Directors commentary

Hello my names Dylan peach and today I will be doing a directors commentary over our thriller opening Decorum.

First of all the beginning of the thriller opening shows the title and the meaning. Some people may not know what decorum actually stands for so this is a quick reminder, plus it fits with the story of the film.

After this we are greeted by a mid shot of Jak. This is an establishing shot telling the audience that he is busy researching. As you may have noticed the background is blurred out, this is because the pictures were not related to our thriller opening as it was someone else's office in which we borrowed so I blurred it out. I did this by masking the wall and adding a camera blur and feather.

Next is a panning shot of the BBC News page with the title "Killer of Jak Hunter's Parents, John Hill escaped Jail 2 days ago presumed dead. This not only ties in with a later scene of a pin board but gives the audience a bit of context of what Jak is searching and what is happening. I used the BBC News page and re-edited it to make it authentic and believable as most people can recognise this page.

After that there is a close up shot of a lock being cut. This suggests to the audience that the person cutting the locks shouldn't be there, this builds up tension. then it pans down to the floor where you can see the lock fall to the ground.

The next shot is a low angle shot of jack walking into the shed. The Cutters are specifically blurred to create a dramatic effect of someone watching him behind them.

This is an extreme close-up shot of Jak turning on the power then the light switch, this is adding to the dramatic build up to see whats inside the shed which has been locked off.

We then see the lights on the roof turn on. This is really dramatic as it gives a kind of "saw" look to itt as its dimly lit making it even more tense than before.

Next is a panning shot of the shelf with the knives on them. This is a really dramatic shot as the audience get shown what is in the shed for the first time. All the knives and blood suggests that he himself is a murderer, foreshadowing future events.

After that you get to see Jak looking at his shelf's full of weapons, pin boards and gun. This is all shown through the outside window through a rip in the plastic bag covering it to create a motion of you are following the antagonist and watching him.

Then there are a few shots of Jak putting on gloves and wiping the blood-stained knife. These are more 'filler' clips, however they still keep the suspense flowing and they gave me an opportunity to include most of the credits.

now it cuts to my company name, "vector productions". This is a name I have used for some previous productions. Vector is a term meaing lossless quality, which I thought worked kind of implying that the vector productions films are very high standard.

After that it cuts to a long panning shot from quite a wide/long shot of Jak walking. As you can see we chose quite a rural setting to fit with the conventions of a thriller. If you cannot tell I have synced the clip with the glitch in the audio.

We get an extreme close-up of Jaks hand with the gun banging on the metal bars. This suggests that he is confident in what hes doing, and willing to show people he is not ariad, consequently building up suspense.

The next shot includes Jak leaning on the metal bars whilst looking. This is dramatic because he is blurred out and only the tree branches are in focus. Also i added a little pan to it to keep the scene flowing.

The main shot of the thriller opening is this shot. I am in the entrance of the tunnel on my phone. I am alone and not on guard to portrait to the audience that I am vulnerable. then it pans up to see that Jak is standing above me. it proceeds to pan down to see me on the phone again. The next time it pans up Jak is not there, this is done in sync with the glitch sound if you listen closely. as it pans down for the final time you see Jak and myslelf.

As I lift my head up it cuts to a first person view of me looking at the gun, then for Jak to swing it at me and knock me out. Only the barrel of the gun was in focus to connote disorientation and the fact that the gun is all they can concentrate on.

This was my directors commentary over our film Decorum hope you enjoyed,

Actor interview and out-takes

Me and Jak filmed a questionnaire with the help of James giving the questions and using the camera. After loading it into my editing program (Premiere Pro CC 2017), I decided to add some out-takes from filming our original idea so people could see what it was like. Below is the video and below that is the editing file.

 

Group Roles

To increase productivity, we split our group up giving different tasks to each other.

Dylan:

My role in the group was mainly editing. I edited the whole of our thriller opening, plus I did all the Photoshop edits such as the movie poster,billboard and Empire magazine cover. I also acted for a short part of the film and was the main cameraman. I did the most with the camera as it was my personal camera and I knew how to utilize it to my the best ability.

Jak: 

Jak Main's roles in the group were doing the screenplay and acting in the thriller opening. Jak is the main character in our thriller opening and seen a lot during it. He also wrote the thriller opening and did the final story board for it. Another thing Jak did was operating the camera.

