EVALUATION

Media Evaluation- Kirsty Trevarthen
Before starting our media product, we looked at many different thriller openings. We also watched a documentary called “Watching”. This documentary was about film openings and the way that the opening of a film can either seduce the audience and make them want to watch the whole film or they can give too much away too quickly and therefore give the audience no reason to continue watching the film. According to the director Jean Jacques Beneix, a film opening should start slowly because if you start at a high point the audience will feel deflated by the end.
Stanley Kauffman describes the “classic opening” as a shot to establish setting, then slowly progress to a building or specific area, then slowly reveal where the character is by going through a window, and then the audience are fully aware of the characters situation. Rational progress is a good way to keep the audience gripped but also not giving away too much at one time.

These pictures establish character and setting
We decided to follow this convention, mixed with the “classic opening” therefore the first shot that you see in our film is the main character walking down the street, and answering an “unknown” phone call with a mysterious voice over giving her orders. The audience therefore know that this is the main character and that she is possibly working on a 'secret mission'. The next two shots are then establishing the Mise-en-scene of Tower Bridge and City Hall, therefore telling the audience that this is set in central London. The cut between showing the audience the main character and then establishing setting follows Kyle Copper's convention of making the audience feel that the film can go anywhere from this point.

Some of the films that inspired our shots
As a group, we decided that we did not want to follow the usual thriller conventions, such as..
Night time filming
A killing/murder of some kind
Deserted location
Stalker
We wanted to do a political thriller, and break some stereotypes of how thriller films should be.
As we had an all girl group we thought that having a political thriller, with a women as the corrupt character, this would be individual and interesting to film. This would give the audience something to think about and also not make the film too predictable.

A hint that this is a political thrilleR.

Having a business women, who is dressed smartly, and clearly successful breaks the stereotype of men being the most powerful business people. Also, filming at locations such as Tower Bridge and City Hall, give connotations at how successful she is due to the fact that this is a very high status area. The voice over that gives the orders at the start of out film is also female. This further implies that there are no men involved in this corruption and therefore women are the higher status sex in our thriller.

Whilst deciding who we wanted out audience to be, we looked at some statistics based on the genre of films that men and women are more likely to go and see, what the most popular genre of films were among males and females, and what we thought he reasons were. The general viewing of thrillers at the cinema showed that men are more likely to go and see a thriller than women. Also spy films were also more popular among men and therefore we came to the conclusion that we would aim it more at men than women. The fact that the main character is a women and very powerful gives it a certain amount of sex appeal for men as well. The age that we aimed our film at was around 20-45, this is because of the nature of the film, the political awareness of the audience was a factor to consider as well as the maturity. However the age restriction would be a 15, because any higher than that would suggest violence and very graphic scenes, but our thriller did not contain these things. Our demographic would be a mainstream audience, this is because firstly, we do not want put too much of a limit on the people that can come and see our film.

An audience member profile:
Steve, 21, A university student of politics, loves to see films that gives him more of an idea of the corruption behind politics, he also likes powerful women, and is a bit of an adrenaline junkie.
He is white middle class, lives in London.

We would advertise ourilm on billboards in many different areas, London in particular. We would also advertise it on the Internet, such as YouTube, Vimeo and other popular video sites. Due to the fact that political thrillers are individual, I think that the genre will attract people to see it, so therefore we don't necessarily need a well known film star in it to attract an audience. However, a relatively known well actor/actress may be needed for people to be that little bit more intrigued about seeing the film. This method of advertisement means that we would be able to reach both Niche and mainstream audiences, therefore getting a wider range of people and a bigger audience which would make the film a bigger success.

On practical and hands on level, the technologies that were involved in the filming and editing of this project were quite easy to use, because of the practice tasks that we did before hand, we were used to using the equipment, and therefore we could do so successfully.
The Canon 3CCD DV Camera that we used The tripod that we used too.
The camera and the tripod were the two things that we were used to handling and transporting to different locations.

Final Cut Pro Screen shots

We used Final Cut Pro to edit our film once we had finished all the filming of it. Final Cut Pro is fairly easy to use once you are used to the different functions. It makes it easier to make your film run smoothly and change the shots that did not quite work. For example, in some of our shots we had too much space above the characters head, so we used final cut pro to reduce this slightly so that it was a good shot. We then used it to put the credits onto our opening sequence, and to perfect the length of the shots so that the credits did not go past too quickly.

