What is TV Drama?

The genre of TV drama is very large, and splits into all different aspects of it.
Examples of dramas are:

• Corination Street
• Eastenders
• Emmerdale
• Neighbours
• Doctors
• Holby City
• One Tree Hill
• The Bill
• The Accused

Examples of TV dramas which features a combination of both drama and other genre are:

•  Misfits - comedy, drama
• Doctor Who - sci-fi, drama
• Skins - comedy, drama
• Being Human - fantasty, sci-fi, drama
• Ugly Betty - comedy, romance, drama
• Desperate Housewives -comedy, romance, drama
• Sarah Jane Adventures - sci-fi. childrens drama
• Holby City - hospital drama
• The Tutors - historic, costume drama

The word genre bascially means a 'kind' or 'type'  of something, such as drama, sci-fi, comedy, romance, horror etc. TV programmes often use this to categorise shows into things they have in common with each other. These genres can break down into sub-genres, such as a drama can break down into a crime drama. Drama is the most popular genre and they first began in the 1950s on ITV when it started broadcasting. Genre can be broken down into sub-genres also; costume drama's, childrens dramas, soaps, crime, hosital, and historic.

Evaluation - Rough Draft

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

The titles at the start of the thriller are quite neutral and scroll across the screen, this is slightly calming and lulls you into a false sense of security and this is also a popular option that many thriller films use, then make you jump when you least suspect it.
The costume our character is wearing is a typical teenage girl’s attire and so it is easy to for people to relate to, especially teenage girls. It also challenges the forms and connections of real media products as it also features another sort of character; however it is not quite real and so this sways away from the norm. The main character 'Poppy' (though her name is not revealed in the opening) fits in best with the reality of the thriller or she appears to be just a normal teenage girl going for a walk in a lonely desolate woods.

Another convention we used was the different effect for when the creature was looking at the girl from his point of view; we changed it so it would be clear that something else was watching her. They use this in many other films, not just thrillers. In other psychological thrillers (which is what genre ours is) they often make the victim feel trapped, in cages and various other objects, we used the trees of the woods to create a feeling of closure and like there is so escape from the forest and like the trees are closing in on her.
We also included paranoia into this film, The Machinists main topic of the film was paranoia and how it can have a massive influence on people, such as seeing this which is exactly what our character was doing. As well as The Machinist we also looked at other films to help shape our thriller around. Book of Eli is a good example as it uses a wood in the opening scene and the trees appear a metaphorical cage around the subject and in No Country for Old Men long shots are used to display the feeling of loneliness and barren wilderness.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

‘Guilt Trip’ represents women in this film as the victim, this makes her seem very vulnerable, and she is the only person in the opening so this just adds to the loneliness of it all. Normally, the victim in a film is female so this is a traditional factor of the thriller. It strays away from the stereotypical teenage girl, she is alone walking her dog in some woods with nothing her iPod plugged in (though you can not see this in the film, it is there), this makes her seem even more cut off from the world and perhaps a bit of an outcast.
She is easy for teenage girls to relate to however, and this will make viewers fit in more (and maybe even feel as if it is them who is the woods), she is wearing normal teenage clothes; jeans, hoodie, warm winter jacket and wellingtons– a necessity in the country. Because it is so average you don’t expect anything to happen and that it’s just a normal day to take the dog for a walk.

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

Most media these days is spread around the internet on major social networking sites; youtube, facebook, blogger, twitter, vimeo, anything you can communicate to people on and it’s a good way to distribute media products. When we were getting peoples opinions on our rough edit of the thriller I put it on my facebook page along with a link to a survey on it, this was a good choice as it targeted people of my own age, the main majority of who the thriller is aimed at, and it helped people answer the survey. If we were working on a bigger scale we could get press and radio stations involved to help raise awareness.
There is an independent film company named ‘Coffee Films’ which specializes in thrillers and other genres that relate to this which we could send our thriller too, this would get more viewers who like to watch alternative films; these kind of people would most likely be teenagers or young adults who have internet access, as the main way to find out information on such things is by using the internet.

