Evaluation Question 1 (Jack)

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

I believe the opening to our thriller successfully creates tension and raises various questions as to why a sense of normality is conveyed in the first few moments of our opening. In my opinion, our intro does conform to the stereotypical thriller genre, seen through the thriller conventions that we used in our final product, typically found in thriller movies.

Our opening conforms to traditional thrillers by having the production company logo presented in the first five seconds, like most real production logos (ie Universal, Dreamworks and 20th Century Fox). Our company logo is simple yet professional, the name of our company in combination with a stick figure being translucent, on top of a time lapse of stormy clouds looks sharp and a step above using a simple solid logo on a plain background. The use of dark, dull colours may reflect the mood of our opening also. The name 'Escape', to slip away from pursuit or peril, can be associated with the thriller theme as it is meant to be shocking and eerie. 

We used a variety of different techniques making it clear that our opening was of the thriller genre and understandable for the audience. Through these conventions, an eerie atmosphere was presented.

We aimed to shock the audience and make them feel uneasy through the camera angles used in our opening. The unusual mid shown used was from the point of view of the mirror, and can be compared to the shaving scene in 'Royal Tenenbaums', it was used to grab the attention of those watching as the character looks straight into, out and past the audience, like they would be when looking at them self in a mirror. Through our opening, we aimed to make our persona feel foreign to the viewer, leaving them suspicious of what the man is about; why he's shaving? why he's wearing a suit? and why his knuckles are bruised?

We also used panning shots, revealing the whereabouts of the persona and his living conditions. After clearing the living room set, to make the cleanliness of the room somewhat bizarre for a man of that age. The panning shot in the opening to 'Inside Man' is used to establish the character and the setting of the movie, like ours which we use to establish where the man lives, giving a small background to the man.

The use of montage editing to condense time, space and information, is used in other thrillers where certain moments are focused on to inform the viewer in a small period of time. We used two layers of film simultaneously alongside each other to help present a bigger picture of what was happening, a good example of a film which uses this technique is 'Se7en'. Our opening was successful in this sense as we condensed the man's preparation of himself into small clips, which we put together in combination with transitions for a montage effect. Therefore the opening did not necessarily have to be in chronological order as through montage editing, we are able to get a grasp of what is happening.

The use of mirrors was also powerful, usually used to create a sense of claustrophobia and reflection of one's inner self. Mirrors were used in our opening to create a sense of unease as the character carried out a normal task, an example of a good use of mirrors is the film 'Mirrors'. We aimed to present another side to our character by using the mirror as a reflection of the 'darkness possessed within' and we did this though the camera acting as the mirror and the actor looking into it.

We decided to have the title of our film come at the end of our opening as we found it to be more effective than having it at the very beginning. Or research found that many other films do the same thing, not only because this is the opening of the film and the title introduces to the audience that the film is about to begin, but also because it is hard hitting and an effective way to make the title of the film memorable, especially in a thriller when stopping before an exciting point in the intro to make the audience want more or a horror where the intro is building up to a big shock or scare and the title breaks up the film, to also make the audience want to watch more.

 

Frame 1 creates an unpleasant atmosphere by creating a one on one sense with the viewer. The viewers attention is caught and this was done on purpose to create tension and unease. The connection between the persona and the people watching is a questionable one, which leaves the audeince to decide whether they think the character is good or bad, this question may leave them unsure, which inturn creates suspense, wondering what this character will do in the film.

Frame 5's panning shot across the clean living room reveals the whereabouts of the persona and his living conditions. We wanted to hint at the persona's lonliness through these panning shots which establish the setting, and dont reveal any other characters, suggesting he lives on his own.

Frame 6 reveals futher ideas of the plot, suggesting the man is preparing to go out, and what the man is wearing could also reveal the class and nature of the persona. Wearing a suit and tie, and classy watch may infer the man is quite well off, and his preparation is for something uimportant. This raises questions and draws the viewer in as they want more to be revealed.

Evaluation Question 2 (Jack)

Evaluation question 3 (Jack)

Evaluation Question 4 (Jack)

During post-production, we deiced which age and gender we were aiming to produce our film for, 15 and above, up to the age of 48 and male or female audience. We chose 15 as the youngest age rating due to the research we carried out during pre production which told us that 15+ audience would want to watch a thriller and are willing to go out to the cinema and buy a ticket to watch a thriller film. Another reason why our film is targeted between the younger ages of 15- 25 is because we have found out that this age group are most likely to have free time available giving them an opportunity to go out and watch a film. 

In our previous research, during pre production, we used a questionnaire, given to a variety of  ages asking them to describe a type of films they liked and if they liked the thriller genre. Most ages responded positively, with the majority of the people asked saying they enjoyed thrillers, therefore an appropriate age range would be 15- 48.

We also took a small focus group out and asked them to react to a thriller trailer, then interviewed them on the type of movies they enjoyed and whether thrillers appealed to them. The group were on the lower end of the age bracket at 15 years old, and the group reacted positively to the trailer, describing their love for the genre. Many of them said that this was their favourite genre and how they had watched plenty of films which surprised us slightly as we then questioned whether the lower bracket of 15 was young enough. We were reassured through other groups revealing that the thriller genre wasn't always their favourite and the ones that they had watched were full of action rather than suspense, like our thriller opening. 

