Thriller Evaluation

When we made our started our media project we worked our idea around current influences. I worked in a group of four. We all contributed to ideas and built our storyline around each of ideas we contributed. Our film is called . “Love Me, Love Me Not”, Hamsa Aden came up with the idea of the story line and we all worked around it. Some ideas of our film came from the movie “My Bloody Valentine” which was successful at the time we started our project.
“My Bloody Valentine had gained a lot media and public attention, maybe because of it’s mixed genre, which is why we thought this would be a good film to focus on working along. After hearing about the film we thought we could apply the same elements to our film by focusing on love as well as still keeping our film in the thriller genre. We used connotations of e.g. love, danger and blood to convey meaning. In our film we used a red rose as a connotation of passion. In the film our protagonist (Fouzia Abbasi) destroys the rose at the end of the film showing our audience that in the film love is killed compared to our protagonist murdering the victim (Qiu Ling Lam).

During the making of our film we really progressed in using techniques to match the conventions of a real thriller film. We understand certain films have conventions which they follow.
Most movies have an equilibrium which is disturbed and then by the end of the film the equilibrium is restored. We challenged normal conventions by creating a new equilibrium. In the beginning Hamsa and Qiu Ling play the happy couple but then the equilibrium is ruined by Fouzia, who murders Qui Ling. Since the story is from Fouzia’s (our protagonist’s) point of view it makes this an alternate/new equilibrium.
At the beginning of the film we used an establishing shot to try and match the one in ‘The Shining’ and also ’28 Days Later’. In The both films an establishing shot is used to introduce the place the film is taking place. Our opening shot is of the Angel wings in Islington. We decided to use this as our establishing scene as the wings are commonly associated we The Angel in Islington.

During the making of our media product we challenged usual conventions of real media products by using a variety of non-diegetic sounds. We used sound effects more than conventional movies which often focus on natural sounds. We used the sound effects to challenge the conventions of real films but at the same time try to imitate them.

The people we used in our film are young. We portrayed our actors as being middle class rather than paying a larger focus on a particular social class. We tried not to focus on much on social groups. As our actors were all young and dressed accordingly to people our age, it made it easy for us to relate this film to our age group. In our movie our main character, the protagonist is female. This can be related with sexuality, as often villains and criminals are often portrayed as being male so this way our film is also challenging conventional methods of film. This gives an interesting twist to our film as some aspects of it are out of the norm yet the film still follows normal conventions of film making.




We could work with a company such as WARP Films or Working Title as they work with low budget films to create successful blockbusters. I think our media product would be distributed in the UK only, rather than being distributed world wide as but this would depend purely on the break-through our film has on the British film industry. If our film is profitable in the UK it could be re-released in the USA. I think our film would be distributed on DVD for a short amount of time but this would solely depend on whether it made it worldwide. A channel such as Film4 focuses on British, art-house or independent films rather than international hits and blockbusters which is why the films success would affect its distribution so much.

The audience for our product would be our fellow peers as they fit our target audience. As our product is aimed at people in their late teens our product would be ideal to those around us.
And this would also fit well to the genre of our product as it contains violence, so it would have to be aimed at people in their late teens and over.
I thinks the main audience for this product will be young as they would able to identify with the main character in having liked someone but being unable to tell them how they feel.

We would use a wide range of marketing techniques to attract the audience. We would attract our audience by advertising where our target audience is most likely to notice. We would use the internet to create good publicity for our film by maybe adding preview pages and special trailers to social networking sites. By adding a preview clip to sites such as Facebook or Myspace, this will help us reach a wider audience. Since our movie is more art-house it would be good to keep a decent level of advertisement to keep interest and originality within the product.
Although we don’t have a strict target audience, so we would focus on making our advertisement appealing to young people. We would probably advertise our product magazines aimed at young people. We would also work with fast food chains such as McDonalds as young people enjoy fast food and often go there.

I have learnt a whole range of things during the construction of our product. At the beginning I found a bit unfamiliar using the video camera as I hadn’t used one before but after we were shown how to use them I familiarised myself with it.
I learnt the most in the edit suit as this was a technical aspect I was not yet used to as this was my first time using these programmes. We used Final Cut Pro, I established the main tools we used for our product such as the razor tool and cross fading and I adjusted myself with them. I also worked with other programmes such as Live type and Sound Track.

