Q1: in what ways does your media product use develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

A thriller is something that gets the audience gripped makes you want to know what is going on, and why they have made it like this. The aim for thrillers is to keep the audience alert and on the edge of their seats. There are so many thriller genres for a thriller for example they would be like action thriller, crime thrillers, super natural thriller, religious thrillers. We picked the religious thriller as we thought that there was not many but they are really effective to watch as you could use so many elements to do with religion. We also picked a thriller to do with religion because we liked the idea of someone begging for forgiveness for something they have done.  We also liked the idea of the symbols and the church as the lighting in the church could be very useful to get an atmosphere. The audience expectations for a religious thriller would be like not knowing who the killer is. Why is he praying for forgiven? What has he or she done so wrong? Why does he have these beliefs? Who was killed? And why? These would be some of the questions that the audience could be asking when they are watching a religious thriller. The elements for our religious thriller were to create it so the audience was gripped and wants to know who the killer is and why he has done the things he did? We wanted to create a tense feeling to the audience making them want to watch the thriller.

I feel during the making of our thriller we used a range of shot types. We want to create the feeling of mystery, making the audience not know what the man looks like. We did this by not putting the camera straight on to his face, so his face was hidden. We didn’t use the close up shots in this as we felt it was not the type of thriller to have them. We set the sense for the thriller by using a still grab to show the location of the thriller. Showing the audience what setting the killer or victim was is in. For our editing we used the mac and iMovie. The setting we used was at Morton church as it was a small village and people know everyone in the village so it would be weird if anything happened in the village. They convey this idea to be this because it’s a small village not a lot happens and the people in the village know everyone. Also they type of place it is quite and the people in the village are mostly in the older age group. The costume was very basic, we thought it would be more effect it was all black so black coat, black trousers. The lighting for our thriller was really good when we got into the church as there was so many different ways of light that we used. For example in the church there was candle sand a red room so that gave it different lights. Also the windows made different lights because of the colours in the stain glass windows. We chose to have a voice over in our thriller like the thriller “The exorcism of Emily Rose” as they have a voice over in the film. We liked the idea of that as we thought it would make it more mysterious.

Here is a screenshot of my voice over and what it says:

This is what we want to say in the voice over. It sounds like a prayer, but its someone who it saying what he feels, kind of telling a story on what he wants to confess to God. 

 

Here is a screen grab form tom my blogger to show our voice over script to you can see what we want to say when we are recording it. This will be done in a male voice as we feel it would fit better with the type of thing was are going for. Also we want to make a mystery on who the audience thought was talking and we wanted to keep that hidden. Also we thought that this scrip sounds like he was confessing something that he has done because he is saying how powerful god is. 

Here is a screen grab of our thriller. This is showing the religious symbols in the church. It’s a screenshot of a religious symbol as Christ on the cross. Also shows the type of lighting we had. We liked the lighting in the church it gave the effect that it was old; worn out, cold feeling to it. This is the type of feeling we wanted to achieve by the lighting we had. We wanted to give that effect to the audience too.

                                                                                   

This is a screen grab to show the type of place the title of our thriller, and the effect it gives it also show the character in our thriller. This also shows what the character was wearing as you can see all black and a young male character.

Here is a comparison to our thriller to a real thriller and see how some of the shots are similar:

The Exorcism of Emily Rose comparison:

The start of the thriller of ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’ starts with the trees blowing in the wind. The lighting is dark and gloomy. The shot is simple but effective. As you can see the lighting is giving the effect that something may help so even the lighting can change the mood of the film.

Comparison of the two shots:

This is a shot from our thriller kind of the same thing. Setting the scene. Dark, gloomy lighting. Both our thriller and the real thriller have the same kind of opening shots to them as you can see. We wanted to get the same kind of lighting and shot types as the real thriller ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’. Having bare trees could symbol the signs of death, there being no life. Also having sharp angles

Another shot comparison:

Stain glass window shot from the real film. We liked the idea of the stain glass windows having pictures of Christ and the cross to show the religious side to it and the colours from the stain glass windows.

