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The Storyline
After our preliminary task had finished being filmed and edited, our attention was immediately drawn towards the main task as we knew we would have to make an early start on it to think of as many different ideas and locations that we could possibly think of, in order to make sure our main task goes smoothly and, is not in any way rushed and that we achieve the desired standard of work that we are aiming for.
We, as a media group came up with several different ideas and storylines, for our thriller opening sequence. We came up with numerous ideas both individually and collectively as a group. To narrow our choice of ideas, and to find which idea we would be using for our main task, we had eliminated some of the ideas that would have been too hard to film and the ideas that had a far too complex storyline for our three minute sequence. We also eliminated the ideas that did not completely fall under the thriller genre. This may have been because some of the initial ideas that we had come up with, were more horror based, then a typical thriller genre.
The final idea/storyline that we had come up with was about an 18 year old, teenage girl who is dead on her bedroom floor, with two detectives standing above her. What appears to be suicide, is truthfully revealed, with a series of flashbacks to enhance the events taking place and to build suspense and tension. Later in the scene, it is obvious that she had been murdered whilst, on the computer; talking to her friend on IM. After the teenager had been murdered, it appears that the murderer then replaces everything making the room look orderly again and makes the incident look as if it was suicide ... or is it that obvious?
Below are some of the initial storyboards that we came up with as a group, illustrating he description of the sequence (above) ....
We then looked at which age group our media product would be aimed at and why. The age group that we believed our media product would most appeal to, was teenagers aged between 16-21.The sequence would appeal to this age bracket more because the girl in the extract that was murdered was a teenager. The actress used, combined with the stereotypical mise-en-scene of a teenage girl’s room, would appeal more to teenagers then people of an older demographic. It would also make teenagers of the age bracket chosen to be more engaged and interested in the sequence as compared to older adults beyond the age of 21. This is because, the storyline is an over exaggerated plot/storyline, as compared to the reality that the teenagers/young adults are currently living.
The Location
The location that our group needed to film in was extremely difficult to find. The sequence is based in the bedroom of a young teenage girl with a desk and a computer, which doesn't sound THAT hard to find! However, the sequence required a "dead" actress on the bedroom floor, with two detectives standing above her, as well as space for the camera crew and filming equipment, for which we would need a reasonably large room.
The first room we looked at was my own bedroom. Although i was able to lie on the floor as if i were dead, the room did not provide enough space for the detectives to stand and the camera crew to be in with the equipment. Also my room could be seen as a typical teenage girl's room but did not look as obvious enough and the group were not too happy with the mise-en-scene. Also ideally we wanted a desktop computer which i did not have either, and thus my room was ruled out and the search continued...
Here are some pictures of my room...
We then moved on to looking at another member of or media group's room, (Calum's room). We looked at filming in his conservatory area; however, this area was not suitable to film in because although there was a fair amount of space, there were large items of furniture around the area required to film in, that we would not be able to move, but rather have to work around. This would be rather awkward to film. Also the mise-en-scene that we had in mind of a typical teenage girl's room is not at all offered by Calum's conservatory. Therefore we decided that this location was too unsuitable for the filming of the main task. Below are some pictures to illustrate what Calum's conservatory looks like, with regards to us not being able to use it...
We then moved on to looking at yet another member of our group's bedrooms (Zoe's bedroom). Her room looked ideal was it was a stereotypical, teenage girls room, with regards to the mise-en-scene. However, there there was not enough space to work with, with regards to the actors, camera equipment and camera crew to be in and thus Zoe's room was also unsuitable to use for the filming of our main task. Below are some pictures of Zoe's room and the space that was limited an caused us not using it...
Finally, when we thought all hope was lost, we had asked a friend from the college we attend, if we would be able to film in her room (Elanor's bedroom). After being granted permission to view her room we had decided that it was a very good room to use. This was because her room is very spacious, features a desktop computer, which is vital for our sequence and has a very stereotypical teenage girl's mise-en-scene which is of course what we are looking for. The includes the girly clothes, a female mannequin and of course...girly posters! Below, are some pictures taken of Elanor's room, illustrating the female teenager's mise-en-scene, as well as the space which is adequate to cater for the actors, filming equipment and camera crew.
After much deliberation as a group, we had decided without a doubt, that we would film at Elanor's house as mentioned earlier, it is the best location to use that we could find. This is because of the large amount of space that we need for our sequence, the mise-en-scene being of what you would expect a typical teenager to have, and because her room featured a desktop computer which was crucial for our thriller opening sequence.
The Script
We, collectively as a group, came up with the initial script, that would be used in the final sequence. The whole group was very pleased with the script, because of the way it was written and the dialogue used in the script. This is because the dialogue had a very realistic tone and approach and showed a certain level of professionalism with regards to what the officer's say. An image of the draft script is shown below...
