Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

During the time between my preliminary task and the opening sequence i have just created, i have learnt a lot. Little things like match on action and eye line match have been made evident to me and we as a group thought about this carefully when filming to make sure they meet. Also continuity has been thought about a lot and to make our film look realistic we have thought about this. Like when we were in the forest filming, i kept on snapping random plants and tree branches, so when i did this we had to re-film in order to keep continuity. Also continuity was used when i was getting ready in the morning scene. as when buttering the toast, we did it wrong a few times, so i had to re-film it because it would look weird if i buttered it one way and it looked different. When filming for this task, i hada better idea about camera angles and differnt camera shots, so as a group we wer able to combine our thoughts and make the opening sequence as good as possible.

How did you attract/address your audience?

In our opening sequence, we address the audience immeditialey by making it look like i open my eyes and see the audience, then a split second cut attracts the audience, as it appears as if they are looking through my eyes and seeing exactly what i'm seeing. This attracts my audience immediatley as they can experience what my character is, and also try to picture themselves in that situation. We were also able to attract our audience as we used a young innocent looking character that they may be able to relate to. We also attracted our audience immediately as the use of very odd non diegetic sound interests the viewers as to why it has been used.

Who would be the audience for your media product

This would be the audience that my thriller opening is aimed at, as they are young aduls to adults and they will most probabably be able to relate to what is happening, also they would be roughly the same age as our main character, so the situations my character might get into may be similiar, or realistic, so they can relate. The opening sequence is quite confusing at a first glance also, as there is things like clocks in the woods, which could possibly interests young adults as they may like films they have to think about and guess what is going to happen. However, this isn't to say that older people wont enjoy it, as they may have experienced some of the feelings my character has in the opening sequence. Through the use of very up beat music for our opening sequence we hoped that we interested our young audience as they may listen to this kind of music themsleves. However, through the use of the non diegetic sound of the music box, could relate to many age of viewers as they may have had one as a child.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

These 2 companies may distribute my opening sequence as these 2 companies have uploaded other films similiar to mine, with the same genre of a thriller. Having these 2 companies associated with my film will also add to the popularity of my film as these 2 are quite big well recognised companies.
Thrillers Spyglass have produced- The cabin in the woods, The tourist, The happening
Thrillers hollywood pictures have produced- The invisible, Sixth sense, shadow conspiracy.

How does your media product represent particular social groups

AS we only had one character in or opening sequenced, we spent a lot of time choosing suitable attire for our character in order to portray to the audience what type of person he is. We wanted to portray our main character Damien, played by me, to be a well off young, hard working and educated young man, about 21 years of age. To do this, we chose our character Damien to where a suit, whih represents his working class and to show that he is a typical hard working man. To show that Damien is a normal everyday kind of person, we show him doing normal activites in our opening sequence such as eating breakfast, going to the toilet and getting ready for work. All of these things we deliberately did in order to fuel the stereotype of a young working man. However, we did challenge the stereotype of men, as usually in films, we show the women in danger, and the men seem to be the heroes, however, in our opening sequence, we showed that Damien was in trouble.
I looked at the main charater of shutter island to help to understand the kind of role i was going to be playing. The reason i chose Teddy from shutter island is due to the fact that he was a well respected, well off citizen who seemed very normal and organised. He was dressed in very tide clothes such as suits throughout the film to portray that he was well off. However, during the film, we as the audience find out that he is very psychologically challenged and suffers from mental flashbacks and horrific, detailed dreams which was very relevant for our character, as our opening sequence was a dream sequence that out main character was trying to make sense of.

Here you can see where we have thought about lighting, as although the time scale of the dreams in both scenes are different, we still used the bright white light so that we could distinguish the similarity between them.

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

Our media product has been influence by the 2010 film Alice in Wonerland, as we chose to do our first setting in a forest with many confusing, yet spooky objects to add to the eerie effect we are giving to the audience. We chose to use many normal house hold objects as this would add to the confusion further, as the audience would be asking questions, as to why they are in the middle of these woods. Looking at the Alice in Wonderland pictures, we saw things such as clocks in the strange environments, and this gave us the idea of the clock.

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(Screenshot of clock part on our opening)

I think as a group we conveyed a very psychologically confusing opening as we used more common every day items, such as an umbrella in the woods, a dressing gown, and a small neatly wrapped present. Much like Alice's dress, we used the colour light blue as a theme running throughout or opening, as the dressing gown and the symbol that appeared was blue.

Script

In our opening sequence we have chosen to have no dialogue contained. This is because in order to create a high amount of tension, we thought we would use non diegetic sounds, as we could exaggerate them more and make the opening sequence seem strange and confusing, in order to grip the viewers. The only diegetic sound we had was of me breathing, and even that was exagerated to create more tension, and we also had some sound of usual household objects such as the toaster.