James:

James main role in the group was directing. He also used the camera for some of the shots.

Storyboard for Continuity Piece

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I have researched a lot about the forms and conventions of films in the thriller genre (please refer to my blog post Conventions of a thriller genre). I have also watched many and many highly rated thriller films to broaden my knowledge of the genre (Leon the professional, Shutter Island, The silence of the lambs, etc.)

First of all the title of our thriller opening 'Decorum' hints to the audience what the general meaning/morals of the story are. The definition of the word decorum is "behaviour in keeping with good taste and propriety". Now this can be interpreted in many ways in our thriller opening because of its genre (thriller). On one hand it can be interpreted as the murdered kills but he still keeps himself well presented. This is apparent from the Empire magazine starring Jak Main on the front cover. As you can see he is wearing a very formal suit but is covered with blood splatters and holding a knife. Another way it can be interpreted is that he has no sense of morals or self awareness in his behaviour when trying to hunt down the murderer of his parents. This could connote that the different things he does in order to find the killer (ends up being him) are very disturbing and not normal.

Thrillers typically have one main protagonist and one main antagonist. The basis of the story revolves around these two characters. This is apparent in our thriller as we have one main protagonists (myself) and one main antagonist (Jak Main). Doing this our thriller fits with the forms and conventions of the main characters.

Our media product has shots in which conform to the typical locations used in thriller movies. First of all the locked away shed. This is shown throughout the opening in a very dark palette of colours with very dim lighting. Low lit basements and sheds are used to create tension, like in the films Texas chainsaw massacre and mainly The silence of the lambs.

To fit with the conventions of a thriller our cast had to be clothed in normal clothes and be seen doing normal every day things. This makes the thriller seem realistic as they are just general people. Near the end you see myself walking about on the phone. This is to connote that the protagonist is vulnerable. The whole aim of this is to connote to the audience that this is an event that could happen to anyone, even the person watching, therefore making it very tense and scary to watch.

Typically in thriller movies the antagonists despite their problems/wrongdoings, usually live in a secluded location. This is shown in our thriller as Jak Main is in his shed, with no other visible home for him show in  the introduction. This connotes that the shed is where Jak's character does all the killing (supporting that with the blood stained knife on the shelf). The darkness of being in the shed in the thriller opening creates suspense as you can't see fully inside it, leaving it to the audiences imagination what is there.

Our film challenges the convention that antagonists usually have a hidden identity until later on in the film. Our film takes an approach from more an antagonists point of view, like the film Shutter Island.

Props are typically used in thriller films to add to tension and to build suspense. Weapons such as guns, knives and explosives a generally used a lot in Thriller films, however household items such as cutlery, glass bottles and other sharp objects can be used to make the person look desperate. In the first minute of the introduction of the thriller the audience have already seen a variety of knives, a handgun, pair of cutters, and various utensils for breaking into places such as screwdrivers. This connotes that the person in the opening is violent and willing to kill someone (blood on knife) therefore building suspense as the audience can see he is well equipped for what hes eventually going to be doing later on in the film.

Mise-on-scene is obsessed over in the thriller genre. It is designed to target your subconscious, making you think about whats going on around what your primarily focusing on (e.g. if someone’s in the background in the dark, only slightly visible.) In our thriller opening there is constantly things to be focusing on, the BBC news screen, the board with all the pictures of different suspects/murder victims?,  consequently making the viewer on edge and scared for whats going to happen next.

Added to that the scene where I am held gun point by Jak takes place in an empty tunnel. This represents there is little/no escape, no weapons, no where to hide. This fits the conventions of a thriller as the location where the action takes place is somewhere where you would be most vulnerable, alone away from any form of human interaction.

Lighting is a big part of mise-en-scene as it can connote subliminal messages to the audience. Lighting in thrillers is mainly low key which is used to create shadows on faces, bodies and props. Low key lighting is normally used during more sinister, scary scenes to emphasize the suspense and tension. It helps provide detail, making the viewer unsettled as they can’t see what’s going to happen until it’s too late. Colour is a direct link to emotions, therefore a lot of dark greys and blacks would go with uncertainty and confusion.