4.  Who would be the audience of your media product?

A teenager is the leading role in this thriller; teenagers are the target audience. Although it is suitable for anyone this is the age group we would be aiming at most. The lead role is wearing normal clothes, in a normal environment which could be anywhere.
The main nationality for this thriller would be British, because its set it quite a British desolate location, but what is good about this opening is that the girl does not say one word throughout, it's all down to expressions and movement to show how she is feeling, so this would open up our potential audience even more as people from all over the world can understand it. But then because of a girl having the lead role this may attract more females than males to go and watch it, but in contrast to this females are less likely to want to go see a thriller than male. Through terms of sexuality however, the males may wish to see it for the main character.

5.  How did you attract/address your audience?

To help attract our audience we sent out questionnaires asking the public what they like to see in a thriller and various other questions on the same topic, we asked a variety of ages and genders to help widen our potential audience. After this first questionnaire and after we had completed our rough edit of the thriller, we then made another questionnaire to hand out during our screening, this was too ask the audience what could be done to make it better and what they would like to see more of; this was very helpful and enabled us to get a clearer image of what the public would like to see. The results were they like psychological, which was a perfect result as that was what we were working on.
Auidence feedback is a very significant part of the media, as without we wouldn't know what to base our thriller on. As a general rule men normally prefer thrillers to women, but of course this does not always apply.

We looked at other thrillers to base our own characters on, Donnie Darko was one of these; though a female version and less psychotic. Fight Club contributes to this as well as the narrator is suffering from paranoia and seeing things, the same as our lead role. Brick is another film we watched the intro of to see what a thriller was like, the main character was quite isolated from the world and is never seen phyically talking to another person, just like our character. These are all quite popular films so to follow their guidence is a good way to gain an audiance.

6. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing your products?

The main things I have learnt from constructing my product were learning how to edit and the software we used for it. iMovie was good and very simple to use, but then we wanted to use a software that was more precise and a little more challenging, so we used ‘Final Cut’, this is very good software but a quite a bit harder to use and we were used to the setup of iMovie, we soon enough picked it up though and agreed it was a lot better and because it was more precise meant the editing would be a lot more effective and we had many more options to explore and use, whereas iMovie did not.

We adjusted the music a lot more, lowering and raising the sound is certain parts, something which we couldn’t do in iMovie. As well as the editing side of things, the filming part was quite tricky in places, we needed to get all the timings precise and it was harder than it sounded! We ended up with quite a lot of footage and even when we put it all into place it was still much too long, so we needed to cut parts out and shorten a lot of the clips for it to be around 2 minutes long.

Aspects which we used on Final Cut were we could adjust the music easier, a more varied array of slide transitions, a wider range of fonts, more ways to set out the credits across the screen, and the speed of everything. An important part we did ourselves was that the starting song we put at the end, but put it in reverse so it sound like a whole new song, but really quite creepy and chilling. This reflects the start and the finish together and almost mirrors one another.

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

Since the preliminary task I have learnt a lot. The task was quite simple got me used to the equipment we would be using and basic software (iMovie). But since then we have learnt a lot more, we’ve used different camera angles and some of it we did not use the tripod but hand-held the camera to give those shots a more dramatic affect.

We used iMovie again for the rough edit as it is a lot simpler and quicker, but for our final edit we used ‘Final Cut’.

Final Edit of our Thriller

Alana Forman AS Media Blog: Editing Completion!!!

Alana Forman AS Media Blog: Editing Completion!!!: "Today we finally finished our Final Cut final edit! it took less time than we thought, but we were still getting used to the new software. w..."

Alana has summed up everything I wanted to say about the final parts of our editing, it's now completed and we are very happy with the end result.

Questionnaire that was handed out during the screenings of the Thrillers.

Questionnaire

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Survey Analysis

This is Alana's audience research on the surveys we constructed using our questions and graphs we made.

I posted mine earlier but here it is again.

Case Study: American Psycho

American Psycho is a thriller/drama/black comedy which was released on April 21st 2000 worldwide. It was directed by Mary Harron and based on the book written by Brett Easton Ellis, the screen play was also written by Harron. It started with a budget of $7 million and ended up with a gross of $34,266,564, so it made a huge profit! On IMDB is has a rating of 7.2/10 so it is quite highly rated. It was followed up with American Psycho 2 which did not get a very good reception as it was straight to video, it currently only has a review of 11% on the review website 'Rotten Tomatoes'.

