When making our thriller opening film our group research the thriller genre in general and analysed various films in order to get an idea of what makes a thriller and the objective of the director. From this we understood the general techniques and conventions used in Thriller films in order to create tension and suspense upon the audience. Despite the thriller genre being very versatile and having many sub-genres within the category, we decided not to challenge the conventions and techniques a great deal but stick to making a typical thriller opening keeping the themes quite normal.The four main techniques used in thriller films to create tension and suspense are - mise-en-scene, sound, camera angles/shots and editing, therefore we focused on these aspects greatly and ensured that each technique was used to it's greatest ability in order for us to meet our aim.
One convention that we concentrated on a lot to create suspense and to keep the audience on the edge of their seats was sound. This is as we believed it was one of the most important ways of creating the atmosphere in thriller films as it helps connect with the audience feelings and emotions. Often, film companies with large budgets in Hollywood etc, make their own music for their films meaning it would be perfect. But as we were an A-Level media studies group this obviously wouldn't be possible, therefore we researched some of the most successful and iconic thriller films in order to find out what type of sound worked well to create tension and suspense upon the viewer. We found that orchestral music was very effective and used quite commonly in typical thriller films. Dan in our group who focused on sound, ended up researching music of this genre to find some suitable and appropriate music that would work well with our final product once completed. Despite our film and many others using sound as a main factor to create tension and suspense, many films - e.g, No Country for Old Men, use the absence of sound to create the same effect, which in fact works very effectively. However, we decided to stick to making a typical thriller film that included sound.Typically in Thriller films, the protagonist is shown as weak and the audience are encouraged to feel his emotions and feelings whilst the 'bad guy' is presented as an evil character who the viewers are meant to dislike. We used this idea in our film as we felt it was a good way to get across the the audience and make them feel tense and possibly in a state of subtle depression. The main techniques we used to create this aspect in our film was the use of different camera angles, shots and positioning of each character.
Here you can see an over the shoulder shot facing the protagonist over the evil characters shoulder. It presents the idea that the 'shadow' has more power and is looking down on the 'good guy', this could make the audience want to tell the protagonist that someone is there watching him as they build a positive relationship with the main character. Other points in the film that use camera angles/shots and positioning to create the same effect is when the protagonist is sitting at the bottom of a tree and the camera is looking down on him. This gives the audience the idea that the evil character is above and looking down on him, again this brings up the contrast of power between each character and makes the audience want to tell him that someone is above him.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our thriller opening does not specifically represent particular social groups and we did not aim to target certain social groups either. One way in which our film could be typical to a certain social group is the costume of the main character. He is wearing smart black shoes, smart jeans and a smart black jacket which could suggest he may fit into the middle/upper class social group. This could bring up the idea and suggest that he may have been targeted by the evil character for his wealth or maybe even his association with certain people of power. The 'shadow character could fit into various different social groups too. His costume consists of black trainers, tracksuit bottoms and a black hooded jacket, suggesting he could fit into the youth social group. Some people stereotypically associate youths with crime, this could again portray that he fits into the youth social group. Our thriller opening's location is Cannock Chase which is a forest welcome to anyone, so this doesn't particularly represent any social groups the film or it's characters may fit into.
3) What type of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our opening to a thriller film obviously couldn't be distributed by worldwide companies such as Warner Bros, Paramount and Universal as it's an independent film and doesn't follow certain rules or meet guidelines of what a large company may typically go for and decide to distribute. As our budget is on the smaller scale and they would be more interested in distributing a film like our own, we would consider using media institutes such as New Line Cinemas and Working Title. Despite being cheaper to distribute than worldwide companies such as Universal, these smaller media institutes still offer a good and professional service, including production of high quality work and on-time delivery of the film within budgets. Also, due to these types of institutions having a good reputation, if they were to distribute our film, the audience would be drawn in the watch it from not just th
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Under the British Board of Film Classification's (BBFC) strict guidelines on their website I would place our film in the '15+' category, meaning anyone under the age of 15 is not permitted to watch our film. Therefore we would generally be targeted people around the 15-18 age range despite the film being suitable for people of all ages. The BBFC website states that in '15+' rated films - "
Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury". The fact that our thriller openings main point is focusing on violence upon the protagonist suggests it should be a '15+' rated film, instead of '12+'. It is important that young people are permitted to watch the Thriller film as we would plan to use websites used by younger people such as 'Twitter' and 'Facebook' to promote, if BBFC put the film in the '18+' category it would be a lot harder to get it out to the audience. The fact that the film probably wouldn't be rated a '12+' wouldn't have a major effect as people below that age probably wouldn't be interested in our specific film anyway. When thinking of the idea and plot of our film, we didn't want a very specific audience and generally wanted to make it so it could be watched by people of different tastes and ages. Also, despite both characters being male, I believe the product would be suitable for both males and females to watch.
5) How did you attract/address your audience?
If we came to promoting our thriller film in order for it to get out to our audience we would have to consider various different types of advertising. The three that we came up with during group discussion were viral marketing, television marketing and cinema advertising.
