Evaluation- Question 7

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

Reflecting on the Preliminary task, that roles can be ditributed evenley and working in a smaller group can prove more effective, as it is easier to make sure everyone has a role and is working at their own best and not letting the other person down. I felt that during both perices i took on a suitable amount of responsability and workin with a friend can make the communication barrier a lot easier as working with each other out of school becomes less of a chore and something fun and creative, I feel that i have learnt how to use Adobe premier pro more in this peice then in my prelim task where a fellow member did most of this work, i have learnt o add effects and have grown in my confidence with the programme itself. also having touse and learn about a camera has been good, i learn how simple a move of the camera can allow for a smooth proffessional shot, but at the same time how it can look ameater and rushed.

Due to the fact that myself and Emily worked together well and really researched and planned this peice out the level of confusion and mistakes dropped signiffically, which made it less stressful us both and meant we could really enjoy and look at what we were doing rather then arguing on what new scene we had to do or where we would shoot it. There was no changes to location or idea unlike in my prelim task, not that i didnt like the challenge in my prelim task as this allowed me to think fast and change direction with an idea which i bought to Emily and I's piece very early on, into the planning stage.

As the two peices were set in different styles (premilnary- rom com and coursework thriller) it is hard to compare the two the main differences is lighting and use of shots, in the prelim we used mainly mid shots and lots of natural lighting in the thriller we used close ups and dark lighting. i also feel that due to my new found knowledge of the editing software our thriller holds a more porffessional feel about it compared to the ameatur prelim video.

I also learnt how to adapt to different sitauations for example we lost our main actress so instead i had to step in and during editing our software sometime played up, these are things i didnt encounter during the Prlim task and am glad i have know ready for future media products taht will film and produce.

Overall i believe that Emily and I are very pleased with our end piece and have learnt how to overcome certain issues and are pleased at the proffeswsional look  of our piece.

Evaluation- Question 6

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

Although during the making of this product the technology has proved to cause us some difficulty whilst editing although when the software caught up with us we managed to easily and effectively produce a well-polished product. Whilst producing this product I learnt how to apply many effects such as dark, slow motion, and sound effects.

            We used a Acer camcorder, which was easy to use and gave us great, clear and steady filming whilst using a tripod as well, the settings worked well and were very simple both Emily and I used it with ease and the tripod caused, the editing of our piece gave us the freedom to add many different effects and use many tools to make us feel as if we had given the best to our opening scene as we could. Such things as cutting and moving scenes around was very easy and allowed us to view our piece in several different orders to our original storyboard also such aspect of placing the music over the piece and listening to it to adjust either the music or the film to fit was well examined by us so that we could both do this either as a group or on our own .

We used Adobe Premier Pro to edit our peice 

We used the tripod to achieve many different effects such as angles, distances, zooms and tracking shots, we did not use all the shots filmed but as the actual filming didnt take long this was not a issue for us and we did not feel that it wasted our time or effort. We felt that we produced good quality shots and we also had fun using and exploring the software and equipment that we were provided with.

One problem that we encounted was to do with lighting as we filmed 2 shots next to each other on different days we were encounted with 2 different colours of shot, we overcame this by changing the saturation colour on the lighter shot and making it slightly darker so that the colour difference was hardly noticeable to the audience.

As seen below.

Evaluation question 5

How did you attract/address the audience?

We immediately placed our audience in a sense of false security with the sun shining and the clouds slowly moving, it seems calm and quiet and doesn’t appear to be any danger involved in this, also the complimenting music is slow and calm and light tricking the audience into thinking that this is not a thriller type piece. We decided that the music should drop and we should incorporate strings to allow the audience to hear as well as see the change in the feel of the start of ‘the chase’.

One of the main attractive element was the music it was composed by Ian Clarke and fit to our piece beautifully, the music dipped and slowed in the perfect time to add tension and also pull and detract the audience attention.