I think we achieved a great understanding of filming since our preliminary task. We have gotten better in all aspects of our project. We learnt a lot about planning and that we had to plan very thoroughly to get our media product to the level we expected it to be. With all the practice we had using certain programs we have also gained experience in how to use them. All are camera work improved due to the practice during our preliminary. Certain aspects of filming such as match-cuts we have learnt to use better since the beginning of this course.

Creating our Preliminary Storyboard

On the 3rd of December we worked in our arranged groups of four to come up with a storyboard. Our aim was to create a storyboard that insisted of someone reading a magazine in a thrilling way. This was a practical to help us towards our final thriller. From our previous introduction to the camera on the day we were well aware of how to use them. We all practised turning the cameras on and off and we were shown how to insert end remove the tape and how to use a tripod. We practised using the focus on the camera and also went over the basics of filming such as medium-shots, close-ups and tracking. After finishing our storyboard we went down to shoot our scenes in our decided location. We filmed all the different shots at least three times so that we could choose the best ones to use in our finished clip.

Media Thriller Evaluation

Over time the media has provided a set of generic codes such as camera work, mise-en-scene, sound, lighting etc but everything and everyone who either works in media or is associated with it manipulates these conventions, they may not change it completely but in one way or another they tweak it and develop it to suit the needs of their project. This is what we done in our project we were aware of the general codes and conventions within the media and specially thriller movies. For example; the colour red has many connotations such as love, passion but on the other hand it is very symbolic for danger and blood. We incorporated one main iconographic images into our project which was a red rose, it portrayed love so we twisted it and showed it being broken and ripped in half –this suited our title for the film which was ‘Love Me… Love Me Not’ we were able to play with this image in several ways, with typical petal picking of love me and love me not and the connotation of romance.

When looking over our finished project I realised that we didn’t really change the codes and conventions much, we just conformed to it. I think we done this unintentionally and we weren’t aware during the course of filming and editing whether we were breaking the conventions or not but in a way I think we did because if we didn’t, then our film could be somewhat boring and too standardised. One convention I think we stuck to was in our editing and filming. We applied the 180° rule and checked rigorously that we followed it.

I don’t think that our film represents any specific social group but there are only three characters in our project two of which are females we were young people, at the age of sixteen but I don’t think we were playing the part of young individuals but more so those of grown ups. As we do not represent any certain social group via age, gender, race or sexual orientation I think that we are very flexible and may attract a large cross section ranging in differences from class to age if we had created a whole film. However I think our film does challenge the usual, typical story lines as we have a female killer, the complete opposite to the standard so I think more people would be interested in our film because it isn’t predictable.

As our film complies to the medias set of generic codes and conventions it would be suitable for institutions to distribute our film I don’t not think however that it will be a big Hollywood film but that it would be successful for UK release as its initial idea for the film was inspired by the title of another that was out at the current time in cinemas, the film that inspired our group was called “My Bloody Valentine”. It had a horror element with a small twisted romance somewhere behind it, although we hadn’t watched the film we managed to come up with a story and shortened it to make our opening sequence instead of horror we also decided to used thriller elements combined with romance to create our finished piece of work. Eventually after UK release like many other films our film will be suitable to TV viewing. If we were distributing our film in the real media world then we like most film makers would like our film to be successful so we would have to have a unique selling point. To get our film to be a major success we would probably have to go through the big six companies such as Warner Bros, Twentieth Century Fox or Universal pictures this was we are able to break into American and the Hollywood scene which should and normally does, generate huge profits.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1943308800/tt1179891 - My Bloody Valentine IMDB

As mentioned above I think that our film will be suitable for several audiences because it is flexible. However our film will probably attract a more younger, modern audience. Someone who is either single or in a relationship it doesn’t really matter, it should appeal to all of them. I think the film will be popular among the younger generations as they will be able to identify with the characters of the film, eg many females experience jealousy or have been in a situation where they are attracted to the opposite sex but encounter problems in trying to reveal their feelings. Also the characters are not ‘posh’ they are just normal people who the audience will be able to relate to. We would also attract our audience by advertising, I think mainly in magazines and internet campaigns as we are a young generation it is certain that potential customers and our desired audience will see our adverts and then pay to watch the film in cinemas.

Through our media project I picked up numerous skills and developed many that I already had for example; I was able to develop my communication skills and group work skills as this project required commitment from everyone and also patience so everyone in the group could have their say. A more hands on skill that I developed was how to use the camera and camera equipment, but the basics such as blogging came naturally as I use the internet regularly. However where I learnt the majority of skills was in the edit suite, using such programmes as final cut pro, live type and sound track it was the most challenging but also essential to the project making it what it is. The main and somewhat most challenging part of the project for me was the editing of the film because I had never used final cut pro before but over the course of the project I familiarised myself with the basic such as using in and out points, then gradually used more tools such as the razor and effects such as cross fades.

