Here’s my adventure of My thriller opening and production process with full detail as possible.
I had so much fun working with my group, probably the best group of people I could possibly work with- thank you Bilal, Ben and Gina. Hopefully you enjoyed reading this blog as much as I did post it. I have learnt a lot about filming, editing, researching and planning. Most of all I learnt that Thriller is an genre instead of, in the beginning I thought it was just a Micheal Jackson song- silly me :). Looking back now it’s been a hugely fun experience to actually create a thriller film opening. Every good thing must come to an end, Good and enjoy
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
As I said before, we done a prelim to get some experience when filming the real deal of our theriller opening.
Our Planning
When first discussing the prelim with my group, we had all agreed on the story line and briefly drew it up on a storyboard and compiled a shot-by-shot list. We all thought that we wouldn’t need to draw up and plan that much seeing as our prelim only had to be one minute long. But thats not case, When we began using the shot-by-shot list and we needed to plan a lot more. We didn’t have time to draw it up on to the storyboard so we had to go along with it as go along. But the prelim help us plan for the real thing in quickly without wasting time and make most of our time.
The Filming
The first day of filming the preliminary footage, we’d made a worst start by forgetting the storyboard inside the classroom. We lost five minutes running back to get it, when we filmed it looked bright and thought it was just the bright sunlight. Things went bad to worse as it was in Night Vision. This means we needed to record again in our free time, we relise how important time is when producing a film. So when we wrer filming the real piece, we knew how to use the camera without wasting time. Making the most of our filming time with the experience we have.
The Editing
Although the story lines for Bloodshed (the prelim) and Rising Fear , they both allowed me to get to use to with Final Cut Pro X- the software we used for editing the footage (It just shows important editing is). The main difference between our prelim and main product is the use of special effects . In Bloodshed, the only editing we used sloting them together in the timeline, adding the music in the mix. Although we cut and slot the pieces together likeRising Fear as well. However we added colour filters and lighting effects to make the bland, In the majority of thriller films, the effects are a very important part as they really change the mood of a scene and the audience . As you can see below we added a cctv effect below which is more realistic, thanks to editing
As a group we also made a short Interview video describing about the technologies we learnt about during the process. As you can see while watching our interview, the best special effect we used was our cctv effect.
Who was your audience?
The target audience for ‘Rising Fear’ is teenagers and young adults as we planned before, the storyline is something that they can relate. As seen in the ‘reaction video’ a wide age group really enjoyed the opening to ‘Rising Fear’ proving that the audience we picked was correct.
How did you attract them?
We made sure that our opening was very entertaining but at the same time something dark and atmospheric. We attracted our audience by simply making a film about something which they use in everyday life – an elevator and a typical day job. But by turning the elevator into a ruthless killing michine which the audience will feel the pain while watching, and who know- they will take the stairs while burning those calories. The opening should be interesting and will get the audience hooked to watch the rest of the film.
How did you address them?
My group wanted to relate our thriller film opening to our audience and make it relate to them in our day tot day life. As our target audience is teenagers and young adults we all decided to have a teenagers playing a pizza delivery guy- that me. We as a group decided the actor who is most recongnise our group – Thats me again – playing a pizza delivery guy. We address the audience when the pizza guy dies in the opening, this will be a thriller/horror genre type of film. Which furfills the promise of the trailer.
Audience React Video
We took inspiration from Finbros youtube channel, which have hit views from teens, kids and youtubers react video. So we have our own version Audience React so enjoy!
I hope you enjoyed our version of a react video, responses from those teachers and teenage students from year 8 (with age rating of 12A). As you can from the ‘reaction video’ a wide range of demographics enjoyed watching our filming, including people of different ages, ethnicity and gender.
Who would be the audience for your media product ?
Target audience
Our primary audience
Our demographic is late teenagers and young adults, both male and female. We also wanted to let a large amount of different ethnicities be able to relate to our film, like the ‘Fast and Furious’ and ‘Rush hour’ franchise which has range of races around the world. As an example the pizza was ‘asain’ to show we didn’t aim it at one specific ethnic demographic but to a wider range.
