Shadows Evaluation.

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

The introduction to thriller unit was very interesting and beneficial in which we learnt about the forms and convention of a thriller movie and what makes them successful. Thrillers are created to build up suspense and cause a thrill between and audience. Thriller have been categorised into the sub- genres of Crime , True stories, Sci Fi, Action, Psychological, Espionage and some of those who fit in to same group as a horror and a thriller. All the sub-genres intend to create the same feeling amongst the audience; they just find a different way to convince their audience through the plot. The plot of a thriller usually depicts a everyday character in real life situations.

In creating the thriller opening, we hoped to grab our audience’s immediate attention and leave them wanting to know more. By using numerous amounts of camera angles, we aimed to create the thrill amongst the audience. It has been clearly visible that the opening of any movie is a very important the film as a whole as it is used to pull viewers in. This placed a lot of pressure on us as we were only asked to create the opening , however this also made us very determined and in many ways kept us going. We did our best with the task to come up with the best results we could have as a group.

We wanted to embedd as much of the codes and convention of a regular thriller into our own so it would show how much we could interpret and minipulate them to hopefully improve the level of our work. To build suspense and create a sense of fear we used a lot of close- ups and extreme- close ups to add focus and try to persuade the audience to sympathise with the main character. The P.O.V shot for the bathroom door opening which placed the audience in the scene as the character. The close up of the the bathroom lock helped to highlight its significance , the close ups acts a a guide line for the audience as they are pulled in and want to follow to see what happens next.The use of digetic sounds also added dramtic effect, the creaking of the stairs helped to set the mood of the moment and create unanswered questions in the viewrs mind at the time. As a P.O.V shot was also used at this point the audeince automatically links the creaking of the stairs to the unknown character that they are following for clues.

A house was used to create the sense of realism also it is a very common part of peoples everyday lives. We used well recognised settings withing the house such as the bedroom, bathroom and kitching so that the audience could relate and identify them without having too much trouble. The lighting in the passage also added the eerie mood we were trying to create as it was slightly dimmed. The lighting played a very important part in the story telling and setting of the mood.

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

Although I believe that out preliminary task was a success, there is no comparison to the level of work we completed for our final thriller. The final thriller showed huge progression and more dedication from the group.

One of the most helpful aspects from the preliminary task was the completed storyboard. We used this and made an effort to complete the storyboard before filming the final as it had previously helped us with our organisation and saved us a lot of time. It stood out to us that without the storyboard, everything would appear more complicated and this could affect our final mark; which we were trying to prevent.

Editing the final clip was very beneficial and involved a more detailed knowledge when it came to using Final Cut Pro. It was crucial that we asked individual questions when needed, as we had not had a tutorial that showed us how to use all of the editing tools on the programme. It was necessary for us to ask as a group as the other groups had different ideas and chose to use different editing techniques.

When we did the match cut exercise for the preliminary task, we embedded many match cuts that were unnoticeable in our clip. When we realised that we could use match cuts as an advantage we tried to use as many as we could in our final thriller to add all the possible effect. We worked very well with using the input and output points in Final Cut Pro and did out best to match the action we tried to show.

I believe that because our level of organisation as individuals and sometimes as a group it helped the production of our thriller as a whole.
Looking back from our preliminary task it is clear that we had progresses in using both the media technologies but also how to embed the forms and convention of real thriller films into our own to add effect and create realism. Our time keeping was veryorganised and we worked toether both as a team and individually to reduce time wasting. At some points we separated to do individual work for example in one lesson Ashton was creating the soundtracts whilst me and Alethea carried on with editing. This worked well and we were able to do more work in lessons.


Who would be the audience for your media product?

The thriller is aimed at a mainstream audience between the ages of 15 and 35 both male and females from all different classes. In particular, the main female character will attract the majority of the male audience with her sex appeal alone and some other females could possible be able to relate to her.





An example of a person who fits into the audience would be Dareem Phillip, he is 18 years old and is currently attending college pary time and working in a HMV store in West End. He spends the majority of his free time either studying or hanging out with friends. On weekends he usually goes to the cinema, Nandos or stay in with his younger brother John, sister Clara and his girlfriend Elle and watch a movie on the internet. He still lives at home with mum and dad in Streatham and pays rent from the money he gets from work.
If Dareem is not too busy he tends to take Elle shopping but only on occasions as she likes to be a moany cow about him not spending time with her; therefore he does this to shut her up.

Dareem would be interested in our thriller because he likes to scare his younger brother after they watch thriller and horror movies and sinse it is based in a Two storey house like theirs it has a lot of relevance. He will also be drawn in by the female character in the thriller as she has a revealed appeal by the way she dresses . If he doent give in to her looks he will efinately sympathsie with her helpless character as he is very caring and kind.


How will you attract/ address you audience?

I play the main character in the thriller opening; a black female form a working class background. My characters stereotype is a philosophical character of an afro-Caribbean ethic background that is usually killed at some point in the film, if not first. I try to investigate is someone is in the house as I shout ‘Hello, is anybody there’ which in some ways is a well recognised phrase in thriller and horror movies coming form a helpless vulnerable female actress.

The actors listed in the titles are unknown to the audience as ther are upcomign and new actors. This at first seemed as a disadvantage as we didnt have start appeal to pull viewers in and this is one of the reasons why we tried to use editing to minipullate our simple plot to create more effect. Our film was also a small independent production ( CANDI production) therefore many of the actors used were not at all recognise because of our budget.

My feminine side is reflected by the way I am dressed which is slightly revealing. Although I am clothed in a plain nightgown it still appears that, I am trying to seem sexy and possibly available which will pull in a male audience.

Viral marketing will be a huge part of our advertising , sites such a facebook, myspace and profile pic recieves a hig rate on usge on a day to day basic. This is also attract the age group that we want to aimed our film at. We though about the fact that a lot of people can not access the internet and decided that we should also advertise through poster ,billboards and Television( Commercial breaks). Televsion and Internet broadcasts are two vey important methods that we want to use as they are based worldwide and will attract a bigger percentage of our target audience.


