Our Opening

Alex Franck - Question 7

From looking at our preliminary task, I have learnt that it is a big step up in change of editing and making sure that every shot counts. There can not be any mistakes in our final product.
We used more sophisticated camera techniques in our final product than we did in our preliminary task. A tracking shot is a wheeled platform that is pushed on rails while the picture is being taken.

In our preliminary task we used the 180 degree rule in our shots. This is a basic guideline in film making that says that two characters (or other props) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.

Alex Franck - Question 6

Alex Franck - Question 5

Alex Franck - Question 4

We decided to make our film a 15-18 certification product and to be for both male and females because they are representations of both sexes in out film sequence. Anyone in our selected age group would be able to understand the film but there are some parts that younger viewers may find distressing.

 

Alex Franck - Question 3

Lionsgate is the media institution that we chose as our product distributor. They are well known as producing and distributing Psycological thrller movies. So we decided that it would be our best choice for a distributor of our product.

Alex Franck - Question 2

Villain – We used a teacher to represent this group. He is ambiguous because he is wearing normal clothes and he does not portray villainous traits.

 
Femme Fetal – We used a school girl to represent this character. Using innocence.
 
Detective. A school boy is represented as the detective. The boy is dressed smartly, so the audience could maybe think that he was the detective.



In our opening sequence, it is hard for the viewer to know which personalities and traits that our characters are portrayed as having. They are ambiguous.

Alex Franck - Question 1

Our media product challenge forms and conventions of real media products by the way that instead of using corn syrup as blood, we used.

We watch many different open sequences of Psychological Thrillers so that we got a wider range in idea for what we could make our product like.

For the setting we were very limited in where we could shoot. We were only allowed to shoot in school because the Media Production equipment didn’t belong to use, they are the school property and if any of them got damaged or stolen then we would have had to replace them.

The characters that we used are typical of that from a psychological thriller, as they are ambiguous. The open scene to our product makes it confusing, because the viewer who the character walking down the stairs is. Femme fatale is how we represent the school girl. This type if character is strange because when you see her, you (as the viewer) are trying to place her in the film, but from that scene you are not 100% sure so you want to keep watching to see where she fits in.

We used many different forms of editing, when the person is walking down the stairs, you see their legs as being out of focus then as the scene progresses he moves to being in focus.

Rana Refaei- Question 6 what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Rana Refaei- Question 6 what have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? on Prezi

Rana Refaei- Question 5 How did your attract your audience?

We attracted our target audience by having character types that are the same age as our audience but different to that particular age group (teenage femme fetal, teenage detective boy and teacher who is a villain). Because our audience are teenagers some of our actors portrayed the part of a young student like most of our audience are.
Our setting is the place our audience would see mostly in their daily lives.

We didn’t really refer to thriller genre conventional characters which we thought would be a good unique selling point. our setting was also not thriller conventional as we do not see many thrillers set in school.

Rana Refaei- Question 4 Who would be the audience for your media product

We decided that our target audience are both females and males as this film relates to both males and females. Our audience will mostly be teenagers from 15-18 as our story is set in a school and our main characters are students. Our age certificate is 15 + as our film will contain sexual scenes, strong language and violence.

Rana Refaei- Question 3 What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

lions gate is the media institution that we chose to distribute our product as they distribute independent films, and the have distributed thrillers, they have just revealed the poster for an upcoming thriller called the devils double

Rana Refaei- Question 2 how does your media produce represent a particular social group ?

Question 2 how does your media produce represent a particular social group ? on Prezi

Rana Refaei- Question 1 in what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

Question 1 in what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products on Prezi

Rashida Dixon-Question 7

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

When we did the preliminary task it was very difficult for us to use the equipment properly and editing clips was confusing at first as none of us had used iMovie before. We did learn that inter-cutting between scenes helps to speed up the action without having to use jump cuts.