Sound Track Pro screen shots

Once we had finished editing our shots and had our film finished, we then had to put a soundtrack to it so that it was more suspenseful and interesting. I was not there for the lesson that we did this because I had another lesson to go to, but I knew how to use it because of the Preliminary task that we did before this. There are many different sounds on the program, so we spent a long time trying to choose one that fitted with the theme of our film and created tension. Soundtrack Pro allows you to start and stop the sound where you want in your film, and also allows you to create layers of sound, such as the heartbeat that we had playing underneath the main beat of our music.

Vimeo and Blogger allowes us to watch our thrillers once finished
All through the film making process, we had to blog everything that we did onto Blogger. This was a quick and easy way to record everything that we did each lesson and therefore allowed more time for filming. We uploaded the two filming tasks that we did before our thriller project. The first being “A Thrilling Read”, and the preliminary task that we did.
Vimeo is where all of the videos where uploaded. This has widened the potential audience for our product, for example, we could send the link to another country and anybody would be able to see the film that we made.

Looking back on our preliminary task, I feel that our match cuts were a lot smoother, and the transitions between establishing shots were better. I have learnt that using a range of different camera shots and angles gives the film more depth.

Audience Feedback

Some of the things that the audience said after seeing out film were as follows:
The establishing shot of Tower Bridge is very good as you can see city hall through the bridge, and then the dissolve to city hall is very smooth and works well.

The low angle shot of Stephanie at the beginning worked very well.

The voice over was effective, telling the audience that the character has orders to follow.

The title coming at the end with the effects gives a great conclusion

Using 3 different buildings, but portraying it as one worked well, City hall, Student accommodation doors and then the lifts in college, very professional.

The only thing that could have worked better was the continuity of the music, When Stephanie goes into the lift the music should have continued but quietened down, The heart beat could have been underlying all the way through, and the editing of it could have been smoother.

The cinema experience was a good way to see how people respond to your film, and it highlights the flaws but also the parts that work well. The audiences response to the fact that we did a political thriller was not greatly received, due to the stereotypes that surround the genre “Thriller”. Seeing our work on the big screen made me very proud of the work that we put into the project, and also made me think that the group I was with was very co-operative and we all worked together to make a good film opening.

N1 CENTRE VUE CINEMA LOGO

I think that seeing it in the cinema made me realise that our film would either be a “made for TV” film or distributed in a number of UK 'arthouse' cinemas. This is because of the low budget that we would have to make the film a success, and also the amateur nature of the project would make it harder to become a big Hollywood movie.

editing lesson 2

The final deadline was Friday the 27th March at 3:00 PM. I was not available to completely finish our film, due to having another lesson. Micheala and Stephanie came in in the morning and put music and sound effects on our film, and I came in at lunch to upload it onto our blog. Before our final deadline, we got our teacher to look at our film and tell us what she thought needed to be tighter. so using Final Cut Pro, she showd us how to tighten some of the editing so that it ran smoothly and some of the shots were correctly positioned. Once we had done this we put on the credits, and slowed down the establishing shot of City Hall so that the credits could be seen clearly. Once we had done all of this we were ready to do our final save of our film, and then it was ready to be viewed.

First Editing Lesson

Today we started on the editing of everything that we have filmed. First of all we had to log and capture the scenes we filmed last lesson, which were Stephanie walking down a road, answering her phone, and then walking into a biulding that looked like the same doors to city hall. We used student accomodation in kings cross for the scene of stephanie walking through revolver doors. We filmed the street scenes in kings cross, because it was easy to get too in the time limit that we had and also we knew it would most likely be busy. When we got back to college we got a shot of stephanie's feet walking past the camera on the floor and we also got a shot of the mobile phone ringing with it saying "Incoming call-Unknown".
Today we logged and captured this, and began editing all of our clips. It took us a while to get started, as we all had different ideas about the opening shot that we should have. Once we all agrred that it should be stephanie walking down the street and answering the phone, we then were able to carry on productively. We managed to get the whole thing put together and with a few minor edits, and the voice over that we need, we will be finished. We now need to decide where we will put the credits, what they will look like and what they are going to say. This will be the aim of our next session.