Christian Bale stars as Patrick Bateman, he is the main character in the story and his days are spent working for his fathers company on Wall Street making a great deal of money and a popular man in the office. It's set in the 1980's and the soundtrack includes music such as Phil Collins and Huey Lewsi & The News; both popular musicians from the 80's.
However, as night decends over New York he becomes a blood thirsty murderer, killing people to climb up the social heriachy and eliminating any who he dislikes. The film is quite dark and most of the shots are a night or in badly lit bars and restaurants, this makes it more sinister as it conceals people from the full picture.

The film is set as an 18 age limit which is very appropriate; this movie has scenes of a sexual nature, foul language, murders and gore. In my opinion no one below the age of 15-16 should watch it as it’s quite an adult film, a very good one, but slightly disturbed in places. The film is mostly aimed at males because it has mainly male characters throughout, so is dominated by them, the women in it are either sex objects or just meaningless people filling out the story. Of course some women will like it, such as myself; I find the storyline quite interesting and in places it is just so ridiculous it makes me laugh a little. Also, on the graphs of the ratings it shows that 72,908 men voted the film compared to the 11,270 women, so there is a very significant different there. A majority of the males were 18 or under voted for an average number of 8/10 so this just strengthens the fact that it is a more a film for men than women. 


There are hundreds of reviews for the film and most of them positive, such as this one; "This is not a slasher movie, indeed. It's a very deep, strange and delicate moment in satire. While it's serious, it's ironic and ridiculous. Great stuff! Funniest and the most (yes I dare say it) brilliant satire I've ever seen. Christian Bale's performance is unbelievable and if someone disagrees, they have to show me how to perform an emotional breakdown for 2 minutes on a phone. Just unbelievable. I've seen this 5 times now and it never gets boring."

Some people were not so impressed by the movie however, on IMDB one person said "one of the worst films I've seen in a long time. It's never quite hallucinatory enough to be surreal; never quite cartoonish enough to be funny; never plausible enough to be taken seriously; and the acting is the worst I've ever seen from Christian Bale. Sadly, this film also wastes the talents of Sevigny & Witherspoon. I guess this was meant to be a dark satire on the Reagan years, but it failed utterly."
          Many people have said the ending is not quite clear however which is a massive flaw in the movie, and also a majority of reviews say you should read the novel to really 'get' the film. I feel the same way, I have not got around to reading it myself yet but with most things the novels are normally a lot better than a film. 


As this film was shot 10 years ago and is a 'real-life' kind of film there is not much technology used it in, just very powerful emotive acting. I think this adds a real emphasis that someone really does live like that and that just makes it all the more thrilling.

Rough Edit: Guilt Trip

Here is the survey to fill in to go with it.

Feedback

Today we screened our thriller to an audience and handed out a questionnaire for them to answer. This helped us a lot, now we can see what we need to adjust and change.

The main problems were that several people didn't understand the plot and that the music was not consistent enough. We are currently working on the music and are now using Final Cut for all the editing so it will be more specific and sound a lot better.

We've also uploaded our rough edit onto youtube and added a link to a survey we created on survey monkey. We used the same questions in our hand-out questionnaires. This way we get more reliable results.

However, it will be harder to make the storyline clearer so we are giving that some more thought.

We had to leave out and change several scenes or else the opening would go on for more than 2 minutes and that is our maximum time.
The scenes we left out are:

• The girl putting her ipod on.
• Getting ready to leave.
• Changing the dog barking to some twigs snapping.
• Dizziness looking at the dog
• Dog barking at something at isn't there.
• Creature staring at dog.
• Dog runs away
• Looking for dog.
• High shot from the trees.
• POV of creature looking at girl.
• Creature passing through girl.
• Creature running past screen.

We moved some around and put them in a different order so the story will make more sense and be easier to follow.

Questionnaire Evaluation

Why did you ask this question?


