Snatched - AS media final thriller

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

Looking back over my AS coursework I have become much more independent in my work and realised that you can’t depend on anyone or leave anyone to do it as I have noticed that the best way to get something to done it to set your group members tasks to complete as I’ve realised that if you’re all doing the same thing we all get distracted by one and other. I have also noticed that I need to improve my time management side of things as this was one of my weakest links as I didn’t meet the deadline. But I do think that overall from the prelim task me and my group have got closer and have created much better work as we worked more as a group.

As a whole I think that my skills have improved from when I did my prelim task, as I have done much more research and studied more on the camera shot and the different effects that you’re able to use when I was planning on what camera shots to use instead of just using the simplest camera angles and shots. I also have become more familiar and noticed how important the location for the lighting is and what a dark misty effect would have on the audience and by darkening the colours through the editing it would have on the audience. I also used about the usage of props and how the colours would have on the effect of the audience.

I think that I successfully improved on the areas that was suggested to be needed to improve for instance the narrative and that it needed to be understood. Also I made sure that the transitions were clear and easy to follow instead of it being jumpy and confusing. I also used music in the main task which actually fitted into our sequence meaning instead of our other whole sequence which was picked at last minute. Another point we learnt on sound was that we self-recorded sounds in our main task instead of simply altering the volume of the music which didn’t seem to work as much. In the future I think I would use more of a range of camera shots and improve the lighting in darker areas. I could also improve and add in more interested effects instead of using the simple effects so it would make it more interested to watch for the audience.

 

Evaluation - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

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

From the beginning of my AS course work of contracting my opening sequence I have learnt a vast amount. For instance at the beginning of the project I knew about camera a little bit as a take AS photography but I didn’t know about a lot of the other equipment for instance of course in photography you use a camera but you don’t record so I learnt about how to record and move with the camera slowly in both tasks I also used a tripod which I do sometime use in photography but I haven’t ever came across the problem that it gets stuck in mud so this one was one problem I had to overcome whilst i was filming. Other point about the camera I learnt all the different camera shots which was a great experience for instance I got taught how to do a close up shot, wide shots, point of view shots and pan shots etc. which was really good as I knew if I wanted to make a great opening sequence I would have to involve a lot of these techniques. I also learnt all the different camera techniques such as shot reverse shot which is a basic technique to use during a conversation between two people, I didn’t use this technique exactly in our sequence as I didn’t use much dialogue between two people. I also learnt how to use the tripod to steady the camera which would therefore keep the came straight on uneven ground for a panning shot. As well as all of that whilst constructing our opening I also learnt that I needed to not only just record one time of a shot as we realised that when we got our filming on the editing software I wasn’t always happy with the outcome so learnt to record a lot of different versions.

Another piece of equipment which I used throughout the process of producing my thriller movie was a flip camera. This was used in order to record the sounds in my movie for instance the dialogue was recorded separately in order to be able to hear it clearer and louder over the music which was played through our opening sequence. Another example which we used a flip camera to produce sounds was the breathing of the man; this was recorded to add tension and add enigmatic to the man’s presence.
As well as camera work I also learnt some on the short cuts on the editing software to allow us to speed up the editing process as at the start of our course none of my group had used the editing software before so we didn’t know what I was exactly doing but after the prelim task and our first attempt of making an sequence we eventually got the grasp of things for instance how to add and cut sounds clips to get them in time with the rest of the movie and how to alter the sounds to make them quieter when dialogue was being used. Also I learnt how to overlay texts and titles onto the movie to give information which I created on software. From practise I finally got use to the editing software and toward the end I found it easy to cut and trim clip with the correct timings so that it would run smoothly which showed me that we had come on and learnt a lot, I also learnt how to use transitions effects for instance such as cross dissolves and fades to soften and switch from one shot to another so it didn’t look unstable. Below was our final editing strip when we had finished our sequence.

Evaluation - How did you attract/address your audience?

As I’ve already mentioned we carried out a survey which is one type of research we did to find what target audience we wanted as we asked a group of people what their favourite thrillers was from the selection given and grouped them in different genders and age groups, from that we realised who preferred horror films to action thriller films and questioned them on which location was suitable for thriller films as we really wanted to choose the right location as we thought we didn’t do this for our first attempt which was ‘Lost but Found’. Another type of research we did was that we watched other thrillers including, Taken, Seven and Casino Royale and grasped onto which made a good opening sequence for instance the dramatic music was one massive point which made us want to find a great piece of sound. After completely our final film we shared it to a numerous of peer and got feedback which was great as from that we knew what worked really well and what didn’t. It was a great feeling when we got good feedback from our target audience and that they enjoyed the film as from that we knew it was successful. They all agreed that our music worked really well and our self-recorded sounds was a great idea as you could hear them much clearer in comparison to when we filmed ‘Lost but Found’ we didn’t do any other recording of sounds so you could hear dialogue as much.