Another aspect that we considered heavily was relatable characters, mise-en-scene, costume and location. We made sure the young girl was put in a location that could be near anyone so that they felt that this was a believable and understandable location, also with our male character we didn’t make him really muscly or really skinny or really tall or small we made him again a common believable size so that it allowed many girls in the audience to relate to the fear that the young girl would feel.

 A recent realse that also works on the fear of a female lead character is that of  'The roommate' (2011) an america based film Directord by Christian E. Christiansen and Written By Sonny Mallhi, based on a room mate becoming obsessed on going on a killing spree, this is imilar to ours as it hold the female lead a physcotic other lead and the theme of viloence and killing.

Evaluation- Question 4

• Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think that the audience for our media piece would be middle class older teen to mature adults. The way in which we filmed our piece we hope would appeal to a wide range of people as we added content that both teenagers and adults could enjoy and understand. Also our piece covers a few sub genres, it is an action and Physiological thriller meaning that the action can attract the younger teenagers and the Physiological part can attract the older adults and intrigue them into figure out before the end. As a group we felt that this film would be unsuitable for anyone under the age of 15 as the content may be too graphic and deemed too scary for a younger audience .

            To be able to understand our target audience we created a questionnaire and handed it out to our class mates and further pupils throughout sixth form, we  had already considered this age group as our target audience because of our own personal experience with Thriller films, though we wanted to ensure this was correct and thought that a questionnaire would be the most suitable and quick way to achieve quick answers, our questionnaire involved  questions asking what our audience wanted from our own thriller opening scene, allowing us to get an idea into what's popular at the minute and how to achieve a good opening scene.

Question one - "what is your favourite sub-genre?" the majority of people chose, followed by 'mystery'. This meant these were the two sub-genres that we heavily concentrated on and targeted for our audience as this is what they wanted to see so we decided to base our piece on mystery and action. We created mystery by using very close up shots so the audience do not get the full picture of what is going on and have to come to their own conclusions. We then created action by having tense running scenes allowing the audience to feel excited and tense and adding to the thriller notion.

Question two - "what do you like to see in a thriller opening?" many people chose 'quick snappy shots' for this answer, we have definitely considered and achieved this in my opinions as we have used lots of shots of different lengths lights and context, these range from some at only a couple of seconds long to others ranging at 10 seconds. When people have watched this they have told us that this was affected and gave them a good feeling and interest in the scene.

Question three - "where do you prefer the opening scenes to be shot?" the most popular result was 'woods' , we  both felt shooting the entire opening in the woods wouldn't be as effective or gain the audience attention. Our final three shots (of the chase and the female character running away) were shot in a wooded surrounding, giving it a isolated and mysterious feel to the piece.

Question four - "how often do you watch thriller films?"  this question was not really needed in order create and/or edit our piece. But we thought it may be a good question to ask to see if people would want to watch a thriller genered film. We found the most common answer was 'monthly' which  suggested to us that thriller  films are quite a popular genre of film, so this would be a good genre of film for us to be interested in.

Question five - "what is your favourite thriller?" this question had no particular answer, although we found 'Psycho', a classic thriller had a lot of mentions.

Overall the wide range of our target market large, as they we haven’t specifically aimed at a certain target audience, we have only considered over a certain age. This means the audience for our piece can be either male or female, of any background and over the age of 15.

Evaluation Question 3

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

EM Media is an independent organisation who doesn’t work for profit. They raise funds for small film and digital industries across the East Midlands, They have invested in over 700 films included 42 feature length films , a lot which include Shane Meadows production for example ‘This is England’

Some of the films backed by EM media have won many awards including 8 BAFTAs, 10 BIFAs, 3 Michael Powell awards and over 30 international film festival awards.

However after learning and researching EM Media I have found that they would not be able to distribute my film as they only help finance film and digital products, although they would be a great help for this as we would only be a small production company and funds may be difficult for us to produce a fully professional film that could be distributed to cinemas nationwide, we also would want to keep this a British film, so by using EM Media it allows us to do this with ease.

 These 2 of the films funded by EM Media.