1. Which gender are you?
We decided to ask this question because this way we could find out if men and woman had different ideas on which thrillers they like best and what they liked to see in them.
2. How old are you?
We felt that this was an important question to ask because different ages prefer different kinds of thrillers and if our thriller contained something each age would like, it would apply to a wider audience and so more people would enjoy it.
3. Which of the following do you find the scariest?
In a thriller it is important to have an aspect of fear in it, so the reason we asked this was to see if what we have done will scare others and thrill them.
4. What is your favourite film genre?
We asked this because it would tell us what people liked the most and so if ‘thrillers’ came up with quite high amount of people liking it then we know that a fair amount of people will like our film opening.
5. What is your favourite sub-genre of thriller?
We asked this because as our thriller is psychological, if people voted for this a lot then we have a good chance of people liking our thriller. If not then we could incorporate other aspects into our thriller.
6. What character dynamics do you like to see?
We felt this would be a good question to ask to see what character is most popular in a thriller so we could work our characters around this.
7. What makes you want to watch thrillers?
The reason why we asked this was to find out what actually made viewers want to watch a thriller so we could find out what we needed in ours that would encourage others to watch it.
8. Do you think Romance is suitable in a thriller?
Why we asked this question is to find out whether romance is suitable to have in a thriller or not, if we were to film the whole thriller this could be an important aspect whether to include it or not.
9. What is your favourite thriller film and why?
This was an open question and we asked this to see what kinds of thrillers other people like to watch, this way we can create one which may have similar aspects to the most popular result.
10. What do you think makes a good thriller?
We asked this to see if what we have put in our thriller fits with what a majority of other will like as well, this will make our opening popular and likeable.
What have you learnt from your data?


1. From our data we have learnt that more females than males answered our questionnaire and this could affect our results and females are not as likely to enjoy thrillers as much as males are.
2. The ages range from 12 to 35+ and the majority of people who took this questionnaire were between 16-19, this is good because as we are between these ages our thriller should appeal to an audience of our age, but it’s also bad because then the audience is quite limited.
3. Out of all the people we asked most of them thought that the scariest and most entertaining thing in a thriller is murderers, since we do not have any murderers in our thriller it may not be so popular.
4. Action and thriller were both very high in this question which is good for our thriller and a large audience will like it.
5. The favourite sub-genre was action and it was a very high percentage who said this, next was horror and psychological. As our thriller is a psychological I was quite pleased it had a lot of people liking it.
6. The character dynamic that came out top was the hero, I thought it would be the highest as most people do root for the heroin a film, the comedian of the group came second and I feel this is good because comedy is an important aspect in a film, however, not so much in a thriller.
7. We also learnt that the main reason why people watch thrillers is mainly down to the main actor in a film, then storyline comes close after and no one bothered about the soundtrack, however I feel the soundtrack is one of the most important thing in a movie sometimes, especially in tense films.
8. A very high percent of people said that romance is suitable in a thriller, but our thriller does not incorporate this in the opening so it does not apply.
9. All the people picked different favourite horrors but lots had the same reason why they picked it, because of a good story line, they liked the actors in it or it was very tense.
10. People more-or-less picked the same answers for the final question and we think it has a good storyline and suspense, perhaps it’s not very jumpy but it is mysterious.
Compare what you have learnt to your thriller, does it match? How can you improve it?


All in all, our thriller does quite match up with what the audience wants, its psychological, has tense moments, suspense and mystery added into it. To improve it though we need to work on the soundtrack so that people notice it more and the affect it gives off to the audience to increase the tension and so people will take notice of it and make them feel slightly more eerie and scared.

Audience research

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Audience research

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Prelim Task

Filming Part 2

On Sunday the 14th November 2010, Daisy and Alana came over to my house again to continue filming and we finished off all the bits we had hoped to do. Everything went really well and smoothly, unfortunately some parts had to be left out as they were either unpractical, took up too much time - or even both in some cases.

We shall start editing it next week and then hopefully in about 2 weeks it will be fully completed and all we'll have to do is to evaluate it.

Case Study: No Country For Old Men - Mise-en-scene

No Country For Old Men opens with a long shot of a desolate desert in America, the country is rural, arid and lonely. It shows nothing but emptiness stretching long into the distance and makes the viewer feel small and vulnerable. Looking right you see a few run down buildings surrounded by several dead trees and the desert is often associated with death. You can only see one car, or any for that matter which gives you the sense that nobody comes or leaves very often and as the buildings are quite run down not many people come along so there is no much point in keeping it looking clean and well kept.

Your eyes are drawn to the TEXACO sign at the bottom of the center of the shot, unlike anything else in the image it has colour. Red could stand for many things such as danger, anger, blood or even romance.
In the next scene it is in a small dark cramped room which adds an element of claustrophobia to the film. the man behind the till is framed in front of a window, everything is around him and the ropes above his head look like nooses as if he is about to be hanged.
This character wears brighter clothing, such as yellow shirt which may indicate he is a good character. All of the shots of them talking are over-the-shoulder so you always see both people at the same time. Behind him is a tractor/digger which does not appear in the first shot that shows you were you are, this can tell you that someone else has arrived and a new character may be introduced soon.

