Soundtrack (unfinished)

In our thriller Evito we decided not to use a soundtrack. This was because our thriller didnt seem to fit having it, the long periods of silence that stayed as a result of having no soundtrack made it more enigmatic and creepy, it creates an unsettling feeling while watching it, making it feel more realistic. The errie silence that is created works perfectly with our thriller and the genre in general.

Q2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Men: In our thriller men are represented as both weak and strong. This seems odd as most films like to show men as being dominant, mainly over women. However this stereotype does not apply to our thriller as there are no female characters. Never the less the stereotype of men being predatory still lies within our thriller, one character is clearly more powerful and is following the other one with harmful intentions.
Class: Class could be argued to be represented in our thriller. The two characters obviously are from different classes based upon their clothing, our thriller could be seen as the upper class looking down and being more dominant than the lower class, Gerhard representing lower class and Karamel as upper class, one is wearing trampy clothing while the other a suit.

Q6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this project?

Research and Planning:

For much of our research and planning we used blogger. This site enabled us to be able to share all our work to the public and each other  while also being able to take inspiration and ideas from other peoples blogs. The simple format made it easy to write and upload our work and then respond to feedback from teachers, this helps also improve our work to a higher standard. The use of blogger also meant the use of other media services as well, for example prezi. Prezi allows users to display work in a mind map format, this is useful when coming up with ideas as other users can also be invited into your prezi, this was key when coming up with ideas for props and shots when initially planning our thriller as everyone in the group could collaborate and input into it with ease. The finished product can then be embedded into a blogger post like so 

and now when this is posted everyone else can see it and possibly take influence from it to further improve on their own work.
Another great site for research and planning is youtube. If you didn't know youtube is a video social media site that allows users to upload videos and for others to watch them. This was great when planning our thrillers as we could watch other peoples work and also real media products to help influence what our thriller could be based on and what it would look like. It also gave a platform for our final products to be presented on. After this the video can be embedded onto blogger just like the prezi

it can then be viewed by everyone who checks this blog and then the cycle of influence and better quality products continues.

Production:

To film our thriller Evito we used an Canon HD camera. The benefits of using a camera like this are far more vast than just the HD quality of the footage, although this does give our final product a much more professional finish than it otherwise would. One of these benefits would be the simplicity of the camera, unlike more expensive and better quality cameras the one we used was effortless. When filming all we had to do was press record and occasionally zoom for certain shots, by having this ease with filming the whole process became smoother and the shoot took less time than it could have if a more complicated camera had been used. Another benefit also is that the camera had an attached screen which meant we could watch back footage on site and act accordingly, if a shot wasn't good enough we would know there and then and could re shoot it to the standard we want. Without this feature we would have been clueless about the quality of our raw footage and it would have been to late to re shoot if we only found out when we got back to school and watched it on a computer as our location was quite far away and would have been inconvenient.

To help store all the footage we used SD cards, these go into the camera and can be plugged into the computer and then put onto the editing software, they are light, small and very portable, this makes using them easy and they're very convenient.

Post Production:

When editing we used Adobe Premiere Pro, this software allows us to easily edit all of our footage in a non linear way, this means that any part can be edited at any point in time, this was essential when editing as if we realised something wasn't good enough or it didn't fit in our film then we could remove it even if it was at the beginning of the thriller. This meant we had full control when editing, making the whole process easier. Another benefit is the program can edit the footage and produce the HD final product, this meant that our thriller looked more professional, not only this but the software also comes with other editing tool other than just being able to move the footage into place. Some of these include colour correction and grading, this enables us to change how our raw footage looks, for example to look colder and nastier. Another option is the ability to change sound levels and to add non diegetic sound (sound effects). Having the ability to change sound levels made it so that we could make the thriller smoother and less jumpy, if one clip has loud wind noises then that clip can have that reduced as to fit the next clip, this makes the thriller flow better. Sound clips can also extended from one clip into another, this results in a seamless transition. As well as being able to edit the diegetic sound recorded on scene we can also add sound effects to further improve our work and give a more professional finish. This was effortless to do, we simply went onto a sound effect website, searched for what we required, downloaded it and then import it into Premiere, at this point we can then do what we want with it.