Brief

The Brief is to create the titles and opening of a new fiction film, and to make it last a maximum of two minutes.

Shot lists

This is Katie, Gemma, James and my shot list with the different types of shots we used and to what effect and what that type of shot will be showing. For example, Mid-shot when Damien opens the fridge.

What have you learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

During lesson i experimented with live type, in order to get titles onto our opening sequence, to make it look proffesional and to credit people with what they have done. For example the cast, directors and camera crew. Although i found it very difficult to work it at first, with help from fellow strudents and Mrs Jarret i was able to create titles effectively to be used on our opening sequence. Imovie was also hard to get used to, and this helped us to cut and change the length of our clips, we also added music onto this, and this made it easier to getcertain shots in sync with the music, like

~ During my time when making my opening sequence we also used the tripod, which we used effectively in many shots to enable the steadieness of the shot. Without the tripod we would have had to film everything free hand, which may have been difficult as there was movement in some of the shots, and the tripod allowed for smooth constant movement, whereas free hand would have been much harder to use.
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Blogger has also been a main part of my media piece, as i have been able to do posts about
progress and analysing different thriller openings. The blog is also where i have posted all my
research, my planning and the preliminary task, which helped as it allowed for peers to
evaluate it and i could receive feedback on it.

The camera was used in the construction of our opening sequence however i did not get to use it, as i was acting in the majority of the shots. The camera was obviously our most important piece of technology as if we didn't have it, we would not have been able to create our opening.



We used the fig rig for our first shot, which enabled us to steady our shots and to perform effective tracking shots without having a wobbly camera. We really needed our first shot to be good, as this would be at the beginning of the film, and this would most probably determing whether people continue to watch our film or not.

Location Shots

These are the pictures taken at our setting for filming our opening sequence. We decided to use this setting for our opening sequence as it looks like a very unappealing place to be, which would explain how my character acts when he discovers this unusual setting.

Titles Fonts we could use

These are a range of titles that i found on a website called 'Dafont'. I looked through a range of categories in which to try and find the best title possible including, Handwriting, Medieval, Gothic and Horror. Some of the above titles are from these categories and i am choosing which one would be most appropriate.

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Font 1- The first font i really like as a title font for our film, as it looks quite scratchy and like it is quite faded, which may suggest it is like a faded memory which you cannot remember properly. This would be very appropriate for our film, as it is about a dream that our character had and throughout the film he is trying to remember and figure out why he is having the dream. Because the font seems quite neat and very business like, it could look like it is written by our character, as our character wears his suit, which suggests he is upper class and educated.

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Font 2- This font i really like because it is really in your face and obvious. The all capital title suggests that it may be really important or like it is being shouted. This font can also relate to our title, as again it suggests dreams and premonitions, as there is pieces missing in the font, so this could connote the puzzle of the dream he is trying to accumulate together. It also looks like something has attacked the title, as it looks like its been stabbed or sliced, which suggests a killer in our opening.

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Font 3- This font is really effective because it looks like someone has painted it in a rush, or to the effect to scare someone. The scary messy writing shows that maybe someone has been in trouble in our film like at the end of the forest scene. Also it could be used as a warning in our opening sequence as if to deliberately show the character he is in a dream, and to make him think 'why am i in this dream?'.

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Font 4- I really like this font for our film, as it can suggest evil as the edges of each letter are really sharp which the audience may be able to depict as blades or knives. This could feed the stereotype of our thriller with the fact that there is a death and a killer. The fact that all the letters are in capitals also suggests that really sinister tone to the audience.

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Font 5- This is my favourite font that i would like to use for our film for many reasons. The main reason is due to the fact that it looks like someone has done it in a real rush and so it could suggest that there must have been a reason why they rushed it, maybe because they were in real trouble at the time. Another reason i like it, is because the letter t looks like it is reaching out to the 2 i's either side of it, but they have not got their arms out to reach back to the t, which shows the t is isolated, which could connote our main character as he too is very vulnerable and isolated.

Sounds

http://www.youtube.com/user/FreeSoundtrack#p/u/25/ktG2KFYDSY

http://www.youtube.com/user/FreeSoundtrack#p/u/31/qy6_ToZRU6w

These are 2 of the links that we thought about using for our opening sequence. We found these on the youtube channel 'freesoundtrack' and thought that they would be useful as the sound that is created from these tracks seems very appropriate for our opening sequence, as they contain low tone and slow paced music, which could be used to portray our slow and confusing start, and will help to create the tension and sinister mood. We may not use these exact songs, however, these connote the type of mood that we would like to portray to the audience whilst watching our opening sequence. We thought we could use these type of sounds whilst we start our forest scene, as this is meant to be amongst the highest points of tension in our opening sequence and the mood needs to be set immediately in order to grip the viewer. However in order to complete our opening sequence we will need to find a more upbeat song which will be able to keep up with the pace of the next part of our opening sequence which is the scene where I will be getting ready for work.