Looking back over this task and the preliminary task I see what we have achieved, how we progressed and how we furthered our knowledge. In the beginning we were very much amateurs with basic skills and still are but have grown confident in using equipments such as cameras, tripods and the more technical aspects such as everything on the macs from firefox to final cut pro. I have learnt from this experience that it is very difficult to make a short two minute video and that planning really is best also overall with filming and editing I think we would have been better off and not in such an anxious state I we stuck to the work instead of being relaxed and messing around. Our groups preliminary task was never actually completed as we were not committed and did not know how to use the equipment and didn’t really try. Our camera techniques compared to the newspaper project were must better e.g when we were in the graveyard, also we found that our footage was much more steady and saw that using a tripod made a real difference when filming.

Thriller Evaluation

Our media product was a 2 minute opening to a thriller film, in my designated group was Fouzia Abbasi, Qiu-Ling Lam, Krisztina Omoergie, we were collectively Group 19. When we came together we decided to embark into the romantic thriller genre aimed at a younger generation then would be the norm. In preparation for this project I watched more films in the thriller genre, to analyse the opening scenes and seeing where I could emulate such great films for example a classic such as ‘The Shining’ directed by Stanley Kubrickwhich, begins fairly normally, not trying to give away to much, which is conventional of most thrillers, where as a modern day thriller such as ‘The Inside Man’ directed by Spike Lee, a crime/conspiracy thriller, it begins with the central character ‘Dalton Russell’ (Clive Owen) giving the audience the Who, What, When, Why and leaves the ‘How’ for the audience to discover throughout the film. I wanted our thriller to follow the standard structure but at the same time we would put our own spin, because we introduced the antagonist or villain of the story (Fouzia) and we introduced the victim (Qiu-Ling) and we tried to confuse the audience as to why would Fouzia kill Qiu-Ling, if she was in love with me. So in that sense I believe we both followed and challenged the norm at the same time.

I believe our media product represents at all young people aged 15 – 21 because our films cast includes a wide diversity from mixed race and background, to Chinese and Somalilander. It represents London, as the most diverse city in the world; also with the final edited product it threw up questions of sexual motif for example if Fouzia was in love with me and she couldn’t bear to be without me then normally, the crazed stalker would kill the person she wanted but in this film she kills the Girl (Qiu-Ling) so maybe she was in love with Qiu-Ling.

Well if we created a feature length then, it would probably be an independent produced film, probably by a film company such as WARP Films or Film4, because they would offer us as a group the artistic direction we need as they are experienced in low budget yet hard hitting films, that are critically acclaimed and do relatively well for films of that stature. I would push for an international release because I believe the message of the strenuous weight a relationship places on your mind can push anyone over the edge, especially when it’s fuelled with desire, passion and lust makes for an attractive story that must be told.

The audience for this product would most certainly have to be late teen early twenties, specifically because of the violent but also because of the message. Also it’s meant for the teens because it might be something there going through or about to grow through, evidently not to the same extent as the film but in a more general sense, because at 15 – 18 you are still learning the mechanics of a relationship, and you still might not understand how the littlest actions have sometimes the biggest effect. This film aims to fill the niche of informing adolescents that they can still feel the effects of adult problems. Lets look at the typical person this is aimed at ‘Frank is 17, he is currently in college and in his first year doing an apprenticeship to be an electrician, he is currently in a happy relationship with Kayla who is also 17, even though Frank is happy he still picks up a few phone numbers or two when he is socializing ‘he doesn’t know that maybe one day maybe one of these girls will fall for him and he is unavailable. This kind of person needs to know that love is confusing as an adult so as a teen it could be fatal in conjunction with an already hormonal time for the girl.

To attract our audience I think we would first show it to a select group of film critics from the local national newspapers, once we get the feedback we called maybe go back improve it slightly. Then we would advertise on terrestrial TV channels during prime, it would be the ‘must see’ movie of the year ‘Spine-Chilling’ etc. Another way is via social networks such as ‘MySpace’ and ‘Facebook’, we would build up a buzz around the film especially since more young people use these means of media, it would be perfect. I would say it would be more of a rising director and a group of talented actors that one day might rise to the top if given the right backing from the British film industry and its audiences.

