In what ways does your media production use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

What I had to do for my AS level media was to create an opening to a new thriller. My group and I had to take into consider what age range we wanted to aim the thriller opening at. Overall, we thought certificate 15 would be suitable for our thriller. There were many reasons as to why we picked this age certificate, however I believe the main reason for picking this age 15 was because of the scenario towards the end of the trhiller has quite a pschological feel about it.
Requirements

There is a lot that is required thoughout the first two minutes of any opening. Take for example the opening to Harry Potter (the new film). A lot of action was needed to been shown in the first few minutes to draw attention to the audience's attention.things that the Harry Potter opening included, were the three main characters (Ron, Harry and Hermoine). Also, in the credits it showed who created the film and the main characters (names).
Our thriller opening

In the first two minutes to our thriller opening, we needed to include enough detail to draw the audience's attention however not to over load them with too much detail. Quick and sharp images helps attract the audience ('snip its'). Creating the right narrative to go with our thriller opening is vital so that the audience is not to get confused on what is happening. However, in my groups thriller opening, we did not need to incluide too much dialogue. Although this was was the case we had to get the right footage to make sure the thriller opening is portraying what we wanted it to. Our camera shots would help us with the way the film is shot. For example shooting from underneath the actress as she is running into the woods helps show that she is desperate for revenage. Also, close ups on the knife show the psychologoical sife of the thriller as it contributes to the actresses madness/insanity. This is a covention of a thriller as it's showing a psycho side to the opening. Also during my research I had done about thrillers, I noticed that knives are often used as a weapon of some sort to attack a victim.

Voice Over/Dialogue/

Even though my thriller opening does not include dialogue in the actual camera shots, using voice over's help us put across the message in which we are trying to achieve. For example, in the American sitcom 'Scrubs', voice over is commonly used on the character 'JD'. It adds an insight to JD's thoughts. Using this sort of technique on a character such as JD assists the producers ideas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0jxRwp3v5Q (25 seconds in). An example of a thriller opening where the voice over is used to create tension or help tell the story is 'Memento'. This film is demonstrating how someone who's lost complete memory can retrace their steps by taking photographs. Thoughout the film, there are sections where he is in a motel room, a voice over appears to help tell the story. Also, the trailer of Memento has a voicer over, in which these lines are in the film itself. It helps paint a picture in the audiences mind of what the film could be about, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vS0E9bBSLO .

Conventions

One convention of our thriller opening we did was to change the differences in colours to help us show time differences (for example flashbacks to the wedding). Memento does this perfectly when the main character is reflecting back on himself when he's in the motel room. Voice overs in our thriller are useful as a convention because they help create tension and a unusual atmosphere (dramatic).

These two images above help demonstrate how we have used two different effects (colours), contrasting the past and the present (the image of Jacob Wright is the past and the images of myself is the future).

Titles
There are many ways in which different thriller openings have used titles, to make them more effective and eye catching. Here is an example from 'the Happening' thriller opening and I have compared it to our titles which we have used throughout the opening. In our thriller opening we decided to spread the titles out evenly so that the audience isn't overwhelmed by a lot of writing. This technique was also used in 'the Happening' trailer. I feel that this is effective because it adds more tension into the opening. However, we overlaid the writing on the clips of the opening instead of on a black background.

 'The Happening' thriller opening used two different colours and dynamic, cold writing to make it stand out. We also placed our name of the thriller 'Distraught Bride' at the end because we felt it was more dramatic. Dramatic and eerie sounds have been placed over our title, to add tension an alarm the audience to what the title is of our thriller opening. You can see a similarity between the two different titles.

We used a variety of different camera techniques throughout the opening. This was to create the look we were going for. Also, we followed the 180 degree rule (for example having to stay on the life side of the bride). In the thriller opening , we used mainy medium/close up shots and extreme close up shots.

The extreme close up shots helped to demonstrate the importancy of the knife in the thriller. Adding a green tinge to the present day (where we see the wife has gone psychotic, helps to create an air of tension and madness. The example from our thriller opening 'Distraught Bride' is a close up of the knife. It is important we got a clear shot of this because it plays a major part in showing the brides 'psychotic side' Also, a knife is normally a convention of a thriller; this is another reason as to why we used a knife instead of a commonly used convention, a gun.