How does your media product represent particular social groups?

A lot of females will be able to relate to the main actress. The use of Mise- en -scene helps to represent the social class of the character. The clothing doesnt neither depict poor status nor high but is somewhere in the middle. My hair is messy and out which shows the stae of a normal female waking up.

The house itself is very well furnished whcih could suggest that i have a comfortable job as i can take care of my needs. The house is tidy which could be linked to many people in the audience both male and female.

We tried to use as much of our short thriller to reach out the variation of social classes as we knew this would have the advantsge of attractign a bigger audience and recieve feedback from differnt points of view.
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What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

The thriller would be released as an small independent UK release as we had used upcoming and new actors. Slumdog Millionaire would in some ways have the same distributors as our thriller in the sense that we are trying to launch profession careers for the actors in our thriller.
With advertising we hoped that the audience would give our thriller a change to progress and support it whether or not we had start appeal.


What have you learnt about technologies from the process on constructing this product?

The variation of technology that was offerd to use in the process of our film production was ongoing. It seemed like evryday a new program or equiptment was intorduced to us for improvement of our thriller openings such as the lighting kit. We used the lighting kit and a ret pallet over it to create one of the shadow scene. Although we didnt use the clip in our final thriller it was very beneficial and we didnt consider it time wasting as we had learnt a new skill.

Logging and capturing ecame a very easy job to complete and i was happy that i could log and capture my clips independantly. Using Final Cut pro had both advantages and disadvantages. An advantage being that we could also do anything to the clips we had filmed to turn them into our ideas. Such as cropping out Ashtons body in the show scene at the end and slowing down or adding pace to the close up of the door handle. However the disadvantage came as we couldnt change evrything it also depended on our fimling. W wer told about the five second rule when filming and this is where it was most noticable to us how critical it was. At the beginnign of the establiment show we didnt use the rule and it was veryrd hard to add the input and outputs points in the shot. We did end up doind it though after the help of a few technicians.

Adding sound to our finished piece was a bit challenging however we did manage to accomplish our goals at the level we expected in the end . Micky helped us a lot with the sound editing which made the process a lot more faster.

We had a very little problem with making our Shadows title, we couldnt find out how to change the style of writing. After experimentation we founf it and tried out the majority of them to see which one suited to film best.

How successful do you feel you have created an opening to a thriller genre fiml that attracts a specific audience?

When we watched our thrillers over as a class my group recieved very positive feedback which was good. The thunder and the bathroom door slamming open got a reaction from he audience which we were hoping to get. Also we got the same recation form the audience when the entire AS sets went to the VUE cinema to watch out thriller openigngs and congratulate each other; they jumped and shrieked.

A lot of the audience liked our use of camera angles but in particular they liked the fridge shot. We had place the camera inside of the fridge and they said that it added variation to the camera angles and showed that we were thinking out of the box.

Our thriller was very different compared to the preliminary task and we had improved a lot more. We did still carry our knowledge from what we had learnt from completeing the task both good and bad. Our match cuts were much more invisble and our editing techniques were much better.

I didnt feel that the Shadows tilelt was realsitic. As i have never seen it done that way in a thriller or any other film. I only noticed this when i started to compare our title to the other title that were shown in thrillers.

Overall i do think we got the response we wanted and i am proud of our thriller opening beacuse i know that it involved a lot of emotional break down, hardwork , determination and motivation form others to complete our clip. Our thriller could be identified with other thrillers because of the forms and convention we challenged and managed to carry our such as the use od dimmed lightin and everyday locations.

Rushing to finish

The whole filming process was gone in an instant and time had catch up with us. The deadline had reached and every gorup was rushing to finish their thriller opening therefore it was hard to get to a computer. Although there wasnt a lot of editing to be done we wanted the chance to look over our clip and make any modifications.

We had to add sound to the clip which Mickey helped us to do using Sound Cut Pro. The fact that we had already made the sound tracks made Mickeys and our jobs a lot easier as all was left to do was add them to to the time line .

The eerie sountrack that we used was cut in and sometimes repeated in the clip. Before i started walking out of the bathroom the music began and when i spoke it stopped and started again. Add the soung effect for the class was embedde so ell that i was concinced that we actually smashed a glass in the film. A lot of out own sound effects were used so there wasnt a lot for us to do really.

At the end of the thriller opening we wanted to have a scream but as i wasnt filmed screaming we had to try and find one on the sound editing programme.All the screams that were listed were either too dramtic or too urealistic so in the end we decied to not have one to add suspense.

We used Text Edit to create our shadows tile. We decided on a grey background with white writing. The programme was very easy to use and we had no difficulty doing it on our own.

I was nervous when we finally saved our film opening however this was not because i didnt think it was good but because i was nervous to see the response from the audience in the cinema viewing were had next week.

I was happy with our team work and hoped that it showed in our final grade.

continuing editing.

The P.O.V shot that Alethea filmed was very useful. After we loggeed and caprured it we started editing our clips again. We embedded the clip into the time line where neccessariy which made the clip as a whole make more sense.

Me and Alethea were sitting on one apple mac computure doing the editing whilst Ashton was on another trying to find sound effects that we were going to use. We were going through the editing quickly and the more we progressed the more promise our film opening showed. However the time became an issue againg and we were very worried. We addressed Mary with the issue and she basically said that we should do all of the editing them she would watch it back and tell us the unneccessarity parts that we could edit.

Whilst editing we came across a few problems.Some of the clips were not able to be used because of the story we were trying to tell therefore we had to use some of the old film shots we had.We used the old clip where i was walking towards the kitchen sink and the new clip wher i was drinking from the glass. We thought it would be a problem because we could hear when the cup falls but Mickey said that with editing we could cover it up later.