Overall I think that I have learnt a lot about technologies from the process of filming because I learnt that when your filming even if some things like weather can work to your advantage, also that most of the work takes place on the other side of the lens, as it only records what you point it at, so good planning and executing even when it seems unlikely you will get good footage to just power through and you never it might be better than you planned. I enjoyed using software such as ‘Final Cut Pro’, ‘Live type’ and ‘Soundtrack’ because they allow your idea to come to fruition , even the smallest drum or transition add to the product as a whole improving more and more. I used the internet as well to document this project on the blog provided, reading back and then watching the video posted on the blog shows our entire process from beginning to end.

Looking back at the preliminary tasks the match cutting exercise and the thriller newspaper task, I have seen how we all have grown, from making mistakes like leaving to much space above the head, to shaking camera. Also in the planning we were definitely much thorough and detailed, the editing was a lot easier this time because we knew already, exactly what the finished product looked like, although it was still stressful. Another lesson I learnt was that although sometimes its good for everyone to play a part, you should as delegate jobs to people strong points to maximise efficiency and quality.

Second Day of Filming

Today the plan was to film the scene were we showed me and Qiu-Ling as the happy couple just strolling round the the shopping centre, while unknowingly being followed by the devious Fozia. When we arrived we thought it would be better if we used a high angle shot to show the couple and then slowly show them being followed. this was well excecuted by Krisztina and me and Qiu-ling were well directed by Fozia. we also captured Fozia, using a point of view shot, following us up the escalators and into the cinemas. We were going to film more but we had to return the equipment back to the media department.

We are braving the weather for the cause

Today is my first proper filming day because the first filming session, i was absent due to a ear infection, so i had to go to the GP to get some prescriptions that would clear this up as soon as possible. the second filming session was a disaster as it took me Fozia and Krisztina (Qiu-ling was absent due to Chinese New Year) over an hour to reach our filming location which was a cemetery in newington green due to traffic and road works. When we arrived we discovered that Fozia had left the tape back at college, it wasnt big deal because we knew Fozia was a hard worker, so the time lost we would swiftly make up with extra filming sessions.

Well after two large snowstorms the college was closed 2nd & 3rd of february. So today, which is the wednedsday, was my first filming session. Although not many groups went out because the snow had not yet propely melted. The Specific Plan was to show Fozia entering the grave yard and get match cuts of her making her way to a grave, in this we used a a variety of shots; point of view; over the shoulder; medium long shot and when she was at the grave to get a close up of her removing the petels one by one, then still in close up, her turing her hand into a fist. I was especially happy with how three of my shots turned out, the 1st was a medium long shot of Fozia walking the down the footpath, what made it good was fresh snow on the graves and the sunlight that caught the edge of the camera creating a flash of lasting light across the camera, another point was how the gravestones obsecured the view i had of Fozia, this created a mysterious dracula like effect as she was there and gone in a second. The second was a stationary extreme long shot, filming fozia coming of the footpath and turing towards the camera then walking past it, this was good because the melting muddy snow and the sun shining down on it created a solarized effect, of which i must say i didnt plan but came as a great addition

Overall today was a success as we accomplished everything we set out to do. And as a added bonus the fresh snow, melting snow and the sunlight improved the mise en scene and made some of the shots look like a professional effect.

Planning for thriller

Today we were told to start planning for our thriller project, so in the beginning we began brainstorming ideas on sugar paper. We settled on an idea i came up with, it would be a romatic thriller, which was to show a young man and women walking in the park, we show having a major argument because the boy was flirting with a girl who was passing by, they then split up. We were then going to show how the break up had sent the girl over the edge and she has now become obsessed with the young man. As you can see we had planned a feature length film and not an just a 2 minute opening. so we had to shorten it drastically. We shortened it to we show the young couple waking through the shopping centre, while being followed by a mysterious young lady........then we would show this same young lady making her way to a grave yard....the key part of the whole opening would be the picking off petels from a rose, which would tie in & connotate the romantic genre we hoped to denotate ..........Also we decided on a title
Love Me..........Love me not

Inspiraton from Inside Man

I tried my best to find just the opening scene but it doesnt exsist seperately and without enfringing the films copyright and legal use i just decided to post the trailer. Well basically i remember watching Inside Man almost a year ago because the way it began was very unusual, in a sense that it clealy state the Who,What,Where,When and then leaves the How out so it can be told during the movie. This is what came to mind when i was told we had to shoot the opening to a thriller.

Inside Man Trailer 2