Changes after our draft..

Once we edited our first draft of the thriller, we went back and watched it repeatedly in order to gain an idea of what we wanted to change and what we wanted to keep the same.

Feedback
We got feedback from a media teacher, who had experience on working on films, and he gave his views as to what parts may need to be changed and or expanded on. One of his ideas was when the camera zoomed out and revealed the whole wall, but he felt this gave too much of the story away in one go so therefore we changed it so it only revealed the newspaper cut out which we felt worked alot better. Also he said that we needed more images of the stalker, but we felt that we didnt want to ruin the indentity or give too much away and so therefore we did not add any extra shots in.

Our own ideas
So once we did this, our first aim was to change the way in which the film unfolded because we felt it didnt really lead up to anything but instead it was slow and tension was not built up. In order to change this, we decided on having the speed of which it was played, sped up when it was on the reverse and also added more shots in to heighten the anticipation that the audience was feeling.
Aswell at we needed to add our soundtrack to the clip, which wasn't finished when making our draft. We made the track to emulate what was going on in the piece and therefore more layers were added as it went on although near the end we felt that the heartbeat on its own created an eery feel and therefore played on the emotions once again.

FINAL THRILLER OPENING.

Strategies to Market and Advertise our Thriller

Advertising and informing people of a new upcoming film is incredibly important in ensuring the success of the movie; there are many different ways we could go about doing this.

• Posters - for billboards, buses, cinema's, public places. A poster is the first thing that catches the audiences eyes and makes them interested in seeing the trailer and film. They have to be bright and informative so they stand out from others and give off vital information about the thriller, for example:  

• Trailers - for television and youtube. The trailer is the essential part of advertising a new film, it outlines the plot in less then 2 minuets giving the audience a snippet of what the film will be like. The main characters are also introduced, if they are famous actors and actresses then advertising that they're in the film will add to the popularity of the movie. An example of a thriller trailer is: 

Catch me if you can (2002)

• Film Review Websites, for example 'Rotten Tomatoes'. Having our thriller reviewed and discussed by different people with different opinions helps to advertise the film by one of the most important ways of communication, 'word of mouth'. This means that many people will start talking about it to their friends, thus spreading information about it. An example of a review is:

Review of foreign cinema thriller trailer

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) 

From the trailer of a film you can learn a lot, it is very important as it is used to sell the film and to encourage the audience to view the whole film. This trailer of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was made in Sweden and has English subtitles, this means that the trailer is incredibly important to encourage the audience as many people are not in favour of reading subtitles throughout a film. 

From the trailer we learn about the main characters and some of their background. We're told about different characters that lead us to wonder about their role in the film and whether they'll be the protagonist or antagonist. We're also informed of a murder; this tells us that it plays a large part in the thriller and other scenes revealed in the trailer give snippets on how different events and people are impacted by it. 

What thriller conventions does the trailer meet?

• The narrative centres around a crime eg. a theft or a murder. 
• The protagonist will be seen 'in peril' in one or more scenes before the resolution.
• The narrative presents ordinary situations in which extraordinary things happen.
• Micro elements combine in a build up of suspense.
• Themes of seeing, reflection and mirroring. Manipulation of perspectives, visual McGuffins, and optical illusions are common.
• A series of/ one important enigma(s) are/is set up in the opening sequence of the film, is further complicated during the first part of the film and only resolved at the very end.

16/3/11 lesson-

What we did..
In this lesson we continued with our editing of the footage we have already gained. We are also putting the feedback that we got from other groups and teachers into our thriller meaning we could then look back on this and decide which bits we needed to change in order for it to improve. There wasnt time to film in the dark room, so we are planning on getting the last few shots in there next lesson, which are needed because more is needed in order to set the scene better.

Garage Band
After this, we also went on to working on garage band, in order to get a backing track for our openeing sequence. We had already listened to a few tracks that were on the cd's and saved a few which we liked and thought would fit in well with the feel of the film. We imported these on to garage band and worked around them, using the sounds that were on the program already and so therefore built up a track that slowly built up tension just like our thriller.

abstract shot/close up of part of the camera.
shots in the red room following what the stalker is doing
add in shot of stalker putting up picture
speed up shots at the end to build up tension then it stops and title comes up
use the lip shot just before title

Editing

We had a collection of ideas between us before we started our editing process and so knew what sort of direction we wanted to go in regards to the montage images flashing up randomly and what questions we wanted unanswered such as who is the stalker and why they are stalking a certain girl.
 We took many different shots of the places we were using, and went on the fact that it was better to have too many shots than not enough so that we could pick the best and use them in our final piece so this is where editing came into place.

Our first aim was to make up the small flashing pictures and therefore cut them down and put them together in order for it to be quick enough to make a good effect. Once this was complete, we moved on to trying out different effects on the clips so that they would make it fit into a more thriller convention, such as the glow we used on the newspaper cutting. We also tried other different ones but this to not fit in to the feel we were trying to give.
After this we decided to have parts which played forward but then reversed which was idea we had after watching the opening sequence to other thrillers. We feel this worked well and were pleased with the outcome. There was two clips that we felt was hard to flip from one to the other and this was when it went from the dark room to the wall with the pictures on. Many different things were tried but in the end we decided to go with the fade into black.

Rough Cut

Sound Effect Ideas

Essential Death and Horror Sound Effects:
Track 13
Track14
Track 15

How we can use our class feedback to improve our blog?

