Delirium - Final AS Media Product

EVALUATION 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

EVALUATION 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

EVALUATION 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

EVALUATION 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

EVALUATION 3: What kinda of media insitution might distribute your media product and why?

EVALUATION 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

MALES

Michael Ridgewell in our thriller opening is a protagonist; an every day, normal character who reinforces the male stereotype of the heroic male. Most stories and thrillers in society have shown males to be the hero; from when we were younger in fairy tales such as Snow White to more current films such as I Am Legend starring Will Smith, who plays Robert Neville, the hero, the man who risks his own life to save a lady and a child. This is the stereotypical male leader, showing that he's the stronger sex. Like in most typical thriller/horror films the man is usually the protector.

I compare Michael to the character Robert because even though the story lines of these thrillers are completely different these characters are alike in the sense that they both dress very casual, like every day, normal people. They are both protecting something; in Delirium Michael is protecting Sarah which is why he goes off to find out what the strange noise is whereas Robert is protecting a life saving formula in blood and saving a female and her child. The storylines are completely different but the characters in itself are similar.

FEMALES

 

AGE

In most thrillers the hero tends to be an older male although in ours that is not the case; this is because we didn't have older people available to film for it. Our thriller is made up of actors that are teenagers. Rather than represent the stereotypes of teenages we decided to oppose it. The media represents teenagers to be rough and they are not usually represented as heros however our male lead went out to protect his girlfriend. Our thriller aim to show the vaunrability of teenagers and shows them to be more caring of each other. One of the stereotypes we decided to use was that teenagers are rather careless. Our characters went to investigate an abandoned building which is outside of the public eye. Doing this meant that they were risking their safty by going somewhere where they could not be protected. They age of our killer is unknown. We decided to keep this as it helps to build mystery in our thriller however he is also from the teenage age group even though the audience don't know this.

EVALUATION 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge form and conventions of real media products?

After long discussion and research we finally created an idea for our project which led to our final thriller opening. We came up with different ideas and genres for example, a psychological thriller, an action thriller and a horror. We chose a psychological thriller, the final outcome is called Delirium.

Title of our thriller: After looking through the codes and conventions of thriller titles we found that short, mysterious titles were the most effective and this is how we got the idea of 'Delirium'. It works with the conventions of the thriller because its in an odd font although we were limited of choice of font. It is also red which signifies blood and the black is darkness which is creepy. It is challenging to find the right font that looks professional and dangerous at the same time because we had a limited selection. When editing a lot of fonts were experimented with but this one seemed to look the most effective. Defined, Delirium means "a temporary state of mental confusion" which fits our idea perfectly.

Settling and location: Our location is an abandoned bomb site in the fields in Shenfield. We filmed in a house that had previously been bombed and abandoned. We made a few questionnaires and sent them around to see what locations would be best suited. Thanks to the questionnaires and looking at the codes and conventions we managed to find a suitable location which we completed a risk assessment on to make sure it was safe to film there. We wanted the location to be different/remote; somewhere quiet that we won't be disturbed. The idea of the thriller is that its a couple going on a walk, they don't expect to see anyone else which adds to the terror when the antagonist appears.

Costume and props: For costumes and props we decided to keep natural/casual clothing however we used a variety of props to make our thriller look better. To fit the conventions of our thriller we had to create the illusion that this could be possible, the more relatable to life and the target audience better. People seem to be more afraid of what could be perceived in reality/in their own lives; as these are our protagonists they are just everyday, normal people. Mentioned in one of our first blog posts of codes and conventions of a thriller that the protagonists have to be just like everyday normal people; most likely middle class people.

Props: We went to a fancy dress shop called Props and Frocks in South Woodham and bought some fake blood and latex. We also found face paints in The Factory Shop; Basildon and black paint from Asda; Basildon. These fit the conventions of a thriller as our antagonist is a villain and has to look mysterious and unusual; this is portrayed through the strange black areas on his face and the ripped skin (shown by the latex). It makes the audience ask the questions, "what is it?" and "why is it there?" and "where is the blood from?" making the situation more mysterious. The blood on Sarah's face adds to the terror of the situation; we then ask the question; "what happened?" and makes the audience feel sympathy for this innocent victim.

Editing and Camerawork: For this area of the thriller it needed to be edited to show the distance passing, if we had filmed the whole thing and not edited it, it would be a waste of time and wouldn't have shown any editing skills; the fades were added to make the change in distance clearer and not jumpy. The fades used within the thriller were effective because it made it more mysterious and added to the creepy tension we were trying to create. The font here is very clear here because in the credits we want people to be able to read it; its a plain font making it look more professional. We first introduce two characters, a male and female; a couple; all we know is they're having a walk, that's all we know so far, no personal information is revealed throughout the beginning except for a name. We had an over the shoulder shot of Sarah looking around the wall because it was a key moment, the first appearance of our antagonist adding to the tension we tried to create in this moment. I think you create the question "what is round the corner?" because the last time we saw out there (when Michael jumped off the side wall) was nothing so its almost as if to say, what is over her shoulder and round the corner? Why make this such a key shot?.

