Thriller evaluation

Thriller evaluation

Part 1 of our evaluation 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdJPm2yDuWI

Part 2 of our evaluation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czQe-tx-9bI
Unfortunately some of our description was cut however we wanted to mention how we represent the villain of our media product by presenting the city itself as a villain with our high camera angles and dark shadows which depict the environment as a dark and intimidating place.

Part 3 of our evaluation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF7AQPad-jU

Part 4 of our evaluation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qym40l8ZrDU

Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0jub8Jspuw

Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htm1-j9F8X0

Unfortunately due to technical issues question 7's audio went missing therefore it will be presented in written form.

Question 7

Looking back at our preliminary task, we've realized that we have became a lot more creative with our camera shots, where as before we just used shots that we thought looked good or were interesting to do, in our final protect we put a lot more thought into our shots and movements, we wanted a story behind each shot and that's what we did, each shot was a unconscious story giving the view a little story to see although they don't actually see it, we had to decide what shot came after the one before so this was a lot different to preliminary, in our preliminary we just filmed whatever we though was good without really putting any thought into it.

In out thriller project we really found that making a lot of different story boards and putting them all into one final story board really helped us in making our project. In our preliminary task we didn't use storyboards and this made our project messy and took longer to film, we just filmed what we wanted to.

Our audience feed back wasn't as bad as we anticipated, our thriller was made clear to the audience even though we though it's narrative and low key lighting might have been a problem they seemed to enjoy it. What we noticed though was that the voice over was unclear and this made us re-record some of voice-over narration and this really helped to improve our thriller, we realized that speaking to the audience and getting their feedback really helps to make a good film. We treated the audience with intelligence and respect, we dropped little hints to the audience and they seemed to like the connection we wanted to make with them, we treated them with intelligence and made them become a detective by making them solve clues in our thriller and they enjoyed that.

We found group work was hard in some aspects, everyone had their own ideas for the thriller and we had all these different ideas trying to merge together and it was hard, although we all knew what we wanted in our thriller getting there was hard. Finding actors was hard as our schedule did cause some problems, because of our deadline and needing to work during school time because of our short deadline, some of our actors could only film during school time so this made it harder for us to film certain scenes.

What we all did:

Chris: Concept art, story, planning, titles, filming, editing, sound track, voice over, mask, detective locations, casting, research.

Hayden: Script, costume and props, tripod and camera, acting voice over, filming, editing, original story, Wood Dalling locations, vigilante locations, casting, research.

Tom: Plaster board, filming, editing, voice over, original story board, light engineer, casting, research, set design.

What we realized was that our strengths was in the visuals; lighting, costumes, camera shots and movement. We managed to put a lot into one scene and use misc en scene to our advantage, our opening titles we inspired by Se7en and we really enjoyed making a film noir styled version. Our weaknesses was organisation, we found it hard to organise, recording a voice was hard in some parts and we had to re-record it.

What we've learnt it filming making is hard to organise and having a short deadline does not help, you encounter a lot of problems and overall it really is Murphy's law, a lot of problems aren't in our control, weather is very annoying and camera's drain battery very quickly.


Below are edits to our thriller evaluation based on targets set for us.

 Target 1
 Explore how new media services outside of YouTube could help promote and improve (audience feedback) your product. Explain how awareness can be raised using all social media platforms.