There were two different locations we used to create our thriller opening, a cathedral/graveyard and a woodland area. A typical thriller is oftenly filmed in places such as woodland areas and graveyards. The main purpose of the task was to create a thriller opening, however relating back to our questionnaires we noticed that some of the people questioned would prefer to have a hint of romance in it . Making our thriller opening revolve around a wedding, it shows that we have included detail from our audience research.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller opening, we were aiming to put across that the film was about a wedding, and how the wife was left at the altar by her husband-to-be.  In the screen shot (left), we can see the groom getting ready for the wedding. To help show the social group we were aiming this at, we put the actor (Jacob Wright) in a suit. This portrays that he is going to a wedding. Also, it helps relate back to people who are getting married or also, a couple. In our final thriller opening, we made the plot line unconventional, this means that the male was the victim in the thriller opening instead of the female, and the female was the villian. We made this clear in the thriller opening.

 

These two print screen shots of our thriller opening are great examples of shoing the bride's costume. It is showing a side view of the dress she is wearing, and also the long veil, not revealing her face. Then a close up revealing the brides' happy expressions and showing the bride holding a bunch of flowers (which play a convention in the romance side of the thriller opening. It also helps us put across to the audience that our social grouo is based around a couple at a wedding.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Audience
  These three images displayed are representing te sort of audience we are targeting 'Distraught Bride' at.
BBFC classification for our thriller, reason for choosing and what is included in it
After carefully studying the BBFC website for the classifications; we decided to go for the rating 15. A film rated at 15 normally includes; some type of dangerous behaviour (so for example in our thriller opening we included a knife showing violence). Also, the psycological side of our thriller opening may influence the children to behave in an unusual way. So, being in this situation, we decided it was best to aim it at 15 or above. After watching 'Donnie Darko', I noticed that the film was trying to portray a very disturbed teenager who is able to see into the future, thanks to a book on time travelling. http://www.zimbio.com/watch/NHUuupVa2oY/Donnie+Darko+Scene+Book+Time+Travel/Donnie+Darko

Donnie speaks of the book and grandma death in this scene.

Donnie Darko and how it relates to our thriller opening
I feel that this film relates to some people in the audience, because teenagers are often known to get a psychological problem and believe they are able to see into the future or tend to have a friend that 'tells' them what to do however no one else can see them. I beleive that the audience would enjoy our film because of its psychological twist in the plot. The main idea is to keep them on te edge of their seats and wanting to know more! Also, giving it a romantic sub-genre it can also be aimed at people who are after a romantic/thriller film that has an odd twist.

What kind of media institution might distrubute your media product and why?

There are a wide variety of institutions across the globe. One of the most famous ones known is  the American based distributors, Warners Bros. They have created films such as 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' (2002) and 'The World, The Flesh and The Devil' (1959). Here is a link to a clip from behnid the scenes at Warner Bros. *add video clip*. It shows the variety of different studios in which that the company film their movies in. Click on the link to be directed to Warner Bros website, http://www.warnerbros.com/ . However, to ensure we distrubute our film correctly we would have to go through an independent distributor of films (or indie films).
Independent Film Institutions
Although these companies work on a much lower budget compared to Warner Bros, they have produced superb thrillers such as 'Donnie Darko' (2001) and 'Memento'. An independent film is often known to be confusing and misunderstanding in some places. Also, they will normally be filmed in the actual place in which the film is taking part it. For example, a film could be set in London, Warner Bros would often use a scene in their studio (often make a wide variety of sets) whereas the independent films would go to the streets of London to film the shots they need. After carefully researching about the types of production companies avaliable, I have come to the conclusion that I would use 'Summit Entertainment' to produce our thriller. This is because they have produced a variety of different thrillers; these include 'The Dark'.This thriller/horror includes a psychological twist to the story, adding a gut wrenching and unexpected conclusion. Another thriller that has been released by 'Summit Entertainment' in the past is 'The Skull'. Click the link to go on the website of 'Summit Entertainment' http://www.summit-ent.com/