List of props

This image shows the blue colour scheme that we have running throughout our thriller film, and also shows the toaster which is an important prop in the morning scene.
This prop is used efficiently in our forest scene as this is what introduces the all important symbol to our character, Damien.
The dressing gown is one of our main props in our film. As well as it being our prop, it is an important costume for our opening sequence. In the beginning we see the dressing gown in the woods, which adds to the confusion of the beginning, as we see a dressing gown in the woods. Also in the next part of our opening sequence, we need it as our morning attire for Damien as in the morning, it sets the scene, as if he has just woken up.

Audience research 2 (displaying our data)

This is the pie chart that we created as a group to show what types of thrillers people prefer to give us a better chance of making a successful thriller.

This was our questionnaire that helped us to choose which location to film our thriller in as we can see the setting that got the most votes was the forest, so we decided to film in the forest.

What titles?

Different titles have different importance in an opening sequence for example, the more important titles may appear first or in a bigger or more obvious font. Some titles appear at the end of the film as these are less important.

Important titles that may appear in an opening sequence can include;

-Director,

-Actors

-Camera crew

-Costume designer

-Supporting actors

-Set director

-Art director

-Assistant director

-Make up

What does a title sequence look like?

To create an efficient title sequence, there needs to be a certain amount of visual elements in order to grip the audience and make them want to continue watching. It needs to contain;

- Some close ups of the main character so we as the audience can tell that he/she is the main character.

-A brief establishing shot so we can see where the opening sequence is set.

-Some thrillers contain a brief shot of a main prop, like in Memento with the photo's.

-The titles need to appear in an appropriate place so that it makes sense, like in Memento, a memento is like a token of remembrance so the title appears on the shot of a picture, which is clever and effective.

-The directors name or the main actor sometimes appears in an opening sequence in order to try and lure the audience into watching it as their favourite actors might be in it.

Feedback on Research & Planning

Hi Ryan,

I've had a thorough look over your blog, and I am pleased to see that some posts have been really carefully put together and show lots of creative thinking and grasp of some key technical language. it is also good to see that you have responded to the feedback Ms Ingram gave you the other week about how you can improve your Research section. I can see that you have added in a good post for Double Indeminity and completed the post on the conventions of a Thriller.

There are still a couple of important post that remain missing from the Research section, and these really should have been completed well before now. You must make sure ALL of the posts we set for you in the checklists are completed, and completed carefully - these are what the exam board requires from all A level students - and you will need to really show that you are investing time and effort into your blog (as this is your coursework) to strive towards your B target.

I will be marking the Research & planning section for FINAL time from Mon 7th. Please make sure all of the posts for both sections are completed properly by then.

Research - to do:
3 - What titles? JIN ran a session specifically on this. You need to come back to this and fix - or watch the opening of the Sixth Sense and make a list of all of the technical roles that appear on the screen in the opening credits - these are the titles you will have to add into your film to make it seem authentic.
4 ?
12/13 - needs evidence of additional research into your genre
17/18 - needs the results of your survey to be collated in the form of graphs / charts. You need to show that you have handed your survey to the type of people you would intend to be your target audience. You need evidence of having collected the results and thought about their responses - and evidence of you showing that you have considered how you can use this information about audience preferences to shape your own ideas.

Planning - to do:
Posts 3
Post 4 - Sound - I noticed you spent almost an entire lesson one day searching for possible soundtracks to use. Where is this post then? You need links to sound grabs you found on the websites you were looking at and a written explanation about why you are considering using it / connotations...
5 - Storyboards are scanned in - but they have not been completed properly? You need to come back to them and add in more detailed information about each shot - otherwise the storyboard is pointless.
6, 7 - to do (these need loads of photos to make blog visual)
9 - to do
10 - needs written character profile / explanation
11 - font selection and connotations

There's quite a bit for you to do here Ryan. You could certainly achieve more in lesson time, especially when you are predicted a B grade.

SJA Feb 3rd

Today's Filming session

In today's filming session we managed to get all of what we planned done in the time we estimated. We filmed all of the morning scene where you see me wake up and get dressed and ready for work, and then you see me leave the house, with the symbol behind me. There was some problems we had to overcome and we quickly corrected them in order to make our film look as good as possible. For example, when we started filming, i had hair gel in my hair, and then i suddenly thought it would look weird in a film that if i woke up with gel in my hair, it will look like a film, rather than it looking real, which is what we wanted it to be. In on of the shots we filmed, i realised that i had re-tied my dressing gown, but to the other side, and this would have ruined the continuity of our editing, and would have made it look like they were filmed seperately. OUr next lot of filming will be done this friday and will be done in Nonsuch park, we will leave straight after 3rd period and probably get back just before it's dark, depending on how long it takes to frame each shot.