We were speaking to a student who previously attended the sixth form college and he was telling us that we should put our all into our work and not mess about as we would only be disappointed with ourselves. He helped us with some of the editing for example the door handle shaking was lot long enough so he increased the speed by selecting modify then speed , this also added a very eerie sound effect and we were very pleased with it.

He also gave us his input on what he thought about the editing we done so far and he was very impressed which boosted my confidence level. A little while after he noticed that we wer struggling putting the show scene in the time line. Because the space we used to film the shot was too cramped , ashtons body was shown. We didnt want this and as a group couldnt figure out a way to correct it. he suggested that we cropped the shot to take out the body which work very well.

By the end of the lesson we had very little to do and we were almost certain that we could finish off by adding sound effects and titles in the next lesson.

Shadow evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The genre we based our media product upon was a thriller film, and the codes and conventions for this are something that brings about tension and suspense and creates an expectation that something is going to happen but you're not sure what and when. The plot usually reflects real life situations and tends to use everyday characters. Also whilst watching the film, you are expected to have a feeling of anxiety which is due to the tension built in the film. Again, in film openings you are expected to be left at suspense, something that makes you want to continue watching. One film that does this is 28 Days Later http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=sBZnuUZIbBQwhich is a horror thriller; it uses a single character and has a lot of stillness and silence. It also uses diminuendo which builds suspense and theme tunes but only uses a few diagetic sounds to create a normality of the film. In our film we used different elements to create meaning in our thriller. We used an Extreme Close-up of the door as it being locked. This shows the importance of the locked door and allows the audience to wonder and think about what will happen later with the door. We also used a Point Of View shot of the bathroom door open. This was to show the audience what the character sees and to allow fear or anxiety for the character. Also we used a Low angle shot when the female character was washing her face in the bathroom, to make her look dominant and to show that at that moment she is in control. We also used an Over the Shoulder Shot when the character was in her bedroom to see what she was trying to see but also to give the impression that somebody might be behind her. For our Tracking movement we used a around the house, to create an impression that someone was walking around the house. Also for sound we used a lot more non-diagetic sounds to create tension but used diagetic sounds like the creaking of the stairs to show naturalism of the house. As mise-en-scene creates meaning in the scene we used the location of a house, as we felt that it would create a comfort zone for the audience because everyone can identify with this; so this also allows us to mess up the audience comfort zone and bring fear easily.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I feel that from the match-cut exercise to doing the final product I have learnt alot. In our preliminary film we didn’t really take that much time planning and really evaluating our plot, shots and edits. With our final product we had a detailed storyboard, which really helped us stay focus knowing our objective. Whereas, in our match-cut exercise we had an idea of what we wanted, but only jotted a few points down. Also in our final product, we planned where each scene would take place in but, in our match-cut film we didn’t note specific rooms to use; which meant we ended looking for spare empty rooms. After watching both films over, I’ve realised that our filming has improved, especially the panning shots. But the editing is by far of a greater standard in our final film than the preliminary film, our match cuts make more sense, and we’ve learnt how to shorten time in the film by using cross dissolves. So I do feel Iike I have learnt how to plan in detail much better and how to edit better too. To arrange our time we also delegated the work between us, so some worked on the sound whilst others did the actual editing of the film. Also at one point whilst i was filming Kameir and Ashton were logging and capturing in class.

Who would be the audience for your media product and why?
We would be reaching a mainstream audience from ages 16-35 for our product. As we feel that they could understand and get the concept of our film. A typical person who would fit our target audience would be:
Eddie, 21 works in an IT department in an accountant company. Doesn’t have a very big social life, but attends the pub with his girlfriend and rents out movies to watch at home in his sitting room with the lights off. He shops at Primark but occasionally splashes out on gap. He generally has a film interest for things like Star Wars and E.T and loves getting the collectable items. He eats a lot of junk food and has a liking for sushi. Eddie would want to watch our film because it’s all about mystery, and being alone with something or someone around you. He would like the fact that it’s set in the same environment he is in and it could be him in the film.
How will you attract your audience?
We haven’t used big star names at all, because then people are curious to see what the film will be like, and are more interested in the plot rather than the star. For example, films like Slumdog Millionaire Bend it like Beckham, Hot Fuzz and even Kidulthood are British films that were very popular films that either had only one well known star or none at all.

This goes to show that the public do look at the plot as well as the stars. Our plot is simply a woman living in her house and strange things seem to happen around her, with shadows appearing. So we hope that the lack of big star names will still attract our audience. We would advertise through many different forms of media, one being the internet. Whilst your on msn messenger there is normally flash clips or even pop ups that play a clip from the film if you roll over the box even by accident, so this would be a very good way to advertise as many people are logged on to msn messenger. Also through Billboards on busses and telephones boxes where people are most likely to walk by and see it. Again as TV is something that everybody uses we will have trailers during breaks that will attract people to watch the film.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
It reaches out to young people, as the character in the film is of a young age, roughly an older teen. Also I think that it represents middle-class people, as the setting in the film was in a semi-detached house. Also the mise-en-scene in the film showed the household to be not poor but not an exaggerated or a fantasy British home. In the film, Kameir wears some slippers that have a hotel name on them; this can be interpretated as a young mother working in a hotel. It’s good to appeal to the different social groups as this draws more people to watch the film and brings in more money with a bigger audience.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout the film process I’ve learned that technology has vastly improved which has helped me a great deal. During the making of the film, we used a hand held digital camera and tri-pod, which allowed us to vary our shot types and angles. Also having a digital camera also benefited us as the picture quality is a lot better than what it would have been like without a digital camera. Also technology in the editing aspect has also been very useful. For example using Final Cut Pro, without this software would have been very hard to edit the clips, manipulate them, making the clips faster or slower even transferring the footage from the video camera to the computer using capturing and logging. Using the new software has allowed my group to add sound effects and create our own music to create suspense and tension through Sound Cut Pro, and it has been very easy and simple to use. Also it was really interesting having to blog as our coursework, this made it more interesting and helpful as our teachers could easily give us feedback; but the only down side was for those who had internet problems it was a bit inconvenient otherwise great.