How the rest of the film is set up: This is a picture of the first sighting of the villain, where he is introduced to us, no one knows who he is or why he's there. The story is set up by the thriller because in the opening the audience is meant to ask the questions as to what's going on in the scene and who are the characters, why are they there, etc. In the opening all we know is what we see; there is a couple going for a walk, they go through the woods into an old bombed, abandoned building where they hear a strange noise and the male heroically goes off to find out what it is reinforcing the stereotype as men being the protector, the stronger gender; while the female waits scared for his return. As he doesn't come back she searches for him, see's the peculiar, unusual man in the woods and gets scared and ends up screaming with fright as he attacks her. This emphasises that within the thriller the female is the weaker, more vulnerable sex which fits the our thriller.

 

If we were to carry on making the rest of the film we would see that the opening would be a flashback moment and the twist would be revealed that actually Sarah wasn't thinking straight and it was a dreadful nightmare that she was having. After this scene where she wakes up and searches for Michael; when she can't find him she would run through the fields to escape and get to the main road yelling for help. It would then be shown that she is having a nightmare and she'd wake up. The rest of the film would be explaining to her that it never happened when she knows herself it did and she, trying to prove herself goes to the scene of the incident looking for evidence. One day she would see him again and she'd again try to prove this; a psychotherapist would give reasons for this until one day its all shown to be real and the villain was playing mind games.

Official Delirium Poster

We've given Delirium a BBFC rating of 15 due to it's portrayal of violence and distressing imagery throughout the film. We think the content would be inappropriate for people of a younger age group due to such content.

Delirium Poster Idea 1

Here is our final poster for our production DELIRIUM:

Extra Footage

This was originally part of the full thriller but it made it too long and didn't make sense to keep it in the opening as it would probably lead on too far; we've already had the climatic moment where Sarah is attacked and the thriller title 'Delirium' appears which seems like the right place to end it.

TAKE 2 - The production process

Before we filmed on the 9th April I had to arrange the date and time to do it with everyone. We had to re-film everything and not all of our actors were available for a new filming date so I also had to find new actors. I quickly asked Michael Ridgewell (previous actor) if he was available, he said yes; then I asked Alex Jobson and Sarah to help us with 'EMERGENCY FILMING'. I explained that we were desperate to film and we needed actors. Once this was agreed I explained to them over a facebook inbox exactly what would be happening on the day. I explained to each person the storyline, the types of characters they would need to be, that we would have to film multiple shots to ensure we get the best we can and to make sure they act fairly professional so that we don't have laughing and messing about during filming; which they all understood even though this was hard to fulfil on the actual day but everything worked out okay.

I put all of the props in a bag; the fake blood, latex and faces wipes. Although as this wasn't in school time we had no way of getting a tripod. I also remembered to charge the camera and clear space for the footage; it'd be a big nuisance if it ran out in the middle of filming.

We and met at Hutton Country Park at 1:30pm and made our way on to location from there. Upon reaching the house, we promptly ran over the shooting schedule with our new actors and began shooting shortly thereafter. We were shooting for a few hours, taking multiple shots with various angles. We had a short lunch break as I had brought food along for everyone; during this time we did make-up. This is what our villain, antagonist looked like in the end.
The only problem during the day was that our camera battery ran out on our very last shot so we had to switch cameras but this was not a problem. Then we took a wide range of shots for the poster.

I immediately started uploading all of the videos when I got home because it takes a while to upload them and make sure the format was right to edit them on Movie Maker. Once they were done; I split it into sections, for example; walking through the field, Michael scares Sarah, etc. This made it all easier to work with because in the end I only had to edit the ending and beginning clips together although this did prove very difficult. The hardest part to edit was 'the hug' because sometimes the hand position would be different or it would look strange or the clip would be ruined by bursts of laughter; editing that out was extremely difficult. I decided to do a zoom reverse zoom on the line Sarah said "oh my god what was that", it was two separate clips put together but the speech has clearly continued throughout the clips. I spent a lot of time trying to find sound to fit into it, it was trial and error but I eventually found some music on sounddogs.com and freeplaymusic.com. I remember that James Hodges, former AS Media Studies student recommended this when talking about the do's and don'ts for our thrillers.

A problem I had with Movie Maker is that when I had finally finished editing all of it; one of the key videos (the hug) had "broken" and was not compatible with the rest; I attempted fixing it but in the end I had to re-upload the video and star again. By this time all of the music had jumped around so I had to fix and reposition that as well. Once this was all done and saved with no glitches or jumps; I uploaded it to YouTube and then embedded it on to the blog site. A small glitch had developed here but it was nothing to do with the editing it was a small buffer when uploading. Apart from that everything went smoothly.

