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.