And from our thriller we have taken the idea of stain glass windows from the real film and but it into ours, as we liked the idea of the colours in the stain glass windows, and also the symbols and pictures of the religion. The shot type was a high angle shot to show that god it higher up then him this could show authorities

Another screen grab from the real film was the symbols of crosses on the walls. We took this idea and put it in our own thriller, as we liked the idea of the symbols on the wall to show that this is a religious thriller.

Screen grab from our thriller ‘Exodus’ to show that we took the idea from the real thriller. As you can see they are similar but different at the same time. The lighting in tour thriller was more different as we had other lights like the windows, candles  ours was in a church and the shot from the real thriller was in a house.

This is a screen shot from our thriller the ‘Exodus’ to show what he was wearing and what kind of lighting we were working with. As you can see in some of the photo there were the stain glass windows that gave it a bit more of colour also there were candle everywhere.  Also there was a red room that give a really creepy made it more thrilling. As you can see in the screen shot the type of costume he was wearing and it shows what type of place and lighting we was working with. Thus shot from the thriller looked like it was a CCTV shot so it sort of gave the effect that he was being watched on what he was doing. Creates a sense of mystery when doing this. We called this shot an establishing shot.

The types of conventions that are used in a thriller would be like the sense of mystery. A thriller normally wants to get the audience-gripped form the start of the film. This would make the audience want to know more. Having mystery in the thriller will keep the audience on their toes. Some thrillers tend to have flash backs on what happened in the past or something they didn’t and cant forget. The type of thrillers that we looked at that has inspired us was “No County for Old Men” for the amazing opening to the thriller film. As a group we decided that we liked the opening to this by setting the scene as you can see here:

From our thriller

As you can see from our thriller we have set the scene but using an open area, vey quite areas were everyone knows everyone. The main characters is shown but you can’t see his face this will make the audience think ‘why is he there?’ Why is he looking out at the open area? We wanted to set the scene like “No Country for old men” open area showing where they are just like that film did. This is also a over the shoulder shot and also a long shot at the same time as you cant see his face but you can see what area and what sort of place it is.

From No Country for old men

This is the sort of thing we was going for to set the scene in the opening of our thriller. This shows the audience the type of place it is and the where about it is. This is a shot is more like an over the shoulder shot and also a long shot as you can see the type of place it is and you can see the man in the picture too. Having the man in the shot and not showing his face can create mystery.

Here is another shot of the ‘No Country for Old Men’ opening. As you can see it’s like the shot we did in our thriller. Setting the scene but then adding a hint of mystery of the character being there. In the opening of No Country for old men there is a narration so there is a male telling a story, before the film had started. We like this idea of having a male voice over our thriller, telling a story or a confession seen as our thriller is a religious thriller. This can get the audience asking about who’s saying the voice over and why?

Types of thriller opening we have seen and studied.

-          “No country for old men”- we looked at this thriller because of the opening to it was setting the scene on what kind of the location it was and where. Also in the beginning of the film you never see a face you always see the back of the person. Also liked the narration at the start, we liked the idea of them doing this at the beginning of the film got the audience guessing on who’s talking and what’s happening.

-          “Smiley”- looked at the film Smiley for the tense scene and the music that was in the movie kept people on edge. The music was non-diegetic music so the music was in the background but that was not want type of music we wanted we wanted one that was diegetic.

-          “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” – looked at this movie for the religious theme. We also liked the idea of having young characters in the movie; we liked the idea of having a young person playing the character as it more thrilling when a young person is involved in a thriller. We liked this because it made them look more innocent and would be weird if something happened to them. It would make it more unexpected. Also liked how the type of music and the symbols that they used in the movie. Like the crosses and the church was shown in it which gave us some ideas

-          And “The Devil inside” we looked at this film because in this film there are scenes where they are in a church, made it scary and intense but the lighting in the church, we looked the idea of it being in a church because of all the different lightings and symbols in a church and how much it can change the atmosphere.

 Question 2.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our thriller relates to all social age groups, to any type of person. We did rate our thriller to be a 12 on the age of the films. The reason I think it would be more interesting to teenagers is because there is a teenage male in the thriller. The reason why there is a male in the thriller is because teenagers can be known to be violent by the way they are dressed in all black. This could show that he would be mourning someone’s death. This can lead to the audience asking about the person’s death. The reason in our thriller we have chosen a teenage male in it as people expect that teenagers are prone to violence. We thought that this would interest the teenage and young adults to watch it. A social group of that age would like a thriller and want to watch one.