However Working Title is a British distribution company that are based in London, but also has offices in Ireland and Los Angeles. They were founded in 1983 and have distributed such films as Hot Fuzz, Paul and Shaun of the dead since then. As this is a British company with links to america we thought this would give us to have the best chance of reaching a wider audience including some chance to branch into america. They may be interested in our film as it would bring something different  to their company with new stars  and a new genre as they tend to specialise in comedy films with specific well kown comedic stars. If they were to branch into a Thriller genred film they would be reaching a wider range of audience and people may think of them of a more established and well rounded film distribution company attracting more film production companys to use them.

Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We would like to think that our piece could reach a wide range of social groups but due to the classic content within our media piece, it may reach specifically a younger teenage audience.

This may be due to the fact that we have shown a younger female character as weak and vulnerable, this is often the view of many people and we played on this theme to make it more believable and easier to accept by the younger targeted audience group. We looked at many different thriller films and most of them seemed to have a vulnerable female lead, as this is what is expected so we made sure that this was apparent through such details as her bare feet and a long black dress to cover her showing she is vulnerable, as this is not where she expected to be on this day/night. we wanted her to look vulnerable to the male character but to her situation and in turn life. Our female characetr is very similar to that of Clarice Starling in Hannibal Lector the difference being she is a strong character being taken over by the strong male character, but the scenario of the female lead being taken and captured by a strong and slightly menatlly ill character, as she is an older female lead she is portrayed as sexy and vulnerable compared to our characters just naive and vulnerable.

 

We also used an older man to be our villain, this is because being older it looks like he has more power and in control over the innocent and small girl in in comparison, again this is an expected occurrence between the younger social groups, because we knew this from research and basic knowledge we made sure that we did this for them so it would be more appealing for them to watch.

 We also made sure he was wearing black to show a also intellectually strong man who knows what he is doing by covering himself from head to toe to cover up what his crime, however we have shown that he has a guilty conscience about him, making him at time seem as weak and vulnerable as the young female character.

 We created his quality appearance by creating the ‘shifty eye moment’.

 This adds an extra dimension for the audience to watch as they do not know his circumstances and to weather to trust this character or not.

By doing this it has allowed us to use different close ups and shots and really allow people to get a quick look at this character. We used a lot of hand and foot shots by doing the close up of typically strong features this creates the enigma of a typically strong and dominant man it also allows people to not be able to recognise the male character making him a stranger and slightly more domineering to explore the male character. The close up shots are a similar recognition to our biggest inspiration ‘Se7en’ as it lets the audience get close to see the ‘brains behind the operations’ with skilled tasks and quite psychotic behaviour, overall showing a unhinged character.

We also used the music which Emily's Dad Ian Clarke composed for us using such examples of Seven and other dark films in order to get what we wanted, Ian used drums and strings to give a modern twist to a classic thriller film.

Tortured- Final Edit

This is our Final Edit of our AS Media Opening scene, Tortured.

Thriller Evaluation Question One

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

Our opening scene hold many of the traditional thriller conventions, during previous research carried out before the making of our opening scene, we discussed these in order to attain the best and most professional and perfect to genre opening scene, to do this we considered most if not all of these conventions.

The narrative: We wanted to allow the audience to get a quick insight into the full length story, although we have not fully planned the film we wanted the audience to feel like they could expect and anticipate what would occur later on in the film, we went for the classic chase between venerable female character and the typical all in black dominating male. She is wearing a floor length black ball type dress which insinuates that she is not expected to be there which again adds to the classic thriller story line.

The protagonist: We again followed the classic thriller roots of using a venerable female lead which in recent years has been adapted with the different hybrid versions of thriller films, female leads have now often become power characters and can help solve or even become the antagonist in new aged Thrillers.

The title: We named our piece Tortured we thought that again this defined and could straight away address the audience and let them know that this is a thriller and hopefully it would be a title that would attract a wide audience to watch it. There was a film produced named Produced name Tortured in 2008 so, we might be confused with this film but with it being a small British production it might not be seen all over the world.