The second man appears quite menacing, he is dressed in all black which is quite sinister and makes you think of him as the bad guy. He puts down the scrunched up wrapper he was holding in his hand slams down the coin, this could perhaps show his strength as he did it quite roughly. He takes his hand away and reveals a shiny silver coin and it leaves you wondering what is it about this coin that is so special?

NME Audience

NME (New Musical Express) is a music magazine aimed mainly at people from 15 to around 30 years old and at both genders so appeals to a wide amount of people. The colours on the front page are fairly neutral so attracts males and females because the magazine is about the music and not the gender.

It features brand new bands and also old classics such as ''The Clash' so this makes it more interesting to the older audiences who remember The Clash from the 70s.

NME has Mark Ronson on the front cover so invites fans of him in to read more about his upcoming album. He may also intice women because they might find him attractive so buy the magazine to find out more about him. The main colours are orange and black on a white background which makes everything stand out more, especially as the main object (Ronson) is wearing dark clothes it makes him more noticeable than if it had a dark background.

I took a feature about the band 'Klaxons' and how they are preparing for Reading and Leeds Festival 2010 and talking about their new album 'Surfing The Void'. It's quite a neutral article written by Alex Hoban, aimed at everyone no matter what gender, its easy to read and quite informative. Throughout the article drops famous names in places 'Crystal Castles, The Horrors, Beth Ditto, Akiko, The Big Pink' and even Medusa gets a mention when talking about the weather 'It's also hotter than Medusa's womb' - I personally think its a little grotesque and doesn't quite fit with anything so I would have chosen something different to say instead.

NME is also mentioned several times in the writing, talking about the NME/Radio 1 stage at Reading & Leeds where they are playing.

I think this piece of writing is aimed at perhaps older teenagers who go to festivals and not children of about 12 because the Medusa thing is a bit odd and not quite appropriate.

Editing

Today in our media lesson we started to make a rough edit of the film we had shot on Saturday. Even with less than half of what we needed to be done we had about 1 and a half minutes of footage which was way too much, so we talked about which parts to leave out, which parts to crop down and whether some parts were vital to the thriller and if we should film them.
We've figured out what we need to do and learnt more about editing and this has helped a lot. We also picked out more music to use for the soundtrack.

Filming

Daisy, Alana and myself began filming on Sunday the 7th November. We did it a woods in my village, its very open, empty and deslotate here and so was perfect to get the shots we  wanted. We set off at about 2pm and mananged to complete quite a bit of what we wanted to do, unfortunately we didnt finish it all as it started to get too dark to film so by about 4:30 we headed home.

I was a bit doubtful about how my dog would be in the thriller as animals are meant to be hard to work with, but it all went very smoothly and I am very happy about how it all turned out. We plan to go back again on Sunday the 14th November and complete the rest of the work, but prehaps leave a bit earlier to have more time in the woods to film before it gets dark.

Media questionnaire

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Media questionnaire

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Film Title

We have decided that the film will be called 'Guilt Trip' as we feel it suits the tone and feel of the thriller very well.
Poppy is guilty and that is why she is paranoid and worried about everything, she trips over in the woods and so it became 'Guilt Trip.'

Other names for the film we though about included:

• The Unknown
• Guilty
• Guilty Conscience

We chose not to use these because they were either already in use from another film or feel it did sound right and give the right feel to the thriller.

Research Into Similar Products

We are comparing our thriller opening to Donnie Darko as we think it has many similar qualities. It is about something thats there...but isn't really. Its in depth and really makes you think about the plot of the story as it develops into a film.

Donnie Darko is about a teenage boy who has strange hallucinations of a large rabbit named Frank, which manipulates him to commit crimes and strange doings after escaping near death. It came out in 2004 and stars Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It was directed and written Richard Kelly.

They are both psychological as the thing they fear is not actually there, and it is all in their head. Donnie Darko has Frank the rabbit, whereas our thriller, Guilt Trip, has the unknown creature stalking our characters every move, yet she does not know it. As the film progresses you find out that the creature affects a lot more people than just Poppy. Donnie Darko over powers his 'conscience' by killing Frank because it was overpowering him, however Poppy's conscience takes over her and ends up killing her.