Our secondary audience
There are secondary audience to big film franchise but doesn’t mean we should have one. Possibly older or middle aged adults (aged 30 to 50) are kids when Thriller/psychological film were big hit in 90s, hit films like Cape fear, Silence of the lambs or Se7en. For example adults may take their teenage son/daughter to see the film with them, making a family and nostalgic experience.
The certificate to our film
As a group we decided get the biggest audience for our film, we decided to give it a ’12A’ rating. First we thought about giving it a ’15′ certificate because of some violence, however we fit all the BBFC criteria of a ’12A’ Certificate and didn’t break any of it. So our final decision was to go for a ’12A’ certificate. The reason if we had gone with a ’15′ certificate for our film then we would have potentially missed out on the big percentage of our audience that was of a younger age. Youngsters these days are very easy to markets as they are part of the social network society(generation), its a low budget marketing which anyone can do. Just have fan page on facebook, official youtube channel or have a twitter page- they would spread the word about our film by themselves; without us doing the work . Must of all why not go for a big audience if you can, the film fits the ’12A’ – it basic common sense.
How does your media product represent particular social groups ?
Our demographic/ Social group would be is late teenagers and young adults, Both genders. We also wanted to let a large amount of different ethnicities be able to relate to our film. Usually in a Hollywood blockbuster film, a pizza delivery boy would most likely white teenager which represent the general white audience, which the majority of the ethnicity of the audience. However we decided to challenge this general view and go against this typical stereotype, so we diceded to have an asian pizza boy, an average hieght. As you can see below an asian pizza boy- a different take on genral idea of pizza boy.
First major role that I had already had the role of the cameraman and I didn’t fit the generic pizza boy look; however we later found that it doesn’t really matter becuase we can use costume and props to make him more of an pizza boy look. We also found that by using me as an pizza boy, The film primary audience is teenager and early audult. The character is asian and also an teenager which relates to an majority of the audience.
The social group/class of viewers we decided to target is more then we intended, we as a group decicded that we shoudn’t working class viewers would enjoy the film, but middle class may as well. Come on’ who doesn’t enjoy being on the edge of their seat? However, I do feel that working class viewers may be able to relate to my character more slightly. Becuase of the job he has and the environment he is in, which may attract working class viewers to watch the film. A pizza delivary job is an ordinary job for everyone, it a perfect working class job.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We as a group were determined to make an epic thriller opener. However, our media teacher always keeps telling us she had enough of seeing stalker story line So this made us really think of different ways of making a fresh thriller opening. This was our chance the use the best of thriller convention of even challenge it; completely twist the general idea of thriller genre. But we come with best sub-genre of thriller; psychological thriller. It’s nothing new but it never gets old and there is many ways of making great plot. Here is an another interview below
Our use of these Forms and Convention of Thriller Genre:
Mise En Scenne: The location of the opening is ordinary car park which is not a scary place at as car drive around, it seems lively. However when editing we made it a very cold, dark and dangerous place- Using the cold blue steel background. It is tough to make an ordinary area like a car park a typical location for a thriller film in just an opener, so used editing to the max and sound, as it makes the location more sinister.
Sound/Music: The Music starts slow as you feel in a relaxed mood, a typical teenage pizza boy doing his day job. When he drops the pizza, the beat pounds hard, the sign of danger is realized for audience viewing as he decide to take the elevator. As gets in and when the elevator doors shut, another big beat hits, then music of opening sequence plays. The music gets faster and heavier as the death is coming but the audience don’t witness the death of the pizza boy, but knows what the theme of film later on.
Characters
Within our opening we had only screen character, which was a pizza delivery guy played by me as you can see. We thought that this would be a really good character to have as our target audience could relate to him, like a typical day job. So a young teenager boy is not someone who might usually see in the opening of thriller about elevators. However, we decided to do something different and use this idea as it created even more tension for our audience to witness.
Challenging the convention: Generally dialogue what audience listens to and understand. But instead of giving it to them, we want the audience to think for themselves (Hitchcock reference). No direct dialogue is needed as he his there by himself listening with his headphones minding his own business. We wanted to make his death a surprise as it happens in the beginning of the film. Making them wonder whats going to happen next, its an early plant of the ‘bomb theory’ later in the film.
Characters
iffman 