Editing is vital in a Thriller because it is used to create a tense and suspenseful atmosphere. This is achieved through fast cuts, changing angles and possibly motion blur to disorient the audience. Jump cuts are mostly used during thriller films, these are used to give information to the audience that they might need in order to understand a part of the film. Jump cuts can completely change the scene, the faster the jump cuts the more tension created within the film. A quick succession of short clips will disorient and audience. This is because the fast pacing makes the audience lose focus on everything which is happening in the scene. Our thriller uses all these techniques to disorient the viewer, leaving them in a sense that they want events not to happen in the film which will happen and they are left with a feeling of no control on whats going to happen.

We challenged the thriller genre by having no dialogue in our opening. This creates suspense and tension as there is mystery behind whats going on. Not giving the audience too much information leaves them to use their imagination, therefore usually making the scene scarier as they would assume generally worst case scenarios for the characters. 
 
Finally we used a variety of camera shots to entice the viewer and get them immersed in whats happening in the film. For example at the end of the opening you see a first person shot of myself in a gun point situation. This is very terrifying for most viewers as I have been shown as vulnerable throughout the opening. This doesn't challenge the forms of conventions of a thriller, however first person, or point of view shots are rarely used in thriller films.

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

Looking back at my preliminary task, being our continuity piece, I felt like I defiantly have improved and learned a lot from the task. Most importantly I have improved on working as a group, time management and editing. Without doing the preliminary task I feel like I would have made a lot of mistakes which I did on the preliminary task, on our final piece (thriller opening). This is really good because it gave me a lot of experience of what to do and what not to do when doing our thriller opening.

First of all the story we came up with for our continuity piece was too ambitious. We had a lot of difficulty thinking of an appropriate story we could convey in such as short amount of time. Because of this our continuity piece was not very clear, which was not good. This taught us to be a bit more realistic when coming up with our thriller introduction as we didn't have enough time to include a full section of the story.

A huge difference between our thriller opening and our preliminary task is the dialogue. From making our continuity piece we realized that dialogue was breaking the tension and all we built up. None of the people in our group are experienced actors meaning that when it came to scenes with dialogue it sounded really unprofessional. Because of this we learned that if we wanted our thriller introduction with a high amount of tension we were to not include dialogue.

The editing in our continuity piece wasn't amazing. I had not done any synced cuts with the audio or added any special effects. This was because I didn't really have much footage to work with. Because my editing on the continuity piece was just standard I really wanted to step it up to another level when doing our final thriller opening. I spent many more hours perfecting our thriller opening. I really didn't want to let my group down as I had took full control of editing saying that I would do the whole thing. Even though I did all of the physical editing, Jak and James did help by providing really helpful information and tips on how I should edit it. This was a definite improvement over our continuity piece as I pretty much did all the editing without asking for opinions or what my group would like me to change.

In our preliminary task there was a scene where the camera followed myself into a room and then panned over to our friend who was acting as a criminal. When looking back at the scene in my editing software I saw that James had not properly focused the camera so half the scene was in fact blurred. This was down to the camera we were using not being ours so we didn't know how to use it properly. Overall this helped us realize that to make our thriller opening good we needed to use our own camera so that we do not make mistakes which are prone when using new equipment. For our final thriller opening we used my camera as I knew how to set it up for every scene, which I did and it made a huge difference.

(Scene from our Continuity Piece)

Our preliminary task is all in black and white. This is because of our group being unorganized when filming by shooting some scenes in the dark and some in the light. I could have made the bright scenes looked like it was night in post-production however it would have made the characters look very weird and very contrasted which wasn't nice. I ended up making the whole continuity piece in black and white and giving it more of a "Sin-City" feel to it. From this I learned that organization is key when going and filming as re-filming parts is very difficult as you need to get proper lighting and weather for the scene. This helped when shooting our thriller opening as we stuck to a specific time schedule and it worked perfectly.

In our preliminary task as you can see the music isn't that effective. This was due to us not being able to find a suitable copyright free song to use which would build up tension. Because of this there wasn't any tension being built up. I learned that music was vital when making the thriller and so when we came to making our thriller opening we spend many hours picking the perfect music which would not only fit the conventions of a thriller but build our scene up making it really tense and maybe even a little scary in some aspects such as the knives on the shelf scene. From previous experience I told the group I am working in that I wanted to edit the clips together before finding music, and then put music in and finish the final cuts and tweaks we needed to add. Doing this worked really well as there are certain parts of the thriller where the music is in sync with the cuts, which overall makes the thriller opening really effective. Examples of this are when the cameras panning on Jak walking (straight after the vector productions text disappears), and when the camera is panning up to see that Jak has gone, then to come down to see that he has me at gun point.