Editing

Delirium Version 1 Evaluation

This is the first edit of our AS Media production 'Delirium.' Unfortunately we found this particular edit unsatisfactory and decided to refilm it. The final product can be found here

The above piece does not contain music, as we decided we weren't working with it before we sourced the music for our current piece. There are areas that are muted, this being an indication that music would be in place of it (0:00 - 0:25). The camera at the beginning is also noticable shaky, which is something that we remedied in the second piece.

The match on action shot at 0:32 is also not perfect and required a re-edit. Match on action throughout the rest of the piece, however, is not bad.

The disappearance of a character at 0:39 was also an aggravating factor, something that we revise and made much more slick and less confusing in the final product.

Dialouge throughout 0:49 to 1:10 was also unsatisfactory, as it appeared fake and almost cheesey.

The cut at 1:07 was really noticable, and unfortunately we didn't have a sufficient amount of shots to fix this. We would need to re-shoot to achieve this.

At 1:12 as Kieron pulls out the ring, a stifled laugh can be heard in the background. This was a problem as it ruines the immersion and tension that we were trying to achieve.
Following this is a long period of silence. (1:15-1:27) Initially this was a kind of first person perspective of our protagonist with their eyes closed, and the atmospheric sounds were to build tension. However, the clip didn't cut so we were left in the dartk for much longer than we intended (6-7seconds) and ultimately it didn't achieve what we wanted it to. This part was scrapped completely in the end.

The clips from 1:29 until 1:36 were blurred to indicate confusion in our character, however that didn't realyl work so we were lift with clips that just looked out of focus and out of place.

We intended to overdub appropriate dialouge over the clip from 1:44 until 1:55, however this never came to fruition.

Following the fade-to-black at 1:55 we wanted to have it fade back in to Louise lying on the ground and discovering blood and markings on her body, much like you see HERE in our final product. (EDIT: This part was eventually cut out of our final edit due to time constraints, however it is still visible at the link above.) However we couldn't film this during our first day of filming due to loss of light, a drop in temperature and one pissed off dog (leading to the exclusion of it's role in the final product.)

Despite all of these problems, we felt that we had some good shots that we recreated in Delirium V.1

 

 

There were also shots that we originally shot that we couldn't use

 



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But then there were also shots that we didn't think of in the beginning that we really liked

 

Sound

Due to copyright we had to find alternative music. We browsed the web and looked through youtube and it proved hard to find decent music that wasn't copyright protected. In the end we got our music from the sites below:

freeplaymusic.com - rest of the music and soundtrack. - A level student James Hodges recommended using this website as he'd used it when he was doing this AS video last year.

Sounddogs.com - for the sound effect of Alex slashing Sarah with the knife.

Audience feedback

We did the audience feedback via Facebook because most of our target audience are around the age group that use Facebook; so I thought this would be a different yet effective way to get people to view the thriller opening. I also thought that it would help with marketing and attract more of an audience.

Update!

Schedule!

This is what will happen when we take our final trip to the thriller location.

 

(Behind the scenes make-up - video & pictures)

 

Film Louise waking up on the floor with blood and symbols on her face - get a long shot then film her from bottom to top to show off the symbols

 

Extreme close up of her eyes opening

 

She stands up and looks scared - upper body shot - she screams

 

Paint the walls with satanic symbols

(Behind the scene - video & pictures)

 

Take pictures of Louise's face standing on front of the the wall, looking forwards and looking up - wide eyes for the extreme close up

 

Upper body shot of her looking outwards - (see symbols and blood on arms too - test shot)

 

Re-film libby with her eyes shut looking around - hands over camera (like hands over eyes)

MORE WEATHER PROBLEMS!

Update!

Poster Analysis

Weather Problems!

We were set to film on the 26th March but due to the fact it is snowing we had to cancel. It would seem that weather is not on our side. We can't film because of continuity; if our surroundings are completely different as in it starts plain but then its snowing the audience would be confused. So we have to wait for a date to reschedule a day to film once the snow has melted.

Final Thriller Name

After tossing around ideas for a title for our project as a group, I suggested "Delirium." Defined, it means "A temporary state of mental confusion" which fits our idea perfectly.

Before now we'd struggled to find a name, with ideas such as "Symbols," "Zodiac" and "Gamorra" being thrown around, all efforts in vain. After a quick brainstorm this morning, Delirium was suggested and a unanimous decision made to make that the official name.

Evaluating other students work

Brotherhood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKaCBbfkrFM&list=PLA3F5E2FBDCB81F78

I have chosen an AS media studies thriller opening sequence video called Brotherhood to evaluate because its different to a lot of the other thriller sequences as its not a horror. It contains a lot of different shots and angles and the editing is done really well; the music throughout is incidental, keeping the tone and pace of the opening quite calm but speeding up and increasing in volume when they want to make it more dramatic or emotional.