A representation means something being influenced. For example this would be like if the media this showed a thriller being really good and gripping this would make people want to go and watch it.

Our media thriller created a representation for a specific group of people; by picking a male figure to be a character in our thriller. We chose this because teenagers are seen to be violent and are known to have this repetition. By looking at other thriller the male figure is seen to be a violent character. They are always seemed to be the villain in the films. This is another reason we chose to have a male play the character in our thriller. The type of elements that make up a representation can be the mise-em-scene are in. so we shot our thriller we chose a closed in area where its unknown to have any danger in it. But the area has a lot of teenage groups in it so it can be seen to fit in it the violent gangs you see in some thrillers.  

This is our character in our thriller this is the only one as we have a voice over that tell someone of the story this can create a sense of mystery. We wanted it to be a male tone of voice as it sounds like he was done something wrong by how he is saying it. We wanted to create it so it sounds like were sorry for what they have done.

This is the character in the thriller we have made he is shown to be this quite young man who in his appearance he doesn't look like he could do anything wrong. This is the type of look we wanted to go for. As i said before that young adults are more prone to valiance them older people as they are seen to be like that. as him being a quite character this would show some mystery as he does not loom like the type of person to anything bad. We wanted a male figure character like this to show that he looks older and being being young could attract young adults to watch it more.

Here is the sound to the voice over in the thriller:

Here is or script and the voice over we have in our thriller. This is the scrip the the male figure like the picture above would be saying. as you can here its a deep slow voice. Making the audience want to listen to what he is saying. We chose to have him talk slowly as you want to hear what he is talking about.

Question 3.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media products and why?

Warner brothers.

The reason we chose Warner brothers is because they have made so many religious for example ‘Exorcist’ that is a religious thriller that Warner Brothers have done. This company is well known for their movies like The Hobbit, Harry Potter, The Batman and there religious thriller like, The Exorcist, Giveaway, Warner Brothers is a huge company, as they are known for doing comics even though I’m not doing comics they are a big creator of this.

Here is a list of films Warner brothers have made:

-          Gangster Squad: this would be a gang thriller. As there is violent and action and a clear view on who’s the hero and whose the villain. Its would be a thriller because this type of film keeps the audience gripped and on their toes, keeps the audience guess on what is going to happen.

-          Inception: I would was that this film would be a psychological thriller, as it gets the audience thinking.

-          Batman begins: action film, clearly see who’s the hero and who’s the villain.

-          The hobbit: is a surreal film, not fiction.

-          Harry Potter would be a fantasy film, because of all the character in it.

-          Orphan: is a typical thriller, by the music and the story line it has. But the characters are different and this thriller involves children, and this can relate to our thriller.

These are the type of thrillers that we was looking at to get some ideas for our thriller they did help us gain an understand on what people like to see in a thriller. It gave us some ideas like the type of music and the characters we should have in our thriller. The location and the type of place to set it. These are three very different types of thrillers we have picked to look at. For example we looked at the Orphan as a character based film looked at what characters they had in the film and we took that and wanted a young person to play in our thriller etc. 

The name of the thriller that we picked to be the name of our thriller was taken by the bible the ‘Exodus’  we thought that it would be a good name for our thriller as it is a religious thriller. As you can see we wanted to change the font of the title so it looked like thought about what we wanted to look like. We wanted to make it so it was original.

These are the types of thriller we looked at to get some ideas for shots and the type of story lines we wanted. We wanted to call it this because we felt that the word was in the bible we thought it made it more mysterious

Here are some real thriller trailers:

Question 4.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The type of audience we are aiming our media thriller be for was for 15 and above, more for teenagers and young adults. We are hoping to attract both females and male to watch this film as it is a different thriller to the rest of them. I think this because there are not many religious thrillers around and it would be interesting for young people to see one. We picked to film this thriller for this age group because more young people age 15+ seem to want to watch thriller more then any other genre of films. We thought this because people like to be kept on their toes the fear of the unknown. Also the thrill you can get and how the audience can keep guessing what’s happening we thought younger people would like that more. Also we picked this kind of age group because if there were any scenes in the thriller that younger then 15 found scary then what would be nice for them. Or some of the scene such as the one where the character I walking to the church they may not understand what is going on and what would be happening they wouldn’t understand so they wouldn’t enjoy the movie.

