Adam's Evaluation

Hello, as I did not feature on the evaluative commentary on our DVD as I was busy editing the film here is my evaluation.

1. In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms And Conventions Of Real Media Products? We used many conventions of the thriller genre in our media product. A couple of examples from camerawork are the use of point of view shots, over the shoulder shots and close ups to show the character's expressions. From sound we used synchronous and asynchronous sound (the printer being an example of both) aswell as enhanced diegetic sound (eg typing) and from mise-en-scene the use of realistic lighting, costumes and location/setting.
2. How DOES Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups? In our product only one social group is presented to the audience. This is male teenagers who are not represented in a particularly good way in our opening. Obviously the fact that one of them has a 'top secret' document and then sends it to his friend suggests that these two are criminals and certainly law breakers. However this is only the opening and is a flashback, if we made the whole film the audience would be shown that this is not the case. But there is some positive representation of male teenagers as the two characters seem to care a lot about each other and this would continue throughout the film.
3. What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product And Why? Our thriller opening isn't particularly mainstream, so if we made the whole film it would not have mass market appeal/potential. So it would probably be taken up by an independent distribution company and shown at independent/ more specialised cinemas. It could however be released straight to DVD. The opening could easily be posted onto youtube which is a great way of getting your work out there to be seen and commented on.
4. Who Would Be Your Audience For Your Media Product And How Did You Attract/Address Them? Our audience if it was just the opening I think would be teenagers as the context(pcs, webcams etc) can be related to them and the topic of the opening would interest them. However if it was a whole film i think it would appeal to a wider audience but only within a niche market.
5. What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product? I have learnt how to use Imovie HD and all the various features on it from importing your work from the video camera to editing and enhancing/extracting the sound. I have also learnt how and where to legally download sound clips and import them(eg typing and printer sounds) and have learnt how to burn things onto DVD using Idvd. I have finally learnt how to use the video cameras to their full potential and setting the settings how we wanted them. Also a quick note filming a PC screen is very hard work as getting the angle right is crucial, a millemetre wrong and you get horrible coloured lines!!!!
6. Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Prgression From It To The Full Product? I have learnt all the things above from when we ended the filming for our preliminary task up to now and really just 'homed' my skills to get the best out of everything and to get everything spot on timing wise. For example when we filmed our preliminary task we did takes and takes of Hannah coming through the door and it wasnt perfect on the timing and wasnt following the most serious rule when filming - continuity.

Thank-you for reading and I hope this a sufficient evaluation, goodbye, Adam.

DEADLINE

Okay so we found out the final deadline for our completed project is... well... tomorrow. So we need to film one last shot and our evaluation and edit the entire thing to finalise our opening for good. The flashback ended up being filmed in Ixworth as we found a good location for shooting.
thanks
Sam and Tom

The search for sounds has started

We have started to find and import sounds for the enhanced diagetic sound effects, the sounds we are currently exploring are: printer sounds, the internet dial-up sound and enhanced on typing/clicking. We are using these because the internet dial-up sound is iconic to the internet and our project revolves around technology. We also want to re-create our own version of Hot Fuzz's opening history of police sounds timeline.

Adam will post a link later today to the opening of Hot Fuzz so you can all see the example...

Tom.....and Adam

My thoughts

Lets start at, you've guessed it, the start.

Our narrative and story has stayed roughly the same since the idea was first brainstormed. Obviously some things have been changed and redesigned along the way and we've added bits and taken bits out. For example we added in the flashback to give the audience better understanding about whats happening in the present timing. This was influenced by the flashback in the opening of Casino Royale.

Once we planned it we then started storyboarding it. We took time over this and did 2 versions. I think we were the last group in our class to finish it but it was worth it.

We then started filming and the problems kept on coming. We first had technology problems with basically everything we needed (pc, internet, printer) and during 1 of the filming sessions the camera ran out of battery after only just over 30mins and we were supplied with the wrong charger. But its now all aparrently done.