The first thing we see is the production company name 'BOSS LIGHT MEDIA' accompanied by no sound, its a blue screen that turns to black and then the titles sets on fire and fades into ashes floating away which makes it look very professional.
 

 

It begins with an incredible shot of clouds to start with, it has been edited so that it is sped up so we can see different cloud formation; it makes a lot of sense because in the next clip the character wakes up from a  dream and I think clouds can symbolise that sort of weightless, dreamy state you could be in when you sleep even though he wakes up in a panic. This is shown by his facial expression and the fact that he holds a gun; pointing it around the room shown through jump cuts which shows a bit of disorientation and the fact he is panicked and has anxiety. It is a good shot because its close enough to see his emotion on his face which enable the audience to think "what's happened?" "why is he so anxious?" so we feel curious about his character.
 

A little part of the clip from when he wakes up are the credits which appear (as in the picture on the bottom left) fading on and off screen; stating the two actors in the clip as well as who produced it and another reference to Boss Light Media. The credits don't overlap the character, they're always in a space that's not too occupied with movement which makes it easy to read.

 

For the next 20 or so seconds there are jump cuts of him getting dressed and a mid shot of his legs/trousers and him attaching the gun to his belt which shows he needs security and that he's potentially dangerous. Followed by close up jump cuts of him sorting through lots of empty cigarette packets which to me makes it seem like the character is stressed out because of the amount of boxes there are; I think these shots are good because it tells us information about his character. Then there's a high angle shot of him walking down the stairs followed by a close up of him putting his shoes on, showing us he is going out. Then a mid shot of him, gun in hand, leaving the house, looking around suspiciously. All of these shots put together speed up the process of him getting ready to leave to house; all of the cut aways focusing on things the character is doing, makes it look professional and keeps the continuity of his day/routine clear and gives us little details about the character.

 

As he travels walking on a pathway with a cut away to him running with the gun, then across the road; which was nicely edited to make it seem like he carelessly walked not paying attention to what's around him; then him walking across fields in a wide shot using fades while he walks, skipping the distance otherwise it would be very boring to watch for the audience. Once he gets to his final place there is an over the shoulder shot of him looking out in the distance to the buildings and the music then gets louder and a little more up tempo which makes me think something will happen which it does and even though this was not planned it started raining which actually made the scene more dramatic and the camera made it look clear which I personally think is brilliant. This is a good reason to not stick completely to a story board because sometimes something can happen and it could make the opening so much better than your original idea.

 

Once he gets startled and stands up pointing the gun around there is a nice close up of his face capturing the emotion in that moment. The camera from a side angle still in the close up moves across slightly which makes it look dramatic and sad. The sound then stops in a fade and the title "BROTHERHOOD" appears in white on a plain black screen. This is followed by a completely different scene of another day, him reading the news paper having breakfast, a complete change of perspective for the character who looks fine, like he's just having a normal, happy day and the lighting is a lot warmer which contributes to that sort of happy tone.

 

Overall I think that this thriller opening is brilliant, the editing is spot on, keeping continuity and the camera shots make it seem dramatic and a little bit tense but good because it captures a lot of emotion from the character. The sound is effective in terms of keeping the emotion sad and then happy for the next day; there isn't any dialogue either which helps it look like an opening and we don't have to see how good the character is as an actor although with the close ups of facial expression we see that he is. I think that this opening would get full marks because the filming is great, the editing is perfect as well as the mise en scene which make him look like a normal every day person.

 

Diary - Part 1

Pre-Production

In order to get everything ready for the filming day we needed to organise a date and time, a camera, props, travel to the location, etc. Originally we'd set a date to film on the 5th of March; we'd secured a camera (provided by the school) and but due to weather conditions and illness we had to cancel. This made later filming difficult because we needed a camera but the school's ones were booked.

We changed the filming date to the 19th of March; we would leave at 1:20pm (beginning of lunch time) to give us enough time to get to the location. Louise had secured travel to the car park of Hutton Country Park where we then walked across extremely muddy and boggy fields to get to the house. Because we needed a camera we all had a look to see who had the best one; Sean finally found one.

The next thing we needed were props; we went on a Monday searching everywhere to find everything we needed. In the end we got face paint from The Factory Shop in Basildon; fake blood and liquid latex in Props and Frocks in South Woodham and black paint from Asda in Basildon. Sean also got hold of a tripod from the school so that it would help keep the shots level and it would be easier to take establishing shots.


We had to organise the costume, we knew it was going to be muddy so boots, trainers, wellies were needed and to dress warm because it was in the middle of a field and it would surely get a lot colder filming late afternoon.
 
In order to film there we needed to fill out a risk assessment so we knew it would be safe to film; there was glass on the floor near broken windows, bricks, wood and debree everywhere which made it dangerous to walk around. I went to the location before hand to check it out and see for myself the risks but it turned out to be okay and we knew exactly where to go and where not to and also told everyone before we went in/around the house to watch our step.