How successful do you feel you’ve been in creating an opening to a thriller genre film that attracts a specific target audience?
I feel that we have been very successful in creating an opening to a thriller genre, as we had a lot of positive feedback. The majority of the positive feedback was the use of different camera angles and shots also the sound effects. On the other hand some said the pace was a bit slow and also it was a bit noisy from time to time. In my opinion I think this went much better than the match-cut exercise as we has a better plot and it was more planned out; in terms of the storyboard, the location and also the props. Also the camera angles were more creative than the match cuts, for example the shot with the camera in the fridge. Although we thought we might have to change the storyboard, we actually didn’t apart from adding a few shots so the sequence of the film made sense. I feel that we have been successful in our opening, because if I compare our film to another thriller film like 28days later there are quite a lot of similarities. For example they used shots like; long shots, tracking and POV shots which we used. The music they used was a lot of non- diagetic sounds from soundtracks and diminuendo which we also used in our film. In addition there setting and location was somewhere the audience can identify with a hospital and London city, we used a house. Finally the way they created suspense was by using few characters in the opening and there was a lot of silence which is what we did too. So knowing all this I feel we have made a very good attempt at making a thriller genre for our target audience.

Editing.

The morning started of confidently and there was good spirits all around. We logged and captured our shots and then made comparison with the first filmed footages. Some of the clips that was filmed by the whole group appeared to be better however the majority of the clips that Alethea and i filmed were better so we chose to use them instead. We did not dispose of the other clips as we thought we could possibly use some small parts of them to combine with the new clips.

Before starting the filming for the thriller we were told that our final clip was to be no longer than
two minutes in length. It seemed very little and almost impossible to stick to this time and we we worried about not keeping to the requirements.

We started placing our clips on the time line with a lot of excitement . Some of the shots we fimled were not necessary and some wouldnt fit together where the match cuts were needed. We had to rearrange some of the storyboard in order to get a realistic storyline. With the help of the technician Mickey and Marisa we were gliding through the editing process.

As we thought, the time line was filling up quickly and we were not even half way through the editing. We went back over the clip that we already had edited and tried to find places that were not necessary ; could be cut down without attracting too much notice or interupting the fluent flow. There was on section in the clip that we worked hard on trying to cut down; the scene in the fridge. However Louisa looked through an suggested that we added cross dissolves to the stairs scene to reduce time. She also said that it would be a great representation of time and show that time had passed.

We were pleased with the editing we had towards the end of the lesson and kept on showing the rest of our classmates. Mary watched over the clip and suggetsed that we added a point of view (POV) shot to show that the door had opened in the bathroom. It was a good idea but before we decided to carry it out we tried to convince her that the reflection of the door in the window was enough. As we all didnt need to attend the shooting as no one was in the scense; Alethea decide to bpokmthe camera out and fil m the shot on her own.

I must admit i was a little worried about the lighting in the shot Alethea was going to film as this caused a problem the last time and we were not able to use the shot.

Re-Shooting.

Wednesday had arrived and hours before we were due to start fimling Alethea told me that Ashton would not be able to come to filming with us. I was furious as we had booked this day in advance and i had to carry all the equiptment to Alethea's house as she wasnt in college on that day. I had a huge responsibity of taking care of the equiptment station to help me carry some of the equiptment.

When we arrived and started to look for the sheet that held all the shots we needed to film, Alethea realised that she had misplaced it. We made a decision amongst ourself to re-shoot the whole storyboard without any rush. I personally thought it was better as the majority of the first shots were not able to be used for edting. Also we realised that a lot of things would be uncontinuos such as the lighting, positiong of some reular household equiptments, bedspread and others. I wasnt wearing the earring that i wore last time so we knew it would be more beneficial of we re-filmed the whole thing.

We knew the process would be a little difficult considering that there was only two of us and we had difficulties when there was three ;we wouldnt let it get past us and we were very persistant on getting it right. Although Alethea was doing the filming whilst i act, i did all that i could with helping her out. For example i helped film the establishing shot of the house as i wasnt needed in the shot.

Alethea did a very good job at both filming and directing and we worked together like a match made in heaven. There was no tension between the two of us which helped to set the concentration level. We were focused to the max and nothing could get in our way; because we wouldnt let it.

Lat minute adjustments were made to the storboard and we changed the shot where i am shown from the back entering the bathroom to having the camera positioned inside the bathroom. We wanted to use a variation of camera shots and we thought this one added the effect that someone was in the bathroom watching.

The day was very successful and we were extremely happy with our results. We were confident about the shots because we had watched them over each time. I think we worked better as two and especially because we were not in a hurry our work showed more promise. I had no worries about our next editing lesson as i knew the shots we had would be placed together to create beautifully embedded match cuts.

Editing final thriller

We started editing today and i had very low expectationans of the clips that were filmed yesterday after college. It wasnt that i though the clips were not filmed properly i just thought if we didnt rush our work and looked back over everything we could have corrected any mistakes there and then.However when the whole group had arrived this morning everyone seemed to be in a good mood which was a total contrast to the last time we were together.

Logging and capturing the clips finalised my previous thoughts. As we catured the clips were noticed that a lot of them were not of good quality and we were left quite disappointed. Instead of stressing about it which i found quite hard not to , we decided to go through the clips and select which one needed re-filming. After going throught the clips it stood out that we had a lot of corrections to be made if we intended on reaching the quality of work we hoped for.

