Evaluation

Evaluation

I have learnt a great deal about editing technology in particular whilst constructing our media product. Before we started our media product I just about knew how to hold a camera, however now I know all of the basic things as well as advanced. The first thing I learnt about the technology was how to hold the camera steadily and how to keep it in that position. This is extremely important as if the footage is wonky or out of place it ruins the whole continuity and realism.

One obvious way as to how our media product develops the forms and conventions of real media products is that we use typical ideas and themes used in previous media products.. For instance, our genre is the crime/thriller and to represent the crime thriller genre we show the audience a lonely character throughout who comes across as scary. This immediately supports the crime thriller genre as in real media product they usually convey a lonely, troubled character.

                The locations were also very carefully constructed in order to be empty. This represents the emptiness inside the main character. Also it again gives the audience that creepy spooky feeling. However, if we could do our media product over again, I would shoot it in the evening so it is dark and gives it that freakier scary feeling even more than it already does.

                We decided to dress our main character in plain clothes so the attention is constantly drawn just to his face and his props. His main prop throughout the opening sequence is the orange plastic bag. We used the orange colour as t stands out and obviously we want this prop to stand out the most. Also all the other colours throughout the film are so dull and grey therefore the orange clearly stands out.

                The main character throughout also has a very blank facial expression and scared almost body expressions. These again challenge the forms and conventions of real media products as most main characters in scary films are troubled etc.

                Throughout our media product we have also used slow music. I chose to use slow music as I think it builds up the suspense and creates tension towards the audience.This again develops the forms and conventions of real media products due to the fact the majority of thriller films would also use music which builds up suspense.       

                Our title is ‘The outsider’. Again we chose this as we believe it to be sharp and simple but yet effective just like other real media products such as ‘Scream’ and ‘Saw’. It is in the text of ‘Century gothic’ . We chose to have our font in this as It creates that spooky atmosphere and it is quite modern.

                We used one special effect of ‘masking’ where we cut off the victims head. At first we wasn’t sure whether to use this as we didn’t want it to look to fake and ammature but we kept trying and finally got it looking realistic. We also used colour correction and made the colours very dull and pale again to add to that spooky feeling.

          The editing program we used was Sony Vegas the online linear editing system. From Sony Vegas I learnt a great deal. From how to cut clips, to color grading etc. Personally I think the most advanced and interesting factor I learnt whilst editing with Sony Vegas, is speeding up clips. In one scene of our product you see our main character on a bridge with cars beneath him. To add effect and tension, I thought it would be a good idea to see the cars speeding etc whilst our main character was just standing still. Therefore, we sped the clip up which consequently shows the cars going extremely fast whilst everything else is just still.

          Another editing technique I learnt was color grading. This is very effective and helpful as our main character was being portrayed as a psycho and to add to that freaky feeling we changed the color of his face to very very pasty and white which conveyed the psycho feel. Furthermore I also learned how to organize footage and how to cut the clips appropriately.

Personally I think Revolver Entertainment would distribute our media product. Revolver Entertainment is a multi-award winning, marketing-led, all rights film distributor that gives the industry a unique, approach to managing releases. It was founded in 1997, and the company has operations in both London and Los Angeles.

Revolver Entertainment distributed the British film ‘Kidulthood’ in 2006 written by Noel Clarke. Revolver also distributed crime thrillers such as Tell No one. Therefore, by Revolver having distributing Kidulthood and ‘Tell no one’, this is one main re4ason as to why I believe Revolver would distribute our film.
          This is because, Kidulthood has a target audience of roughly the age 16 and over, and that is the same as our target audience. Furthermore, Kidulthood shows dangerous minds, just like our main character in our film. Another similarity between our film and kidulthood is the fact that it is filmed mainly outdoors and around the streets which is where our central locations are based.
          Moreover, seeing as our main genre is horror/thriller, revolver having distributed horror films before makes me even more positive that they would distribute our product. Therefore as they have already distributed similar films they know how to appeal to the target audience.
          Furthermore, it would be an extremely good opportunity for our film to be distributed in Europe as they released a French thriller called ‘Gela Babluani’s’.

From my preliminary task now to my final product I feel as if I have learnt an extremely great deal. I have learnt how to use the steady cam by myself, I have learnt how to use the Sony Vegas editing software and many techniques throughout using the Sony Vegas software. However, more importantly I have learnt how much effort and time has to go into media and how important it Is to keep call lists and location shots etc as it all does make it worthwhile and easier in the long run.

The first three images are from our preliminary task, whereas the last three images our from our final media product. As we can see the first three images from the preliminary task show m,ore of establishing and two shots. Whereas from the last three shots we can see that our camerawork got more advanced as obviously we was developing more skills. For example the lost shot is a window shot where we are seeing the character but from the other side of the window.Were also seeing more close ups and the first shot where the character is looking through the shelves also conveys how we improved our camera work as we got to know the steady cam. Furthermore we also used more shot reverse shots and low and high angle shots in our real media product, again due to the fact i became more confident with the steady cam.

