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.