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One way we could promote our product is through television advertising. If we did end up promoting our product through television we would ensure that we advertised it on the right channel. The channels we would choose would be those that our target audience tended to watch on a regular basis, for example, channels like Channel 4, Film4 and the music channels (Kerrang, MTV). In order to get our product out to as many young people as possible these adverts must be suitable to be shown before watershed, otherwise we would have to broadcast them after 9pm potentially resulting losing possible customers/viewers. Some things the advert would include are a trailer containing a taster of the film which would tempt people into wanting to go and watch it, information on release dates and where it can be watched, BBFC ratings and links to websites and social networking pages. Despite television marketing being one of the best ways to advertise, it's very expensive and might not be in our budget range. But we would benefit from it in the long term if we were to take up this type of marketing to promote our film.
Trailers and Posters
A type of advertising we could use to promote our product would be making trailers and posters to get the film out to our target audience. These trailers and posters could be used in various different ways to advertise our thriller. Trailers can be played in cinemas for example. This way you automatically have an advantage as you know the people watching are interested in films. To meet the right audience, we would ensure our trailers were shown before films of a similar genre like Thrillers and Horror movies. However, showing trailers before films that's BBFC ratings are lower than our actual film wouldn't be beneficial as the wrong audience would be being targeted. Posters are also a great way of advertising. They can be placed almost anywhere, but we would especially target places where our target audience may be or visit. For example, again cinemas, DVD rental stores, Universities, Colleges and Schools. Our posters would include similar information to our trailer (release dates, venues, BBFC ratings, links to it's social networking pages etc). Trailers and posters are particularly good way of advertising as they are cheap to make. Posters can be mass produced for a small price and then placed anywhere for free or little money.
Viral Marketing
Probably the most important thing we would do in order to market our underground thriller film would be listing it on the online film rating website 'imdb.com'. This is as many people like film critics and potential viewers of our product use IMDB to look up details for any film ever made before watching. Putting it on IMDB would allow people to see images of the cover/posters/screen-shots/actors etc, who the actors were in the film often with links to their own personal profiles and reviews and ratings of the film from other members of the audience. We could use other types of viral marketing too in order to promote our product, with links to IMDB from there. The main examples of viral marketing that we would use are Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. These types of social networking websites would help our film go 'viral' and we could also recieve feedback and advice from viewers of it. We chose these three websites to promote as there are a large amount of young people that use it, meaning the vast majority of our target audience would be able to easily gain access to our film. On these websites we would post images and trailers related to our product to promote it as well as possible. The main advantage of viral advertising isn't just that it's probably one of the best forms of marketing but also completely free of charge.
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing these products?
My group and I have learnt alot about technologies from making our thriller opening. In my opinion, the most important technology needed when making an underground film is the internet. Web 2.0 is the best way to get a film out there and can be done on a very little scale through social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Not only is the internet important for film for promotion but the internet was also an essential part of our product when doing research. Without finding research on sound, camera angles/shots, directors, etc, we wouldn't have had the final product that we managed to make. YouTube has also been a great help as we uploaded videos such as our continuity, directors commentary and behind the scenes. We also recieved all of our feedback off YouTube.
The camera we used was the Kodak Playsport HD which had a picture format of 1080p, this was the best quality of camera we had access to. The final product benefited greatly from having a good high quality camera and helped get the emotions and feelings across to audience in order for them to experience the tension and suspense. Next time, in order to get the picture on the screen even more of a high quality we could use up-scaling software such as Sony Vegas in order to give it that little extra touch and crisp finish.
Dan edited the final product on iMovie 09 on a Mac Computer. This allowed him to do things other editing software would not, such as slowing and speeding clips down or up. In the end this played a great part in several different shots in our film - e.g. the very last arm shot at the end. This helped give the effect that the main character was dead without showing his whole body but just his arm. The software also helped with continuity and allowed the clips to flow well without anything not looking realistic.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in progression to the final product?
The main thing in my opinion that our group learnt from our continuity task is the planning of the film. In the original task, we did very little research and planning and went straight into filming without an objective or aim. This had a negative effect on the product as we were not aware of many of the shots we were going to film and ended up filming them at random. We also didn't come prepared when filming the continuity piece, and on various days came without certain props and often actors were wearing different clothes to what they had previously worn when filming. This resulted in some days of filming having to be cancelled. However, we learnt from this when filming our final product, we ensured all the right props were brought and that clothing was consistent between the actors. Also, we did thorough planning and research and had a good idea of what types of shots we would film. It is quite obvious that we benefited from doing these things when looking at the quality between the continuity piece and the final product. In the continuity piece also, we used a different editing software than what we used in the final piece. Instead of iMovie 09, Windows Movie Maker was used, this had it's defects on the product as it meant many of the visual effect were not accessibly. Also, there were several issues with continuity in the product that we learnt from - e.g. when Jonny walks through the door at the end, the door actually opens twice instead of just once. Despite there being a large difference in quality between the preliminary task and our final thriller opening, the initial task was very important to us. We managed to become familiar with the camera and it's equipment. - e.g. Learning to use tripod and the different camera features. In our final product, we did alot more research and spent alot more time on music and sound as we didn't do this in the preliminary task. This benefited the film greatly and managed to create tension and sound to keep the viewer on the edge of their seats. Also generally, we realised that no enough time was spent on the continuity piece in order to create a good high quality piece. We took this on board when making the final piece and spent longer all the aspects of production (sound, filming, planning, research etc), this paid off and we ended up with a great product that we were pleased and very proud of.
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