The search for sounds has gone well and have found many useful sounds for the enhanced diagetic theme we are going for. Thats it for now its been great fun (the project).

Filming over half-term

We have refilmed some shots which we needed yesterday and now we are trying to get a camera out for half term to get rid of any flaws and also so we can do a video piece of our evaluation. We will be doing "A making of" for our thriller and will answer certain questions within this.
Over the half-term week we will be filming the all important flashback and filling in the last few errors in our previous filming.
Thank you
Hannah and Sam x

Sound techniques

We have finalised our ideas towards sound. Adam gave us the idea to use the internet dial up sound during the title screen and there will be a collage of sounds used by msn, the internet and other modern technologies to add the sense of progressing through time. We are going to use enhanced diagetic sounds with no background music to add tension and eery effect. For example keyboard typing and zooming sounds of a webcam will be enhanced. We are editing out any sounds that are in the film to begin with before we start working on the sound.
thankyou
Sam and Hannah

Filming on Wednesday

Wednesdays filming went well. We got the majority of our scenes filmed with only the flashback and a couple of filler shots we'll be on full flow with the editing. One giant mistake we have made was filming the screen of the computer while filming the file being printed, where the suspense is meant to build up during the printing but you can see the file on the screen the whole time. Well one more day of filming and providing nothing goes wrong (because we've had our fair share of mishaps) we will have completed the filming stage. The editing has been easy so far we're just trimming the good clips down and sieving through the bad ones.
Thanks for reading
Sam

Filming plans

We are filming today!!!!
Just to let you know
thanks
from Hannah and Sam

Flashback

We've got a few new ideas for the flashback. The camera will be positioned at a low level as a Point of View shot (POV) and it will be showing a woman in her early twenties crouched in the centre of two legs crying. The camera will then move backwards and be pulled away and the woman will reach for the camera and scream then be restrained from activity by the owner of the legs. We may use some sound effects of a baby/infant crying to create the sense of the POV being of the infant.
We'll keep you posted with how the filming and ideas go.
Thanks for rerading
Sam

Filming = Fail

Okay, well the title says it all, we went filming on wednesday the 28th. Anyway we booked the camera, got the time out of lessons and did everything that was needed. We then took the whole crew and the equipment to the location (Sam's House) to get our filming done. We thought that wednesday would be our last day of filming, and it was going well untill our luck ran out. The camera was half charged which caused obvious problems, but then after the camera ran out of charge we went for the charger and to our dismay the charger had the wrong attachment.
On slightly better news, we're planning to film on wednesday...The entire day to get it properly polished off.
The flashback is still being discussed. We are thinking of using Ipswich docks to increase the quality and believability of it all.
Thankyou for reading
Tom

Leon

Hey Hannah here,
This is another thriller that we studied in the process of creating a thriller opening. We decided to use aspects from Leon such as not revealing the main character straight away. We thought this was effective as it makes the audience ask questions. This is a key element of thriller and creates tension for the audience. I thought Leon was a good thriller personally and I thought it worked well hiding Leons features and his identity from us as we did not know if he was good or bad. Though Leon is more about killing where as ours is about revenge on a past expierence.

We have also booked a camera out for Wednesday 28th of January. We hope to get more successful shots, we also have had a better idea for the flash back and are considering filming at Ipswich docks, this would determain that the flash back is set in a different time and place and would allow continuity. We are looking forward to filming the rest of our thriller opening and hope everything goes well tomorrow so we can finally crack down on getting all the editing done. We are going to place our palmiary task for you guys soon.
Thanks for your help on the polls!

Filming TODAY!!!!!