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

 Overall making this thriller opening has helped me learn a lot more about different media technologies. If you haven't seen some of my previous posts on my blog I am really confident with editing and I have a paid software which I can use really in depth.

First of all I learned a lot about colour correction in our thriller opening. Before making the thriller opening I was working on a really old editing software called Premiere Pro CS6, after realizing how outdated and how much of a pain it was to colour correct, as I had to open every different clip in Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks. After upgrading to Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 I found it so much easier and more effective to edit the thriller on. First of all it has a colour correction add-on in built called Lumetri Colour. This is a side bar on my editing software where I can easily adjust any aspect of the clip with ease. It was so easy to pick up and learn and worked so well for our film. This increased my productivity ten fold.

Another way upgrading my editing software helped me was by having the mask feature built-in. This is where I can mask out an area in the scene and add an effect to it. I used this in the opening scene with Jak typing. I made a mask on the background using the pen tool and then added a camera blur to blur out the background. Learning how to do this made the final film look so much nicer than if I used my older software.

The camera we shot the thriller opening on was the Sony RX100. Learning how to use this camera to its full potential was vital so that the final film would look really good. Luckily this is my personal camera which was great as I knew how to use/utilize it to get the best quality. The the whole thriller opening I used a manual focus which I adjusted myself for every shot. This was good because it didn't take long to adjust the camera however the results were amazing.

Throughout the time filming we learned to mix up the shots and use a variety of pans and camera motions to keep everything interesting. This came to us when we sat down and looked at the footage from our original film idea. Everything was shot really badly and didn't flow the way our new one. Definitely an eye opener when the film we originally thought was going to work ended up not. Now we know whenever doing anything else what to do and what not, such as shots from inside a house of someone outside (old idea), that was one of the shots that definitely didn't look like planned.

During the process of making the thriller opening I learned how to make my own blog. I originally started using Wordpress however I did not like the layout and preferred the look of blogger way more so I changed over early on to save time. This is using blog-spot or blogger. This is a free website that anyone can use to make a blog, like this one which is on blogger right now. At the start it was quite daunting but as I added more posts it became clear how to work everything and make everything look how I want it to. The only thing I don't really like on this website is how the photos have to be set scales (e.g small, medium, large) but that's not a website flaw that's just a personal preference of mine.

During the construction of our thriller opening I have learned about how effective social media is and how it is really useful in promoting and advertising a product to an audience. Making youtube adverts and facebook pages really helps with getting feedback and promoting our film. Uploading to youtube wise I have already been previously making youtube videos here and there so it was really easy for me to do.

Finding music for our thriller opening was really challenging as we needed to find a song which fitted with our thriller opening but was also copyright free. Eventually we came across an artist called Ben Prunty whose work was not copyright free, however I noticed that he posted something on twitter within the past minute so I sent a tweet to him in hope that he was still on twitter and would answer. He did which was amazing saying that we could use his music as long as we credited him and the video was for non-commercial use (making money). I go more in depth on this in on of my earlier posts on my blog.

Using social media to keep in contact was a really good use of technology when making our thriller. Generally we arranged everything that we were doing in class, however it was really good to have a group chat to remind each other about when we were meeting or to share work and discuss ideas. We all heavily use our phones which was useful when we needed a quick response.

How did you attract/address your audience?

The biggest way to attract an audience is through advertising. Because our film does not have a famous celebrity in the main role nor is it part of a franchise of films (e.g transformers/star-wars) we needed to make people all over the world want to see our film.

First of all I made a film poster which was to be displayed every where possible. Bus stops, cinemas supermarkets we knew that this was going to be one of the main ways to address our audience and make them intrigued to watch our thriller. However I knew we had to go big to be able to really push this independent idea, so I decided to send it out and get it advertised in times square in New York. I knew by doing this I would attract a lot of attention towards our film as it is in the dead center, you couldn't miss it if you tried.