Can't see this clearly? Click here to view full size image...
The Actors
The actors that we asked to use for our, thriller sequence, all attended our sixth form college. The main protagonist, who is found dead on the floor, is a drama student, currently studying at A-Level, A2. She studies both media studies and drama which we thought would be perfect, as she has had previous acting experience. Also, she is eighteen years of age, making her the ideal candidate for our stereotypical teenager.
Charlotte Leslie - The Protagonist
The First detective, Michael, has is very well spoken young man. Although he is only seventeen years of age, he is a lot older than he looks as he has a very defined jaw line, and is very tall, thus also making him look older.
Michael Scorer - Detective One
Detective number two, otherwise known as Mike, also look a lot older than his actual age of seventeen which is why we asked him to act for our thriller sequence, as he looks very mature for his age.
Mike Elsayed - Detective Two
Our murderer, is Stephen, though the audience do not see what he looks like, he has a very big build, making the scene more tense than us rather using an actor with a smaller build, which is why we asked Stephen to act, in our thriller sequence.
Stephen Chinnadorai - The Murderer
As some of our actor's were under the age of eighteen, a letter to the parents of these students, asking for consent, for the students to participate in our media project, was written by myself and Lauren, which is shown below...
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On Tuesday, 2nd February 2010, we borrowed the camera equipment from the college we attended, and gathered our actors to go and film at Elanor's house. Everything was in order and we believed the sequence to be a success.
Below is a video of our Main task...
When we filmed the first section of our main task, we had used fake blood, on our protagonist, which myself and a member of another media group (George Nicholls) had made from scratch. Before we had used the fake blood, we had made a tutorial video, on how to make fake blood. The sequence is starring myself and George and is filmed by Lauren Berridge, from my media group. It has also been edited by George. This video is shown below...
There were some points that we liked about our First Attempt, including...
- Using a wide range of camera angles, including Ecu's, Cu's, Mid Shots, Panning and a Master Shot.
- The sequence included a series of "fade to white" transitions, adding tension to the scene.
- These Fade to white transitions, combined with the noises of the camera blended in well with the scene.
- As mentioned earlier, Elanor's room provided our group with a good teenage girl's room, with regards to the mise-en-scene. This included the posters, mannequin, clothes and make up.
- The other mise en scene also looked very good. The crime scene tape made the scene seem more realistic and the suits worn by the two officers, looked very smart and professional. The camera around the neck of one of the two detectives made his profession seem more realistic also.
However there were a few points that we didn't like very much, including...
- Some shot being rather shaky.
- The sound altered from the detectives talking and the shot of the protagonist, which we were going to put music over anyway.
- Some of the transitions were not smooth at all but jump to the next scene.
- Also after viewing the clip we had decided that the titles did not look as good with the fade to white transitions, than what we had anticipated.
After the first fade to white transition, this flashback will be shown:
After the second fade to white transition, this flashback will be shown:
After the third fade to white transition, this flashback will be shown:
After the fourth and final, fade to white transition, this flashback will be shown:
After the flashbacks were inserted, we were much happier with the end result of our media product. Below, is a video of the main media task, with the flashbacks included...
After watching the main task through, several times, we as a group were not convinced that the product that we had created was as engaging as we first thought it was. Although it fitted in with the conventions and aspects of a typical thriller, it was not as sinister as some of the media products produced by other media groups. Although we portrayed typical conventions of the thriller genre, through the storyline of a murder, we thought we needed something else to add to this. This is because, in most thrillers, it is not usually just action based throughout the whole opening. It has subtle thriller conventions that builds up throughout the scene. A typical example of this with regards to a thriller film, is "The Godfather", which is said to be the best thriller movie of all time, according to Empire, and IMDB.
Here is a clip of the opening of The Godfather...
Click here to follow the link of this video...
As we can see, the music is very eerie and the dark setting helps build tension towards the scene. This is very simple yet it causes the audience to be engaged in the film. This is a prime example that the the opening of the thriller does not need to be action packed through out the whole sequence.
With regards to our own media task, we did not want to discard all of the hard work that we and our actors had put in previously. This encouraged us to use the existing sequences but to alter the storyline to make a more engaging sequence. Rather than having the task being based on just the death of the 19 year old girl, we waned it to have an alternative storyline. The storyline that we thought we could change it to is a father looking for the murderer of his daughter (this is when we use the sequences of the girl be murdered). This is because it makes the storyline seem much more engaging and also contains aspects of a conventional thriller genre.