Shooting schedule

Day 1

2 o'clock arrived at the location
walk through muddy films
2.30 arrived at the filming location
had a quick look around and made the area more accessible. Also did another risks assesment and made each other aware of the potential helth hazards.
2.45 Kieron and Michael arrived and we started filming our opening shots
-filmed a long shot of the two main characters walking up to the house
-filmed the walk into the house/bushes
-experimented with differnt camera angle
-match on action shot
-hand-held video footage

Day 2

9 o'clock arrive at location
start filming for second half/scene
-paint location and use special effects
-film

Twitter exclusive!

Ok guys so our filming starts tomorrow! For exclusive behind the scenes clips and a video diary follow us on twitter! @themediakids

Psychographic Profiling

Definition: A term that describes consumers or audience members on the basis of psychological characteristics initially determined by standardised tests.

These take into consideration the audiences personality, motivations, attitude, lifestyles, activities, and daily routine; the more personal information so we know in the film what the audience expects or wants to see. This helps producers understand the audiences viewing and spending habits. They are split into groups just like demographics.

Mainstreamers	Seek security. Tend to be domestic, conformist, conventional, sentimental – favour value for money family brands. The largest group.
Aspires	Seek status. Materialistic, acquisitive, orientated to image and appearance, persona and fashion. Typically younger people.
Succeeders	Seek control. Strong goals, confidence, work ethic and organisation. Typically higher management and professionals.
Resigned	Seeks survival. Rigid and authoritarian values. Interested in past and tradition. Typically older people.
Explorers	Seeks discovery. Energy, individualism and experience. Values difference and adventure. Typically a younger demographic (students).
Strugglers	Seeks escape. Alienated and disorganised. Few resources beyond physical skills. Buys alcohol, junk food, lottery tickets. Typically lower demographics.
Reformers	Seeks enlightenment. Freedom of restrictions and personal growth. Social awareness and independent judgement. Anti-materialistic but aware of good taste.

We are aiming our thriller at explorers because they'll want the film to be different from the usual film, something that hasn't been seen before. Also, strugglers because they like things that are different.

Demographic Profiling

Definition: Demographic information is used in media marketing to classify an audience into age, gender, race and other categories.

 

Demographics consider variables of age, gender, income, geographic location, marital/family status, and education. They are used to identify a target audience and to point out where there would be audience growth and under performance. For example a magazine such as VOGUE has a female demographic. How something is advertised affects the audience, so because there are many types of woman in terms of age for example they may think their audience is too old so to change this they could get a younger cover model and change the writing style or topics/articles within the magazine.

 

LETTER CODE	JOB/STATUS
A	High management, bankers, lawyers, doctors, etc.
B	Middle management, teachers, creative & media people (graphics).
C (1)	Office supervisors, junior managers, nurses, white collar, specialist clerical staff.
C (2)	Skill manual workers, plumbers, builders, blue collar jobs.
D	Semi-skilled & unskilled manual jobs.
E	Unemployed, students, part time workers, pensioners.

 

 The demographic for our thriller film will be group E for students and young people as its low budget and would be for an target audience of 15+ students because they wouldn't be able to afford an expensive film with no job and using an allowance or part time work.

A plot

The Official Location

Brief Script - Dialogue

There won't be much dialogue through out this opening because we don't know how good our actors are and we want to leave question and mystery as to what is going on into the scene therefore only short dialogue. When they're walking they can talk and have a normal conversation (not scripted) and we'll put music over the dialogue and put the credits in that section starting beforehand in establishing shots of the fields.

Example:
Keiron: Let's go through here
(He sneaks through the opening in the woods)
Louise: Okay

Its only short amounts of dialogue but because we want it to seem realistic we will allow what feels natural although along the guidelines of the script.

(They walk through into the house area, Louise goes through the first door and Keiron goes around the side with a plan to make her jump)
Louise: This place is weird, why are we here? (No reply) Keiron? Where are you? (Starts to feel scared when she hears strange noises) Keiron?
Keiron: (Jumps out and scares her) RAWR!
Louise: (Jumps) Ahh you're so annoying! Why did you do that?!
Keiron: I'm sorry I couldn't help myself (Hugs her) Ok now, seriously close your eyes.
Louise: Why?
Keiron: Just do it.
Louise: Fine (Closes eyes and Keiron runs off again)
(Louise stands and waits but the weird noises come back but Keiron does not, she opens her eyes)
Louise: Ok, this isn't funny, cut it out!... Keiron come back... please?
(Strange silhouette creature comes out and stands in front of her, she screams and there is a blackout)
(She wakes up on the floor with writing of satanic symbols down her face, arms and hands).

Filming Dates

Our official filming day is the Tuesday19th March.

We will be filming in the afternoon in the location at Shenfield.

A Brief

Potential Props

DOG - The dog senses danger and starts barking.