In the preliminary task we used shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180 rule. Practicing this was important as we incorporated match on action and the 180 rule in our final product. we did not used shot reverse shot because it wasn't needed as our characters did not have a conversation. The 180 rule was very important when we were switching from POV shot. we even used this rule in our final product, i think we done this successfully

We also used a range of different shot which we didn't use in our preliminary such as close-ups and point of view shots. In our preliminary we didn’t use tracking shots; we found it difficult to follow a moving object so to solve that problem we decided to use the tracking shot to introduce the setting that the characters were in. In our preliminary we used the tripod to create steady shots however this wasn’t always the effect that we were looking for in our final product so we incorporated a hand held shot.

We found that the sound quality was very good in our preliminary. This help to aid our decision to not used diegetic sound throughout our media product. When we first edited the preliminary we weren’t aware you could manipulate the volume of the sound however in our final product we took advantage of this. Editing was easier and we incorporated different transition such as dissolves into our final product to help make the transition between shot more interesting and to link the shot which seem to have no relation.

Annotated video

Rashida Dixon-Question 6

What have you learnt about technology from the process of the constructing this product? on Prezi

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Rashida Dixon-Question 5

5.How did your attract your audience?

We attracted our audience by using themes in which they were unable to relate to or which are written about in the news a lot. Because our audience are teenagers some of our actors portrayed the part of a young student like most of our audience are. The storyline of the teacher having an affair with a student attracts a younger audience more because it the sense of something forbidden.

The storyline also attract students because the situations are an extreme portrayal of something that they don't want to happen to them. The audience pay to watch their fears being portrayed on the screen in the safety of their homes/ cinema, this is what attracts our audience to our psychological thriller.

We also made sure that our opening quickly drags the audience in by showing the 'dead girl on the floor. The opening sequence makes people aware that that it was not an accident and this helps to keep our audience intrigued as they want a solution to the mystery. The sense of mystery and something forbidden is our selling point in our media product.

The lack of dialog also drags the audience in as they are left with lots of unanswered questions about who the characters are and their relationship to each other. They have to play a kind of detective role while watching the movie, this helps them stay alert and interested.

Rashida Dixon-Question 4

4. Who would be your audience for your media project?

We decided that the rating for our film is going to be 15+ as most we believe this is appropriate for our film as it contains violence (for example murder) sexual and imitable behavior (for example swearing) which The theme of our media product (student teacher relationship) is not appropriate for children under 15.

Our target audience is both male and female mostly students as they are more likely to go out and go to the movies. The storyline of our film relates to them as it is set in a school with characters who are as young as they are.

Our Target audience are people who enjoy watching independent films. They will appreciated the sound quality and the picture quality of our media product whereas an mainstream audience would like a better quality image and sound, they would also prefer to see special effect in the film which our film doesn't supply. The indie (independent) audience like when things have the home made feel. We believe that our product would most likely be appreciated by an independent audience. The theme of our media product will more likely interest the indie audience as it isn't too complex and maze like.

Rashida Dixon-Question 3

3.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Lions gate entertainment is our chosen distributor as they have done films such as American psycho which is also an psychological thriller. We believe that this is the perfect distributor as they do a range of different types of films and they are well known throughout the world. So this will enable our film to be sold throughout the world. It is also well know for distributing independent films as our film is an independent film this is very important.

We also considered to using momentum pictures as an distributor as it is well know independent film distributor in the UK and Ireland however they aren't well known for distributing Psychological thrillers so we decided to go with Lions Gate instead.

Rashida Dixon-Question 2

2.How does your media product represents a particular group?

People’s general idea of a school girl is that they are young and innocent. We tried to portray her in the stereotypical way by making our character dress in school uniform as this helps the audience identify with the character as they are of a similar age. We have made her seem like the victim in the first extract, this is a typical view that young girls are the target for criminal. Young girls who are targeted by criminals are normally portrayed as a normal teenager who was living a good life until they were killed or hurt for example Milly Dowler. We portrayed this by showing the young girl 'having fun' with the male teacher which is a contrast with the situation she is in at the start of our media product. We would have gone on to challenge the view that young girls are innocent victims by showing her manipulative personality.