The antagonist ensnares the protagonist: Although the audience cannot fully see this unfold we do let them see shortened version of it during our opening scene, this is also to add tension and anticipation to our piece. Our antagonist (male character) chases and ties and tortures our protagonist (venerable female character) making the link and difference between them very strong. We show the antagonist ensnaring the protagonist with a chase scene using short shots that change between his and her feet and other small shots that allow the differences in good and bad to portrayed strongly to the audience and hopefully allow them to choose a side and want to watch more of the film.

Micro elements:  We used many different short shots. Adding different scenarios and aspects, with these short shots, this is an important aspect for a thriller as micro elements add to the overall story line and plot and can engage the audience and make them to watch further on.  However these micro elements will differ in traditional and new age thrillers as new age thrillers are set out differently and include many other aspects of the other sub genres they are mixed with in order to create a 'perfect' type thriller film.

A series of/ one important enigma(s) are/is set up in the opening sequence of the film, we found out this meant adding small complicated information so that it could involve  the audience and that could be later solved, we did this by adding small sharp clips to allow the audience

However I felt that we could have explored some more conventions but didn’t have the means or time to add them in plus edit and make sure we had got it to the best and most professional stage that we could with the time we had provided.  We could have explored lighting more we could have used more artificial lighting to add light in to dark scenes, although we wanted this feel at times I myself felt it to be a little too dark and distracted from such things a s facial expression and character emotion.
            We heavily based our opening scene on the 1995 successful international thriller ‘Seven’ starring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker, as this also contained the dark lighting, short shots and vulnerable female character as ours did.

Music

Our music was composed by Ian clarke and was discussed with Emily, it was made to fit our piece and go with all the high and lows to complement the action being played.

we are impressed with the music that has been developed and are pleased how it fits with out openeing scene, we believe it will add tension and intise the audience to watch further.

7-4-11 Extra Shots and final Editing

Today after peicing the shots we had taken earlier in the week decided that these shots did not fit what we wanted and more most be taken to ensure both mysel and Emily were 100% happy with the finished scene, after placing some of the shots from  earlier in the week we decided what else we needed and set off to shoot them.
We shot:
The males feet following the girl (close up, played by Sam Skidmore) we had to darken and flip this image to make it match previously shot footage.

The sun in the blue sky with clouds around it- we played this as a trick star image.

5th March - Filming Extra Shots

Our peice was not yet at the specified time and lacked more energy to it, we decided extra shots must be taken as we had also only used quite basic shots and more established and professional shots must be taken to add the maturity that we wanted to be shown to the audience.

We went back to our original location (the field) and did some running side shots and close up action shots, as we felt this would add tension and excite the audience watching this opening section.

We did these shots of the character of the girl who is running away played by myself, i wore a long black dress and ran barefooted along a grass over 6 times to ensure we got the desired shot.

After we had we also got some shots of knives and blood to add if neccersary to show the evil and satrange side to the girl kidnapper.

29th March - Sorting of editing titles

Today we decided having listened to feedback from our class and tecaher that we needed to change and add more titles.
After listening to feedback from Mr Turner it became apparent that are titles were too basic and made it look like a student peice rather then the proffessional feel we had been hoping for, so we added some more appropriate and terms that were fimilar within the film industry.
We considered and used some of the following terms:
Editing and camera work
Directed by
Music composed by
starring

We felt that these such terms were what our peice needed to add a true film like quality to it.

Draft Thriller Feedback

Today Emily and I's peice was shown to the rest of our class. They watched and then gave us both negative and positive feedback, this is so that we can evaluate and change our opening scene accordingly.

Positive points:
Good Cuts- they thought these were short and sharp and added tension and a thriller feel.
Mise en scene- works well, Noir thriller feeling
The sound works well as it was fitted to the different shots

Negative Points
We need to use more angles/shots in the running scene
Add more narrative to give a bigger view of the story which would unfold
and finally they thought we needed to Add better and more proffessional looking titles eg. instead of filmed by, use camera operator.