Secondly I decided to make a billboard so that people going past in cars could see the poster. Maybe they are going on a trip to their local town/city and maybe haven't got much planned. Either way this is really good advertising as driving/being in a car is usually very boring so even something like a gun pointing at you with an eye out of it would catch a lot of peoples attention. This is a mock-up billboard I made on Photoshop to show what it would look like going past. Putting the poster near a motorway is a good idea also as there are often traffic jams and slow traffic so people may look into the film whilst their waiting as the picture doesn't really give the story away at all, therefore making people interested to know more.

I made a cover of an issue of the Empire magazine (using Photoshop) as another way to attract our audience into wanting to watch our film.This is a very accurate representation on what the Empire magazine would look once printed and in shops. As you can see I included a photo of Jak Main, the main actor in the film, with blood over his face and suit and also the knife which I added in using Photoshop. This is to interest the views as they would probably be thinking by now "oo whats this Decorum film". Making the front cover interesting will help a lot as people may read the magazine to see what the film is about as it's never really been done before, well at least not recently.

As you can see on the middle right of the poster I included a section where you can win tickets to the premiere to our film. Giving away tickets is a guaranteed way to get people involved wanted to get tickets and overall increases attention towards our film. If people want to get the tickets to the premiere they must like the idea of the film so its more likely that they would buy a ticket anyways as they are not very expensive, most likely less money then a dvd copy.

Another way to attract our audience to watching our film was to advertise on bus stops. This is a common way in England in which film companies advertise their film. Commonly people sit/stand at bus stops for around 5-10 minutes to get their bus. This is plenty of time for them to notice the poster and maybe want to go watch the film. Not forgetting the fact that hundreds of people walk/drive past bus stops every single day.

One of the biggest ways to reach an audience is through adverts shown before you-tube. many you-tube videos generate millions of views and for a little section from our film to be on may make viewers interested to go and see the film. I know from personal experience that I have been to the cinemas after seeing an advert on you-tube (The Conjuring 2). Another great way is to sponsor a famous you-tuber or Instagram user into making a post in relation to our upcoming film. There are channels such as Film Riot whom have over 1 million subscribers who could make a video on a certain special affect in our film and go in depth, then for example at the end go "you can see this effect in the new upcoming film, Decorum, we'd highly recommend you do!" or something on the line of that.

We decided that making a Facebook page would be a great way to advertise and address our audience, also to create a fan base for our film. Jak made this as I had done all the Photoshop work with the Empire magazine, poster, billboard, etc. This was a really good idea as we reached a lot of likes within the first few days. This showed us that people are very interested in our film idea and wanted to go watch it.

By posting little games/events where people had to get involved and find our posters for prizes we managed to get a big response with people finding our poster. This was a good way to interact with the audience with little expenditure.

An effective way to promote things is by giving away free items, because who doesn't like free stuff no matter what it is.

We uploaded the poster I made, and got a really good response with hundereds of likes a support by people we don't know. This was impressive as we were not sure how much people would like it.

This is a few posts we made advertising our thriller opening. This was a good idea as it gained a lot of  views on my you-tube channel and we got a lot of good, supportive feedback.

Questionnaire

For my research i made a questionnaire and sent it to 30 people I know. When getting the questionnaires back I asked if they would be anonymous and not put their name on it.  After I collected all the results I typed them into an excel document and made some graphs to show my answers.


How often do you watch thrillers? This was surprising as I thought more would watch them every week.








What gender best supports a thriller movie? I wasn't surprised with this most thrillers have a heavy male cast (with a few exceptions like Silence of the lambs).

I asked people what age range they think thriller movies are aimed at. I was surprised to see most people think they are aimed at everyone i personally think that the 15-25 is the age range they are aimed at.

The majority of peoples favourite part of thriller movies are the plot twists and the story. I personally relate to this as I love plot twists in films such as The Shawshank Redemption and Shutter Island where plot twists catch you really off guard.





Doing this questionnaire I have gained valuable knowledge when coming to make our thriller.

Music in thrillers

Thrillers are types of films known to promote intense excitement, suspense, a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, anxiety, and nerve-wracking tension. Thriller and suspense films are virtually synonymous and interchangeable categorizations, with similar characteristics and features. Music is the main aspect of thrillers which creates the tension needed to build the scene, and without it the film would be completely different.


Non-Diegetic (not in the scene/mise-en-scene) :

My personal favourite composer is John Murphy. He has done soundtracks for 28 days later, Kick-Ass and a few others. My personal favourite is "Sunshine (Adagio In D Minor)" because it worked absolutely perfect in correlation with the scene in Kick-Ass.