We have a Male teacher in our product. There are many stereotypical views of male teachers and we concentrated on the extreme stereotype; that male teachers have ulterior motive for being a teacher which is to be around young people so that they are able to manipulate them. There is also extreme view that male teachers are tend to be more maternal than other male because teaching is considered a “female” job. Most male teachers are portrayed negatively in the media; they are normally villainous or portrayed as someone with a secret (most of the time the secret is that they are having relations with a student). They are also portrayed as paranoid in some show as they are aware that the danger of getting too close to a student could cost them their job. Our media product plays on the idea of teacher student relationship by making the teacher seem in control of the whole situation which in part makes the female character (the student) look innocent and naive. This make the audience put all the blame toward our male character as they see him as an authority figure taking advantage of someone without any power.

Rashida Dixon- Question 1

1.In what way does your media product used, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Before we began our project we did some research. We gave out questionnaires and then collected the information to help us decide what we were going to do in our media project. We also watched some psychological thrillers to get an idea of key things about the character, setting and sound that we needed to incorporate into our on psychological thriller.

Setting

We had to consider what we could or couldn't incorporate into our media project, because of restriction on where we were able to shoot we had to either find places around the school that didn't resemble the school or we could shoot in the school. Our result from our market research had shown us that majority of the people liked psychological thriller shot in school so we decided to base our opening sequence in the school; we then built our ideas around this. The opening sequence establishes the setting. The fact that the thriller is set in a school gives the idea of the norms being disrupted which is very conventional of a psychological thriller; this also enables the audience to identify with the characters and themes. Not many Psychological thrillers are set in schools as they tend to be set in a home environment.

Characters

Our characters are to some extent typical of a psychological thriller as they are ambiguous; the opening sequence makes it confusing about what to think about the characters this is conventional of psychological thrill for example Blood Simple. The school girl represents a femme-fatale character. This type of character is an archetype of psychological thrillers; we tried to imply that her relationship with the other character by the use of body language. Body language is very important when portraying a femme-fatale character. She is dressed in school uniform to give the idea that she is young and naive girl in a forbidden relationship this is unconventional of a femme-fatale character as they are normally dressed very seductive; this contradicts the typical way femme-fatale are usally dressed which tend to be seductive. We also have a villainous/corrupted character; we chose to make him a teacher as male teachers are portrayed negatively in the media. The male character is in a way like a detective character you see in some psychological thrillers, we portray this by focusing on him snooping through the classroom; he isn't dressed like a conventional detective character however his actions are quite conventional of a detectives.

Convention Characters

1. Femme-fatel

2.villainous/ corrupted

3.Detective

Mise-en-scene

We used both coloured and black and white to show the difference between the past and the present; this is very common in psychological thrillers for example in Momento. It also helps to confuse the audience about the order the events should come in.

Camera

We used a lot of close ups to help confused the audience of who the characters are, it is also used to draw the audience attention to certain details that we wanted to highlight. This is a convention of psychological thrillers as it helps to create confusion about an object or person. It is also used to draw the persons attention to something specific, we used the close ups to emphasize the body language of the characters and show facial expression. We also used a lot of mid shots to establish the setting.

Editing

We decided to stick with black and white for our title as we thought that using any other type of colour would take away from the action going on. We decided to uses lions gate entertainment as they have distributed psychological films such as American psycho. We used dissolves to help to link scenes together this is conventional of psychological thriller as it leaves the audience disorientated about what is really going on in a sequence.

Preliminary task

Preliminary task

Se7en

The opening of Se7en creates and sense of mystery and tension. The audience isn't aware of who the character is because of the use of extreme close-ups. The editing distorts the images to give the idea of being inside a psychopath's head . The music also aids the images to create discomfort.