The majority of the lesson was spent on decision makings such as when we were all available to re-film our shots and which ons we should do. We were a bit unsure at first but then it was decided that we would all go back to Alethea's house the following Wednesday and do everything thoroughly. I made it clear to the rest of the group that we need to complete the filming whatever the consequence because a lot of valuable time had already been wasted and we needed to show our dedication as a group.

Final Touches

Finally to finish the last bits and pieces, we created our title 'Shadows' with another programme on the Macs with ours we added a background that had spots that look liked little shadows that appeared and then the word 'Shadows' came up and it looked really good. The colours were just chrome and silver.

We then added this into Final Cut Pro, and then added the opening credits. We were told by our teacher to add it where there was space and it would look good. We used a dissolve effect so that when one name appeared when the next one came up it faded away. We had about five names that ran after each other including who produced the film and the producer and director.

Our final touch was to see if we should add a scream at the end when Kameir sees the shadow or if it should be silent. We came to the conclusion it should be silent to leave the audience in suspense.

Sound editing

After finishing the film we moved onto our sound editing, which we found a bit difficult as we had trouble getting the hang of the Sound Cut Pro. But it was alot quicker as we had some sound effects already done that Ashton had created during the making of the film.

Later on we needed to concentrate at the times music was needed to create suspense. So at the times when dialogue was used the music would stop then when the dialogue had finished the music came back on which had a very good effect.

The biggest problem we had was trying to not use the same music as everyone else which became very common, but we got around it through the help of mickey which was great. We used sound effects such as rain, thunder, wind and a glass smashing the rest of the sound were diagetic. for example the door slamming and the creaks on the stairs.

Filming for final thriller.

Today was the first day of filming which started around 4:30pm and the other members in the group wanted it to be finished at around 6;30pm the latest. I thought this wasnt enough time to complete the filming properly however i was outnumbered so i thought it was best to leave the situation alone and not waste anymore time. The time limit that the group was giving for the filming meant that i would be rushed considering that i was the main character.

At first it was a straight forward process until we started messing around and putting fun before our work. When 6;30 started to approach, Ashton started to get frustrated because he wanted to go and thats when i realised i was being rushed even more. Alethea started to get frustrated at the whole situation which placed me under more pressure which then caused tension bewteen the group. A lot of the work ended up rushed and the quality of the acting was at itz lowest, although we were told that we wouldnt be marked on this ; i think good acting would help to persuade the audience. Therfore i was not impressed!!!!

First off all i didnt have a good feeling at all about the outcome of the filming and had asked to watch over the recordings each time after filming but once againg we were working against time .
The scene that i was most excited to film was the medium shot where the camera was placed inside the fridge. This was because the idea was spontaneous and no one else had planned to do it. It also gave us a variation of shots to work with. However my excitement was soon turnt into dissapointment as that scene was also rushed.

The fact that we tried to do all the filming in on day was already enough work to mange let alone giving ourselves a time limit of only 2 hours. It may have seemed that two hours would have been enough to complete filming but it clearly wasnt.

By the end of the day everyone was left in a rotten mood but especially me . The only thing that i hope for is to have good enough shots to edit next lesson.

Red Shadow scene..

Our thriller was set in the night time which meant that we had to take cameras out for overnight filming. However because of the schedule of our media lessons we discovered that it would be slightly difficult to film when we had the lessons as they were all earlier in the day.

After the pitching ,our next lesson was a 3 hours long one but we couldnt film as the house we intended to film in was in use . We did not want to waste time so we decided to film the last part of the storyboard which was the shadow scene. We found a blank wall in the college premises and started to film our idea. The equiptment we used was a ligting kit and a red pallet over the lighting . The red colour pallet was not our intention at first however when we thought about the meaning of our thriller it had relevance as it represented and signified blood and death and we thought it could add effect by building suspense in the audience.

In the end after we had shot the scene a few times we watched it back and thought it was very effective an was hoping that it would fit into the rest of the filming that we are hoping to carry out at the other location. Were were very happy with today as we hadnt wasted valuable time which was very important for us not to do.

Pitching ...........

Pitching our thriller idea to the teacher was a little bit pressurising. I personally felt that we had to prove ourselves considering the fact that we only had 3 people in the group including myself ;compared to the other groups with 4 to 5 people. This didnt discourage us in anyway if anything it made us more determined.

We were in given a fair amount of time in which we had to plan a detailed plot for our final thriller. Between the group we had a lot of very useful ideas. We finally came up with the idea of having a young woman in a empty house who thinks someone else is in the house. At first it sounded very basic but we were hoping that when we edited our filming and used our knowledge from soundtracks use and effects our thriller would have a better appeal to the audience.

After pitching our idea to the media teachers we began our storyboarding amongst our groups. We spent a lot of time deciding on various shots we could use in the thriller and for on shot we even had two ideas on how we could film it based on the bed we used. We wanted to use an ariel shot for the queen sized bed or the Mid shot for the bunkbed.

The storyboarding gave us a further idea of how we could embedd our match cuts when editing. By the end of our lesson we had a completed storyboard that the group was more that happy with.

We had the responsibility of deciding on a reasonable time that would suit us all to start our filming considering the deadline for the completed thriller opening. This was a little complicated as we were using Alethea's house and we also had to work around her family's lifestyle and be considerate.

Introduction to thriller unit....

Before all the process of creating ,filming and editing our short thrillers we had a media lesson based on 'What are thrillers?'

It was said that the reasons for creating a thriller is to build up suspense and create tension between the audience making them thrilled. Thrillers doesn't necessarily need to show blood or gore to accomplish their goals whereas horrors intend to.There have been many thrillers that have been created from the influence of a horror but show diffence by the 'structure of their plots' and how it has been approached.