FAKE BLOOD - It will be on her hands and splattered on her face showing that she's become barbaric and possessed.

PAINT & STENCILS - On the walls for the satanic, devil symbols.

PICNIC - Couple have a romantic meal.

CANDLES - Laid out on the floor and around the walls for romantic effect.

FLOWER PETALS - For romantic ambiance.

FOG MACHINES - To create a mysterious and creepy atmosphere.

FACE PAINT - For the silhoutte.

UMBRELLAS - In case of rain to protect equipment.

TRIPOD - For a better filming quality, no shake.

CAMERAS - Take pictures while we're filming (camera phone). To film the actual production.

These are combined for two plots so some of these may not be necessary on the day of filming,

Make-up

After the girl (Louise) is on the floor, she will wake up with satanic symbols on her face and arms.

 

This idea was created from an episode of doctor who where there is a beast with strange symbols on his face acting like the devil.

Costume

 In our thriller there are 3 main characters; the female and male actors (the couple); and the silhouette of another character. It is set in the 21st century so the costumes for the female an male actors will be average every day clothes that anyone could wear. They'll probably wear the typical jeans, jumper, coat and appropriate shoes for rain and muddy fields.

 

The silhouette however will be dressed head to toe in black; they may need to have black face paint on and around their face so that they are completely covered. The picutre on the right is a silhouette, we want to achieve this effect by dressing a man in black and having light shine on them from the front so that they will be out lined from the back. (Although they wont be like the pose in the picture)

Risk Assessment

Symbolism of Colour

Throughout all of history colours have been attributed to different things. Purple to royalty and nobility, pink to love and romance, and grey to intelligence and modesty. These expectations of colours can be  exploited within our thriller to direct the audiences attention, and more importantly, lead their thoughts in any which direction that we desire.

Red: is the colour most often assosciated with love, passion and desire, making it ideal to use in our 'young-love' scenario. The presence of red within scenes can hint towards their affection to one-another. However, it is also the leading colour when it comes to death, danger and aggression. Because of this dual-association, we may be able to find a way to implement it in such a way as to represent both passion and danger, possibly by means of foreshadowing.

Black: is typically associated with evil, anonymity and mystery. This perfectly fits our intentions of using a silhouette to represent our antagonist. Black also represents power, which will also be fitting as our protagonist will be left vulnerable and clueless, with our silhouetted 'villian' holding all of the power.

White: suggests purity, innocence and youth. Our 'victim' could be pictured wearing white to display their innocence whilst their partner is in red to both represent their passion but also foreshadow their death.

Green: is oft attributed to nature and environment, but also has links to greed, envy and misfortune. This could suggest a possible motive in those forms, and maybe even put forth a "wrong place, wrong time" scenario.

Brown: is the colour most closesly related to earth and outdoors, whilst also having connections to comfort, simplicity and homeliness. With our set consisting on natural browns and greens due to it's woodland location, we can partner these 'comfortable and homely' browns (Dirt, trees) with the misfortunate and envious greens (leaves, grass and ivy) to create an atmosphere that is seemingly harmless, but has a sinister feel about it. If we find a way to correctly do this, it will help in our aims to lull the audience in to a false sense of security.

Blue: Blue suggests both peace and sadness, confidence and depression, security and cold. I feel as though blue is a particularly deceptive colour due to it's many assosciations. With this in mind, we could use it in such a way that makes it clear that not everything is as it seems; not everything that is secure is warm.

Green, brown and blue will likely be colours used in establishing shots. As the opening credits 'roll' we'll likely feature shots of the surrounding area. Scenes featuring more brown may feel more comfortable to the viewer, whilst the implementation of green in to them will introduce that overhanging feeling of misfortune.
A shot of a blue sky would then bring forth this idea of the environment not being quite as it seems. Maybe even the introduction of the colour Yellow in the form of a shot of the sun or sun shine passing through the trees can bring light or optimism in to the picture, whilst carrying this inherent affiliation with cowardice and dishonesty with it.

To conclude, by looking at all of the different meanings colours carry with them and applying them in different ways, we can lead the audience to think one thing whilst intending to take them another. All of these will be present in our thriller be it in costume, make-up, environment or elsewhere, and by correctly optimising them we can manipulate the viewer's thought patterns, assisting us in our "psychologically hard-hitting" production.


Sourced: http://www.incredibleart.org/lessons/middle/color2.htm

Choosing a Location

Focus Group

Analysis of a Thriller Questionnaire

 

Psychopathic Productions - Logo

 

This is the logo created for Psychopathic Productions.

(Made on Adobe Fireworks CS4)

Titles

Tweet Tweet!

We're now part of the twitter hype so feel free to follow us to get more updates on our thriller production!