According to the website http://video-share-review.toptenreviews.com/ sites such as Break,Metacafe, and Dailymotion would pose as the best alternatives to promoting our film in terms of achieving an audience by uploading our film to these sites free of charge. Furthermore these sites can help us achieve audience feedback since these sites allow comments from our audience. I have chosen theses sites from this website because of the fact that they are listed in the top 3 other than youtube (however i have excluded google videos entry into the list since google video has been shut down). The website goes into detail about the pros and cons for each website for instance the cons of Break.com are that it "lacks a large community, and a diverse viewer demographic." Because of this factor perhaps promoting our film and expecting feedback on this service would not be appropriate however there is still an audience and uploads are free so we would be missing out. In addition if we want detailed audience feedback we could produce a survey on questioning them about thier thoughts and feeling of our film on surveymonkey.com. we could then attach a hyperlink at the description section of our uploaded film and then direct our audiences to this hyperlink. For example we could do this via annotations on youtube. To raise awareness of our film we could target many film based forums such as total film and sfx to raise awareness by creating a post with the appropriate tags which hyperlinks to our uploaded film. We can also raise awareness by targeting media based forums as well such as the escapistmagazine.com and repeating similar steps to the film forums. I have chosen film and media based forums in particular because of the audience these platforms are directed at are a similar audience to ones we want to attract. Using  popular social media platforms such as facebook we could create a facebook page on our film which raises awareness of our film through teaser trailers i.e little clips of our film and also teaser graphics and logos which link to our film. After doing some research on facebook the cost of advertising would depend on the budget available to us and how much awareness we want to gain. Furthermore an alternative to this would be to get our post concerning our film promoted on facebook. This would mean that our post will be seen by a mass audience depending on our payment. After creating this page on facebook and gaining awareness through these promoted posts linking to said page the next step would be to post hyperlinks to our films facebook page on alternative social networking sites such as Twitter, Reddit. As well as targeting film social sites targeted at the "film lover " for example filmburner.com and openfilm.com a film social media website which also allows indie film makers to upload their films to the site, so perhaps we ccould upload teaser trailer to the site to gain more publicity as well as a link to our films facebook page.

Due to some technical difficulties with blogger anything written in orange is supposed to be written in red which means this content has been added after the initial post upload. Furthermore anything in grey is a hyperlink.

Target 2
 Explain how your product was altered in response to audience feedback.

New altered transition

When we first showcased our product to an audience feedback that was received were mainly concerns about sound, more specifically the vigilantes monologue; this feedback altered our final product we handed in. When we showed our rough cut to our audience our film featured the vigilantes monologue running throughout. The monologue was very soft and ghost like however audiences said that it was too soft and they couldn't understand him. Moreover  some felt that the monologue took away from the visuals and they ended up concentrating more on understanding him rather than watching the film and getting engaged in our narrative. In response we altered the length of the vigilantes monologue as well as re-recording some of the voices to make them more understandable. Another feedback that we recieved that change the outlook of our film subtly was the transitions between each of the animated title cards in the beginning. We were told that the transition were too sharp for such a soft and slow animation, so to resolve we decided to add a soft fade in between titles instead of a sharp cut as seen on the right.


  

Target 3
Summarise ideas for the first two questions in a very concise format.

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

• We challenged modern day thriller convention mixing them with the more classic thriller conventions of film noir
• We looked at old films such as Out of the past for guidance for these conventions, more specifically sound; this film had some influence on the outlook of our chosen soundtrack.
• We drew from other media texts such as La confidential for influence e.g. La confidential features multiple protagonists a feature we implemented in our initially to show our narrative from different perspectives.

• The vigilantes costume   



The vigilante on the left, Rorschach in the middle, stock detective on the left

• For the vigilante we wanted to blend the thriller stock characters, the psycho and the detective into one character thus challenging genre conventions. To do this we had to conform to some genre conventions of the detective more specifically the classic noir detective with the inclusion of the trilby hat and trench coat. To make him look like a psycho we made his mask in particular look very cheap and gritty to connote this psycho character type. Not only this but we made sure that the hat and trench coat for this character weren't the typical detective trench coat hat, for instance the vigilante wears a tropical trilby hat. Through this we wanted to show how he wants to be the detective character type but he isnt quite thus developing both thriller character types of the detective and psycho by merging both looks together to create a new character type for our film. In addition the vigilantes mask also shows how he is this blend of this psycho detective character by completely covering his face thus taking away his humanity but with the hat and trench coat still allowing him to appear like a man. One character used as an influence for our costume was the character Rorschach in the thriller film watchmen a character who has similar theme to our character the rough psychotic detective.

• The detectives costume
• The detective was more conventional to the detective thriller stock type with the clean suit and tie.



The detective in our film.

•  Our media product used both the verfremdungeffekt and the helmet and nickel to present our characters to our audience more specifically the vigilante and how we could present him as a protagonist with antagonist qualities through costume by dressing him black and white, white representing the good qualities and black representing the possible evil in him.
• Finally we used many media texts outside of film such as video games like the max payne series with its kinetic graphic novel like type and La noire with its film noir like tone.

 How does your media product represent particular social groups?