The older of the people research described their passion for the thriller genre, despite ideas that this wouldn't be the case. Therefore not including people up to this age would've gone against our research, so a rating of 15+ would be perfect for our thriller opening.

Evaluation Question 5 (Jack)

Evaluation Question 6 (Jack)

Evaluation Question 1 (Dylan)

In what ways does your media product (film opening) use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products (film openings)?

In the bathroom scenes we used a medium close up of our protagonist to put the focus on him shaving. Throughout the film opening we incorporated still shots and pans to establish the location and also give a sense of calm and serenity.

In order to conform to traditional film openings we created our own original production logo which is seen at the very start of our film. Like most real production logos

we chose to animate our logo by putting it behind a time lapse of stormy clouds and making it slightly translucent so that it would not appear amateur as opposed to just fading a solid white logo onto a black screen.

Our logo was inspired by an escape sign you would usually see on the top of any escape exit, the reason for choosing this was because the name of our company. The name of our production company itself was chosen as we believe the plot of most films (especially thrillers and horrors) is to get away from someone or something so it seemed to fit perfectly. The reason we chose to use clouds is because a large majority of production companies seem to use them, example of these companies include; Warner Bros, LIONSGATE, DreamWorks, and TRISTAR.

At first we decided to put the title of the film at the start of the opening but we chose to leave it until the end as it is something that most film-makers have not done. This was a risky decision but if the film was to continue you would see that our main protagonist is actually the one playing the piano which is heard throughout the opening sequence creating a smooth transition to the main film.

The colours used in the opening sequence are dark and cold which is typical of a thriller as brighter warmer colours would automatically change the film from a thriller to a more light hearted film such as a comedy.

Our film is based on a short story about a serial killer who has 100 days to live and in those 100 days plays a sick and twisted game where he plans to kill a girl each night until he dies. Our film opening sets up the plot of the story by establishing the protagonist as an ordinary man who cares about his appearance and is later revealed as a psychopath. In the opening, we chose to focus primarily on our character shaving as it is a basic task that every man is familiar and can often be associated with preparing for a special occasion i.e. meeting a girl.

Evaluation Question 2 (Dylan)

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation Question 3 (Dylan)

Evaluation Question 4 (Dylan)

Evaluation Question 5 (Dylan)

How did you attract/address your audience?

For our thriller we used posters to bring attract our audience as it is the oldest yet most effective form of advertising.

Posters can be seen:

At bus stops 

On billboards

In tube stations

On the side of buses

In train stations

Everywhere you go there is a huge possibility that you will see a poster in some shape or form.

For our film poster we took inspiration from Inception, because of its bold writing, Fifty Shades of grey as it suggests violence from the likes of upper class men, and The Great Gatsby as it shows sophistication without hinting what our film would be about.

  

Our film poster would look something like this with the words HUNDRED

in bold white writing. The poster would also include the name of the actor Sam Conway and the date of release followed by the credits at the bottom.

Evaluation Question 6 (Dylan)

Evaluation Question 7 (Dylan & Jack)

Evaluation 1

Evaluation 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Main Features of our character:
Male
Caucasian
Middle Classed
Trendy hair cut

Adult

Mise en Scene:

Our character starts the opening by wearing a white vest which is a piece of clothing that a typical middle classed teen would wear under his clothes or when he is getting ready to go out.

Later on in the opening the character changes his costume to a  black and white suit. This also is a typical piece of clothing that adults would wear when they are going out of a meal or going out to see someone special.

His  hair is a trendy but smart hairstyle to portray that the character is much like a typical Caucasian adult. We did this on purpose as we did not want to give away too much to the audience about our character.

Our character has black hair which is a common hair colour. This helped us not give away allot about the character.

We tried not to give away to much of our character persona away in the opening to create suspense and make our audience want to watch on to find out if this character is a hero or villain.

During our research we found out that 15-34 year old really like watching thrillers so on that we based our opening to suit the preference of that age group. I think we did perfectly to suit there preference to an opening as the music we used in our opening suit both old and young people. Another reason why music was so effective was how it complimented each scene in our opening fitting perfectly as if it was composed for the opening.

Our character looks similar to the character from "American Psycho" Patrick Bateman who is a psychopathic killer who kills people using an axe and enjoys it. The audience of "American Psycho" would love our film as both films would be similar but ours with have a twist to who the victims would be. 