We used Sony Vegas pro to edit our preliminary task and our real media product. However, I think I used Sony Vegas pro more effectively whilst using it for our real media product as I kept improving my skills from when I edited the preliminary task. We chose top use montage editing with our real media product as we thought it would give the opening sequence that spooky creepy effect that we want the audience to feel.    In our preliminary we did not choose to do this but we followed the 180 degree rule and used shot reverse shots and match on action as they were essential to the task.

                Personally I think that the most useful and complicated factor I learnt through using Sony Vegas pro was how to speed up footage and colour correction.When I first attempted to speed up the footage of the cars speeding up I found it extremely hard, however I then got the hang of it and now find it much easier and also very useful to use whilst editing things. Moreover, Colour correction is a very effective technique to know and was very useful for our final media product as we edited it so the main character was extremely pale which added that spooky feeling!

                On the other hand when we added the sound track I did not find it very challenging. First of all we added the sound track ‘Mad world’. However we soon came to realise that we could not use it as we would be accused of copy right. Therefore now we have just settled for another sound track which still gives the opening sequence that creepy feeling.

                In conclusion, I think throughout the coursework and filming and editing our final product I have learnt a great deal in a short amount of time. I am very happy to say I have learnt so much about camera work and now know how to use the steady cam by myself and know all of the aspects about the steady cam. Also the fact that I can use Sony Vegas confidently and edit individually is a great achievement.

Prop List

For our opening sequence we are conveying the crime/thriller genre therefore the props we will require are:
Fake Knife
Fake Blood
Ropes
Chair
Mirror
Yellow forensic tape

Preliminary Task

Genre Research

The genre my group is portraying in our opening sequence of a film is ‘Crime thriller’. Thriller is a genre that uses suspense tension and excitement as its main elements. The primary sub genres are crime (in which we are going to convey in our opening sequence), mystery and psychological. The biggest and possibly the most popular thriller movies are the Hitchcock movies.

The main themes that are in Crime thriller movies are mainly ransoms, captivities, revenge, heists and kidnappings and murder. Some crime thriller films that involve serial killing and murder are: Seven-1995 American film directed by David Fincher, A Perfect murder-1998 American film directed by Andrew Davis and silence of the lambs-1991 American film directed by Jonathon Demme. Whereas some crime thriller films that involve heists or robberies are: The Score-2001 directed by Frank Oz, The killing-1956 directed by Stanley Kubrick and Resevoir dogs-1992 American film directed and written by Quentin Tarantino.

The general mise en scene/iconography used in crime thriller involves dark gloomy locations. The lighting is generally dark and gloomy which is very conventional as it relates with the dark themes of the storyline. The majority of the characters in the thriller films are also dressed in dark clothing. However the contrast between one dark color and one brighter color in crime thriller films is a typical convention of many thrillers and the brighter color would usually be red-which represents blood. Again the makeup worn by the characters would also be very dark, however again it could use some red blood and maybe some contact lenses e.g. white contact/red contact lenses to create the whole horror/thriller feel to the audience.

The typical setting in a crime thriller film would again usually be a dark place to again convey to the audience the dark gloomy feel of all the themes that are being portrayed to them. Some typical settings are dark empty forests, dark alleyways and empty rooms. These are all used to convey the dark and scary feeling the darkness and the emptiness are used to create suspense building up inside the audience. One of my favorite settings used in thriller films is the setting in ‘Friday the 13^th’-1990 is the lake scene towards the end as it shows the dark misty lake and the sky almost changing to an orange color to represent the mood possibly changing.

In crime/thriller films characters are usually represented in similar ways. The director usually has a naive young female character, a ‘tough’ male character, the evil murderer and other characters to make up the group. E.g the characters that already know they are going to die in film therefore they take part in the drink taking and drug taking (e.g the group in scream). The director also usually uses a police man who either nearly finds out who the murderer is or the answer to the case, or sometimes he does find out, but then get kills before he can tell anyone.

The narrative of thriller/horror films usually starts with a murder or a killing or a character dying. We are then introduced to the main character who is usually the ‘final girl’. A series of killings usually then takes place and the audience are used clueless but are given small clues to keep them guessing who the murderer is. However in some films the audience knows straight away who the killer is they are just left guessing who is going to be killed next. In films such as ‘Halloween’ the identity of the murderer is known from the beginning through the opening sequence. The murders he then commits then get progressively gorier throughout the film. All attempts to stop him fail until ‘the final girl’ puts an end to it all.

Introduction

My name is Tai Ellis and I am in a group of three with Konstantin Ermakov and Corey Fielder. We are doing an opening sequence to a crime/thriller movie and throughout my blog I am going to show some of the individual research I completed throughout shooting the film and planning the film.

Target Audience

To help us determine our target audience please fill in the questionnaire below.

How old are you?

What is your favourite genre?

Do you prefer true story lines?

Why do you like/dislike crime thrillers?

What would encourage you to see a crime thriller?

How many crime thrillers do you normally watch per year?