We were then asked to come of with a few film that we considered to be horrors based on the information the we had previously been give. Some ideas that were shared by the class were
* Mission Impossible
* Jaws

As the ideas were being put on the board by the teacher, i realsied that she was placing them in differnt places . She placed the thrillers in groups according to their sub genres some of which were
*Sci Fi thrillers
*Crime Thrillers
*True stories
*Action Thrillers
*Spy Thrillers
*Psycholigical Thrillers
*Espionage Thrillers
*Horror Thrillers
*Conspiracy Thrillers
*Political Thrillers
*Supernatural Thrillers

The list could go on and on whilst the thriller sub genre list keeps being expanded continuosly.

They most definately had one thing in common; all the of the sub- genres were still had to same intension of creating tension ,exhilaration and anxiety amongst their chosen audience.We then briefly looked at some thrillers and we were asked to put them in the cateregories based on their sub-genres.

continuation of editing

After I logged and captured the footage of the POV shot we placed it in and it made much more sense looking from an audience's prospective. We then had to perfectly match the fridge shot to the rest of the film as we it had to look fluent which was a bit tricky, but we got it in the end.

Now the main problem we had was when Kameir turns around and drops the glass. Originally we only dropped a cup but it our new filming we used a glass which we didn't drop. But when we went to cut the new film to match the film it didn't really work to well at all. So instead we used the new footage with the glass as she walks to the sink, but then cut to the old footage when she drops the cup and covered the noise with a glass smashing sound effect.

Also we had a problem with what she was actually scared of in the kitchen scene, as the door handle was not that scary, so what we did was in final cut pro we went to modify and selected speed and increased the speed. to give it that extra effect. Then we used the sound aspect from that and repeated it as she is walking away from the door to still show what she was running away from.

Finally the last difficult part was when we filmed the shadow part of the film, the wall it should have been recorded on in my house was too small. But as my kitchen has the small colour walls we recorded in another part. But later after watching it again, it had part of another door in my kitchen that we could not get out of the frame and also a painting from another wall. But because we had done some filming of the shadows in another room in the college earlier on with a red filter light to connote danger, we thought we might use that one instead. However, after looking at both we knew the one recorded in my kitchen was alot better. So one of the technicians helped us by just cropping the shot but not too much otherwise it would have been very pixelated

So we were finally done all that was left to do was the sound and opening credits.

match cut tuturial

during this time we was shown how to use match cuts effective and correctly. before this tutorial i never had a clue what a match cut was when i was shown i was happy to learn an no that it will become very usefull when coming to edit my final film.

first day of filming final film

After we had finished our practice films we decided to start our final film. During this time we met up after collage and started filming


This was fun and we realised that it wasnt gonig to be as quick an easy as we hope it to be. However we managed to film most of the shots but alot had to be retaken after we realised that they may not have been correct or the camera angle/ lighting wasnt correct.

Evaluation

Evaluation for media
Before we created our thriller, we had to do some background research on what actually makes a thriller movie. During this time, I learned that a thriller is actually a type of genre that has a suspenseful and climaxing. It effects the physically and emotionally but heart race and shock. We analysed films such as “Arlington Road”, this was a very interesting film about a man who goes through a series of unfortunate events and had a great twist at the end that was very useful and we decided to use the same conventions for our thriller. We also learnt from watching films like that how we could make our film affective to attract a certain audience.

Because of our previous practice, films that we made that help us a lot with creating the final. However, we did come across a few problems in these previous films. One of the main problems that we had was the time we had offered to complete the practices films, this made us quite rushed an therefore effected the quality of some of our shots. For example, there could be problems with the positioning of the camera; also, because we felt rushed we were not able to look over some of the shots we made. Therefore, we would shoot a screen then when we watched the clip back; the camera would be tilted slightly. To fix this we would just get a second opinion when positioning the tripod make sure that it was at the correct angle and that the legs of the tripod were all level. Other problems we came across in the final were with the lighting, for example our group filmed on two different occasions and each time the lighting was different this caused problems from when we wanted to use bits from each but found that it didn’t look professional enough.

My target audience is clearly for people who are interested in thriller, but I think my film will be able to identify the target audience. I think the age range will be 15+ simply because of the thrill the film has to offer may not be appropriate for younger children could resolve in nightmares etc. The gender of my film is aimed more towards women however; men may still enjoy the film but will have to get into it. I am planning to go mainstream with this product but still have a main niche market, because the product is aiming to seek thrill seekers as well as pleasing the average viewer. People who watch my film have to also expect aspects of a horror film and enjoy the feeling of an adrenalin rush.

The main marketing strategies we will use to advertise our film are trailers, TV, billboard, internet camping, or advertise posters in shop windows putting ads in places we are sure our specific audience would go. These will be very useful to get our film out there and in the public eye. There is also a famous actor Will Smith; this will attract many fans because he is well known so the audience may automatically think it has to be a good film. We will also encourage him to go on shows and advertise the movie buy talking about it in a positive way, this will attract other audience. In addition, to really get our film out there we will make the cover of our film appear in free newspapers like “The Metro” also on billboards. We could also advertise it but making it into wallpaper and asking some famous singers to advertise it as there background on their My Space page etc. We can also advertise the trailers on the internet maybe get a spot on the T.V in the adverts of another thriller movie. This will help because if the person is enjoying the film then they will be intrigued.


My product may represent women who live alone, and may show that they are vulnerable while alone. The film therefore may appeal more to women, and the thrill to be more effective. For example if a couple or a group of girls was watching this film the story line would be more effective wearas if a group of grown men decided to watch it they would enjoy the film but wouldn’t experience the thrill to the fullest extent. They are not religious, and are seemed to be independent live alone. There is no racial aspect that needs to be covered; it is more about the lifestyle the people live, working class average women who just happen to come across a series of unfortunate events.