An example of a brilliant composer for films is Hans Zimmer. He has done many soundtracks for famous films such as Interstellar and Batman the dark knight. One of his most famous songs is "Time" which is on the highly rated film Inception, the 2010 science fiction thriller by Christopher Nolan.  

Diegetic:

From gunshots to typing diegetic sound builds the scene by hearing clearly what is happening. 

Advertising

 

This is a billboard I made on Photoshop, it is one of the designs of what the advert would be like in a real city. Overall it looks good and the design is very eye-catching.

On the right is a Empire magazine cover I made myself. I did this using Photoshop. This looks like a proper Empire magazine with the text,date and price, bar-code and reviews.

Below we have the official Decorum poster. I have a full post on how I made this on my blog.

Protagonists and Antagonists

Protagonist: A protagonist is the main character in the story, such as a literary work or drama. The protagonist is at the center of the story, should be experiencing the consequences of those decisions. The protagonist can affect the main characters decisions and should be always moving the story forward.

 Antagonist: An antagonist is a character, group of characters, institution or concept that stands in or represents opposition against which the protagonist must contend. In other words, an antagonist is a person or a group of people who opposes a protagonist.


In the classic style of stories where the action consists of a hero fighting a villain/enemy, the two may be regarded as protagonist and antagonist, respectively. However, the villain of the story is not always the same as the antagonist, as some narratives cast the villain in the protagonist role, with the opposing hero as the antagonist.

Audience feedback for our Thriller

We sat down two people who had previously watched our thriller and asked them some questions:

1) What are your first thoughts after watching the thriller intro?
2) Any improvements you would make?
3) What was your favorite part and why?
4) Did this intro meet the typical conventions of a thriller?
5) Would you watch the full film?

Overall we had a good range of feedback pretty much all positive which was really good. Both people interviewed also said they would watch the whole film which was a bonus.

On the improvements side one answer was better than the other. Isaac gave the feedback to maybe add dialog to our thriller opening to move the narrative a bit more which makes sense as a response as there is no dialog in the opening whatsoever. On the other side James said that "the vector productions thing seemed a bit basic". This feedback was good  however it was a bit vague so we didn't really take it to much into account.

Continuity piece

This is our Continuity piece we did. This was our chance to learn from our mistakes for when we went and made our actual thriller opening.

Equipment List

The camera which we used was the 20.2 MP Sony RX100. This is my personal camera and I love every aspect of it, I use it all the time for filming, photography and experimenting with long shutter and long exposure to create amazing photos. First of all, it has an F1.8 ZEISS Vario-Sonnar T lens with a wide aperture so it captures more of the shot. Secondly, the 20.2MP Exmor CMOS sensor on the camera captures light with great efficiency, and third, the powerful BIONZ processor produces smooth detail and exceptionally low noise. This is a compact camera which meant it was easy to transport. It is a DSLR-like camera as it has all the functions a DSLR without the size. It has a 1.0 type sensor meaning it is about 4x larger than most compact cameras. One of the best parts about this camera is the iso range. The Sony RX100 can shoot from 125-6400 iso meaning you can capture footage in any lighting. It uses a really powerful Exmor sensor which means you can capture really high quality video. It has a built in steady shot to remove any motion blur.

We used a tripod to make sure the shots were steady. We used a very basic one as you don't really need to spend too much on it.

For the lighting we used natural light. We filmed in the day so it wasn't a problem getting enough light and my camera works well in all conditions. Natural light is the best light as it fills the character better than having multiple soft-box's, which we did not have at our disposal.

Used a blue yeti microphone to record the keyboard typing (Foley). This is a studio microphone with extremely good audio quality.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

I made a video to answer the evaluation question, "Who would be the audience for your media product?". I decided to put a more creative twist to my evaluation answer in order to make it more interesting and enjoyable to watch. Below the video is the script I used for the video, which I stick to pretty much fully except from the outro which i did off the top of my head. As its the first time I have made a video like this so I am very happy about how this turned out. I put the tripod  on the top of my desk to film this with my camera facing down, I have done this previously along time ago when I used to time-lapse myself doing drawings which came in handy.

 

Hello this is Dylan Peach and this is my answer  to the evaluation question "who would be the audience for you media product?" Now who would be the audience for our media product, well lets take a look...