The Machinist is another psychological film that twists the mind into confusion. It was released in 2004, directed by Brad Anderdson, written by Scott Kosar and features Christian Bale as Trevor Reznik, a man who hasn't slept in a year and is starting to doubt his whole life and sanity. He sees people no one else can see and feels as if a conspiracy is being plotted against him and in his mission gets two women involved in it.

This is like Guilt Trip because Bales character takes over his mind just like Poppy's conscience does to her. They both become paranoid and anxious about what is happening and no one else can see what they see. The conscience of both of them start to deteriorate as the film progresses and you see them fall apart in front of you.

Music

The music we have chosen is all from copy right free sites. We have chosen slow, hauting instrumentals to build the suspence and tension. We have also played around with garage band to find out the sound effects and may also use some of them to increase the experience of the thriller. The music is chilling and as its set in Autumn/Winter it even makes the whole shot feel cold and empty.

Planning Schedule

Alana, Daisy and myself have organized to meet on Sundays when we are all free to film the thriller opening at my house.

We shall start on the 7th of November and hope to have in completely finished the filming by the 12th November.

Film Planning

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Film

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Case Study: Body of Lies - Mise-en-scene.

Body Of Lies was released in 2008 and was directed by Ridley Scott. It features famous actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. Throughout its time in the cinemas it made a total of $39,380,442, which is less than what it cost to make (which was an estimated $70,000,000).

The film starts with a quote from W.H Auden then fades out and tells you the location (Manchester, England). The black then slowly fades onto a foreign man and half his face is hidden in the shadow whereas the other half is lit up by sunlight. He is facing piratically facing towards the camera and addressing other people in the room, he is gesturing his fingers at them which makes him appear more important. The camera angle makes you feel as if you are one of the people he is talking to.
The camera pans out and shows more of the room, then switches to the camera moving down the corridor of what looks like a small, clustered flat. It shows a room with a lot of light coming in from the window, because its so bright it makes everything else appeared darker and with more shadows.
There is a man sitting at a table in there with lots of strange pots and pans surrounding him and smoke coming out of one of them. He looks hard at work (and very stressed) like he is building something (a bomb).

You then move into another room where a different man is standing watching television which has the first man talking on it. Another man is then brought into the scene, he is asleep in a dark room which light shining on him which makes his body and muscles appear big, this makes him look very powerful. He also has a book on his stomach and he is holding it with his hand; this can also mean he is clever as he can read. The second man appears with smoke around his face.

The next scene cuts to a street view of Manchester, just outside the building. Police and Swat Teams are everywhere and smoke is also coming from somewhere. A milk truck clatters down the road and the police let it through. All the swat team are now running into their positions and breaking into the flat. Its very busy and there is a lot of movement and things going on as they rush around. There is one part that is filmed from behind a fence which makes you feel imprisoned or as if something is trying to be kept in and you aren't meant to be there.
The milkman appears at the door of the flat and everyone is eagerly watching him as he puts the milk down outside. He is a distraction for the swat team as they break the lock on the door and sneak inside.

The people upstairs in the flat realize something is wrong and alert each other and wake up the sleeping man.
The room that the swat team is in is very dark and slightly smokey,all you can really see of them are their silhouettes (you cant see their faces as they are in masks). The others upstairs talk to each other in their own language and there are no subtitles on screen to tell you what they are saying and the camera switches between them. You never really see any of their faces because they are concealed by the shadows. The man at the table says something then blows up the building with the bomb. It quickly cuts to a shot of one member of the swat team and flashes yellow because of the explosion, then goes to a long shot of the exploding building and the road, you can still see the milk truck.
People everywhere in the street are panicking and screaming and its all a scene of confusion, bits of the building are falling down among them. It shows the explosion from another shot and more bits of building flying everywhere.
The scene then ends here.

Plot

In my group of Alana, Daisy and myself we have discussed the full plot of our thriller, drawn a storyboard, annotated it in a presentation and then today looked at music that would fit the aspects of the film well. We were looking for dark and brooding music and found several good pieces. We also played around on garage band looking to create something fitting.
Then we talked about what the main characters would wear, why they should wear them and if they were practical.

Next week we shall continue this and also look at locations which would be good to film in.

