Production report: thriller opening

Production report: Thriller opening

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
For this task we had to get into groups and produce a two minute opening to a thriller. We had to come up with an idea that included all the aspects of a thriller, so it attracted the thriller audience. After planning our thriller we decided that the certificate should be a 15 because many of the 18’s contain strong violence and sexual content, which is not included in ours as we feel it a thriller should not contain strong bloody violence.
A thriller can contain different genres within them such as crime. A typical thriller creates a tense atmosphere, which leaves the audience wanting to watch more, through camera angles such as close ups to see the characters faces. Props and narrative also are important. In the first two minutes of a thriller, you would expect there to be a situation that grips the audience, with a storyline that intrigues them. The dialogue is kept to a minimum as to not give much away until later on. The camera shots, sound and editing need to create emphasis on the important parts of the opening so that the audience can remember them as they may be important later on in the film. In the titles it should tell the audience the main characters in the film, the director and what media institution distributed it, as if the audience recognises the actors and the institution it may encourage them to watch it and remember other films they liked done by the same people.
By researching other thriller openings it enabled us to create our opening as it showed us what a good opening should look like and how to keep the audience interested. Our thriller opened with a merge of two shots of a church and wedding photos, one on top of the other which created a really good effect as it emphasises the fact that the characters are happily married. Also the church is a typical thriller setting. I think a good thriller opening is from the film ‘No Country For Old Men’ directed by The Coen brother. There is not a great deal of dialogue in the opening which is appropriate as the action tells the story. The silence in the scene and camera angles creates a very tense and suspicious atmosphere. The Coen brothers also directed films such as ‘Burn after reading’. ‘No Country For Old Men’ isn’t really typical of what is expected of a thriller as it is set in an everyday place and the killings are quite calm, even though they are brutal. Another thriller is ‘Seven’ which I think is typical as the lighting is very limited, and it is set in a dirty house and an autopsy room.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Costume is a very important part of creating a film opening as it sets what type of characters are going to be used throughout the film. In our thriller opening we wanted to present our characters as being a well-off couple. We dressed them in smart clothes, such as a blazer for the male and a dress and heels for the female. This made them look smart and upper class. We had too consider the fact that we were not using adult actors, so clothes were very important. By making the characters hold hands while walking it showed that
they were a happily married couple, which is how we wanted to put them across to the audience. Props that were used in our filming were things used in everyday life to make it look believable and as realistic as possible and the tasks carried out were also realistic. These include make up, jewellery, and a shower. This builds up the tension. A typical killer in a thriller is dark and mysterious. We put our killer in black clothes which makes him seem disturbed. Also the shots used on the killer made it hard for the audience to see who it was, which is good as we want to capture the audiences attention to finding out who the killer is.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I would choose Universal to distribute our opening, as universal is one of the most well known film institutions which will mean it would sell well. Universal have distributed other thrillers such as 'The Bourne Identity' and 'Doomsday', which are some of the top thrillers with action filled openings that capture the audience. I think ours would fit in well with universal as our opening also has action from the beginning and is similar to the kind of thrillers that Universal distributes. Universal Studios is located in HollywoodSM in Los Angeles, CA. It was formed in May of 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment. Universal is also one of the worlds leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. The company was first founded on June 8th 1912 by Carl Laemmle, a German Jewish immigrant from Laupheim
Who would be the audience for your media product?
From our questionnaires we aimed to find out what kinds of films the audience likes to watch. After we produced and distributed our questionnaire, these are some of the genres we asked about and which can be closely linked with thrillers; Thriller: 3, Horror: 7, Action: 5, Suspense: 13. The majority of people chose these genres, which shows they like thrillers and other genres within them. Audience research is very important as we do not want to create a product that the public don’t want. We took the audiences answers and came up created a thriller opening that satisfied their needs. I think a thriller is for either male or female because of all the other subgenres within the, but mainly aimed at male’s as they find action and killings exciting and interesting. Before planning our thriller we deconstructed three thriller openings, these include, ‘Seven’, ‘Psycho’ and ‘no country for old men’. By deconstructing these openings it helps us understand the audiences that consume them as I we could look around the classroom to see the reactions of people. It seemed that the males that watched the opening were more interested and hooked to the opening than the females. I think they like the concept of violence and killing.
How did you attract/address your audience?
