a key example of what our target audience is, people like this that have similar preferences will want to watch and like our project. Therefore it is key that we know what to include and what our audience likes. 

 When we had all our clips sorted out and put them all together, we then moved on to finding background non-diagetic music that suited our thriller, we also added title screens, where our names would pop up in the opening of our thriller to state to the audience the roles we played. It was mine and Oscar's role to find the music and add titles, as Tom and Ollie roles was to edit the clips and put them together.  In this screenshot we were testing different music to see what one we liked and suited our piece best. We also started to then add the titles so the timing of the music fitted well with the time of the titles popping up, with the titles we chose a font that suited the conventions of a thriller, we did this by looking at other thriller examples and seeing what font they were using. This was important as it has to be clear to the audience that they are watching a thriller.  In this shot we were experimenting where the best place was to put the titles, so they were n...

 My group and I had a discussion to sort out the roles of the editing stages. Ollie- Editing clips and putting them together Jack- Organising clips, adding sound effects, finding music Oscar- Sound effects,  Tom- Getting rid of clips we don't need, editing clips, I organised the clips by numbering them and giving them brief descriptions of what each clip included, this made it much easier for my group to find the clips we were looking for and saved us a lot of time. I added the gunshot sounds by going onto YouTube and finding a non copywrited gunshot sound which we used.  We hope to get it all done by the 25th of May so we can have an opportunity to get feedback from our target audience where we will do a screening, meaning we will be able to improve our piece from the feedback we receive from our target audience. This also means that once we have completely finished it should match what our target audience wants to see.

 Tom and Oscar created a health and safety post for our group project.   Motor bikes  As there were multiple elements of our film that require us to extra take care in acting and filming our scenes. The first area we films that had potential area's of danger were the motor bike scenes. As there were two members of our acting cast that knew how to drive motorbikes and have high levels of experience we decided it would be the safest option to give them the roles of the characters who have to drive the bikes in the getaway chase.  This decision resulted in us having to give Ollie Blayne and Oli Newland to be the main protagonist and antagonist. As the motor bike scene looks best at relatively high speeds these two people had to be put forward for these two roles.  The props  As our props have a dangerous nature we made sure to handle them with extreme care and made sure they had as little involvement in the scene as possible. These pro...

Ollie- " In!" Ollie- " What you looking at?" Ollie- " Right, come here! Come!"  Jack- " We're next!" Oli N- " No, we're not going to let that happen." Ollie N- " Get the knife on the table". Jack- " What?" Oli N- " Get the knife!" Jack- " Quick, cut me! cut me!  ( Ollie enters back from killing Oscar) Jack- " Go, run!"  Ollie- " Oi!" Oli N- " Wait, wait please!" Ollie- " No, you've messed me around enough".

 

 

 When we uploaded all the clips onto the computer we had 82 clips, we didn't use all of them as there are some duplicates, clips that we don't need to use and some clips where we made mistakes therefore we cant use them.  My role of the editing process is to sort out all the clips that we will use and are not using, and also put the clips that we are using together cutting parts out of the clips that we don't need, to make our thriller more exciting to try and keep the audience interested.  As we are in a group of 4 we have split the editing roles between us Jack- Organising clips, editing clips, finding music, sound effects Ollie- Putting clips together, cutting clips, editing,  music,  Tom- Editing,  Oscar- Editing, We couldn't use this shot as the motorbike was misplaced and we didn't want it in the shot, but was accidentally put there. When we first started editing and got all our clips onto the computer we put small detailed descriptions in to make it ...

I did a prelim task, to test out and try camera angles that I could possibly use in my actual thriller, this prelim task gave me some experience and an idea of what it will be like when we film.  I realised that this prelim is quite bad, however it was just a start and from my research and watching other thrillers I now know what conventions I can include to make my thriller better. This prelim task was mainly done so I can compare my first ever experience of filming a sequence to my final one, therefore I can see what I have learnt and the differences between the two. 