The Two thriller movies which my group mainly focused and was inspired by were ‘The Happening’ and ‘Taken’.  Both of these movies involved a tragic and horrible outcome of crisis which both involved a child which my thriller does also. I found that on

e way that my movie addressed the audience well was through the choice of the cast and characters. For instance a good thriller movie which I researched sometime involved young children to attract the audience through the innocence of a character, for instance in ‘Taken’ the young girl gets kidnapped after doing nothing wrong and the audience may have thought that the young girl was being punished for other people’s expenses. I have found that audiences normally attach themselves the young children in thriller movies and root for them to live and not get hurt, this was one reason why we chose to include young children as our characters as we thought that it would help to address the audience.

Another way we addressed the audience was through our location. We chose to set our opening scenes at a park as the park is scene to be a normal and warm location where young children are normally seen to play and have fun in comparison to where crises happen. The happening also includes scenes in their opening sequences where the location is a park (Central Park, which is shown in the image below).

 

 I thought that by taking a normal and welcoming location and tuning in into a mysterious and spooky location would be a great way to address the audience as they could feel shocked and worried. For instance a park is where children like to play and have fun not where young children are kidnapped and taken. We was able to as a group transform a fun an normal location to a mysterious and  cagey location by altering the lighting and colours and by also adding in sounds in the backing track to make the scene add tension. The two sounds of music we used was ‘http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynjmWX9rw7Q’ and ‘http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtDHnBh3ikE’ which was found on YouTube by typing is mysterious and wary music.

 

Evaluation - Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided to aim our target audience at a mixed gender aged between 15-30 for people who are interested in thriller films. Our genre is thriller and by researching into thriller films we was able to use similar techniques and camera shots in our films also which created a much more successful thriller opening. To find out our target audience I carried out a questionnaire to help find out specifically who was interested in thriller films. For further research we also showed some people a selection of horror movies and asked which one they preferred, this helped us a lot. Another bit of research we also researched other famous thrillers and analysed them. I think 15 is the youngest age who would be interested in our product as we wouldn't want to scare them as the location is at a park and younger children may be scarred of the park after watching our film. But on the other hand I don’t think people older 30 would be interested in our media product as they could see it to be boring as it's not that scary in comparison to movies which are out at the minute such as Saw movies and paranormal activity etc. I think that our target audience wouldn't be similar to seven as I wouldn't find that 15 year old would understand the film as it is quite confusing to follow but on the other hand I find that taken would have similar target audience as the opening location is a young girls birthday and our film also involved children as well.

Evaluation - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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

 

 

For my AS media course I had to complete an opening sequence to a thriller. I have realised that an opening title sequence is a very important part of a film as it has the job to grab the attention of the audience in order to keep them watching the whole film. From research my group and I realised how much planning was needed to do this as not only was there a narrative you had to plan but also sounds, the titles and mise-en-scene.

I find that our opening titles show many challenging forms and conventions of real media products. For instance we included point of view shots and panning movements to help identify what a character is looking at helping the audience understand the characters point of view and feelings and a panning shot is used to follow a character as he is riding his bike along an establishing shot. The effect of this was to get the audience to follow the character and almost care for him and to make the audience feel almost as they’re there with the characters and I find that these two types of camera shots worked really well because I feel that the point of view shot from the man on the swing helped the audience see the bigger picture by putting the audience in the characters shoes making it even more mysterious.

 

Also editing shows many conventions of a real media product as it uses editing, a form used in our sequence is transitions for instance. Transitions are used between shots to make the shots come together smoother and making the outcome not jumpy. An example of this was when we included a cross dissolve transition to put together a shot of the young lad ans the swing which is shown on the left in the screen shot, this helps drive suspense. The effect to the audience was to be that the title sequence is easy to follow as for our first attempt which was ‘Lost but Found’ we realised that our dissolve transitions didn’t work with the narrative so we also had to take this into consideration. But we found that our transitions such as cross dissolves worked really well as our target audience said that the outcome was very smooth and easy to follow.

Sound also help show conventions of a real product because we used a backing track which played pretty much throughout the whole sequence. We involved sound to hopefully create suspense and tension throughout the film; we hoped to also do this by altering the volume of it to also add more mystery suspense. We were overall impressed with our sound as we noticed that the strange music went with the plot. We also involved titles, which is another convention to a real media product. The narrative of our titles was to inform the audience of the actors and the different people who played a role in making the sequence. We hoped that the titles would also drive tension as we added many effects onto them, which added even more anxiety, and after showing our target audience they agreed with us and said the effects definitely added tension.

Our whole sequence also involved a narrative which is another form and conventions of a real media product to help set the scene of our narrative we used establishing shots to establish the scene and location for instance to establish that the location was in fact on a park we helped show this through not only establishing shots but point of view shots as well. This is shown above in the screen shot. Establishing shots are used in many opening sequences to help set the scene and point out to the audience where they are in fact this is shown also in the film taken which i shown in the print screen above.  The effect we hoped for this was that the audience would know where the location was and they could add tension by using their own imagination and we found that the outcome was impressive as our audience agreed that it helped show the narrative. We also used mise-en-scene which is another convention of a real media product for instance we used dark colours for the clothing of the man which helped represent danger and threat which helped cause suspicion for the audience.