Evaluation

1.
2.
3.
Our film 'The Reprisal' is most likely to be distributed by a small institution such as Film4 or Warp Films.
One reason for this is that our film is low budgeted and is therefore a small independant art-house production and even though Film4 and Warp Films have distributed big successful films, for example Film4 distributed 'Slumdog Millionaire', they both have experience in dealing with and distributing smaller independant films that are aimed at niche audiences, such as 'Four Lions' .
Also our film is fully british. We use British location, british actors and british writers. As Film4 and Warp Films are british, this may encourage them to support and distribute a film like ours.
The themes mainly involved in our film are adult themes such as violence therefore the films would be mostly aimed at older people, most likely students and would be showing in cinemas in student areas such as cambridge. The film would probably be shown on student nights.
4.
Jack is 22 an currently goes to Bournemouth university of media and studies media journalism and cinematography, he boards at the university with his girlfriend julia who he has been with for 18 months. His favourite hobby hobbies are playing competitive chess and going to art houses to watch low budget local films. jack would prefer so spend his money on a good book or a dvd than on designer clothes and nights out with the lads. His favourite film of all time is avatar as he appreciates well made and graphically advanced films.
5.

6.
7.

Evaluation

1. 

We used the forms and conventions of real media products by using darker lighting which is usual of a thriller and we also used typical music of a thriller getting faster and building tension. The music we used was from a website called www.freeplaymusic.com. the website allows you to choose the style and feel of the music you want and we chose to get music from the 'tension' genre. We have two different pieces of music for the two sections in our film, the first piece of music stops as he stops running as a sort of second start to the film. We then changed the music to another piece from the 'tension' genre, but it is of a slower beat and we are trying to build tension slowly as he packs his bag. The music then gets louder as he leaves the room, to show that the action is about to begin.  We didn't put the music on a loop as we are using 2 different songs and they last the duration of the opening of the film.

This is a frame from our opening scene of a thriller. We used color corrector in final cut to make the lighting dark and dingy. We done this because we believed that it would 'set the scene' and hopefully build more tension. We also done this because in our research we found that the opening scenes of thrillers often use very dark and dingy lighting.

The frame on the left is from the thriller film 'The Usual Suspects'. The lighting is very dark, which is similiar to our film, and is an example of how thriller films use dark lighting. 

We developed the forms and conventions of real media products using running to create suspense and we also featured a car getaway which is also usual in thrillers.

On the left is two frames taken from our film 'The Reprisal'.

The first frame directly to the left is of our actor whilst he is running. We decided to start off with our actor running because we felt that it would build tension and suspicion which are good qualities that a thriller film should have.

We finished our thriller film with a 'getaway' car scene. This is widely thought to be very typical within films especially action thrillers which is what genre our film would probably come under. This is why we thought it would be effective to include.

The frame on the right is taken from the film 'Case 39'. We chose to add this frame because it is a good example of a running scene within a thriller film which shows how we developed the conventions and forms of a thriller. also because they have used dark lighting which is similar to the lighting used in our film.

The frame to the right is a frame of a 'getaway ' car scene taken from the movie 'Bullitt'. Getaway car scenes are very typical of thriller movies which is why we included one in our film as we wanted it to feel authentic.

These frames show where we have challenged the forms and conventions of real media products. Firstly is a frame of us using a young actor which is unusual of a thriller film and we also don't show the murder so we are challenging the usual conventions of a typical thriller film.

This is the only shot of our actors face, you can not see alot of his face but you do see enough to see that we have a young person acting.






It is not very common in thriller films to have a very young person acting, the actors are usually middle aged or older. In contrast to the frame of our young actor we have taken a frame from the 'Se7en' trailer as the one of the films main character is Morgan Freeman and he is an example of the age group of actors that are more frequently used in thriller films.                                                                

2.

Social Groups on Prezi

Social Groups on Prezi

3.
Our film 'The Reprisal' is most likely to be distributed by a small institution such as Film4 or Warp Films.
One reason for this is that our film is low budgeted and is therefore a small independant art-house production and even though Film4 and Warp Films have distributed big successful films, for example Film4 distributed 'Slumdog Millionaire', they both have experience in dealing with and distributing smaller independant films that are aimed at niche audiences, such as 'Four Lions' .
Also our film is fully british. We use British location, british actors and british writers. As Film4 and Warp Films are british, this may encourage them to support and distribute a film like ours.
The themes mainly  involved in our film are adult themes such as violence therefore the films would be mostly aimed at older people, most likely students and would be showing in cinemas in student areas such as cambridge. The film would probably be shown on student nights.


4.