As you can see by the violence and disturbing images of blood and weapons this video can't be shown to a younger audience as it would be inappropriate. By watching this thriller opening alone I can guarantee that the British board of film classification would rate this as at least a 12A, however as the film continues it proceeds to have strong violence and more distressing images for young teenagers. It will also include sexual references, strong language with drug references making it all in all a 15.

This is okay though as the target demographic for cinema is around 16-24 year old's. Our thriller will be complex however enjoyable and satisfying for younger adults as it has exiting action scenes and plot twists throughout keeping them hooked until the very end. However the story line is very complex and can be interpenetrated in many ways, such as the film "Shutter Island" by Martin Scorsese.

The audience will be be heavily males, this is because it is a serious action/physiological thriller with a male heavy cast with only a few females (not including extras) in the film itself. This also means that older audiences will enjoy it just as much as people in their mid 20's would.

When we were planning our thriller we thought of the films we enjoyed because the target audience was to start from the age range of our group 16+. Me and Jak had taken a huge liking to films such as shutter island, seven and final destination therefore wanting to make a complex story for our audience to uncover. Even though it may not be as enjoyable for some rather than others in case they don't understand the story-line, this is a chance we were willing to make in order to provide a film which sticks in your sub conscious giving the film a long lasting affect.  The films with the strongest plot twists and story's often stay in peoples memories longer as they are more impactful, and that's the way we wanted to do it.

This would not be an independent film, however there would be no main celebrity starring as the main role. This means the viewers would have to be attracted by reviews/ websites and adverts meaning the majority of premiere views will be spontaneous movie watchers or film buffs. 

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

This is my answer to the question, "What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?" For this answer I made a power point and then uploaded it to SlideShare, after that I copied the html code to embed it into this blog post. Here I made a recording of myself reading the presentation however i do slip up here and there.

How does the media product represent particular social groups

 This is a prezi I made about Social groups and how they are represented in our thriller.

Film Production Companies

For my research on film production companies I decided to focus on Universal Studios.

Universal Studios is an American film studio owned by Comcast.The company was founded in 1912 by Carl Laemmle, Mark Dintenfass, Charles O. Baumann, Adam Kessel, Pat Powers, William Swanson, David Horsley, Robert H. Cochrane, and Jules Brulatour, and is the oldest surviving film studio in the United States.

Its studios are located in Universal City, California and its corporate offices are located in New York.

The top 10 highest earning Universal Studio Films are (1 being highest earning):

1	Jurassic World		$1,670,400,637
2	Furious 7		$1,516,045,911
3	Minions		$1,159,398,397
4	Jurassic Park ‡		$1,029,153,882
5	Despicable Me 2		$970,761,885
6	The Secret Life of Pets		$875,436,077
7	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ‡		$792,910,554
8	Fast & Furious 6		$788,679,850
9	Fast Five		$626,137,675
10	The Lost World: Jurassic Park		$618,638,999

Propp and Todorov Theories

Todorov’s Theory of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium: 

1) Equilibrium: Everything is how it should be.
2) Disequilibrium: The state of the equilibrium has been disrupted.
3) Recognition: It is recognized that a disruption has occurred.
4) Fixing the Problem: An attempt is made to fix the problem.
5) A New Equilibrium: Everything is how it should be again,although there may be a few differences.

An example of Todorov's theory is in the 2005 Thriller, The descent. We can see the equilibrium of the narrative when the characters are seen rafting. They are all shown having a laugh and a good time as a close group of friends. The disruption from this point is when the central character, Sarah is in the car with her husband and daughter. Their car comes into collision with another van and her husband and daughter are killed. Sarah soon wakes in hospital to find out that they are dead, this is the recognition stage of this part in the narrative. Sarah and her friends soon begin to try and repair their lives and relationships by setting out on another team adventure, caving. There then is a scene where the group of girls are in a cabin camping for the night, it could be debated that this is the new equilibrium for the characters as they are having a laugh and good time again and rebuilding relationships. From this point, the process starts again and there is an equilibrium where the girls are setting off to the caves. They are enjoying themselves and looking forward to do a new activity. As the girls enter the caves and begin to explore them a disruption occurs when the characters find out that Juno has taken them to a completely different cave than they were meant to and they are lost. This also involves the recognition as they realise what has happened and that they are lost. In their attempt to repair the situation they begin to work together to try and find their way out of the caves. Their is no new equilibrium at this point as the characters struggle to do so. The whole narrative of The Descent is full of little cycles of Todorov’s narrative. With the characters becoming trapped under rocks etc. However, the main Disruption of the film is when the creatures in the caves are discovered and they begin to hunt and kill the characters. There is a strong recognition stage as the characters realise what is happening and begin to repair by trying to kill and escape the caves in order to survive. It is again very debatable whether there is a new equilibrium at the end of the film as all the characters are dead apart from Sarah. However, Sarah is lastly shown staring at an illusion of her daughter. She seems content and this could be seen as her personal equilibrium as she has accepted the situation she’s in and seems happy just to see her daughter again