Scene Shots

I went to the woods near my house where I thought of filming the thriller and these show a long desolate track leading up to a dense wood in the distance which makes it look big and daunting.

 

I think they look quite effective because there are no buildings or people in the shot which adds to the lonliness and the fact there is no one around to help if you were in danger.

Case Study: Kick Ass

Kick Ass was directed by Matthew Vaughn who also co-produced it with Brad Pitt. It was released in the UK on 26 March 2010 and 16 April in North America.Filming took place in several places but mainly in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and various locations in the UK, including Elstree Studios.
The film made a final gross of $48,071,303 in the U.Sand $47,960,570 outside of the U.S, so was a massive hit worldwide! It has also been said that they have the green-light to go ahead and make a sequel of it.

The film was set as an 15 when released at the cinemas and on DVD, so that is the age it is targeted at. I think people into their 30's may also like it, but I can't see many parents wanting to que up to see it, as it is quite disturbing and upsetting in parts of it so they may not want to see it or for their children to either. I think that it should in fact be set as an 18 because it uses obscure language throughout and also features a sex scene in it. Looking at the whole film I think it's more aimed at males, most the characters are male and it is quite violent. However, I think it is a great film, one of the best I have seen, so it can still apply to females.
It seems a bit of a cult classic at first, it was an acquired taste but then people starting recommending it to others and it all took off and millions of people have seen it world wide and love it!
Many people thought it was too harsh and out-there though so it put people off and many even complained about the disturbing scenes featured in it.
On IMDB it has a high rating of 8.1/10 and has had over 90,000 votes.
One user comment has said "It's Superbad meets Kill Bill." which I think is quite a good description of the film and most of the 500+ reviews all give it nearly 10/10 stars!

However some people are not as impressed, one person says "I cannot believe the undeserved high rating of this film, by way of balance I must therefore award it a 1.
The storyline starts out promising enough as a lighthearted comedy but it quickly runs out of steam and it becomes apparent it actually has nothing new to say."
So as you can see, it's not to everyones taste.

New technology has increased the intensity of this film by using computer animation to give it a more cartoon feel in places as the film was based on a comic, lots of CGI shots, Red Mist had a very cool and gadgetry car and Kick Ass also promotes many huge companies, such as Apple (an iPhone was used), myspace.com (Kick Ass and co had a website with myspace) and youtube was also featured in the film.Throughout the film it features many different camera shots, a lot of them are long shots because there are a lot of establishing shots and action shots of explosions etc, so a long shot is the best for this so you can see the explosion in all its glory. Hit Girl also has a POV experience in the film, she is wearing night vision goggles and you see from her perspective as she pans around the room looking for villans (this looks and feels slightly like you are in a computer game).

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

So far I have learnt how to use the video cameras properly and how to attach them to a tripod and navagate the camera around on the tripod to get all the best angles I need. Tripods are very important when it comes to filming because it keeps it nice and steady instead of having a wobbly shot (unless you need it that way), so it is always best to use them or a flat, sturdy surface.
I also learnt how to use the iMacs and edit things using iMovie which was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Everything is clear and simple which really helps, as it will build you up to using more professional versions of it.

Lables 2

Lables

Thriller Film Openings

Gothika (2003): Starring Halle Berry and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz.





The opening to this thriller is three minutes long and it's quite tense and dramatic. It starts with dark, chilling music and a dark background with the names of people starring in it and then the title of the film fading into the background, almost as if they are running away, trying to escape.
Then you hear whispering by a woman with a foreign accent, its a very hoarse whisper and makes you wonder what she looks like, then throughout you hear beats in the back ground that sound like heartbeats. The woman's face appears from the darkness and you see that she is messy and untidy, no make-up on, hair not neat, red splotchy face as though she has been crying and dark circles under her eyes which are watering. From that close up it then switches to a mid shot of Halle Berry, the other woman, and shows her very prim,  proper, neat and calm.
The camera then pans around the room and through the grills of the room, it makes you feel like you are not supposed to be there and prying into someone elses business, it's all very suspicious. The darkness of the room and shadows gives it quite a claustrophobic feeling, and all through the scene there is music that sounds slightly like wind.
A majority of the sound in the clip is non-diegetic apart from the crashes and bangs when she is being controlled by the security guards.