Q5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

For fans of scary thrillers like Se7en we added the enigma and the jumpy flash-forward scenes in an attempt to scare our audience. The enigma was achieved through the use of the mask, the lack of detail for the characters, the reasoning for the location and the unknown locations, eg: the forest and dark room. The mask kept the antagonists face hidden from view to the audience, this makes the viewer want to watch further to see if thy ever find out the true identity. The characters lack of information and back story further develops this as not much is known about our two characters or where they are, there must be a reason and also a story behind the person. This attracts audiences as it gives them a chance to not live their lives but more to be involved in someone else's, to learn about their problems and to lose yours. Both characters are also quite unrelateable to our target audience, one being higher class and the other lower.

Our opening ended on a cliffhanger, by doing thriller conventions like this we have managed to keep the familiarity of a thriller. By this I mean that there is nothing abnormal about our thriller, we have stuck to a certain structure and this means that the audience know what to expect when watching the film. This familiarity is good in all media products as it means that your target audience is wider as people like to watch the same thing over and over again. 

The font we used for the opening of our thriller suited the genre we were trying to portray, this addresses the audiences desire for the thriller they are expecting to watch, simple things like titles and, in the case of real media, DVD covers/posters, help to build the whole movie experience so it is important to get them right as to not distract the audience from the fact that they're watching a thriller, everything needs to flow accordingly, without the audience questioning it.

We targeted our thriller towards a young (teen young adult) slightly more male market, we addressed this by making our thriller verge more over to the horror scary side of thriller, the key demographic of horrors is younger and male so this helps our thriller a lot. We accomplished this by having the flash forwards to scare the viewer and the enigmatic antagonist as a way of making our thriller seem possible, like in se7en, unlike films like alien where is just made up.

Evito - Thriller Final Cut

Q3 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Q3 - What kind of media institution might

More PowerPoint presentations from Julian Popely

Q4 - Who would be the audience for your media product? (unfinished)

This is John. John is male, 19 and loves horror/thriller films like The Blair Witch Project and Friday the 13th. These films, though quite big, have all been targeted at specific audiences  unlike comedies or dramas that go to a broad target market. John enjoys small films as he feels them to be more original than money driven.

We believe that our thriller appeals to men slightly more than women, and for ages between 16 and 25, teens to young adults. It will most likely appeal to people who like smaller films, like people who go to cinema city. But also people who prefer the more jumpy horror side of the thriller genre. Below is the ratings for the blair witch project, this reinforces some of our demographic. Men, especially younger, vote it higher than any other group of people. 

Q1 - In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

When planning our thriller we were heavily influenced by The Bourne Ultimatum. In this scene many flashbacks are used to show what he is seeing in his head and how that is affecting him, we decided to do the same but with flash forwards instead. By doing this we can see who the threat is and why that is so, this also explains the reason our main protagonist starts to run faster and become more paranoid even though he has only seen the antagonist once. This helped us with our story a lot and just made the film seem to have a much larger impact.


For the location I believe ours is very similar to the style of the horror film "Eden lake", in this film two adults are chased around a forest by some violent teenagers. This film proves how creepy and isolating forests can be, if this film was set in the city then it wouldn't have the same effect as someone could come and save them, but with the forest no one can hear you call for help. Forests are also very enigmatic, cities have monuments and icon places in them, whereas a forest doesn't, you really could be anywhere, just the idea of this isolation in an unknown location is eerie.

Coming up with an idea for our antagonist was tricky as we needed it to be creepy, realistic and enigmatic. When thinking about it this way a mask seemed like the best method of doing this, the idea came from Jigsaw's mask in the film saw. As you can see these two shots are extremely similar, the use of the mask hides the persons identity while adding a chilling aura to the character. The low angle then shows them as being powerful and in charge and is also perfectly realistic as anyone could buy or make a mask like that, giving a sense or realism to the character.

But arguably the film that had the biggest impact on our thriller would be The Blair Witch Project. This film is very similar to our own, the claustrophobic shots giving a sense of loneliness and the unknown entity following them through a forest is very similar. However what the Blair witch project does differently is they never show what is following them, it's all audio and the characters reactions. This is very powerful and enigmatic  it leaves a lot to the viewers imagination, by the end of the film you're not sure if there ever was something following them. We built on this to a point leaving the ending with a cliffhanger, you want to find out what has happened instead of being left with questions.

The clothes that our protagonist wears were chosen to make it so that the viewer would build an immediate opinion on him, this can change how they view him and how they react to what happens to him. This idea was based upon the film tyrannosaur, as soon as we see his clothing we judge him even if we don't mean to, and our reactions to what happens to that character changes as well.

We took inspiration from the movie se7en and decided to include sound before any image is displayed on the screen, in se7en this is used to build an image in the viewers head before they even see any of the film, when watching se7en we first hear police sirens and this tells us all we need to know about the area and it portrays the film to a certain degree. In our thriller we used the wind of our first scene before any picture is shown to give an idea of the location while also adding a eerie sentiment to the thriller from the beginning.