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

We have used a wide range of technologies to make our thriller opening 'Distraught Bride'. For example, we used iMovie on the Macs and also we used Garageband to create our music We used iMovie to create the actual thriller opening product. On here we used techniques such as cutting and splitting the clip Also, we edited the production on the Macs because there are a variety of different options on the Macs that helped us edit To get the music we needed we had to look on Garageband to begin with. This is because there are a wide amount of options that are available for us to use, however there wasn't any sound that sounded psycho/thriller like. Although we managed to find one sound on Garageband, we were unable to find the right type of sounds to put over our thriller opening, therefore we went on to Google (search engine) On here we found the sound track 'evil noise'. So we went with this because we felt that it went well with the other sound track we established

Any technical issues?

Throughout the making of the thriller opening i feel that we didn't really suffer any technical issues with either the Mac or the digital camera. However, during the filming we found that it was difficult to zoom in slowly/quick enough because of the way the zoom dial is.  Other than trying to understand how the digital camera we used worked to begin with i feel that we didn't suffer any technical issues.

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

Over the past few months, i feel that i have learnt a lot about the media industry and how the audience reacts to different things that occur in a film. First of all in our thriller opening i learnt how to create music in Garageband.

Garageband

To make our music was three simple tasks, the print screen shots below show this. To begin with, we had to open a new file so that we could add the music into garageband (we named it song 7 as it didn't really need a specific title). Secondly. we added the music that i downloaded from Youtube 'evil noise'. Eventually we found a backing noise that fitted in with the 'evil noise track'. We added in a texture to help calm down the evil noises when we didn't want them to be as strong. To get the music onto the actual track line itself, we had to drag it over and place it in the appropriate area, so for example textures would be put in the same track line as each other and cannot be put in the piano section

Camera Angles

Getting the right camera angles was also vital to tell the story of what is happening in the thriller opening, else the storyline wouldn't make any sense. We had to stay by a few rules however, one of these was the 180 degree line (DO NOT CROSS IT!)  and the other two were either the rule of thirds and golden mean. In the rule of thirds, the image is normally broken up into a grid of nine and the main attraction would be in the centre square, for example the image give of the butterfly is an example of the rule of thirds. The main attraction of this photograph would be the butterfly's wing.  The golden mean rule means that there is two subjects in the shot (normally). The shot of the landscape above the butterfly is demonstrating the golden mean. It shows where the eye would be drawn to normally. In this case the eye is drawn to the glacier and the cliff. This short clip from youtube shows a variety of different camera angles. It is mainly aimed at cutting the scene in an action film however it helps show the cutting effect. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8agiaT3SZQo&feature=channel 

Preliminary task

The main aim for our preliminary task was so we could get used to the way the cameras worked and also, master the techniques of editing on the iMac. During my group's preliminary task, we discovered how to use the camera effectively and to its maximum potential. We also learnt that it takes more than ONE shot to get it perfect (during the preliminary task it took up to three shots approximately). Also, getting the camera angles correct was vital, we learnt the rule of thirds and also the 180 degree rule. Other camera techniques we used was over the shoulder (conversation), CCTV (above shot). Other basic shots we used were extreme close ups (walking through the door, handle) and long distant shots. Getting a wide variety of techniques in our preliminary task was helpful when we came to make the thriller opening. *add in YouTube clip of the preliminary task*

In the making of our thriller opening we decided that it was best if we left a 5 second delay before actually filming what we wanted. This allows us to mess around with the clip more than what we got (for example trimming the clip down and also when it came to editing). Our planning for our two tasks was simple, although our idea changed a lot when we came to actually filming the thriller opening. We discovered that we had to gather more footage than we had originally got, therefore we had to go out in our own time and film more footage. This was difficult to do because the group had to make sure that the costumes and props were exactly the same as the original footage. *add images of thriller storyboard* Minus the difficulty of getting the footage we needed, the group and myself found that the filming day went successful.

The second storyboard displayed are images from my preliminary task. I felt that we developed well because we knew about camera and also the different types of editing techniques.

To help us answer the questions

During last Wednesday's lesson, we spoke about the different characteristics and how people can be stereotyped in real life. This would help us fully evaluate the characters in our thriller opening. Here is a PowerPoint that i made during that lesson to show how teenagers are stereotyped.