We have taken these points on board and have decided to use some to add depth and a all together more proffessional looking opening scene in the end.

This is our draft video, we understand that this is not completed, we want to add a few more artistic shots, such as tracking and side shots to add to the proffessinal feel that we are going for during our opening scene.

How we made our credits

We went on to powerpoint to produce a look that we liked we decided that to fit with the style and feel we wanted to create that the background should be black.

We then went and looked at the type of font that we wanted to use to create
the creepy and sinister font to match the style of the opening scene we thenm looked through the basic fonts of powerpoint and discovered one called Chiller

We weren't going to use this original 'idea' but afetr a while we decided this was the exact title taht we wanted to use so we printscreened and madeit into an image we then imported this onto Premier Pro and used it during our opening scene.

03-03-11- Filming Extra scenes

Today we took time outside of the classroom to film the last two scenes these scenes were:

1. The scene in which a female's hands are ties behind her back using blue rope, the scene intitals her struggling for freedom, this scene last for about 10-15 seconds and ends with her breaking free, this is a extreme close up shot of the hands, as Our initial actress couldn't make this filming session meant that i had to fill in, we chose myself as my hair is anturally curly like our chosen actress and hair colour was not an issue as the only scene where the hair colour is seen the room is dark and hair can not be seen clearly.

The second scene is:

2. The same Female running across an empty field, the female runs from off screen as she enters, she carries on running and runs far from the screens, she is wearing a long black dress which we thought added to the drama and sinister feelings of the opening scene. Again this character was played by myself as our chosen actress was busy at the time of filming.

Risk Assesment

Camera: The camera is an important peice of equipment and without it we will not be able to film because of this we need to think about aspect of risk around it:

Breaking the Camera We have to think about where we place the camera for example if we were to break the camera it would be certain to break, because of this we must make sure that it is fixed to the tripod or that we are holding it correctly, another aspect would be water damage weather that be from the weather or from carelessness with drinks, we must make sure that the camera is either coverd with a waterproof sheet or well away from any liquids that may be knocked over.

We must realise that if the camera were to be damaged while Emily and I had care of it we would have to pay for any breakages or a new camera if it could not be fixed.

Breaking the Tripod The tripod can not only be broken itself but it can cause injury to us or our actors on set , if not placed in a correct area. we must be gentle with the tripod as the legs can be pulled out and broken if we are too rough with it also we must place the camera on it carefully as this could break either the camera or the top of the tripod.

We must again realise that if the tripos were to be damaged while Emily and I had care of it we would have to pay for any breakages or a new tripod if it could not be fixed.

Injuries to us with the Tripod If we do not place the tripod in a certain area because of the legs, we may get tripped up this causing injury to ourselves and a possible breakage to teh tripod.

Health and safety of cast and crew When we're filming we need to consider the health and safety of the cast and crew , we will need to make sure they are being looked after and are safe in the surroundings that we put them in, as it is our set it is our responsability to make sure that they are safe and are not going to get injured.We must also consider if any of the cast members fall ill, who will replace them with as to not slow down production so that it is completed on time. When filming, we will check our area to make sure there are no health and safety risks where we choose to film, this could include such aspects as crossing roads, dangerous weather conditions other situations that may become an issue. Emily and I will take all responsabilities for any situations that may occur dangerous or not.

Actor/ Character Profiles

Name: Ian Clarke

Age: 46

Gender: Male

Character: Mysterious villian

Costume: All black, coat, jeans, boots

Name: Phoebe Clarke

Age: 15

Gender: Female

Character: Young victim

Costume: Long black dress (full length sleeves etc)

15/2/11- Our Final Storyboard.

Our opening scene shows somebody writing in a book, the writing will be a foreign language, this makes it myserious and adds to the common conventions of a thriller scene.

Shows our production company after the first image which adds tension as the audience will want to see more of the first image.

This is the next image of an Ace of Spades, this is an image that relates to the title sequence, adding to the audiences suspision.