Editing:

• quick cuts in the sequence allowing it to show many different items , this makes it difficult for the audience to take in everything at once which adds to the discomfort.
• There are flashed to what looks like images which are related to what the character is doing.

Camera:

• Close-ups are used to exaggerate the characters action and make the audience well aware of the action of the character.

Editing:

• we aren't aware fully if what the character is doing as the camera flashed between different 'activities'.
• there seems to be images laid on top of each other which makes it difficult to tell which image is real.

Mise-en-scene:

• The lighting is used to create shadow which gives the idea of a hidden.
• Flashes of red makes the audience feel more uncomfortable as it signify blood.
• The fingers gives the audience an idea that the main character is cruel and horrid.

Sound:

• Sound is distorted and it gives the impression of someone screaming.
• The music develops as the sequence ends.
• We hear a voice at the end of the sequences however it is difficult to understand what it is saying.

Memento

the opening scene of memento creates tension as we see a picture that gradually disappears. we are then introduced to a character. we see blood all over the place and items. then we are introduced to a second character who gets shot.

Camera Shots:

• close up of picture of blood on wall creates tension as we want to know how that blood got there
• man's hand visible in the close up of the picture creates tension as we want to know who this person is.
• close up of blood dripping down
• close up of glasses in covered
• close up of first character makes him seem as the villain
• close up of the second character's back of head makes him seem that he is the victim
• close up of camera and man's face hiding behind it makes us want to know who this person is
• close ups are also used to show the characters facial expression.
• close up of bullet

Sound:

• the music is gradually building creating tension
• we can hear the flapping of the picture

Edit:

• the use of rewinding starts the story off.

Treatment and Planning

TREATMENT:

Smith has a perfect life; an amazing son (Sean) and an adoring wife (Rachel) who he married after he lost his first wife and mother of his son in a fire. Sean and Rachel's relationship hasn't been very good as Sean doesn't see Rachel as a suitable replacement for his mother.

Smith is a very popular and a well known teacher at the school that Sean is attending and he is having an affair with his son's girlfriend Emma. Emma decides that she wants to end the relationship and threatens to reveal the nature of their relationship if he doesn't leave her alone. This results in her being pushed down the stairs. Sean finds Emma on the floor; she then tells him about the nature of her relationship with Smith. Sean vows to her that he will get revenge.

Sean reveals everything to Rachel, Rachel then discovers that Smith has a record of affairs that have ended with the woman going missing or dying. Rachel becomes aware of the pattern of her husband's relationships and she knows that she could be next. Rachel and Sean's relationship becomes stronger as they realise that Smith has been the cause of the friction between them. Sean confronts his dad about all the evidence that they have found out about his hidden persona, Smith then tries to attack Sean. Rachel tries to protect Sean which results in the death of Smith.

STORY BOARD:

Before we began filming we had to make a plan of what our sequence was going to look like on storyboard. We planned what how we were going to edit our different scenes together and how long it was going to last. Even though we didn't end up doing our final in exactly the same way we planned to do it in our storyboard, planning however did help us to have an idea of what we need to record.

LOCATION SHOTS:

We needed to make sure that we found the right location for our film in advance. We decided to shoot in the school because it was in the school we had to shoot while no one was in the corridor(during lesson time and after school).

SOUND:

We decided not to have any diegetic sound so we have background music that kept the audience interested in the image.

Market Research

Majority of the participants preferred R&B music. Even though this genre of music isn’t suitable for the soundtrack of a psychological thriller it can however be added as diegetic music. So someone could be watching TV with music on or be listening to it.  The themes can also be based around R&B (lifestyle, dress sense ect).

 

Surfing the internet was the most popular hobby for the participants. This tells us that we need to incorporate the internet somewhere within our thriller.

For the question referring to the preferred setting in a psychological thriller the majority of the participants preferred the setting to be in a school. We can incorporate this into our film by basing our story around a school environment. We could also incorporate some of the other popular setting such as the woods-in order to please a range of our audience.