Emma is 22 and is currently doing a course at Birmingham university  in media. when she leaves uni she hopes to get a job in press and PR specialising in horror and thriller films. Before university she went to sixth form studying Media, English Language and English Literature. After sixth form emma took a gap year and travelled around the world with her best friend. Her favourite author is Gary A. Braunbeck and she collects his books. she adores reading and watching thriller films, she would rather stay in and read or watch a film than go out clubbing. she prefers going down the pub with a few of her close friends rather than go out clubbing. Emma has been with her boyfriend Ryan for 8 months and they met at university. They have the same interests and regularly go and watch small art-house films. She is into old school music from the late 70's early 80's such as meat loaf and madness.

5.

6.

during our filming we had to use various new equipment and technologies that we was not familiar with. this includes;

• Mac Computers
• Final Cut Express
• Camera, Tripod
• Prezi
• blogger.com

the first piece of equipment that we had to familiarise ourselves with was the Mac computers. After using Microsoft Windows computers for years i found it quite hard to adjust to the new computer. I had to use all new programs and learn how to use them properly in order to do my school work effectively.

Above is a picture of me using Final Cut Express on the Mac computer.

Final Cut Express was the main program that we use in our media course. Therefore we needed to ensure that we knew how to use it properly, for example in our film we wanted to use colour correction to make the first part of our film look like it was filmed in the dark. Before editing our film we watched a youtube video explaining how to use the colour correction tool, we also practised on pictures.

Above is a picture from when i was practising changing the lighting of our video.

The camera and tripod was probably the easiest equipment to learn how to use. Once we knew the basics of how to use the camera, for example record, take picture, and then review your videos and pictures, it was very easy.

Above is a picture of me recording on the camera whilst it is on a tripod to ensure that the shot isnt shaky.

Our blogs is another technology that we had to get used to as neither of us had ever used anything like this before. The website is laid out and labelled clearly which helped a lot when learning how to blog.

Above is a picture of our blogger dashboard.

When posting on our blogs we was told to use different ways to present our work. One way that we was told was an effective way to present work was using Prezi's. Thankfully on the website there is tutorials to help you get started and show you how to make an effective Prezi.

Above is a picture of a video featured on the website that helps you get started

7.

Name of our opening scene of a thriller

we found that coming up with a name for our thriller film was particularly hard. There fore we decided to think about the main themes of our thriller, the main theme we thought of was revenge. We did not think that 'revenge' would be a good or effective name for the film, so we decided to use an online thesaurus to see if there were any words that had the same meaning but sounded more effective. This is when we came across the word 'Reprisal' and decided on this name for our film

Sound

when we had filmed both parts of our thriller opening scene, put them into a sequence and had effectively edited them we then realised that we had to put music to it. Neither of us felt confident enough to create our own music, therefore we used the website http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ to get our music. the website allows you to choose what kind of music you want and the feel of the music. this was helpful as we know that the music needed to create tension.

Report on second filming session

we did not properly organise our second filming session and ended up filming late compared to the other groups. There fore we was not properly prepared with the location or props that we originally was going to use. We had to do our filming at school. we used a medical room as the characters bedroom and we used things around school that we could find for the props. for example gloves, a craft knife, wire and a laptop.

Despite all this i believe that the filming went well and even though it was not properly planned i believe it turned out to be very effective.

Risk Assessment

our second filming session was in school, therefore the risks were immediatley reduced. However there were still some risks because of the props that were used.
firstly we were using dangerous things such as knives and razors. we needed to ensure that the actor was especially careful when it came to these as we didnt want him to hurt or cut himself.
Also at the end of our film we wanted the character to drive away, however as he does not have a driving license we got some help from a driver who offered to let our actor get into the car and then he would drive him away safely.

editing

we could use this effect in our film possibley in some scenes to make it look weird and spooky to add effect to our filming.

report on our first filming

I beleive that our first filming day out was a sucess as we got shots of our actor running throught the forest and we also got the shots we need for our mini film sequence. however it was a sucess we still need another day out to film as we didnt film it all and still need to film the second part in the apartment.

lighting

we will be filming thw forest scene in the daylight s as we dont have the funding for lighting and we will edit it so it looks like its being filmed at night time. in the apartment scene we will aslo not be needing to use much lighting apart from lamps or already set up lights in the house.

props

we will be using minimall props in the forest scene as the character is only running , however in the apartment scene we will need a suit case toothbrush gun and many odd a various items to go into the bag.

costume

costume will be kept simple, we will use normal mens clothes in the forest scene eg trousers and a shirt, then in the aparment room scen we will use a suit to make the character look formall in an odd way.

location

the location is split up into two different parts as the first scene takes place in a forest , the forest we are using is elsenham forestin elsenham. The second part of the scene will be taking place in an apartment and we will use the bedroom and the bathroom in our scenes.

progress report

as weve now filmed the  first part of our film i decided to do some practice editing to further my understanding of the soft ware. this way when it comes to really doing the editing i will be more familiar with the programme and the editing will look better and more effective.

i learnt to cut out the pieces of film that i did not need and put the different scenes together to make the film flow together.

