Final Cut

Here is our final cut for our thriller project.

Evaluation Notes & Planning

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

- Boys instead of girls
- Convention of suspense
- Develops the equilibrium making it more subtly broken.

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

- Props, vodka - binging - younger generation.
- Mise-en-scene, choice of clothing etc
-Location - modern but dull etc

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

- One apealing to the older teenage generation for example - twisted pictures etc.

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

- Older teens between 14 - 20. people who enjoy thrillers etc.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

- relating to them via choices of characters and also choices of mise-en-scene and even the sound as it is a modern-sounding soundtrack.

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

- Filters (night) - hard to make work.
- Cameras - how to make shot look good.
- Tripods
- Software - so much you can do with it.

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

- work as team
- produce better products
- linking micro elements together
- control of editing and camerawork
- planning
- more interesting story line etc
- how to create desired effects.

Thriller Rough Cut

This is our thriller rough cut. We have used a night filter to make it look more like night and achieve a better mise-en-scene however we chose to film in daylight for better quality causing it to look more like dusk than night. During this project, a few problems occurred with filming due to the dark rooms being closed when we wished to film and having to re-do arrangements more than once.

Opening Titiles Research

We have chosen the popular film Pulp Fiction to analyse the opening titles because we feel that the titles are effective that they use.
It has parts of the opening credits ontop of the footage and part on a black background. i think this would work well with a fade in our opening sequence. We are going to use plain text to make it look simple and not fancy text which may make it give the wrong impression to the audience.
The main film name is in bright colour and the rest of the credits are in plain white. i think we will do the same with ours and put the main name in colour. We may also use Adobe after effects to create some more interesting titles.

Possible Titles for the thriller opening sequence

• Development
• Developer
• Photograph
• Depth of field
• Obsessed
• Obsession
• Digital Night

Thriller Animatic Sequence

Here is our animatic sequence showing a rough outline of the scenes we are going to shoot. Each storyboard still is in place of each scene. We have added in some transitions to show how our final video will switch from scene to scene. Our draught soundtrack has been added to the Antimatic sequence to give a feel of how our thriller opening will build suspense and work.

Animatic drawing research

An animatic drawing is basically a prototype for a film, it is to see if the sequences look good and work together this is used in every single animation film e.g. shrek. Our animatic drawing for our AS thriller course work is focusing on photography, how we aim to do this is to use photos to tell part of the story which is used in a lot of successful thriller movies. The music we are conducting using garage band has to suit the drawings and we have to make sure that it works as a production. We have researched thriller music extensively and have watched opening sequences from such films as face off and Matrix and by closely analysing them and by taken notes on the techniques they use we can adapt them. We are going to make our animatic drawing using final cut which is a good program and we have used it before so we are familiar with the possible techniques. I think that doing a animatic drawing is good and bad. It is good because you can take advantage of using the music to get the full feel of suspense in needed places but by the same token it is bad because you cant use the same techniques because it might not work, the most you can o is get rough feel of how you would like it to turn out.

Soundtrack Research - Matrix Soundtrack Analysis

I found the opening matrix sequence (above) which is close to how our thriller opening is going to be. It starts with creepy high pitched sounds for quite a long time as the key characters are introduced. This also helps the viewer to hear the non-diagetic sounds and dialogue. The strange sounds continue before introducing some texture and some trumpets as the chase begins. The trumpets are played together to purposefully cause dissonance which shows the situation is not how it should be and the equilibrium is broken, just as the agent starts to run. When she stops the music calms down and as she starts to sprint the music builds back up, mirroring the agents actions. This helps the viewer understand more as there is more than just the visuals explaining the sequence. The music gets faster when she is closest to danger, for example when the lorry is about to hit her the music gets faster and louder and as she picks up the phone and leaves the matrix, the music cuts. The music switches from loud to quiet throughout the sequence and the music stops in some parts which also shows that the situation is unstable. Also included are transition sounds as the scenes are changed. This makes an un-naturalistic feel which is related to the virtual matrix and also shows the viewer that the time is different in the next scene.

Soundtrack Research

We researched our soundtracks by looking at thriller soundtracks on youtube such as the saw soundtrack and final destanation and seeing what made them good, we then thought of some ideas and which soundtracks we liked and compiled our soundtrack to have similar features. When researching the soundtracks we considered what would go well with our video and modeled it around our storyboard and visual ideas also. As more research we looked at clips which in movies helped build the suspense and added similar clips to our soundtrack to achieve the same effect.

Starting Ideas For Thriller Opening

Our main idea for our thriller is photography. The idea originally came from the student thriller opening "negative" but the theme is used in may other thrillers such as "momento". The idea of using photography is a more psychological approach to the thriller genre. The opening sequence will start off set in a dark room with the camera focusing on a picture of one dead women. The scene will then flashback to the three women walking down a street in Cambridge. The camera will then follow the three women down the street for a few seconds. The camera would then change to a view of the front of them as they laugh and stumble down the road. After this shot the location will change back to the the dark room. The next photo will be on a table, it is a picture of the three women together, and a hand will come from the side to put crosses through two of the women's faces. There will be one girl left without a cross, which starts to ask questions. The location again switches back to the three women as they split up. one walks in one direction and the other two leave in the other.

The lighting will be low or coloured red (for example in the dark room) to effect the viewer via the mise-en-scene. Also the editing pace will be slow until the events in the opening start to un-fold. We have chosen the setting to be Cambridge and the surrounding villages to make a more natural environment which will make our clip more natural and the viewer will find more to relate to and will raise complex questions.

Generic Conventions in Face Off Opening Sequence

Generic Conventions In the Opening Sequence

• Music and Visuals create suspense - The music is happy, but slow. The visuals have a slight sepia tone/old film effect showing creating an eerie feel for the viewer, it also suggests that the clip is in the past which we soon find out when it says "Six Years Later". Also the dramatic diagetic sounds creates more of an impact on the viewer.
  
• There is an close up of the gun which creates suspense as the cover is pulled off it, later there is an extreme close up of the bullet leaving the gun, this is also in slow motion which makes an impact again on the viewer and builds the tension before the bullet actually hits the man with the child.
• It then goes into an establishing shot to show the bad guy silhuetted after seeing the good guy with his son in the previous shot.
• The breaking of the equilibrium is broken by the man being shot by the bad guy.
• Suspense created by revealing of plot - Viewer wants to see what happens next.
• No enigma or protagonist flaw revealed in the opening sequence.