Before we started planning our thriller we looked at openings of other thrillers, which gave us an idea of what the audience is looking for in a thriller. It also showed us what kind of subgenres we could include in our thriller so that it could appeal to more than one audience. We made sure that the opening creates tension, in order to attract the audience to the rest of the film, if a film has a boring opening that the audience loses interest immediately. I think our opening would appeal to the audience as the storyline of our film is a clear thriller and exciting, which also gives action from the very beginning. I want the audience to feel tense from the very beginning and feel scared for the victim. After seeing our opening I hope the audience will want to know what happens in the rest of the film. After conducting a questionnaire we found out what people expect to find in a thriller. The majority of people expected to find screaming, creepy music and footsteps. We took into consideration what the audience wanted and incorporated their ideas into our opening. We had creepy music and screaming and put in other aspects we thought would be suitable. For a 15 film the BBFC states that “There may be frequent use of some strong language, But the strongest terms (e.g. 'c**t') may be acceptable. Continued aggressive use of the strongest language is unlikely to be acceptable. Nudity may be allowed in a sexual context but without strong detail” we put our film at a 15 as we felt it matched these criteria very well. We also made this decision by looking at similar thrillers which were certificate 15. No strong language was used in our opening, no scenes of a sexual nature and no strong aggression was used. I think a 15 is good for a thriller as there is enough of everything in it, it is not too excessive.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
When filming our opening I learnt quite a lot of new things. I learnt about the different angles I can do with the camera to create different effects and also effects that can be created in editing. We had to think carefully about what shots and angles we were going to use as it can influence the meaning of the shot, such as close ups to see reactions on characters faces. Lighting and sound were also important while filming the opening. I learnt that without the right lighting it can ruin a shot and even the whole opening, also music is a good way to create tension before something dramatic is about to happen. At first we had a problem with lighting as without the curtains open, it was too light and the light would bounce of the camera, but with the curtains shut it was too dark and you couldn't see anything. In the end we opened the curtains a little bit to let in some light . While editing I learnt new things as I went along which helped with the final product. I managed to cut scenes to the points where I wanted them to start and end and put shots together, which showed good continuity. In between some shots we put fades in which made it flow smoothly and not look like we were jumping shots. Before editing our thriller I wasn’t really used to Adobe Premier Pro as I was not confident in using it in our preliminary task, but while editing our thriller I was more confident in editing and putting more of my ideas into the process. Now I am more confident in using this package one my own.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
As a film maker I have discovered that even for a small piece of filming you need quite a lot of shots, so a whole film you would need hundreds. Also it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. While doing our preliminary task, I did not quite understand how to edit it, which means I didn’t put as much input in as I would have like to have. But while editing our thriller opening I began learning more and more about the editing and put more input in which made me happy, as I know I did something. Over all I think that our preliminary task went very well. Although there were some problems we had to over come. On the set day that we were filming one of our team members was not here, which means that they did not get to film parts of the task. In order to sort out this problem, we had to set another day for us all to film and put the shots from both days together. The good points about our preliminary task was that after we had edited the continuity was really good as there were no quick shots that made it look like there was a shot missing. For both our preliminary task and our main task we did the following things; we shot all the shots in different angles to see which one made the biggest impact on the audience and we chose to put fades in between some shots to make it flow more smoothly. Throughout this thriller task I have learnt that maybe with a bit more planning it would have been better and if we went in a smaller group there may not have been so many disagreements, if I was to do it again these are the things I would do differently. Our group, I would say did not have equal roles. It was clear to see who the leader of the group was, which didn’t make me feel comfortable. I think we could have worked better as a group if people didn’t want so much control and shared out responsibilities equally. It made me feel that I wasn’t really part of the group. I do think that the members of my group realised that some had more control than others and then tried to involve the whole group in some way. I think our final opening was very successful as we managed to finish it in the time given, we got all the shots we needed and more, and we overcame any problems we bumped into. I was really impressed with our final product.

Shooting Script

Establishing shots of wedding photos etc. to set the scene.
Shot of newspaper and date
Credits
Quick and short shots of church in-between the shots of the wedding photos
Mid shot of couple walking down street, and going into house. Include mid and close ups.
Shots of around the house, empty and dark...
Couple are walking and talking about nothing in particular.
Shot of girl looking in mirror with “dark figure” standing behind her
She turns around and no one there, she thinks she thinks she’s seeing things, include Close ups
Shot of dark room, someone turns light on, man just standing there in the middle.
Low angle shot of man, high angle shot of victims
Man runs toward them
Shot of outside the house as girl screams.
Titles - Sanctum