How we research our audience we posted questionnaires on our bloggers. We also asked people around school what they thought about or thriller and what they also thought was good in a thriller. Then we took what they thought and made our thriller better in any way they thought it would help. Before we started making the thriller we ask some people in school though recording them and what they thought was effective in a thriller we took note on what they said, made the thriller and asked them what they thought on the finished product. This helped us see what we need to work on when we do any other media projects. We chose recoding people and asking them questions while filming the recordings because then we can keep looking on what they have said and it shows research. We also posted on Facebook what they thought of our thriller to see what feedback we got.

Our BBFC age ratings for our movie would have been:

•   Strong violence

•   Frequent strong language (eg 'f***').

•   Portrayals of sexual activity

•   Strong verbal references to sex

•   Sexual nudity

•   Brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence

•   Discriminatory language or behavior

•   Drug taking

These are the type of things the BBFC age rating say that should be in a film for age group 15. I would say our thriller would be at this as it could have strong violence and drug taking with bad language and behavior. This is why I think it should be a age rating of 15. Also some scene in the film people may not understand if they are younger then 15. They may find them distressing or wrong. Also having the age rating of 15 may be an interaction that the film might be a bit more interesting to the audience means it will have more detail and more violence or action some audience of this age might like. We feel this will reach out to the audience if we have the age rating at this.

An Audience profile:

Age: 19 years of age

Gender: male

This audience member likes the thriller film that it more action then thriller. He said he likes to keep a guess on what is happening. And he also said he likes the ending to be the best part of the film. He does like a thriller that is jumpy and that keeps you on edge. He also likes comedy films as they are for the family and they make him laugh. He said they are very watchable. He said that his favourites thriller was Saw and his favourite comedy film is Ted.

Music preference: likes rock and the odd modern music.

TV shows: likes the soaps like Eastenders, Corrie, but also likes to watch South Park and comedy programmes.

This would be the type of person we were hoping to aim for as an audience. The age and the type of interests they have matches what we wanted to catch their eye for this film. And the same gender mainly as the feel that more males would want to watch a thriller more then a female. He has a interest in controversy and mystery.

Question 5

How did you attract or address your audience?

How we made our opening to appeal to our audience was that we tried to make it so it was mysterious that the audience didn’t know who the hero was and who the villain was. We created sound as a narration so that it made a male man tell the story to the audience without giving it all away. We made the narration more like a prey then anything as it would come across as he has something to pray about e.g. a killing he could have done. We did different types of shot types so it showed where he was and what sort of place it was. The editing was done on a Mac on iMovie made the lighting and the type’s shots darker so it looked more thrilling. Looking at other real thriller they seem to so mid shots, so you are looking at the abject and the things around them to. We did quite a few shots like this as we thought it was effective to watch. Also did a lot of point of view shot as the film ‘No Country for old men’ because we set the scene before you saw any characters. Also we chose some natural sound from outside so for example that would be like moving trees, birds, wind etc. we did this to show how quite the area was and we thought it made it more of a mystery.

Interviewing Beth Ryman

                                                            
                                                         Interviewing Melissa Antcliff

I would say that we fulfilled our audiences expectations as we took note of what they thought would be good for our thriller and made it so it was in our thriller. The questionnaire helped up see what young people age of 15 wanted to see in a thriller and what they thought made one.  Also what type of genres they liked in a thriller most people said they haven’t seen a good religious thriller so we thought that we would make one and see what they thought.  We let the audience watch the finish thriller we made to see if they thought we took their ideas of a religious thriller into considerations and see what they thought and the feedback we got was positive and they said it shows different range of shots and lighting and does give it a sense of mystery with the narration and give the audience something to think about when watching it. They also asked for a male voice to do the narration as it gives a lower pitch to the voice. Also as we have a young male character playing in the thriller it would be appropriate. I would say that we fulfilled what the audience said in the questionnaire.

Question for this response for the voice:

Q1. Do you think that a voice over is a thriller is a good idea?

Q2. Do you think a male voice would be better than a females voice?

Q3. Do you think that a voice in a religious thriller would be a good idea?

Q4. Do you think that keeping the voice over as a back voice so you don’t know who’s talking?