Editing.

None of our group members are very experienced in using final cut and as we have done almost all of the filming it will soon be time for us to start editing our footage. Therefore i have been browsing Youtube to try and find a simple video that could teach us the basics and get us used to using the software. This is the best one i found...

Report of First Filming Session.

i believe our first filming session was successful, we got about a minutes worth of footage. we did not use anyone in the group for the acting, a friend volunteered to do it for us. we got the shots we needed for our opening scene of a thirller, we also took back up and extra shots in case anything was wrong with the original filming. we filmed about 4 seconds before and after the acting so that it would make it easier for us when it comes to the editing of the footage.
i am happy with the location that we filmed in, however the background noise from a nearby road and the chirping of birds will need to be edited out as it is meant to be taking place at night time. we will also need to use final cut express to make the footage look as though it was filmed in the dark.

Risk Assessment.

our first filming session was in the woods. this meant that there was various hazards and risks that we had to take into consideration before actually filming.
for starters, we needed to be careful walking through the woods so we would not trip or fall on any branches or other things on the floor.
we also had to be careful with the equiptment used. we had to ensure that no one tripped over the epuipment whilst filming. we also had to be careful carrying it to the location and setting it up as the equiptment could easily be broken.

progress report.

i have fallen behind in the course as i have not been posting any where near the amount of posts that i should  have by now. i realise that this could potentially mean i fail this A Level. I have come up with a plan to ensure that i get back on track and acheive an acceptable grade in this course.

• I must post regularly onto the blog in much more depth and detail than my previous posts.
• I should find different ways to present my work, using more pictures, videos, prezis etc.

Credits

At the begining of our opening scene the main logo for our production company will come up. Following this it will come up with 'presents, in association with...'.
we havent decided on a name for our film yet, however the film name will come up after.
I have been researching different fonts that we could use and here is a few that i came up with..

the rest of the credits, such as:

casting by...

music by...

edited by...

produced by...

written by...

directed by...

will appear during the film, when the male is packing his suit case. we decided that it would be effective if the credits would appear on the random items that he is packing. for example...

obviously when it comes to the real thing, it shall be properly done using the right software and editing programmes to do it, unlike the one above which has been quickly done on paint as an example.

Filmimg

We havent started filming our actual thriller opening scene yet. However me and alex decided that we would take some shots at different camera angles of someone running to see if the camera shots we had agreed to use during actual filming would be effective.
The camera shots we used were:

• Close up
• Long shot
• Low angle shot

when doing this, we ensured that we filmed in a similar setting to what we are going to in the actual opening scene; woodland area. we done this so that we could see if there were any implications to shooting in this area and to see if the camera angles would work in this setting.
Unfortunately the footage that we took could not be uploaded to the computer due to technical difficulties. However we concluded that the list of camera angles listed above were appropriate and effective in the running section of our opening scene. 

lighting and editing

in order to get high quality shots we are going to film while
it is light, and when we come to edit it we will use the colour
corrector to make it seem like night time.

we will also use the colour corrector and the fish eye effect
in the shots from the pursuers point of view to give a non
human effect.

film rating

                                      Suitable only for 15 years and over

Discrimination 

:there will be no racial, sexual descrimination

Drugs 

:the only form of drug takin will be the odd scene of someone smoking

Horror 

:there will be no form of horror throughout the film

Imitable behaviour 

there will be scenes of variouise hard to get weapons (e.g. sniper rifle, hand guns etc)

Language 

there will be mild swearing throughout the film and none or very little srong swearing 

Nudity 

the only nudity will be mild and in brief glimpses

Sex 

if any there will be mild nudity 

Violence 

there will be mild violence throughout

to view the BBFC guide lines click here

Thriller Audience Research

I looked at several different Thriller films whilst researching about the audience of a thriller film. The film 'What Lies Beneath' when voted on showed that more women  between the ages of 18-29 enjoyed this film. I looked at the themes, conventions, setting, actors, and the storyline of the film to try to work out why this was. The first thing i noticed was that the main character was a woman. i thought that maybe women felt that they could relate more to the main character more than what they could if there was a male lead. The story is about a woman who was in a car crash and has just sent her daughter away to college, again these things may be related to more so than what men would as men and women deal with things very differently.
i decided to look at other films that had a female lead to see if women do relate to and enjoy the film more with a female lead.
Case 39, Black Swan, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose is some of the films that i looked at, when investigating again the results showed that women do enjoy thriller films that have a female lead, or female influences.
this is compared to films such as shutter island, inception and the town, all of which have male leads and males seemed to enjoy these more so than women did.

