After very thorough planning and deep research, me and three others produced a two minute opening of a thriller film together. Whilst using our creativity skills and imagination to produce our own movie, we also attempted to include many typical thriller conventions that you usually see in modern thriller films. Our aim from the start was to challenge and develop forms and conventions of real media products.
In our film there are several moments where it is clear that generic conventions have been incorporated into it. We used both certain camera shots and camera movements to achieve this. For example, we used numerous ‘point of view’ (POV) shots in order for the audience to see things from certain characters perspectives. One specific example of this is when the villain of the thriller spies on a meeting which is taking place. Additionally, we used camera movements like a tilt in order to reveal things gradually which draws the audience in and makes the film more exciting. This was used the main character steps out of her car
to go to her meeting. The events in our thriller opening take place in a backwards like order which creates a sort of ‘flashback’ effect – a scene is established to the audience and then they are shown how things led up to it. The shot of the opening is of several objects lying on the ground. As the audience sees this a sense of mystery is created as they try to work out what the objects are there for and what they are representing. Also throughout the two minute film there is music, which is non diegetic, playing on top of the footage which changes tempo at certain times in order to help create a suspenseful feel for the audience. One way of how we challenged the typical conventions in our thriller, is how the takes become shorter as the tension builds up. Furthermore, the way we pre
sented our titles/credits is an example of how we developed typical thriller conventions. Our inspiration for our titles/credits came from the film ‘Se7en’. Here is a picture of our credits whilst we were editing them
in Final Cut Express.
Here is the credits from the film "Se7en"
After watching the thriller movie taken, we thought that the idea of having a kidnapping plot is very effective in meeting typical conventions of thrillers. By using this as our plot we knew we could bring mystery, excitement and action to our piece. Here is a screen print from Final Cut Express which shows examples of the different shots and techniques we used in our kidnap scene.
We didn’t focus too much on representing certain social groups within our product however; it could be argued that it represents middle-class who are white British race. It could also be suggested that we represented gender in a stereotypical way due to the fact that we decided that our victim would be a woman – women are usually seen to be more vulnerable than man. If our thriller was to be produced by a Hollywood studio such as ‘Paramount Pictures’ then obviously a wider range of social groups could be represented which in turn, would increase the target audience’s interest.
I believe that our thriller could be produced by a major mainstream Hollywood studio because of all the typical and successful features that we took into account when making our piece – it shares characteristics with many other modern thriller films that mainstream studios have already made. If the film was to be produced then improvements would certainly be made as more money would go into the making of the film. For example, better settings like a famous city could be used. The thriller would be released for pure entertainment purposes however; I can see opportunities for sequels could arise at a later stage because of the nature of the film.
The audience for the thriller would mainly be males with a smaller number of females too from the age of twelve upwards. This is because instead of using, for example; blood, gore, violence and dialogue to create thrilling tension and suspense we used sound and different camera/editing techniques to create a ‘thriller feel’. As a result, our film is suitable for a younger audience, unlike other thrillers, though it has the same effect on the audience.
Before we could make our thriller opening, we had to attract and address our audience. We did this by researching the ‘Film Certification Guidelines’ and as a result decided our film would be a 12 rating. We also gave out questionnaires to gain more of an insight into what people want from a thriller film. One particular moment in the thriller opening which
would appeal to younger members of the audience is the shot of the kidnapper grabbing the victim as it is very sudden and not expected. A POV shot was used in this take which has the effect of making the audience feel more involved and as if they are there ‘in the movie’. This draws the audience in more to the film. This is a screen print from Final Cut Express which shows examples of the POV shots that we used. The camera equipment we used was good however, use of a high definition camera obviously would have been better – this was never too much of an issue. We certainly made the best of what was available for us to use. The main problem we had when filming was the lack of charged batteries. We had to charge up a battery before we could commence with our filming which in turn, slowed us down. However, once we were over this hurdle, filming went well. I personally found the editing software, ‘Final Cut Express, very challenging at first. However, with the help of the rest of group and began to improve my skills and knowledge of the software. I am definitely more confident now when using the software. Another software we used for our music was ‘Garage Band’ which I found a lot easier to function. There were no problems with this. We took two different bits of music from a Royalty Free music website and then mixed them together to create a new piece of music.
As a result of our research onto other thrillers, we were aware that we had to have an effective contrast in the length of takes and we also had a better understanding of what effect different shot types had. I definitely feel extremely more confident with all the equipment.
Overall, I feel our project was very successful taking into account the few limitations we had. Obviously without these it could have been better but I feel we did as good a job as possible.
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