The vast landscape of our first shot really emphasises the idea of loneliness, how no one can help our protagonist when there is so much to get lost in, it also gives a sense of hopelessness. We were inspired by films like transformers 3 and no country for old men that also use wide scenes and locations like this for similar reasons. There is something quite powerful about a shot like this.

Q7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Since my preliminary one thing that has improved is the use of camera angles. These can be used to develop characters just by looking at them instead of what they say or do, a very good way to introduce a character straight away in the first few shots. In the preliminary two detectives are talking about a case they need to get to, all the shots apart from extreme close ups have level angles, this in no way shows how powerful the characters are or who is in charge. However in our thriller this is vastly improved on as the third shot of our main protagonist shows him being looked down on by using a high angle. This shows that he is vulnerable and weak, we instantly know that he is the victim. Another way we have used camera angles is in the flash forwards, they have a distorting tilt that contrasts the lack of tilt in the rest of the thriller, showing that it is an abnormal place. 

Sound is something that is very over looked, I now realise how important it is after adding sound effects and changing sound levels. In our preliminary task we made little or no changes to the sound levels and added no sound effects at all. This was worked upon in our thriller to a great level of detail, we added extra sound effects to make certain scenes have a greater affect on the viewer while making our film look more professional, and changed the levels in certain areas so that the soundtrack is smoother throughout the film. For example in our thriller we have a rolling wind sound going over the initial bit until our characters appear, at that point the wind quietens down over a few seconds to blend into the background sound the actual clip that is on screen. In our preliminary nothing was done to blend the sounds together and this makes it sound almost jumpy and it makes the viewer feel less immersed. We also decided to not to have any music in our thriller, the periods of silence with only a hint of wind in the background suit our thriller far more than having some creepy music, this is like blair witch project where the lack of music makes it seem more real.

The use of titles and their placement on the screen has become so much more important since our preliminary task. With our preliminary we didn't have titles in the first place, but now we use them I see the importance of them, the font, placement and how many. The font represents the mood or genre of the film, the titles for Se7en wouldn't suit a film like Toy Story, it is key to introducing the viewer to what they are watching before they understand what the title represents. The positioning of the title is also important, not so much in the way of telling the viewer what sort of film they're watching or to follow a genres conventions but as a way of cleverly using space on the screen to position your title into like we did. For our thriller we only put two titles in, one to show the name of our film and the other for the production company, we thought that having too many titles would ruin the creepiness of the film, this

similar to films like Paranormal activity that dont use titles at all to make it seem more realistic.

I have also learnt the importance of time management, in our preliminary we had about 40 minutes to shoot everything and I think this shows in the final product, where as our thriller was filmed over a period of two days, giving higher quality shots and an overall better finish. The same goes for the editing process, for our preliminary we edited over a couple of days, our thriller was edited for weeks and had a rough cut that we got feedback on. Just by spending more time on it the difference in the professionalism of the two films is clear to see.

Evito - Rough Cut Thriller Opening

As a whole we are very pleased with the rough cut of our opening. The eerie scilence in the shots where our main protaganist is running away fits perfectly with the style of our film. The begginning shots with the wind and scenery accompanied with the footsteps is perfect, however changes do need to be made, like colour correction and grading to make the shots stand out more, and the ending lacks power, it could be improved by making the mask dropping sound effect more promenant. The angle of that shot is great however, it is distorting and shows how hopeless he is as we are looking down on him.

Actors

For our film we only had two actors, Felix as Gerhard and Harvey as K. We thought that K, being the unknown entity, needed to be tall to make him look more authoritative, this way it is obvious that he is in control. From this we just asked our friends who were tall if one of them would like to do it, by using a friend instead of someone we don't know too well we have made it much easier on ourselves for organising when/where to meet and also giving instructions. As for Gerhard it was all about the how he came across to the audience, we wanted him to look covered up and frail, as long as we didn't have someone tall or big then all that really mattered was the clothing. As Felix was in our group it seemed fitting as me and fin didn't want to do it, the less people we have for the shoot the easier it will be to organise and complete.

Chosen Locations

Potential locations

Most of the photos are in the same location as we had a strong idea of where we wanted to film straight away.

Storyboard

This is our storyboard for our Media Thriller production. We used post-it notes so that we could rearrange shots if we need to at anypoint. The post-its also gave us a frame to draw in.

Character profiles