•  The Region
• Our film was set in La an urban setting with several suburban areas however we live in a rural area. To represent the rural region we live in as a suburban area we used specific camera shot which gave of the illusion of such an area as seen on the right. In the shot we captured a close up shot of a shot row of houses to give off the effect of a long housing block.
• The hero - vigilante
•  We gave him a gritty and sketchy mask to portray him as a ghost like character as well as making him look like a flawed hero with the roughness of the mask. Not only this but he is also represented a strong character through deep and dark voice.
• The hero - the police/detective
• In our film the police more specifically the detective are represented as being weak as evidence by their small role in our intro as well as the fact that the detective has no speech all he does is move around slowly. This was linking with the idea of is vigilantism being favored over the police in response to the governments reform into public vigilantism.
• The victim 
• The victim of our film was a woman which is conventional in film however our film was based on a historical event in which the murder victim was a woman. On the other hand our film has fallen in the trap of women being represented in film as a narrative mechanism. A reason for why the protaginst does what he does.
•  The villian
•  we represented the villain of our media product by presenting the city itself as a villain with our high camera angles and dark shadows which depict the environment as a dark and intimidating place as seen below.
  
  
  

Memento Mori

Memento Mori 

The first two minutes of our film noir inspired thriller

Thriller update 31- quick notes

Thriller update 31- quick notes

 

 

 

 

 

In shot 11 we planned to film a tracked shot of the vigilantes feet as he moves towards the right. However we did'nt have access to a tracking dolly that will go low enoguh to capture such footage. Furthermore we wanted to convey a dark environment while still keeping the footage captured visible. To solve these problems I proposed we use my skateboard to capture the moving footage.On the skateboard we attach a torchlight and the camera. The torchlight and the camera were flat therefore there should be little shaking . In additon the torchlight will allow us to reveal certain areas of the scenery while still creating shadows; an element of thriller iconography.

 

 

What we used to capture our tracking footage while on a budget





 

The detective's revolver

Because of budget constraints we could not get access to a high quality snub nosed pistol replica, however we got around this problem by buying a blue toy snub nosed pistol instead.  I then to make it look realistic I then painted the top part of it in black acryllic paint. After that using silver paint and crunched up paper I dipped the crunched up paper in silver paint and started to paint over the parts in black. The texture of the crunched paper would cause a scratch mark on the gun making it seem like it was made out of metal.

Finally we decied not to worry about painting the handle as we found out that blue and brown show up as similar tones when a black and white filter is overlayed. We plan to capture our footage in colour and re-colour it in black and white using final cut or after effects.

 

Coloured vs Black and white side by side

 

 

 

 

 

Changes from thriller storyboard to filming

Changes from thriller storyboard to filming

 

 

 

Below is a list of changes from the storybaord and planning in our thriller film

•  A number of new shots were included to improve continutiy between shots
• The plasterboard will not feature in our film, although it was finished and fully constructed, it unfortunatley did not suit  our location.
• The high shot of shot 10 was adjusted due to lighting issues
• The over the shoulder shot of shot 13 was removed as it added more footage that wasnt needed and would potentially break the continuty between previous scenes filmed at other locations to connote one whole location.

 

Opening credit pictures

Opening credit pictures

For our thriller opening shots 5-9 will be handled slightly differently as we plan to print of off  images like the one below and tear sections of these images. We will then scan in the images and using adobe after effects we plan to animate the frame panning across a close up of the image. The images hold some significance to the narrative in our thriller i.e the image of the detective badge links in with our character Teddy Kaplin and his job role.

Using Photoshop I was able to distort an image of a LAPD detective homicide badge to give it that film noir aesthetic.
As noted before two opening credits that inspired our opening credits were the opening titles of se7en with its use of close up shots of objects and the opening for girl with the dragon tattoo which uses a similar method.

Original image

Edited

This video will help us to achieve said desired effect

Construction of the Elizabeth Short photoframe prop

Construction of the Elizabeth Short photoframe

 

 

Below is a visual process of how I constructed the photoframe that features in our thriller opening.

 

1. First I printed out an image of Elizabeth Short
2. Then I cut out the image and using an old photo frame  I found I placed the picure in it.
3. To make sure the image wasnt too small or too big first I resised the image using photoshop then with a craft knife I cut around the image to fit around the frame.
4. Finally I ripped the photo in two to add to the dark atmosphere that features in our film.