Q.01. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

1. Title of the film – We developed an idea from a thriller film that we researched, which is “Die hard – With a Vengeance”. The title of die hard came in with a sound like a single explosion. In our opening scene, we made a sound effect for each of the letter of the title coming in.
2. Setting/Location – Regarding location, we made use of one of the most common place for a thriller film, the woods.  The sense of isolation and the appearance of the woods, dark and lonely, helped us create tension to appeal to the audience.
3. Costumes and props – For props, we made use of work clothes and a bike. The character pushing it and walking through the woods alone gives the audience a sense of isolation and creates tension.
4. Camerawork and editing – The tilted camera and the black-and-white colour of the shot is one convention of thriller films. This creates tension and a sense of uneasiness. This also helps the audience get a feel of what happened to the character.
5. Title font and style – The font of the title are done in big, clear, white letters. We challenged normal thriller, which uses fonts in bold capital letters. This simple font and style combined with the sound effects combines really well to catch the audiences’ attention.
6. Story and how opening sets it up – The film opens by a seemingly person gets off work and goes off. This helps show the difference when the character enters a attack or struggle.
7. Genre and how opening suggests it – Another common convention of a thriller film is violence of an attack. The bat connotes this violence well, especially with it pointed to the character. The distorted colour also adds to this, thus creating the tension needed in the scene.
8. How characters are introduced – The character introduction is done very clearly, with an attacker and the one who gets attacked. One of the main conventions of thriller films is that the main character gets attacked, assaulted or tortured by an attacker. The opening scene shows clearly who is which.
9. Special effects – We used a black-and-white shot effect for a flashback. A flashback is one of the conventions of thriller films. Furthermore, by taking  the shot from a high angle and making look like a CCTV camera, this makes it look like the character onscreen is being watched or followed.

Questionnaire Results

Which of these Thriller films have you seen?

            According to our questionnaires, some of the thriller films that people have seen are these four. The top 2, both with 6 people, is Die Hard 3 and Jaws.

What locations you associate with thriller films?

            The top location associated with thriller films is the woods. The second one would be alleyways. When we asked them why, they said that because the place is abandoned and isolated.

What genres of music are usually associated with thriller films?

As for the music, the top one associated with thriller films is classic music. Furthermore, they said that it would be fairly slow beat and then changes to a faster beat when nearing the climax.

Costumes and Props Research

                In our film, the attacker will use a bat to attack people. We considered a baseball bat and a cricket bat. A baseball bat would have been better, however, only a cricket bat is available to use. Therefore, we will use a cricket bat in our opening scene.

                These are the costumer that we are considering for the victim in our opening scene.  We think that bright coloured clothes are suitable for a victim. Furthermore, the casual look allows the victim to blend in with the mise-en-scene.  The more formal clothes is for the victim that just got off work and is about to go home. We’re deciding whether a jacket over the work clothes would be more suitable. However, whether a jacket is suitable or not will depend on the weather.

We decided that the attacker should wear a hooded jacket. Furthermore, the dark colour is suitable for the attacker. Furthermore, the contrast between the dark clothes of the attacker and the bright clothes of the victim will give the audience an idea of what’s about to happen.

Location and Setting Research

Thriller films normally use places that are out of the way, and therefore have few or no people around.

Woods

Woods provide the setting for a thriller film perfectly. The deserted and isolated atmosphere that this place gives provides the perfect atmosphere for thriller films. Fursthermore, for an attack to happen, somwhere isolated and where thereisn't much people is mre suitable than a crowded place.

Graveyard

Graveyard has a lonely and isolated atmosphere. Furthermore, there are rarely a lot of people in graveyards, so an attack could happen here. However, graveyards would be more suited to a horror movie, unlike our thriller  movie.

City streets

City streets provide a lively or crowded atmosphere. This is mostly used in thriller films to show contrast between two locations, therefore increasing the tension. Therefore, we could use this in a thriller movie and then change the scene into a more isolated place to catch the audiene off-guard and surprise them.

Alleyways

Alleyways give off an isolated atmosphere. Furthermore, unlike other locations this is closer to the city, showing the difference in atmosphere more clearly.

Questionnaire

We will use this quetionnaire to get our target audiences' opinions. Whis way, we can appeal to the right preferences of our audience to draw them in successfully.

My group...

I will be working with my partner, Max Baranowicz. We both will act while the other one handles the filming. For our thriller films, Max will handle the filming and bits involved in it. I will mostly focus in editing the clips and adding effects to theem. We decided on our jobs depending on our strengths.

Evaluating the Preliminary Task

I was asked to film and edit a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down on a chair opposite another character, with which he/she exchanges a couple lines of dialogue.

I prepared for this task by doing a storyboard. This storyboard showed what will be on each shot. This also detailed the type of shot and camera and character movement. This pretty much shows what happens on each shot.

We used three shot techniques to make up the film. One is match-on-action shot. In this shot, I was the actor on camera. We took a mid-shot showing my upper body, and an extreme close-up of my hand pushing the door open. This makes the audience know the character, and the extreme close-up makes the audience focus on my hand opening the door. The framing in this shot is focused on the character and the setting. The mid-shot showed where the character is in the room. Also, in this shot I was positioned in the centre of the shot, making me the focus of the shot.

 

The second technique is shot-reverse-shot. In this shot, I was one of the actors on screen. For this, we used over-the-shoulder shot. We used this shot to clearly show a conversation and who was speaking. The framing in this shot focused on the two actors on screen. However, the framing also included people behind the actor. On this shot, the actors were positioned in the centre of the screen, with only a bit showing the background.

 

Next was the 180-degree-rule. We used this rule so as not to confuse the audience. We use a long shot of the actors on screen. We used this shot to show the dialogue exchange between the actors and to clearly show the position of both actors. This shot also helped to prove the 180-degree rule, as the actors are clearly shown and they stayed on the same side of the screen even though the shot angle was changes. In this shot, the actors were positioned in the centre of the screen, opposite each other.

        

          The final result was good. I was pleased with it, because the transition between the shots was smooth.  Also, because we were able to use every shot, the editing went smoothly and only needed little work.

          On the other, we could still improve it.  For one, we could move the camera closer when we did the shot-reverse-shot. This way the only focus would be the actor, and the people in the background won’t be shown.

          As a group, we worked fairly well. We divided the work evenly. This way we were able to work efficiently as a group, which made the final result better.

          I also got used to editing using Imovie. Now I feel fairly confident I can do better editing next time. I was also able to use many shot types, and I got confident in using the camera better.