I am going to use “Liongate Entertainment” to produce my film I think that this will be a good choice as they are well known in the film industry and I am satisfied with there level of production. I will also use fox film company ltd to help with the distribution of my film. The film would be a Holly Wood blockbuster, the financial backing I would have to use would be a bug budget. The budget would be around 20 million. This would be very useful because I am going to need to use computers, renting out sets, props, pay actors etc. I am also going to be looking to release the film later in the year as this may increase the chances of maybe picking up an award e.g. Oscar, reasons for this is because I think the film has got an original story line and because its got some well known actors it could be a hit. I would tend to drift towards big companies like “Sony pictures entertainment” to distribute my film reasons for this is because they have distributed a lot of popular thrillers for example Arlington road, and are very popular as a company and have got there foot in the door to get “Shadows” really out there.

I think that I learned a lot from using final cut pro, I now feel confident assisting with the production with a film. I also found it a lot more challenging then I expected and have leant a lot. The filming side was very intrusting and exciting, and it was great to see the systematic improvements from the filming to editing on final cut pro. Before filming, I never knew how to handle a camera or how much work goes into the production, filming and directing of a film. Also in the practice films we didn’t use a lot of effects so in our final film we was determined to add extra effects and sound, this help and was very effective as shown in the final outcome. Before we made our film, we were shown that we were not able to use copyright music, knowing this we created our own theme tune and got great feedback. The internet has also been very useful for me to blog through the steps I took in order to complete the film. The internet has also been useful for the release of my movie on Vimeo, from this can people also progress to release on other broadcasting sites like YouTube, this will also widened my potential audience and therefore increase the views and increase publicity of the film.

I think I have been successful in the making of my thriller film, however if I had more time I think I could have made improvements. For example, I would have spent more time on the lighting and increasing the suspense of the film. The storyboard use in the making of the film was very useful and gave a positive guideline on what our aims were for each shot. However, we did not always stick to this as our ideas improved as we went along. I was pleased with the feedback we received about our film the main issues that was brought up was the timing of the class cup dropping of the floor to the sound that we edited, also people commented on the heartbeats and creaky floorboards and said that it was very effective and created tension. In addition, we were shown that we established the location well at the beginning. As Individual shots go, the one we received the most positive feedback from was the one in the fridge, and a good use of P.O.V. However, that we would have also made changes if we had more time to some negative feedback. There was feedback about the slow pace of the film and therefore lacked suspense, here we would have speeded up the tracking and maybe increased the merges.

Ashton Sheppard Y56819

Preliminary (Evaluation )

Our organisataion as a group throughout the entire process was a very good start. We worked together as a team because we were very concerned about producing very good short clips that would hopefully show our dedication and hard work.

Creating a variety of shots was very useful as we learnt how to visualise and imagine them before filming and also think ahead of how we eill used editing to fit them in our thriller openings.

We used a very shory and simple storyline to create our film however we experimented with the shots and match cuts to create complicity and add effect. we were hoping theat editing would help our fimling appear professional and a well thought out process.

In producing the storyline , filming and editing it was alost as if i was a professional at film production also the fact that we used the forms and convention of previous thrillers. This showed that we had used the imformation given to improve our work and create a sense of realism.

by showing the male (Ashton) walking up the stairs then entering the roo.

Preliminary (Editing)

Logging and capturing the short clips was very straigh forward with the exception of a faulty camera. The process was very simple because we had been through it before and had understood how to use the equiptment independently. Again we had to use 'Final Cut Pro' to edit our clips.

When we went throught the clips that we had filmed many of them were done very good standard. However after trying to place them together it was revealed that some of them wouldnt go together without being visible match cuts because of the angles that we had filmed some of them. It seemed that we had underestimated the angles we had filmed.

Time was caving in on us and we had to rush the editing process. Unfortunately we didnt quite finish editing our film at the quality that we had hoped for. We did however have lots of beautifully embedded match cuts and a variety of other clear shots that we were extremely proud of.

The Preliminary filming process wasnt as hard and stressful as some of us thought it would be and it wasnt no where as hard as the first film practice. We did our bestwith our time management and i am confident enough to say that we worked as a unit and hopefelly we will continue to do this.

Preliminary (Filming)

As we has planned our storyboard properly it made it much easier to film the shots insted of being distracted by the planning process.

The filming process was much more relaxable this time which could be because we were extremely organised and we had more time. Either way filming out second film was exciting ,knowlegable and much more interesting which was because whilst filming we were thinking about how we could place the shots together to create our match cuts.

It was clear from the standard of our filming that there was a lot of improvement between the group as a whole. The filmining itself was a good way that proved that we remembered all the given pointers from the technitions including the 5 second rule before fimling each clip.

Thinking back to our first film the shots were of much better quality and all the group members were almost professionals at filming the shots which made me more exciting to see how filming our filnal thriller would be like.I also though it would be interesting to see the level of improvement next time.

Match cut tutorial.

We had a match cut tutorial at the beginning of our lesson which we were told that they were use to shows actions being carried out from differnt angle; almost as it it was from differnet points of view. They showed us how we could embedd match cuts with editing in order to add interest and create a flowing piece.

We were then shown a short clip and we were required to spot all the match cuts that were shown. This proved to be extremely difficult as the shots were place together brilliantly. The shots were so quick and because of how the editing was done they were almost invisible. I found myself watching the acting without any realistion that the were edited. The purpose of this execcise was to show us the level of expectation that out match cuts were intented to be like in our preliminary film.

The class was then given the brief for the next filming task which we would have to include what we learnt about match cuts. We had to prove how much we understood by coming up with a storyline of a conversation between two people using match cuts to create 'Shot reverse shots' when editing. This was a little bit different as we now had to think ahead about how we would edit our filming in order for it to make sense.


After careful and thorough decision making it was decided that we would based our filming on a woman who is held hostage a room. We wanted to show a man coming into a building whilst still showing the girl in the room which is where our match cuts would come into place.

This time we had to include a over the shoulder shot, close ups, mid shots,wide shots and a high angle shot. Creating the storyboard for our ideas were so easy which was a change considering that last time we found it hard to create to amount of shots we were asked to.