Actor Scouting  Jack Young-  In our film, one of our actors Jack will be playing the role of a teenager who has been abducted with his friends. Jack did GCSE drama which meant that due to his experience in front of the camera, he was the right person for the role. Oscar  Mccarthy -   Oscar will play the role of the second teenager who has been abducted. We choose Oscar to be an actor because he fitted the role presented well compared to the other choices.   Tom Barrett- Tom was another option that we had for an actor. However, we decided that Tom suited the role of the cameraman more. Tom creative ability paired him well with the role of the cameraman.   Ollie Blayne- Ollie will play the role of the killer in our film. We came to this conclusion as he did GCSE drama, so he is a good actor. It was good for Ollie to play this role as the killer has ride a motorbike, which Ollie can do.  Oli Newland- Oli will play the role of the third teenager ...

 Representation is the way media texts deal with and present gender, age, ethnicity, national and regional identity, social issues and events to an audience.  Media texts have the power to shape an audience's knowledge and understanding of these topics.  Representation is important it can help break down stereotypes that can be detrimental to some individuals and limiting to society.  When a group of people is only ever  represented  in negative ways, it negatively affects the way others see them, as well as the way they see themselves. Stuart Hall representation theory Cultural representation is a concept cultivated by Stuart Hall. The theory states that there is no true representation of people or events in a text, however there are many ways these can be represented. Therefore producers try to 'fix' a meaning or way of understanding people or events in their text.  In order to analyse media  texts to determine how they've represented ideas...

 Using ' Narrative' as a descriptor, ' Narrative media' are media that aim to tell a story.  Narrative theory is the study of the way stories are structured. All media products tell stories in some way. The study of  narrative  explores the different ways that  media  texts can tell a story.  Narrative  is strongly linked to the audience and purpose of the text. The narrative theory is made by Tzvetan Todorov. His theory states that most story's or plots follow the same pattern which is the 5 step narrative theory pattern. First part of the story will display a happy start , where the characters are content and everything is how it should be  There are 3 types of narrative: 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person.  Many stories and novels are written in the  first - person  point of view. In this  narrative , you are inside a character's head, watching the  story  unfold through that character's eyes. Second person ...

  These are the simple camera shots that all films use multiple times throughout they're films. They are all affective for different reasons, for example and extreme long shot can be used to show the location, extreme close up can be used to show a characters emotions and facial expressions very clearly.  I will be using a lot if not all of these shots in my film as they're all effective and can be used at different times. I have watched films to help me know what type of camera shot is most effective at what time. There are also more camera shots then this that are not as basic but still very effective, therefore I will be using some of them. For example cutaways, two-shot, over the shoulder shot, POV shot, these are shots that will also be good and useful to use in my thriller.

 I have chosen to deconstruct an A level media thriller called ' Silenced'. Silenced starts with quick pace piano music which makes the audience feel tense and curious to what is going to happen and why is it going to happen. The camera then cuts to a POV shot of him putting down a newspaper and picking up a paper that says ' missing person' on it. This is effective as it shows the audience what might of happened and builds the intensity. When he picks up the paper the camera cuts to an extreme close shot that pans up very slowly bottom to top. This reveals to the audience slowly what the paper says and gives us information about the missing person. While all this is happening they're credits with names in the bottom left corner. The next shot is of the missing person who is sitting down at a table, it is a medium shot and while this is going on the missing girl is getting told off by a background voice saying stuff like ' how would you feel if I tormented you?...

I have made a survey for my audience to see what they're demographics are so I can compare them to thrillers they will like. I have asked these question to create a target audience as from the answers I now know the percentages of my audiences age, gender, thrillers they like and genres they like, therefore I can now make my thriller that have similar semiotics to thrillers they like. Also I can now include a sub-genre that my audience like if I want to. The survey has helped me a lot in creating my own thriller as now I have more of an idea of what to include in it based on my audiences preferences.    I asked this question to find what my target audience is, so I can make my thriller relatable to the audience.