Evaluation 3

Evaluation 4

 Who would be the audience for your media product? Include audience feedback

During our post-production stage we deiced that out film would be aimed at 15 and above male/female audience. We chose 15 due from our research during post production which told us that 15+ audience would want to watch a thriller and are willing to go out to the cinema and buy a ticket to watch a thriller film. Another reason why our film is targeted at 15+ is because we have found out that this age group are the most likely age group to have free time on there hands which would give them a perfect opportunity to go out and watch this film. In our previous research we used a questionnaire that was given to a variety of  ages asking them what type of films they like and if they like the thriller genre or not and most of them came back saying yes from 15+ age group. This resulted in us doing a research post on what we could include in a 15 movie and what we could not (this can be seen below)

From the guidelines of the BBFC it told us that if we want to make our film have an age rating of 15 we have to follow the following rules or else our film opening would not get the age rating that we want it to have. During our research we looked at films such as Psycho, Rear Window and North by North West as these were popular thriller films that were watched by 15+ age group and tried to figure our why they were so popular. Which lead us to find out that our target audience loves suspense and not knowing the whole plot of the movie in the opening sequence, which made them want to carry on watching. 

Through our research and our own knowledge of the thriller genre, I think that we have made a good opening that would hit our target audience and make then want to see the whole film. In addition we have also followed the guidelines given to us from the BBFC that tells us what our film should have and not have to clacifi it as an 15 film.

Evaluation 5

Evaluation 6

Evaluation 7

FINAL AS MEDIA OPENING- HUNDRED

HUNDRED AS Media first draft evaluation

 
This was our first draft for our final opening for our AS media. Audience feedback told us this opening looks professional for a thriller film, they gave us mixed reactions. Some were expecting more from the opening while others were pleased. However most people told us that the music played throughout, and during our production and distribution company logo, did not fit in. In Addition we were told that the directors name should not appear at the end of the opening. Although the director's name stands out at the end, it would have been better placed during the opening minute, in front of other roles in the making of the film, as it would fit in with the other titles and the opening in general.

We took this on board and changed the correction which had been made in our final cut for the opening. Furthermore,  we were complimented on the way that we did not use that many different shoots and angles in the opening, as this made it look professional, and although the lack of other shots and angles may have restricted our variation which could have been criticised, it kept the audience focused on the man shaving and built suspense and harmony.

Raw Footage

Film Preparation

Location - Ben Conway's Bathroom and Living Room

The location was chosen as it is an ideal setting for our plot. The bathroom mirror is situated directly above the sink which allows us to capture the provocative expression of the protagonist whilst he shaves. The majority of the filming takes place in the bathroom as we intended to focus the intro mainly on our protagonist shaving as it is an everyday task which is so simple but can be interpreted as dark and sinister when put into the context of the film. The size of the bathroom also allowed us to manoeuvre the camera into various positions such as a mirror POV shot and an aerial shot of the bath. We also plan on using the living room as it is the last room our character was in and reveals glimpses of the plot without giving it away.

Props - Razor, Laptop, Radio

In the bathroom scene will be using a bog standard razor as we want to give the impression that our protagonist is an ordinary guy but secretly a psychopath. For the living room scene we will be using a laptop showing a screenshot of a dating website to highlight the fact that the protagonist is looking for new women as part of his game (revealed later in the film). We will also be using a radio in the living room scene to establish the source of the music playing in the background.

Actor - Sam Conway

Our protagonist will be played by Sam Conway. The reason we chose Sam is because he is similar in age to the character and is able to grow a beard, making him the perfect candidate for our film.

Music - Beethoven's Moonlight sonata - Evaluation

We needed to make sure that the music we wanted to use was copyright free. The music we chose to use, Beethoven's moonlight sonata, was found and downloaded through the youtube audio library, which allows the songs to be downloaded for commercial use. Evidence has been provided.

We chose to use a different piece of music to which we originally wanted to use. The previous piece of music, played by Karen Conway, wasn't eerie enough for our opening. Our opening needed a piece of music which successfully created tension but raised various questions as to why a sense of normality is conveyed in the first few moments of our opening, which was done through adding a classical piece by Beethoven. The addition of the music works well with our opening, classical music is old and wouldn't usually be played in this day and age, by adding this and not modern music, we captured a slightly intimidating feel, as the music could be associated with knowledge and intelligence. This can be intimidating because the more a person knows, the more of an advantage they will have over another person. The music can also be identified as mysterious and unnerving through association with bad imagery or it can subvert expectations so that apparent innocent music curdles into evil.  

Thriller piano music- Attempt 1

The piece of music we recorded, played by Karen Conway on the piano, was our first attempt at a piece of music to accompany our thriller opening. We have decided that this may not be the best piece because the tune is too jolly and doesn't work with the thriller theme. We wanted a piece to throw the viewer although this may not have been the best idea because it doesn't work. We may use another piece which could compliment the spookiness of the intro, which would be needed to show the theme.

Planning Post: Costume

Costumes can play a big part in the audience's perception of a character.  They can reveal or conceal certain details about characters.

Main Character Costume: Our main character is a suave, 20 year old male preparing for a night out with a female. One of the main actions throughout the production will be him shaving off his beard. Whilst shaving he'll be wearing a white vest and suit trousers. There will be a jump cut depicting the male putting on a suit jacket which will be black. The fact that he'll be wearing a suit suggests he's a stylish character and wants to impress the lady he's going to see.  However under the suit is a serial killer. I believe the suit and freshly shaved beard will do well to conceal this and will not make the audience suspect anything.

Mood Board

Mood board from stacio965

Animatic

3 Point Lighting Technique

Storyboard