BBFC

What rating would our thriller 'movie' have?

After reviewing the BBFC website, i believe that our film would be considered as a '15', meaning only people 15 and over may watch this film. 
the reason that i believe that it would be a '15' is because there would be strong language used in the film. also because of the violence involved.

props needed for our opening scene



Props

For our opening scene the following props will be needed to ensure the film feels as realistic as possible:

• A tooth brush as we are using a close up on the man brushing his teeth.
• A suit case.
• Various different items to put into the suit case, clothing, or more violent items like knives.
• A 'gun'. we will most likely use a bb gun for this.

lighting of our opening scene

Lighting

the lighting for both locations will be different and contrasting with each other.

When we film the section of the opening scene in the woods it will be day time, however we feel that it would be more effective if it looked as if its night time when the young boy is being chased, there fore we are going to use the editing effects on final cut on the mac computer to change the lighting and make it look as if it was actually filmed at night.

The lighting in the bedroom is going to be much brighter than the scene in the woods. However the curtains are still going to be drawn there fore we still have an element of darkness.
Darkness is often associated with bad things,just as light is associated with goodness. By showing the scene in the woods as if it was night time symbolises the fact that something bad is going on. Just as in the bedroom scene, because its quite light but the curtains are drawn it gives the impression that the man is in a better place and situation but can not escape from the darkness; the darkness being bad things.

 

location of our opening scene

Location

As our opening scene involves a dream, we are filming in two different locations. firstly one of the locations that we have decided to film at is in elsenham woods. The woods location is for the dream part of the film where a young boy is running away from something through the woods.We originally came up with the location of woods because it is a sterotypical location for a thriller film and it instantly came to mind. Although the location is stereotypical i believe that we can make a film that is individual compared to other thriller openings whilst still being effective in the thriller genre.

The second location that we agreed on was a bedroom. We need the bedroom to film our scene, however this part of our opening scene is not concerntrated on location and will not be seen very much during as we will be using camera shots such as close ups on various things and items that will hopefully result in the audience feeling curious and suspense.

costume for our opening scene

Costume

As a group we have decided to use only two actors in our opening thriller scene; a young boy and a man.

The young boy is going to be the first actor we see in our opening scene. we decided that he should be wearing just normal casual clothing. However we do believe that his clothing should be a bit muddy or ripped as he is being chased through the woods.

The fact that the young boy is in casual clothing will hopefully entrigue the audience as it is more of a mystery as to why he is being chased because there are no clues as to who the boy is or what hes done. where as there would be more indication to why he was being chased if he was in for example a uniform of some kind.

The man on the other hand will be dressed smartly in a shirt and tie. Dressing the man in this way will give the audience the impression that he has higher status, some kind of power and is quite important.

LOCATION
The opening scene will be filmed in a woodlands area, we have chosen elsenham forest to film as its the closest and best available option we have. The second part will be filmed in just an cluttered room for when the man is changing.

COSTUME
In the opening scene there is a child and will be dressed in normal childrens clothes, for the other older character in the cluttered room scene he will be wearing smart atire(suits and so on).

PROPS
In our openning scene we will need various probs such as , a toothbrush for the close up of him brushing his teeth, a suit case, various random items to put into the suit case and a "hand gun" to show confususion between the various items in the suit case.

LIGHTING
The forest will be quite dark and if not at a twilight time of day will most probably needartificial lighting to help. In the room scene no artificial lighting will be necessary as it will be mornin/daytime and will have light in the bedroom.

location: elsenam woods (for the opening of the child running through the woods)
and a cluttered room (for when the man is packing)

costume: the boy running through the woods will but dressed in typical childs clothes
that will be a bit tacky and the man will be fairly casualy dressed but will have a feeling of
order and routine an his habits and clothes

props: the props will be; a suitcase, numerouse clothes, toiletries, a mirror, a general mess
and a 'hand gun'

lighting: the woods will be fairly dark (we hope to get a twilight time of day look) and
the room will be fairly gloomy but will be fairly light as it is meant to be morning. 

Risk assessment

obstacles in the woods, triping and hurting yourself or damaging equipment, we will make sure the route we choose is clear.

bb pistol, its a projectile weapon, the pistol will remain with the owner and the barrel will be blocked.

leads for the camera, trip hazard, there will be someone with the leads the whole time.