The Book Of Eli (2009): Starring Denzel Washington  and directed by  Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes





This film opens with ash falling and the wind gently blowing it around making you think where is the ash coming from? what caused the fire to make the ash? Haunting bass music is paying in the background to add depth and tension. The trees are shadowed and makes it look like a silhouette
which is very creepy and they almost look like  a cage so makes you feel trapped in them. The camera pans around the whole scene allowing you, the viewer, to take everything in, then it shows a gun laying on the floor and next to it a man, mostly covered in ash. Perhaps suicide as his hand was close to the gun? By why? A sphinx cat soon comes into the shot looking around carefully and meowing, then walking cautiously towards him. Again the camera pans around the forest and up to a bunker which I looked at for a few seconds before realizing there is a person sitting in it in armour so there face is hidden from view. You then see a point of view from the cat, eyes darting around because it has sensed something.  Strange non-diegetic noises can be heard while viewing the person and then you hear their heavy breathing (diegetic sound).
The figure releases a arrow from a cross bow and you see a close up of the cats face and eyes wide looking straight on. The camera then focus' on the arrow as it glides past in slow motion and you can see every little detail of it, and you can hear the sound of it flying past, then it speeds up again, hits the cat, and it goes flying and yelps.





Brick (2005): Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and directed by Rian Johnson




Brick begins withs chimes playing in the background, soon a persons feet come in to view as the camera pans across an ally. Next her face is shown to the audience, she's wearing glasses and behind her is dark tunnel and you can see no light at the end of it so this can show that there is no escape from what has happened, and death. Next to the dead girl laying on the floor is some running water in a gutter, her hand is laying outstretched in it and you see several blue bracelets on her wrist. Then a male character is introduced to the film, he is sitting a little way from the girl with his knees up near his chest and looking distressed.
It then switches to the past and you see a girl with blue bracelets on her wrist putting a note into a locker at school. We know who put it in but the person who's locker it is has no idea which adds drama. There is no music playing and it is all diegetic sounds. The male from earlier is always on his own so this can show loneliness and isolation from people. He then walks along an empty road and encounters a ringing phone box which is quite mysterious. There is heavy breathing down the phone which adds suspence and builds up tension. He pans the area and the camera switches to a point of view. Throughout the whole introduction there is hardly any talking going on which gives it an eeiry feeling and there are only two people you see throughout.

Last week we starting shooting our prelim tasks in small groups, we had a rough draft of what my group was going to do but then got a bit carried away and made a whole new one as we went along! We were in the drama room and found quite a few props to use which was quite good. It all went smoothly considering we had never used the equipment before, and we different kinds of shots to show the scene such as; long shots, mid shots, close ups and points of view.

We then uploaded it onto a mac and began editing, today we finally finished and it's turned out pretty well! We also added sound effects, music and some text to one shot. iMovie was quite simple to use most of the time, but a little fiddley in places but we managed to get the hang of it and do all of the things we wanted to add to our video.

Analysing Film: Terminology

They use a many number of ways to film things, lots of differnt camera shots such as; over the shoulder, point of view, close up, long shos, wide angles, establishing shots and others which are similar to these. High and low angles are also used to make the character of the shot seem either vunerable or over-powering.

There is also several ways to move about with your shot, you can pan, tilt, zoom, steadicam, track, dolly, hand-held or just hold with your hands (though it can wobble a bit so this is best used for point of views).
Composition is very important, you have to make sure it's right so the shot will look better and drag your attention more, framing the subject or object is a way to do this, also using the rule of thirds, and the depth of field.

You have to be careful when you edit things because there could be errors that affect the whole scene. Continuity is an important one, the things have to stay the same in the shots or the viewer will notice and that would be bad editing. Cutting across to other people has to be done right as well, you could cut it too much and miss out an important part of the footage.
Also, to add other things such as transitions could greatly help (or ruin) the feeling of the film. You could show a new scene by dissolving it in, or fade-in, fade-out, wipe, superimpostion, long and short shots and visual effects.

Sound is a main factor in films, music can change the mood of the whole film, as can the sound effects. The words much match the mouths, and the music must match the subject of whats going on in the film. If it was a dramatic, thrilling part to a film you wouldn't start playing something by The Beatles, you'd have a tense piece of instumental music.

My media blog.

Hey, I'm Holly and this is my blog for media studies. I will be post about films, tv shows and all sorts and also making my own thriller opening, so here you will see my progress on this throughout my media course.