Propp's Character Theory:

• The Hero – a character that seeks something.
• The Villain – who tries to oppose the hero.
• The Donor – provides an object of significant power.
• The Dispatcher – who sends the hero on his/her quest via a message.
• The False hero – who disrupts the hero’s journey by making false claims.
• The Helper – who aids the hero.
• The Princess – acts as a reward for the hero.
• Her Father – who acts to reward for the hero.

 This can be seen in the 1977 Science fiction film, Star Wars, A new hope.

• The Hero – Luke Skywalker, he looks to become a Jedi and defeat the evil Darth Vader.
• The Villain – Darth Vader, he looks to rein terror across the galaxy and defeat Luke Skywalker.
• The Donor – Obi-Wan Kenobi presents Luke with a Lightsaber, a weapon only worthy of a Jedi.
• The Dispatcher – R2D2, he lands near Luke’s home with a message from Princess Leia.
• The Princess – Leia, The princess of Alderaan, needs saving from the Empire.
• The Helper – Han Solo, alongside Chewbacca he accompanies Luke on missions.
• The Father – Darth Vader, acting as the evil Dark Lord, he isn’t revealed to be the father until later on.

Decorum Poster (+BTS)

For my thriller i decided to make a poster for it. I really like how this came out and how much it looks like a "real" film poster. I even made all the little white text at the bottom myself and also added a "vector productions" logo for added authenticity. Below I explain how I made this in case anyone is interested.

 

First of all this is all done in Adobe Photoshop CC 2017. Some of my previous work on my blog has been done on Adobe Photoshop CS6 however a few days ago I made the upgrade as I needed a lot of the new utensils in the CC version of Premiere so I upgraded Photoshop as well because it was convenient at the time . No plugins are needed for this, and you could do this on previous versions of Photoshop if desired.

The red and white title was inspired/remade from the famous thriller film "Black Rock". I just loved the text and thought it would look great on mine so I re-made it. I did this buy making a red/dark red gradient on the text then adding a grunge texture on top. I then used the "linear light" blend mode whilst attached to my text which created the "grunge" effect. After that I added a nice shadow to make sure it stood out.

I added an eye into the barrel of the gun. Most thriller posters have close-ups of faces in them and as Jak's face is blurred out I wanted to have a work around for it. I came up with some different ideas like Jak being in the reflection of my eye close up but instead I just went for this look. I really like it, it really does look creepy.

Little touches you may have noticed:

Made the gun black as it had lots of blue marks and copied the "shine" from the left edge of the gun to the right as well so its clear in front of the black silhouette of Jak's hoodie. 

Director research

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock is a famous English film director and producer. He's referred to as the "The Master of Suspense". Some of his most famous films are Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo. Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as one of the most influential directors in cinematic history.

Hitchcock's films were extensively storyboarded to the finest detail. He was reported to have never even bothered looking through the viewfinder, since he did not need to.

Colour Correction

 Here are a few frames from our thriller opening, raw file will be above and below frame will be with colour correction. I use Lumetri Colour and Sharpen on Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017.

Location shots

 For this shot we filmed in our Film/Media Studies teacher's office. It was good for our shot however I did have to blur out the personal pictures behind in post-production.

 This is Jak's shed in his back garden.We did the majority of the filming in here because it had good lighting and had the perfect look that we wanted.

This is a shot of Jak and I in a tunnel. No one was around when we filmed this which helped us concentrate. The setting had a grunge look to it being a dirty tunnel filled with graffiti, making it a good dull background which would work perfectly in our video.