Close up of the males eyes sifting, we dont want him to be scared but more looking for someone to again add and build tension.

A title scene of  Mine and Emilys name saying that we directed and filmed the the opeining scene again interrupting the tension and setteling the audience before the next bit of action.

The book is now closed with a slam to engage the audience quickly without dialouge, just the use of teh slam sound.

This is an image of a girl with long hair it is eery and meant to enage the audience further and play on their suspisous nature.

Another title page to intoruduce the actors to the audience in the same font and background as all the other title scenes.

We get another shot of the girl with the long hair this time from an over the shoulder shot from the mysterious man.

A close up of a female pair of hand struggling to get out of the rope, this along with heavy breathing sounds will again add and build tension to intise and hold the audiences attentions.

This is a tracing scenes which follows the young girl runnign across a field this scene is in slowmotion and ends in a fast spin round to look at the camera.

Thriller Planning

We started by brainstorming the ideas that we had for our own Thriller opening scene, we decided the most important aspects of Thriller that we needed to explore were:

Props/Costume:We want an Ace of spade card, book, pen, rope and a chair.

Lighting/music:We want to use sinister and dark music with sips and peaks to add to the tension of the drama which is being filmed. Lighting will also be dark and mostly natural lighting to add to the naturalistic nature, but any shots inisde might use artifical lighting.

Characters:We decided after brainstorming we wanted a child like characeter and a male mysterious character.

Set:We wanted to use a field or woods and a garage or house something with a large and empty space.


Sub Genre:Ideally we would like to create a horror thriller to show and produce.

Storyline:Our storyline is a bit mixed and match it dips in to lots of different stories but they all revolve around a mysterious man and a young girl.

Location Research

We decided during this lesson that we wanted a young girl in a chase scene from the perspective from our male mysterious character in a field or wood setting. We then decided during this lesson Emily and I would go and look at local settings that we thought would suit what we wanted.

Field behind the media block: We first looked at and took pictures of the field behind the media block.
Advantages: It was a large open space which is what we wanted, as it resembles a space that anyone can walk by.

Disadvantages: It has alot of surrounding buildings , which obviously resemble the buildings and fittings of a school. This may result in it looking un proffessional and confusing our audience as we have not set it
in a school and therefore the scene would look out of place.

Long Stretch of grass alongside the school tennis court
Advantages: This is good as it is a thin piece of grass which allows teh camera to just film the grass and the character.

Disadvantages: It is not large enough area and there isnt enough grass, we want it to be a wide field which can be scary looking if noone else is around, this is not wide enough.

Large Sports Field:
Advanatages: It is large enough to run around in certain areas without having other buildings and fittings that are not appropriate to the shot, it also has a wood which means we might be able to use to make the space seem wider and more deserted.

Disadvantages: There is a large pilon and sports equipment in certain areas of the field which may get caught in shot, if the equipment is shown in shot then it may ruin the feel of the piece and make it look unproffessional.

Costumes and Props for our Thriller Opening scenes

Costumes

For the male character we want the costume to be simple and plain black. As we see him once or twice quickly on screen . We thought that by wearing all black, plain clothing this would give the character mystery and darkness and addd a sinister feeling.

For the young girl tied to the chair, we wanted to put her in a dress as this would add the vision of a young girl, showing that she has vulnerable and naive nature, We also wanted to put her in balck to add to the dark and sinister feeling of film.

Props

Book: a book is a key prop in our opening scene as it belongs to the mysterious man like a scrapbook, it will have images and writing in.

Pen:This goes along with the book and may be a fountain pen.

Ace of spades card: I feel this prop adds mystery, as it's an abstract prop used only in a close up as a drop of blood splatters onto it.

Rope:the young girl in our piece is tied to a chair with her hands behind her back they are tied together with rope.

All of these props are easy to get hold of and add a certain edge and power to the thriller peice.