Editing 1st film

We also has a Editing tutorial which was very useful with editing our first film. We were given the opportunity to watch and demostrate the key points of editing.

We looked at short clips of a little boy in a cafe in which we used editing to minipulate and create different meanings. We had to place input and output points in the clip which suited best and insert it in the time line at the bottom of the screen. We were briefly taught how to mute the clips, create text and add sound effect because we had to move on.

After playing around with the clips we were taught how to Log and Capture our triller and save it into to our video drive which we then had to edit with our groups using 'Final Cut Pro'. We started moving around our clips and placing them in the time line in the correct order. We experimented with the program to try and add effect to the clips we had which turned out be very benificial and interesting. In the end we were quite happy with the final piece based on the clips that we had.

Filming 1st thriller.

After Mickey and Marisa demonstrated a tutorial on how were were expected to use and care for all the media equiptment were were given an hour to go to our chosen locating and start filming.

When we first looked over the shots in our plan they were a bit conplicated to film especially with the given time however as we went along we started to get better ideas on what would suit the thriller . It got so bad that we had so many new ideas but very little time. We filmed all that we could at the best standard although some of the clips were a bit rushed . Some of the group members including me started to panic as it was very important to us that we completed our filming . We did end up finishing with the exception of a few minutes into lunch but this was fine by us.

The lack of planning for the thriller was partiallty the cause of why we had to rush filming , i definately knew it would be a very critical that we planned our work thoroughly next time. In order to reduce complications and time wasting planning instead of filming this was a MUST!!!!!.

The entire experience of filming with my new group was exciting at first, it then proved to be a bit complicated, ending with all us us tired and frustrated.

Overall, i think it was worth it and i was very curious to find out what filming againg would be like because we worked well as a team although we had our moments.

intro to cameras

during this tourial we were shown how to use the filming equpitment correctly during this time we were shown how to use the cameras with the tripod. we also learnt how to edject and re-apply the camera to the tripod and the tape from the camera.



we were also shown in this basic filming things like how to record, rewind and play back what you filmed.

intro to editing

we had a tutorial showing us how to use final cut pro, this was a very fun and productive lesson. During this lesson we learnt techniques like how to use the input/output controls in order to make correct cuts in your film.



we was also asigned clips of a little boy in a cafe but the clips were a jumbled up and our job was to assemble them together buy using the correct tools that final cut pro provided.

editing the second attempt of filming

When we cam to class we were much more hopeful with the footage we had, and quickly began logging and capturing our film. After we had done this we decided that the footage we had the second time round was much more better than the first set, so we would use our recent footage instead.

Editing the film began to be alot more promising and easier, but the we hit our first problem. The shot we filmed when someone was looking at Kameir through the door looked good when it was filmed and the idea was good too, but when putting it together on the timeline it didn't match up or make sense. Luckily we had a tracking shot which sort of was over her shoulder and followed her through the door, which Marisa (technician) said would be a better shot to use to allow continuity throughout the film.

We also had another problem, which was the length of time. We found the clip was becoming very long, and we were unsure of what to do as we felt all the shot were necessary. For example we had a shot of Kameir walking down the stairs very slowly to create tension, but was taking up alot of time. So our teacher Louisa gave us the idea that cut the clip up into sections but add in cross-dissolves that show that time has gone past.

Later we showed our work to our teacher Mary and she had another opinion that maybe there should be a POV shot after the bathroom door has opened, so the audience can see what has happened. I went home and filmed that shot and the next lesson logged and captured it.

Shadows

Untitled from 283goswell on Vimeo.

2nd attempt of filming

So the following Wednesday, Kameir and I came back to my house to re-shoot the shots needed to make the film better. But because we were unable to find the sheet with the shots we needed to re-do, we decided to re-shoot the whole film together.

It was very hard just being the two of us, as I would be filming and directing whilst Kameir would act;but we were very focused as we realised that is was very important to finish the film at a better quality. Also we felt we needed o re-record as in the first shoot Kameir was wearing obvious gold studs, but was not the second time round; so it was also to ensure continuity as well.

We changed some shots we used to make the match cuts more realistic, for example when Kameir is walking from the bedroom to the bathroom instead of having a shot of her back going into the bathroom we changed it to a shot of seeing her walk into the bathroom head on. just the slightest change appeared to look alot better than the original.

Overall the second filming did go alot better, we also did the establishing shot during the evening which set the mood better than during the day as it created tension. So now we had better footage to use the following day, we also learned from our mistake and watched any footage recorded .

editing clips of shadows

The morning we had to edit our film. I was trying to film the establishing shot outside my house. But because it was the day after the snow day, there was alot of ice. so it was very hard.

When i got to college to see the editing, we found that because we hadn't watched our shots after we did them; they were not great and was unable to use all of the clips. so during the lesson we decided to go through all the clips we needed to re-do(which was quite alot).

In the end because we didn't have alot to work with, we decided to create the soundtrack to go with certain clips that we will need. At the end of the lesson we made a date that we would record some of the shots again the following Wednesday, and thought about what we need to do better which was:

- watch the clips again
- keep recording until happy
- give ourselves enough time
- remember what we used in the first recording to keep continuity

first day of filming shadows

The first day Ashton and Kameir came to my house around 4ish and we re-read the storyboard to get familiar with the storyline. In our storyboard we had two different versions of the bedroom scene, as we didn't know what bedroom would be best. After deciding which one was suitable for the film we then set up the camera and began shooting.

We found that it was easier as we had more time, but was very frustrating at the same time as it was getting late and very long. The last shot we had to film was very hard, as we had to find a plain wall in my kitchen to do the shadows, but it was hard not getting the door and the painting in my kitchen into the shot.

One thing we didn't do properly was watch our shots over after we had done them, but we did generally stick to our storyboard which was good.

intro to cameras