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We wanted to insert various clips of our previous filming (of our female protagonist dying), as part of a series of flashbacks, we then wanted our male protagonist to wake up (with an extreme close up zooming out of his eye) walk into the kitchen, cook some eggs with the music in the background to be "How do you like your eggs in the morning?" by Dean Martin, before making a mysterious phonecall to the murderer of his daughter, (extreme close up of his mouth talking) expressing that hes been searching for the killer for a number of years and now that he's finally found the killer, he will seek revenge. Then the scene fades to black, with a crescendo of music, whilst the titles of he film roll, leaving a dramatic cliffhanger at the end of the scene.
Here is a copy of our new script...
Can't see this image clearly? Click here to view full size image...
The Added Voiceovers...
The first voiceover is by Tilly Guess. Her voice was ideal to use for the roomate at the beginning of the scene because her voice sounds very innocent and as Tilly is 17 years of age, it is very close to the age of the prodagonist (19) making it seem much more realistic.
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Tilly Guess - Roommate of Protagonist
The voice over of the mother was played by Lauren Anthony. Lauren has a very mature voice which makes her sound a lot older than her age making it perfect for her to play our voice for the mother. Not only does lauren sound older than her age but also is very well spoken which is an added benefit to the role of the mother making it seem more realistic.
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We had George Nicholls do a voice over as an unsympathetic police officer as he has a deep voice and sounds very mature for his age...
We used Calum Bowen from our media group because his role as the boss was a last minute idea and Calum also has a very deep, mature and sophisticated voice for the role...
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We chose the location for our male protagonist (the father) scene to be filmed at Calum's house. This is becaue the house contained the mise en scene for a typical household. Calums house also features a living room with easy access to the kitchen, which made it easy for us to film in also on the way to the kitchen from the living room., you pass a big pool table, illustrating that the protagonist is a man of wealth and luxury. More pictures of Calum's house are shown under "The Location" section of this post.
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The protagonist that was used for our main task was, Jack Higgs, a member of our media studies class. We asked Jack to act for us because he looks older than his age and has a deep, powerful voice which was crucial for the phonecall part of the scene.
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On the day of our filming, everything ran very smootly. We used a wide range of camera angles and props to enhance the meaning of the scene, such as the bottle of whiskey as the father wakes up, indicating and enhancing the impact which the father has been through after losing his daughter. Overall, we believed it to be a success and for it to be a big improvement to our second attempt.
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A few days later our group gathered at Zoe's house in order to edit our sequence. We all had something to contribute towards the editing process to make our sequence as tense and suspense building as possible. This included fade to white and fade to black transitions, the voice overs over the flashback sequences, and the dramatic music from the "drones", which was very useful for engaging the audience, especially with the crescendo at the end of the scene. We also inserted the song "How do you like your eggs in the morning?" making sure we were very careful at doing so, trying to get the egg to crack in time with the music and we were very sucessful in doing so. After a long day of editing we had decided that our media task was looking very good. We thought we could tweak a couple of parts with regards to the editing. For the editing process we used a software only compatible with Macbook's called iMovie and for the sound we used another piece of software called Garageband.
Below is our media task befre we had finalised the editing...
Whilst doing the final part of our editing, we thought about adding in a production company sequence at the start of our thriller, to give it a more realistic and professional effect. We then decided not to go ahead with this as it was more effective just having a black transition with red writing. Below is one of the ideas we came up with with our thriller opening company...
We had decided that the name of the thriller is going to be "The Hunt". This is because it is a very simple yet sinister title indicating that the main element to the thriller is the father persueing the killer to avenge his daughters death. The name of the killer is also "Mr. Hunt" which gives us even more reason to use "The Hunt" as the title of the film as it is clever with play-on words.
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Inspiration
There were a number of different elements from different movies that inspired us to produce our final media product. One of the first films which inspired us was the film "Psycho" (1960). During the shower scene there is a lot of suspense being built up with the raging noise of the shower. After the protagonist is killed, there is a shot of a close up of her eye, gradually zooming out. We felt that this was very effective for building tension and used a similar shot in our own media product.
More information about the movie "Psycho" can be found under the "Thrillers..." post. Below is a video of the shower scene which had inspired us with our task...
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Another film that inspired us was the movie "Taken" (2008). This film is about a daughter being abducted. There was a scene in this movie that had inspired us with our protagonist on the phone talking to the killer of his daughter. This encouraged us to have a similar scene in our own media task as we all found the scene very engaging. The phonecall scene from Taken, is shown below...
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Below is a video of our final main task - Thriller Opening Sequence with all of the editing being complete...
Evaluation
After we had finished filming and editing our thriller opening, we promptly began our evaluation. We all did an equal amount of work on our own using a Powerpoint Presentation software. We then gathered everyones work and merged them into one presentation which we filmed ourselves presenting in front of an audience.
Here is the finished presentation of our evaluation...
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Here are some comment YouTube users posted after watching our Final Thriller Opening Sequence...