Inception- Film Analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VXkUzf1et4 (video will not work, as embeding rights have been taken away)

Film: Inception
Year realeased: 2010
Director: Christopher Nolan
Famous Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page

Sound: To intorduce the distrubuter for inception heavy stringed instrument is played in collision with the images and logos, this sound builds up and then we get the silent in comapriosn noise of waves beating against rocks, on top of this the audience can hear children laughing and scremaing, but they only see a small amount of the children which allows for the sound to be intriging but not significant to ponder on for the rest of the film. Within the opening scene a wind sound can also be heard along with the sea to cause an eery atmosphere and add to the confusion of where the film may be set. Compared with Seven this opening scene holds alot of dialouge between charcaters and this takes place throughout most of the scene, but the dialouge is often sharp and unclear which adds mystery and suspense. Towards the end of the scene we hear what sounds of a chorus of chanting people along with simple sounds of doors opening and closing and objects being moved or emphasis being made on words by hitting objects etc.

Mise en Scene:We are first intorudced to a beach setting within the opening scene of Inception, which is a location that most people are familiar of, which makes any events that occur there more interesting and tense for an audience to watch. Alot of the characters are in suits or uniforms to show importance and also danger, as alot of business good or bad can occur from this.The house is very oriental and well decorated making th audience assume money and dodgy dealings may be involved which may excite and add tension for the audience. a spinning top is adding which may symbloise how quick time can pass or a childlike meaning either way it is a interesting concept to add into such an adult and serious film.


Camera Work: During the opening scene for this film a large variety of shots are used in comparison to other thriller i have seen the tension and atmosphere is created more by the speech which incoporates alot of mid- shot and long shots and alot of close ups, how ever there are really any extreme close ups, which is not always the typical way of a thriller film.

Editing:This film does not follows the normal trend of using dark, dim or brown coloured washes throughtout the film instead it uses natural lighting in most scenes as the whole film is based on dreams which are often light. Although certain scenes are dark and this is where alot of the sinister dealings take place the edit of using quick shots to add tension and braking this up by using clips of child like objects help hold and add tension to the scene.

Titles: There are no titles to be shown in this clip of 'Inception' only right at the start.

Se7en- Film analysis

Film: Seven
Year realeased: 1995
Director: David Fincher
Famous Stars: Morgan Freeman & Brad Pitt

Sound: The score used in the opening scene of 'Seven' causes an atmosphere straight away, with a constant beat that almost follows the pattern of a beating heart. The sound seems very manufactered with sounds that seem to be stratches on a old record, when a significant name or image is being shown a sound of a small explosion can be heard over the music to create the state of mind of the character that we are being shown. This piece of music builds up tension and atmosphere throughout this opening credits, which adds to the audiences feelings and intises them to watch further. Throughout this opening scenes, there are a series of images that link nicely to the disturbed nature of the music, these images are linked with the typical sounds of the object that is being used aswell as the constant beat and odd scrathing sounds, these images sometimes triggers the change in music or the adding of the specific sound effects. These sound blips almost ditract the audiences attention at times and the images bring them back adding the typical thriller mystery and tension, towards the end of teh opening scene the music becomes a rock beat and a lot quicker.

Mise en Scene:We are intraduced to the film via a book with sunlight coming through the pages, immediatly this is intriguing and makes the audience what to know more,we see the shadow of a hand and as this hand moves acroos the page we are introduced to the distrubter name 'new line cinema' we then go to a black screen with white writing in a very abstract font immediatly showing the genre of the film with the contrast in black background and white font. We then get intoduced to several images of hands and instruments such as blades and other office equipment. As the last images fade we see flashes on numbers and letters and then the title of the film flashed quickly to build tension and mystery, the audience is then faced with some imgaes of a male scrapping his fingerprints off this immeduatly tells us that this is someone who knows and delved in crime often, this then contarcst with several images of the same man making a cup of tea and filing, which calms the audience in to a senzse of security by this chaacter carrying out these simple tasks. in the following 20-22 seconds the audience is faced with images of books pictures, writing that all seem to be in clean colours eg. white, red, black but all have fuzzy or hazy outlines. This all shows a crazy or disorted mind of the charcater that the audience will now want to know so much about.

