The most important thing that you can do in a thriller is to get the opening correct. This is because if you cannot keep the audience enticed then you lose them. The opening sequence should tell the audience about the film but you should not give the plot away. You should show some characters but not get to know anything about them so far other than what can be told by their costumes, attitudes or diegetic sound. You should include some titles in the opening sequence of the film which we have included four and then the actual title 'The Haunting' at the end. In our product we have decided to use many different conventions which are typical of the thriller genre. We decided to make all of our clips darker by using the fast colour corrector because we thought that this would make the clips look a lot darker and scarier. Some of the clips were done in daytime and this is not very typical of the thriller convention as quite a lot of the time thrillers are in the darker periods of the day or are filmed in bad weather. On the clip of the table tipping we decided that we would choose an effect which made the clip in the middle of the shot focused and then on the outside of the circle there it is just black. We decided to do this because we thought that this would make people focus on the shot in the middle of the clip rather than looking anywhere else. Although there is not really anything else to focus on, we wanted to make this the main feature of the clip because it is scary and also begins to hint on the storyline and what it is about. We have chosen to put dip to black on lots of our shots also because we thought that this would make the clip seem darker. If we had chosen to dip to white then that would not have really been relevant because it would not be follow the typical conventions of the thriller genre. The dip to black is more relevant because our thriller intends to be dark and moving and we don’t want to make the clips seem light and happy.
How does your media represent particular social groups?
When we began to research into thriller films we decided that a questionnaire would be a suitable way to find out the information that we needed. The majority of the people that we got answers from were young adults and we thought that an age group from about 16-25 would be a good age group to aim our thriller clip towards. These age groups are the ones who are most likely to watch thriller films because it is what they find interesting and fun to watch. This meant that we had to create a storyline which would excite them. We used actors who are 16-17 because this is relevant to the audience. We decided to wear normal clothing which is relevant to teenagers as we wanted them to feel as though they can relate to the film. I wore jeans, a jumper and UGG boots and Lizzie was wearing a blouse, leggings and military boots as these are just typical clothing of teenagers.
It also shows that they are not expecting to be going anywhere dangerous because if they were going to be in danger then they would be wearing provocative clothing instead. Also because it is not too dark it shows that the characters did not intend on staying too late Who would be the audience for your media product? If people were wanting to watch ‘The Haunting’ then I think that the most suitable audience would be younger adults who are interested in paranormal thrillers and being excited by films which are fast moving. If people enjoy watching other films such as Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch Project then they would enjoy watching ‘The Haunting’ because we tried to base our film around the opening scenes of these films. I think that the appropriate age grouping would be 16-25 year olds as these are young adults. The film could not be aimed at anybody under the age of the 15 because this could cause problems as some of the footage is not suitable for them. If people had watched movies similar to this before then they may want to watch this film because it is something that they would be able to relate to. Another reason that I feel comfortable with saying that 16-25 year olds would be a good social group to aim my film at is because they are an age group which at the moment due to 'paranormal activity' movies and 'most haunted' on television, they are most interested in ghost walks. It is something that they don't quite know what to expect from it and this makes them want to keep watching as they cannot predict what might happen.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
If I was going to distribute my media then I would most probably choose 'Warp Films' as they are an independent film distributor and they would more than likely fit in with my budget and location which are smaller and not as great as I would like. 'Warp Films' produced the film 'Hush' (2008) which is a thriller film and this is another reason that I feel that 'Warp Films' would do well to distribute my film because they have experience within the genre.
If my film had a larger budget then I would definitely want it to be distributed by a large company such as 'Universal' or 'Warner Bros' as they produce films which are high grossing. They have a lot of control when they want to distribute the films and with their marketing as they have a lot more money than small English companies such as 'Warp Films'. 'Warner Bros' would be a good distributor for my thriller film because they have distributed other thriller films such as 'Harry Potter' 'The Dark Knight' and 'Inception' before and made huge figures. These are all films that I have enjoyed and they manage to make lots of people want to watch them by the large amounts of marketing that they do.
Harry Potter has produced so far 7 films over 10 years and made $6,369,345,142 which is a humungous amount of money. All of the films have been directed by different people because different images and inspiration have come from them all. The series is the highest grossing of all time.
The Dark Knight (2008) was directed by Christopher Nolan and had a budget of about $185 million and they had a gross revenue of $1,001,921,825.
Inception (2010) was directed by Christopher Nolan, the same as The Dark Knight. They had a budget of about $160 million and they produced a gross revenue of $825,531,030.
When we were filming we have found out quite a lot about technology. This is because we had a few problems with the actual camera when we went to film for the first time at our first location. When the camera was taken to Tutbery Castle the battery ran out which meant that after the long drive to Tutbery that we could not even get the footage that we wanted and needed for the thriller clip. To try and get past this problem, some videos were shot on an iPhone, although this was a good idea, unfortunately the footage did not come out as well as we had hoped it would have done as it was shaky and also we could not put it onto Adobe Premiere anyway because it was not in the correct format. The second time that we went to film was at our new location, Attenborough Church.
We also had technology problems when we went to this location because when we began to film it was over exposed and you could not see any of the building or any of our faces. The only part of us that came up was the darker parts of our clothing as shown in the image below. We began to film anyway as we hoped that we would be able to change the lighting on Adobe Premiere.
When it started to get darker the camera began to also show us up more on the camera and the building so we decided that we would redo all of the shots that we had already done. This came up a lot better but it was still far too over exposed and this meant that when we got back to our lessons we could not use a lot of the footage that we had already shot. This was the second time that we had had problems with technology and unfortunately was not the last. The third time that we went to film we did not have any problems with the camera technology which was fortunate and we were able to film the shots that we needed. The last time that we went to film, we were out in some fields and we lost all of the battery. This wasted some of the remaining time that we have and this was not a lot of time at all. Overall the main technology problems that we had with the camera was the travelling so far to Tutbery and then the battery losing power and then the over exposure of the camera when we filmed for the second time. Both of these technology problems wasted a lot of our time and have shown when we have had to edit and put our work together. We also had technology problems when we were using Adobe Premiere because we have a lot of footage and this meant that Adobe Premiere had a few problems with managing it all and it crashed many times. Sometimes we were fortunate to have saved our work but at other times when it stopped responding we lost all of the work that we had produced in the lesson. This also caused us to lose time because we had to start producing all of the work that we had done again.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When I look back on my preliminary task I did not really understand what I needed to do within the editing as we had a large group and they wanted to take over more. This meant that I did not get the option really to help with the editing. I also played part as one of the actors in the preliminary task which meant that I did not get to look at how to use the camera.
Fortunately I am quite good with cameras so when I needed to use the camera in the filming for our Thriller it was easy to get used to. On our first trip to our location there was only three of us and I mainly did the filming and then went on to the set as it is easy to cut out the parts which were not needed e.g. me getting into place for the scene. I found using the camera easy and not difficult at all although we did have some problems on our first filming session. When we arrived at our location the camera was far too over-exposed and we looked through all of the settings and could not change it. We tried to change the brightness and nothing happened so at the beginning we had a few problems with the camera. This meant that when it started to become darker that we had to get the most footage as possible before it went too dark that nothing could be seen. When we got back to the lessons and had to edit this was where it took quite a lot of time. This was because when we had done our preliminary task as other participants in other groups we did not get to do a lot of work in Adobe Premiere so we did not really know how to use the program. We all gradually learnt to use the program but it took longer than it probably should have done. I have definitely learnt how to use the program well and I do not have any problems with it anymore other than when the program crashes itself.
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