From the feedback we were given, we could've done with some more constructive critisism. However, from the feedback we did get, the first thing we would do would be to add captions to our pictures. This would add more information to the reader and would give people a better understanding of why we used the pictures we did. We could also add more personal opinions and maybe a little bit more media terminology. This would make our post more technical and detailed for the reader so they can get a really detailed idea of what/why we chose what we did for our thriller opening.

Class feedback from our blog

Variety of relevant posts:

. good variety

. most of the checklist complete

. long paragraphs

. posts that are in place are detailed, however a few more could be added

. Disney post wasn't that relevant

Appropriate visual aids:

. large amount of pictures and videos 

. used pictures throughout the blog, not in clumps

. good visual aids to support ideas

. a lot of pictures used for each idea

Appropriate use of technical vocabulary:

. good quality context/media language, i.e. 'enigma' and 'montage'

. correct shot language

. lacks in technical vocab

. appropriate to thrillers

Quality of posts: content, explanations, clarity:

. long, informative explanations and analysis

. highly descriptive explanations

. detailed

. uses media terminology to further the information and makes it clear

Development of ideas/stages:

. organised

. completed each stage with high quality 

. clear sections of development and headings

good step by step guide to show how they did their planning stage 

Target Audience Expectations

The target audience for our thriller opening would be aged from 15 and above. I think our film would also be rated a 15. This is due to the plot of  the theme of a stalker, there may also be some violence in the film, and strong language, which wouldn't be suitable for people of a younger age. People younger than 15 also may not understand the idea/plot of our thriller. Our target audience can be either male or female, there isn't a paticular feature that we have included to make the film lean towards one gender. I think that we have broken quite a typical convention that is usually included in films involing some kind of stalker/serial killer etc, the person is usually a male. We have decided to use a female as the stalker, as this was slightly different to most thrillers that use a similar story line.

Analysis of Cache/ Hidden

Cache/Hidden is a 2005 production from Michael Haneke. The opening sequence begins with a long shot of a suburban flat/house in France. For a few minutes nothing happens, playing on the way that Michael Haneke likes to playwith the audience's patience, and then there is speaking over the film.

How does the opening sequence of this film use Thriller conventions?
There are many questions left unanswered in the opening sequence, as nothing really happens visually in the opening, there is just a voiceover talking about things that the audience wants to know about. This happens because the audience is waiting for something to happen. Also, because it is like the characters' house is being watched, it makes the audience ask who is watching them.
What questions does it pose?
Who/What are they waiting for?
How does it make the audience feel?
Confused, Unsure.

Unknown poster analysis



This is the poster for the new warner bros film, Unknown (2011). The film is about a Martin Harris (Liam Neeson) who wakes up from a coma to find that someone has stolen his identity, and no one beleives that he is actually the real Martin Harris and not the other man, not even his wife.In the poster, the tag line of "TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE" tells the audience about what the film is mostly going to be about, Liam Neeson's character trying to get his identity back. The strip picture through the middle of the poster is of 2 women and strange words and numbers randomly on the background. This introduces some more of the characters and makes the audience ask questions about these women. Also, the numbers in the background could make the audience look out for them in the film. However, these numbers and letters also make the film seem as though it's going to be a confusing film with lots of things and clues to look out for.

03/02/11

Focusing on the montages...

We went straight to the dark room, as we had an idea of what we were going to film today and how we would film it. We went in and took small video clips of the room, which could be used with in a montage throughout our opening sequence.
Although this was successful, we soon came across a problem which caused us to rearrange what filming we could do. This problem was that we were not able to process the photos, which are a very important part with in our film, and so did not head to the sport hall changing rooms, where we would of used the photos on the wall, but instead carried on working on our other ideas revolving around the montage. This included shots of the photo film and the red lights within the dark room.
On top of this, we came up with the idea of showing lips within the sequence and so filmed this in order to use our time productively regardless of the problems we had faced.

Examples of pictures edited for the thriller

We thought this picture linked in well with our theme as it poses questions in the audiences mind whether there will be a murder in our film.

This picture helped us to come up with the idea of our title, 'Green Eyed Monster'. The word monster is good because when you think of monster you don't usually relate it to a human. So by using this, we are almost dehumanising the 'stalker' to a 'monster'.

This picture we took in negative as it gives a scary, distorted look

This picture is similar to the 'murdered', as the words 'tragic lesson' suggest something bad could happen to someone in the film 

These two pictures link into our thriller, because the idea of 'red lips' show/suggest that a woman could be the stalker

Film name ideas..

 We found it hard to agree on what the name of the film could be called because we had many ideas. From the title incorporating a question, too a short one worded name. We mainly revolved our ideas on the photography side of our opening sequence, due to it revolving around photographs and the developing of them and this is when we came up with initial ideas such as;

Montage

Photogenic

Captured
These though, didnt really stand out to us as we felt they would do the film justice because they are quite plain and were not very unique. This is when we came up with a 'question being incorporated in our title, due to it being a main thriller convention and come up with;

Is she watching you?
Do you know whos watching?
After discussing though, we decided to focus it around the fact that this is a wall of images and its being exhibited and therefore our final and the one we chose was
The Exhibit

02/03/11 lesson review.

In today's lesson we focused on doing testshots for our final filming. We spent most of the lesson in the college changing rooms which will be a major part of our opening, we investigated into different shots from different angles, places and from different point of views.  We also filmed the red lips, this is when Ellen applies red lipstick in the mirror without her face being seen to add a mysterious effect. Experimenting with different shots enabled us to figure out the best way to film, and we now have many strong idea's for tomorrow's lesson.