@themediakids

We decided to create a Twitter account as an extra blog medium to connect with followers who are interested in our blog and our thriller production. As an exclusive we will be 'tweeting' behind the scenes videos from location hunting and filming and we are also hoping to include a trailer to our thriller and even a bloopers video as well as posting news and the latest information on our progress. Our aim is to connect with people on a more personal level and to hopefully create a "buzz" about our up coming thriller!

BBFC

Location Spotting

 

Mood Board

These images are all inspiration for our thriller. We want it to be a psychological thriller including plot twists such as in the film 'The Game' and contain elements of suspense such as in 'The Woman In Black'.

In Silence of the Lambs, there are close up camera shots on 'Hannibal Lecters' face (in mood board) that makes him seem creepy and chilling as it's an abnormal way to look at someone especially as it is directed with his eyes almost looking straight into/through the camera as if he's talking to people in the audience.
 

In the film 28 Weeks Later there is suspense throughout and has moments that are severely intense especially the opening chase scene. In this scene the audience questions whether the character Dom will outrun the infected which puts us on the edge of our seats. There is incidental music that builds up suspense and tension as he escapes the house and runs across the field to a boat and it cuts out as soon as he is free with only the sound of his dialogue which is a sign of relief. It is created again when the 3 characters; Andy, Tammy and Scarlet walk through the train station in the dark where we only see what's happening in the scene through a night vision camera. We know the characters can't see ahead of themselves, when they are down at the bottom of the stairs after having fallen, each character is separated and there is no light, only dialogue. This is all so intense because people in general fear the dark and what they can't see and as an audience we build up stress and anxiety as if we were in their situation because like the characters we can't see where they are.
 

 

In Cabin in the Woods there are many red herrings that play with our minds as we get scared thinking something will jump out when it doesn't; an example of this within the film is when all the main characters are in the basement of the cabin looking around. Also, in this film there is a key moment that interests me, which is the lake scene, (in the mood board) where the zombie slowly rises out of the water. The water is deep blue, we can't see what beneath it and that is scary, it interests me because we think the zombie is gone and its over but then when it appears we know its not which increases fear.
 

 

All of these images are inspiration as we can create ideas from them, obviously making them our own. They are create fear, anxiety, stress, tension and suspense and have nice plot twists and red herrings which keep us on the edge of our seat.

The Process of Production

Pre-Production

 

Upon being given the preliminary task, we formed our group and began brainstorming for ideas. Initially we didn’t digress from the typical idea of simply walking in to a room, spewing a few lines of conversation and leaving it at that. We then had the idea of having a conversation through a wall, but that was disregarded when one member jokingly mentioned doing an “Inception-esque” approach of having a “prelim within a prelim”. We then build upon that; fleshed it out somewhat through discussion and producing a script shortly thereafter. An issue arose when we wrote the script, because some of the ideas we had had previously were lost as they weren’t noted immediately after. This made our end-result somewhat less exciting as we’d hoped.

 

There were also a lot of changes and omissions following the drafting of the script, and as such it became somewhat confusing. This wasn’t a major concern however. 

 

Before filming, we produced a storyboard, and whilst it was vague it did give us a rough idea of what we wanted to achieve. Our storyboard and final product do differ, however, as we found that sticking to the storyboard to strictly was unwise, and more creativity was found within the production of the prelim than was found in pre-production.

 

We also watched some example videos from previous years; some good, some bad. From these we learned that even if your ‘story’ idea is awful, you don’t lose marks, something that can be applied to the main thriller task. We noted that editing is the most important thing. Keeping continuity and varying shots mad even the most awful prelims bearable, and in doing so also achieves more marks. There were multiple instances of students who hadn’t got the editing right when opening a door and entering a room, which really does throw the viewer off.  We’ll use this information in the main task, and focus more on getting the right shots and editing it correctly than we will story writing. 

 

We also spoke to year 13 media students that had completed the task the previous year and obtained advice from them. They told us things like “be inventive” and to be prepared to “take criticism”. They made it clear that the prelim would likely not be very good, but also that it would benefit us as it would highlight areas that we need to work and improve on for the thriller. They also gave the advice of not following storyboards too quickly, something that we took in to account and used during our preliminary task. Their biggest piece of advice, however, was to use common sense. Things like framing and composition were necessary and often at the front of our minds, but things such as battery life and memory space weren’t. They made it clear that we’d need to pay attention to little things such as these as if overlooked they could ruin an entire days shooting. We kept all of this in mind when it came to shooting our prelim, however none if it became an issue and filming went relatively smoothly in the end. However, their advice won’t be lost once it comes to planning, filming and editing our main task.

Sean Cleary

Production

As we did not have much time to create the prelim we did not put much time into working out what problems we would encounter, because of this we did have to overcome a few problems that we ran into when filming. Of course none of us are amazing actors and we don’t have much of a background in creating ‘short films’ therefore none of us were prepared. Some of the issues we ran into we just small things like people moving out of the frame. Also the fact that we were using a camera phone really affected the outcome of our video but really it was all just a matter of controlling our immaturity!