We're going home to film today at 1.20pm. We're just adding the finishing touches to everything at the moment, our preliminary task will be on the blog later today!!!
We'll let you know how the filming goes after we've finished today.
Keep commenting
thanks
Sam

Virus production

Hey it's Hannah again just wanted to give you some more information on how we developed our idea.
We saw a small example of a low budget production called virus, this used the idea of web cams and technology to base their film. We were strongly influenced by this as it showed us how we could use web cams effectively within our thriller. Virus was more horror then a thriller, we astablished this because they use super natural references where a thriller is more realistic with it's content though the genre of virus is debatable. During this horror a man uses an internet chat room and web cam to see his wife/girlfriend but it differs from our storyboarded thriller as they use a virus file which opens up the webcam and then the wife/girlfriend gets taken away by a supernatural being. The whole piece is set within a office and used the idea of silence but having enhanced diegetic sounds for sounds to do with technology. We decided to stick to a more realistic approach with our thriller by using humans rather then supernatural beings also with a realistic story line which is exaggerated in some parts for more tension and auidence pleasure. This film helped us a lot to define the fine line between horror and thriller and allow our piece shine through as a thriller and not have to be debated over the genre.

Memento

Hello, Hannah here. Just wanted to give you a little information on some of the thrillers we have looked at...

We did some work on "Memento" which is a well known psychological thriller. I personally really enjoyed this movie. "Memento" influenced us by using technology as an idealistic object. In "Memento" they used a Polaroid camera and in our thriller we use a Web cam so we are more on the modern basis of things. This is a more ideal movie to look at for us because it is psychological and that interests our group since we feel they have better tension and better story lines rather then other thrillers.


We linked "Memento" to our piece because rather then using still image we are using moving image via web cam which is more high tech as I mentioned before. This will probably appeal to a more teenage audience as we are using program references such as msn and internet chat rooms which most the teenage population use now-a-days to keep in contact with their friends. This means they can relate to the movie in this way and understand the program references better then older audiences.


This is a Polaroid camera (on the right) which was used in "Memento". It takes still images and develops them there and then and prints the out rather then sending the film away and waiting a while for the to develop this is what made it ideal for the movie. Then on the left is a web cam which you can see a lot of difference between the two even though they are both to do with taking images. This is the sort of web cam we would be using in our Thriller.

Update!

Hiya,
So we've just finished the drafts of our storyboarding and should be getting that up on the blog soon, i've just started our final storyboards with any changes and hopefully some better drawings. Shot list is currently under developement and we're discussing cast and locations.
We have thought of using Tom's bedroom as the main source of filming and my own bedroom will be featured in the webcam view.
As for the everyday scene we're drawn between cooking dinner (the whole chopping and preparing sort of thing) and watching television and flicking through channels (This could be an oppertunity to give clues to the events that would of been happening later if we wer'nt just creating an oppening to a thriller.
Should have some more information coming in soon
thankyou
Sam

Basic Storyline for our thriller

So far we've had a few mix ups over the story but we're very nearly settled.
So far we have a man sitting at his desk on his computor, when his friend on webcam comes on and tells him hes found the file they've been looking for he becomes a bit anxious. As the file downloads onto the mans computor the webcam shows his friend being wrestled around by a government official. Now at this point he either uses print screen to get a picture of what is happening or he recieves the file and sees its contaminants. This causes a flashback to his past where a scene is shown of his mother being taken by the government officials. His reaction to this memory will be shown then there will be a short scene of the main character perfoming an everyday activity like cooking or watching television. There will be a cut away and government officials may be shown entering a front garden and walking up a pathway while constantly cutting inbetween the acitvity and government men at a quickening pace to build tension and then a knock will be heard by the main character and after the reaction is shown the opening will end.
Sound good?
why not give us some feedback and any tips for improvements?
thanks for reading
Sam

WELCOME!!!!!!

Hey there guys welcome to Stocking Thrillers (excuse the pun)
So we're gonna be discussing all sorts of thrillers and what we love about them
also we'll be creating our own thriller and keeping you up to date with that as we go along
So im gonna open up the first poll with a pretty plain and effortless question that ticks all the boxes

Whats your favourite thriller?

Oh that's right we went there.
Looking forward to any comments please dont be afraid to leave them.