First filimg session for Thriller

Today we did our first filimg session for our actual thriller. Last lesson we made a production schedule so the first place we had to go to was Tower Bridge. We did a few establishing shots of london and Tower Bridge. We panned across the whole of the bridge so the audience can clearly see where we were. We were not allowed to film some of the buildings around City Hall but they gave us permission to film City Hall itself so we did and hot of Stephanie walking into the frame of the camera and we panned as she walked towards City Hall. We re-did this a couple of times and then got closer to the building and saw her get near the entrance. Because we are not allowed to film inside City Hall we will prbably have to cut from her just about to go through the doors, to a shot of her walking up some stairs to an office.

Making our Pitch

In today's lesson we had to make a pitch to our teacher about the thriller we want to film. To do this we had to give a brief introduction to the plot of the clip and then go into some more detailed points.

The main plot of our story is this: A women who works in Politics is walking down the street, only her in focus the crowd are blurred out so that the audience can establish who the main character is. We know she's in london because we are going to flash from her to iconic views of london such as The London Eye. We see her put on her I-pod earphones and we hear a voice over giving her instructions. These instructions will include, where to go, what floor to go onto and the room number. We will see her go into an office and search through filing cabinets and try and log onto the computer. We hear a bang and we see that she has been caught, and that she is a corrupt politician. We wanted to break the stereotype of men being politicians and in high status jobs.

Key images and Icons- We think that we should have an establishing shot of London, and then have specific iconic places such as Big Ben and The houses of parliament. This would establish a connection with the audience because they would recognise where we are and therefore feel more of a part in the film. The setting also connects to the Mise-en-scene of the clip. The costume that the character is going to be wearing connects with central london because she will be wearing a smart suit, high heels and carrying a brief case. The Key icons and images also covers the setting and location.

Music- The music we are going to use is being made by Oyin, it starts off slow and then builds with the tension of the clip. This will create suspence for the audience and add to the overall effect of the clip.

The age group that we are aiming the film at is between 18 and 30, this is because we feel that an understanding of politics and corruption is needed. It is also aimed at women more than men but we feel that men will be interested because of the sex symbolism of the women in power.

Lighting- We are going to be using natural lighting, this is because obviously we can't get proffesional lighting for our movie so natural light will be fine.

Preliminary Film

In today's lesson we did our preliminary film to carry on from the planning that we did last lesson. We had to film someone walking into a room, sitting down with another person and sharing a few lines of dialogue. I think that our second film went really well, we used many different shot types, we used match cutting which we learnt in our last lesson.
Between the first and second practice film I have learnt that the footage doesn't always have to be perfect because you can edit it on the computer, and also it is better to have long rubbish clips that you can edit and cut down, than have a short perfedct clip because it is harder to edit.

Our preliminary film doesn't challenge the coventions of a real film because we used all different shot types and match cutting and they do that in real films as well. However a real film may not be filmed in the tight amount of space that we used, we used a small part of the corridor and then used the classroom that we were working in. Because we edited the film and the clips, you can't tell that the corridor we filmed in and the room we used were on two different floors, it was fluid. Our film do not allow us to make any comments about representation, as it is very short and simple.

If we had more time we would have used more shots such as an over the shoulder shot at the end to show the conversation from one character's point of view, and we would have made it a bit longer, but with the time and resources that we had I think we did very well.

Match Cut lesson

On our match cut lesson, we were given a tutorial on what match cutting is and shown clips that use match cuts, we then had to point out the match cuts in the said clip. Once we had done this, were given the following scenario: A man in london, 3 pm, chain smoking and working on the computer, he is seen putting private files onto a disc, packaging the disk and then posting the parcel. We had to then fill in a sheet describing each of the shots we would use if we were filming this scenario. Once we had done this, we were given another scenario, which we then went on to film in the next lesson, and we had to plan the shot types and do a story board of these. This scenerio was as follows: A person walks into a room, sits down and shares a few lines of dialogue with another person. We came up with 12 shots and planned them carefully to get the perfect film.

"Watching" Film Openings

The first thing we did in the last media lesson was we watched a documentary about film openings. We had to answer a number of questions, some of which were about the points of view of certain writer or directors such as Jean Jacques Beineix talking about "Instant Arousal" in films and the risks of this. The argument around this issue was that some people said that you need to start the film with the biggest impact so that the audience are gripped from the start. Others such as Jean Jaques Beineix said that this was wrong. He said that you should start the film slowly so that the audience don't feel deflated at the end of the film because the big event has happened at the beginning. There were any other questions aswell.