Q5. Do you think we should have music in the thriller? As well as a voice over?

The audience responded in a very positive way. They said it was different and had a variety of shots and sounds. I think they were pleased that we took the advice and put it into to our thriller. Most females thought it was better than male that’s want we found out.

Question 6

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

During the making of the thriller we are creating I have learnt all the different ways that we could create it this would be like using the cameras and the tripods etc.

List of technologies:

PowerPoint’s- creates the slide show of  all the idea we had for the thriller to show the audience.

We used this camera to shot as it had good focus and the quality of the shots would be a better quality. We also used another canon camera as we would have twice as much footage and we can compare which ones were better and pick the ones to go in our opening thriller.






i would say out thriller that we have shot would only be a 15 rating, as it does not show any killing or an violence in it. It is a Thrilling and a tense thriller this is why i thought it would be a 15 rating.

Question 7

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

During the making of our opening to our thriller there was some problems that we had and some things that we had to change because if these problems.

These problems were:

-          The weather was bad which made the lighting not so good when we were shooting. This had to make us change a lot when we had to edit it.

-          The church had s service on so we had to wait till they had finished getting the shots in the church that we needed. This meant us to wait around till they had finish. Wasted some of the day.

-          We didn’t have the right equipment so we had to go back to school and get the right equipment we needed. This cost us some time from our filming.

These were some of the problems that we had on the day of shoot.

I feel that we improved from when we did our prelim as I feel we worked better as a team. And we did it and got done so there was not messing around. Also I feel it was better this time as we thought more about would give the best effect so we thought more about the lighting this time. And we thought more on what the audience wanted to see. The only thing that I feel went bad was the recording of the narration as it didn’t sound good and would go on the mac when we wanted it to. I feel we did improve from when we did our prelim. I feel this because it was a better result than our prelim more thought out. And the audience felt the same about this one.

The skills we have developed since we did the prelim I feel was that we have been better at editing this time changing the lighting and the way it flows seems better. And the editing on the mac it better then when we did the prelim. We worked better as I feel that everyone in the group did there bit this time then when we did the prelim. I felt after learning about the entire rule about using the camera to keep it looking better I feel we kept to those rules and helped us with it. We kept this the 180 degrees rule and the match action shot.

I feel this time was better at planning then when we did the prelim. We did PowerPoint on some of the ideas that we had for our thriller and showed some audience to see what they thought about these ideas. We did 4 idea sketches on our thriller ideas to see what sort of camera shot we wanted to use and when the story line was. We planned where we wanted to shot the thriller and we had to contact the church to see if it was ok to use it for our thriller. Luckily they said it was ok for us to use it on the day of shooting but they had a service on that day. We also had to think of what sort of character we wanted to use and what sound would be good for it. As you can see we chose a male young figure to play. I feel that how we planned it went to plan and there were not that many problems that we had to face. I feel that this was so much better than our prelim and we are glad that the audience liked what we did for our thriller opening.

Strengths:

-          Lighting thought that was a good way to set the scene and in a church we really thought about all the lighting we had in the church and how we could use it

-          Narration I felt this is good because it clear but not giving it away too much.

-          Having an older person playing in the thriller made it a bit more mystery.we thought this as they are seem more as a threat  

-          Editing was easier than when we did the prelim as we know more what to do with this thriller

-          The planning was thought out

-          The place was a good place to film- locations was in Morton church and the setting was in a quite village.

-          The cameras we used were at a good quality. We used two cameras as we thought is we had two good cameras then we would get good quality footage and we would have twice as much to work with when we was editing.

-          Better group communication

-          All know what we were doing when we was filming.

-          Listened and took note on what the audience wanted to see.

Weaknesses:

-          The weather didn’t go how we wanted it to so it made it hard to work with.

-          We had to wait around for the services to finish

-          Church didn’t get back to use until the day before

-          Didn’t have the right equipment to start with

-          Needed people to help act in the thriller needed to get hold of them to help

As you can see there are more strengths then weaknesses so over all. Which I feel is better and we had improved from when we did the prelim till now.

Now here is our end result to our thriller:

(Screen grabs and camera work photos will be here to show what we did and show what we used to create the thriller in the end)

(Photos)

(Equipment used)