Camera Work: During the opening scene for this film it does not show a large variety of shots as the tension and atmosphers i created by the secretcy within the extreme close up shots used throughout.Between the images which have been chosen to cause a large effect and the music which is very different and almost futuristic, the camera shots themselves can get lost and more focus is pushed onto the images. The camera occasionally pans across the screen but is always in extreme close up as to never expose the charcater at this point.


Editing:This film follows the normal trend of using dark, dim or brown coloured washes throughtout the film to inforce the fact that this film has been created with a thriller genre in mind. This causes a sinister feel as it becomes clear that alot of events happen in the dark or including shadows, the transitions are very quick and can often be replayed over 4 times in qucik consession to get the desired eery and racey atmosphere, a mixture of short and long shots are used to always grab and re-grab the audience attention but these scenes are not always put together.

Titles: The titles themselves are a very small part of the opening scene but are there enough to let the audience know important information, such as the director, production company and any major stars within the movie itself. They are set on a black backgorund in white abstarct writing in a small font, but by using a contarsting colours the font is not lost but pushed to the front of the screen even though the are sometimes flashed or set slightly to the left or right of the screen.

Research of Audiences of Thriller Films

Thrillers are not everyone's favourite films, one reason maybe that they engage and make the audience think whereas other genres of films allow the audience to relax and just enjoy and envelope themself in perhaps an ideal perfect world, whereas thriller make the audience comprehend things that happen within life but perhaps not on such a large scale as the show to us.Another reason maybe that thrillers are aimed at certain ages and genders, Sam Milne within my media class helped me to find graphs to show that this was true.

This graph shows us that it is mostly 50+ viewers that watch thrillers. i think this is because they enjoy to work out what is going to happen at the end and how are the bad/good characters before they are told often at the end.

Alfred Hitchcock- Thriller's best director

Sir Alfred Hitchcock he was well known for creating suspense and was known for his psychological thrillers. He directed more than 63 films in a career spanning six decades.Some of his most famous films include 'Vertigo', 'North by Northwest', 'Psycho' and 'Rear Window' From the sources it shows how successful Hitchcock was from 1940-1976, this is based on the gross profits of the films at that time. Hitchcock helped shape thriller and is one of the only directors who is true to thriller itself as most thrillers in modern times are 'hybrid' thrillers such as horror thrillers & action thrillers to name two. Hitchcock is regarded as the greatest British filmmaker, he even came first in a 2007 vote of film critics in the Daily Telegraph; which said that he was: "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else.- The Daily Telegraph.
I also believe having looked closer at Hitchcock and his thriller films i think that hitchcocks films were not only the best thrillers of Hitchcocks time but the best to date as they have all the quailties that are expected of a classic thriller and this was never comprimised by crossing a thriller with another genre of film, by doing this he created a totally different effect to what we see ina thriller today but it still worked and created the desired effect. Albert Hitchcock sadly died on the 29 April 1980 aged 80.

Thriller Conventions

Within groups we mind mapped on what we thought the conventions of a thriller were, we discovered:

Lighting is normally darkend to create a sinister and evil atmosphere.

Tension is built up through the film often with smaller peaks of tension throughout leading to the end.

Heavy strings are often used as a non digetic soundtrack to again help build and add tension, this can often play the biggest part in building tension with the audience.

Setting and atmosphere is normally dark and can be set in a well known area such as a city, wood, island etc.

There is usually a female or child like character within a thriller and these are usually percieved as the vunerable character.

Normally ends with a cliffhanger to surprise the audience and leave them wanting to see more.

A twist normally takes place at the end of the film which the audience does not expect.

There is often a crime often murder that holds the plot but can be such crimes as kidnap, rape& burgulary.

Strange things can occur in normal situation.

Often foreshadows within the opening scene, to again add tension and engage the audiences interests.

Title sequence sometimes reflects on the character's psychological state.

Likely to leave a few cliff hangers to keep the audience "on the edge of their seats".