The next thing we did was we watched past students thriller films so that we could see what it is we are expected to do. The first one we watched was called Blasphemy. This had a very strong presence of religion, and it used the title sequence and credits so that we can see the obsession of the main character aswell as the credits. We spoke about what made each of the works we watched good and what we thought wasn't as good. This helped us understand what would be a good idea to do and what not to do.

We then looked at films and the audiences that they pull in. The most popular genre of film were comedy and action. The male percentage were higher than women for thrillers, action and spy movies. There are a few things that we have to think about when making out thriller film. The movie classification- for example 15 may suggest violence or sex.
Niche audiences- A film made for a very specific audience and lower budget
Mainstream Audiences-A general appeal to a range of people and ages.
Actors- Our choice of actors may influence the people who come and see the movie for example
if we say Johnny Depp is in the film then we will get Johnny Depp fans in to see the film.

28 Days Later Evaluation

I chose to evaluate the thriller 28 Days Later because I feel that the camera movement and other aspects make it the most interesting and gripping, although nothing happens in the clip, the audience get a sense that something has already happened and we are in the same position as the character because he doesn't know what's going on either.

The lighting maintains being quite bright fake light in the first scenes inside the hospital. This shows the surroundings very clearly so that the audience can see chaos and mess thats around. The lighting outside is natural, it is shot very early in the morning and there is absolutely nobody around. The camera movement always shows the character as very small in the shot, just visibal in distance. This shows his vulnerability and emphasises the fact that he is alone in a deserted area. The first shot of wide shot so that we see the surroundings and chaos. The audience wonder what has happened and the camera just follows what the character is doing and focuses on him.

The music is mostly diegetic, for example the phone banging when he drops it, or the can opening, are all sounds that are there and happen. His voice gets echoed to show that he is alone in very big space, it also gives a feeling of uneasyness, because the sound of the echo sounds creepy. When non-diegetic sound is added, the sadness of the situation is emphasised by the sound of strings and a meloncholy rythm shows his loneliness and boredom.

The only editing that is done is the cutting between shots. mostly the camera is tracking him.
The setting and location is firstly a messed up deserted hospital and then we go outside and we see that we are in central london. This makes a connection with the audience because most people who are watching this clip know that central london is always very busy and packed. The fact that there is not a soul there except for one man, and the places is full of strange things like turned over buses and smashed stuff, gives the impression that this could be real and the audience feel like they are there experiencing it. This creates suspense even though nothing is actualy happening.

Lesson before Xmas

In our last lesson before christmas we brainstormed the different types of thrillers that exist, and think about what sort would be appropriate for our group, for example we could not do a love scandal where the husband kills the boyfriends because we are an all girl group. We then watched short clips from the following thrillers. "28 days later", "The Shining", "Collateral" and "What lies beneath". We had to fill in a grid commenting on lighting, camera movement, music, editing and setting/location and say why these aspects made the clip suspenseful. We then had to chose what clip we wanted to evaluate on this blog.

Camera Tutorial

Before we wre able to starrt filming, we had to watch a video teaching us the important things on the video camera and learning how to use it safely. First we watched how to insert the battery then we had a go at it ourselves. Then how to insert the tape and eject the tape without breaking it. We then learnt about the tripod and how essemble it. We then had a go at attatching the camera to the tripod securely. After we had the camera ready, we were told about the 5 second rule, where there has to be 5 seconds of rubbish footage and the start and the end of each clip we filmed. We were then able to go away and film succesfully.

A Thrilling Read

We got put into groups and we were asked to film someone reading a newspaper in an exciting and thrilling way, so that we can practice before we do our actual thriller. We filmed Michaela in the toilet reading the newspaper, different angles and shots to make it thrilling. We then used 'Final cut pro' to edit the clips and make them into a long clip. We then inserted transitions where needed to make it smoother and more slick. We then added 3 different clips of music and layered them so that the music builds up, we used silence to add tension and at the end the front page story was about an aeroplane accident, so we put a sound of an aeroplane when the focus was on the headline.