Because none of us really took the filming seriously we were all joking around and laughing. This meant that rather than taking 3 to 4 scene takes, we ending up having to take millions! Even still we did not take enough decent footage to create an impressive prelim video. However the issues we faced during the filming and editing eventually will only help to make our thriller opening a strong production. We will concentrate more on making sure we are not looking into the camera and that we remain in the centre of the shot and will remain focused. We will also be more aware of our surroundings to make the clip as authentic as possible. This will involve cutting out any background noise that is non-digetic and checking around to make sure our surrounding corresponds with our thriller. For example if we decide to film something based in the 1800’s we will have to make sure we don’t leave anything that would we out of era. When we moved the filming into the common room we also had the problem of background noise. Although background noise can help create the atmosphere and we will definitely look into using such a technique in our thriller, the noise we encountered actually drowned out the dialogue in our prelim. Even though our prelim was not the most fantastic video, we now have a good idea of the direction we will take towards creating our thriller. If we had to re make our prelim and do the whole thing again we would definitely take certain problems we encountered on board to make sure we give our prelim a more professional look. We would also give ourselves more time to plan which would then allow us to come up with a more interesting storyline and also a better production all together we would also get hold of a better camera. During the editing we would allow more time to sort out any mistakes which in turn could allow us to re film any scenes that we were not happy with. After watching other people's prelims we decided that adding music helped create a better atmosphere in the clip and if we had to do ours again we would most definitely add some music.

Our prelim was rushed however as a group we are all happy with the outcome we managed to produce however our prelim won't be able to hold a candle to our thriller clip when it is made.

Louise Cormack

Post production

The biggest issue I had for editing involved technology; as we recorded the clips off of a phone it was hard to transfer them on to another device. Originally, we were going to send them to Sean but problems came up and we couldn’t send them, we it but it didn’t work until the night before the deadline. It took a good hour for most of the clips to download on to my laptop. Once they had finished downloading and then put on to Windows Live Movie Maker I found that they were an unsupported format therefore couldn’t play. I then transferred the clips on to my brother’s laptop which was an updated version of the Windows software; everything ran smoothly once I’d figured out how to actually use Movie Maker. This is very important as we don’t want another technological disaster when we need to edit our thriller opening; we should make sure we know exactly how to use our technology, that the formats are all the same and that we know how to transfer all footage in the first place so that we spend less time fixing and more time editing.

Problems during the editing were clarity of videos and movement with the camera because they were filmed on a phone and we didn’t use equipment such as a tripod. Another problem with using a phone is that the sound quality was not great, we filmed in class rooms during lesson time to ensure that we wouldn’t have background noise but our last scene was filmed in our school common room and there was a lot of loud background noise from people talking and you can’t keep continuity on that because you can’t get everyone to repeat what they say for every take. I think this is valuable information to carry to the thriller because you need to be aware of your surroundings and all the potential noise in the background because it has the potential to spoil the clip. For example, if you’re filming near a road or near houses you don’t want people talking in the background or a car beeping and realising too late and having to go back and film another day. This is a hassle because you would have to have all the conditions the same (e.g. the weather, setting of props, costume, layout, etc.) for continuity.

There was a problem with continuity with dialogue and movement, for example, in one shot Sean brushes his hair back and speaks and then we film another angle and he does the same thing although his dialogue and movement weren’t the same. It was really difficult to match these, I spent minutes clicking seconds to cut forwards and then backwards in the clip in order for it too match up. This is important because we can’t break continuity, if one moment you’re walking forward in a clip with your left leg from another angle it can’t be your right leg; it will make the thriller seem amateur and not like a serious production.

It is very important to get a lot of footage when filming, there’s no such thing as enough, the more choice you have the better because you will have a variety to choose from, for example the lighting could be of a better quality in one clip than another or you could try different angles and shots for scenes to make sure you get the most out of your location. This is all good for editing because you will be able to choose the clips that look the most professional.

Overall I think that the prelim was useful as it gave me a chance to learn how to use the technology and software that will be required for our main thriller meaning it will take us less time and I will be able to do a better job having practised before. We got some feedback from the year 13 students who did this all last year; they thought we had continuity and they saw the correct techniques; 180 degree rule, match cut and shot reverse shot, they thought it flowed; they could see small errors with the actual footage itself such as the clarity and sound quality but overall they said it was good. One thing they did say is not to use silly transitions after they saw we used a speed change at the end of the prelim as when used inappropriately it can look amateur and silly.

As a group we wrote down many ideas for how we wanted our prelim to go, we wanted to create ‘Prelimception’; ‘a prelim within a prelim’ was the initial idea and we got that as our ending result. We created a storyboard of how we wanted it to be set out and we followed it exactly. Although, when the Year 13’s came into our lesson to give us some advice and tips they said you don’t have to follow a strict structure, test out what you want while you’re there filming because it may be better than your original idea.

Danielle Ranaghan