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

Since the preliminary task I think I have learnt new skills along with developing and improving the skills I already had. At the beginning I learned basic techniques and rules like match on action, over shoulder shot, the 180 degree rule and how to use either low-key or high-key lighting. These helped me create a successful final product that followed the rules and conventions of a perfect opening sequence.

I used these conventions and technologies throughout my opening sequence to make it more effective and to help it look realistic, so it was easier for my audience to understand and follow. I have also learnt many technical skills like Live Type which I had never used before, and found extremely difficult to begin with, as I was putting myself down and telling myself I couldn't do it. In my preliminary task I didn't use titles, therefore this was completely new for me. My skills in iMovie also improved along with camera skills, as I had studied and researched more thriller opening sequences, the more I was able to really see through the lens of a director and how a scene would be best shot.
I also learnt a more theory side of creating a film. This involved understanding the different conventions to certain genres and the industry of film making. I learnt to use a range of camera angles, movement and lighting to help create a tense atmosphere and allow the audience to understand the events that are happening.
However, I do think that the preliminary task was extremely beneficial as it gave us a taster as to what we were going to do, and what we had to do for it. Although I do believe that I have progressed incredibly from my preliminary task, and this is shown from my opening sequence.
Here is a contact sheet from my opening sequence, showing the different shots that I have used:

This blog has been marked. SJA 08/05/11

Thriller Opening

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

During the construction of our opening sequence, we were given various media technologies to experiment with.
When filming we were given camera's to use, however as I was the only member from my group that had done media for the previous two years, I was already familiar with the layout of the camera, so this benefited our group greatly. Aswell as hand holding our camera, we were also given tri-pods to use, to help steady some of our shots. This was a new technology for the whole of our group, as I had never needed to use one previously. We also used a fig rig, a construction wheel that is beneficial for tracking shots. We did a few tracking shots of the scenary, and as the scenary was one of our key theme in our opening sequence, we needed to make sure it was filmed and the fig rig was used to perfection.

Once we had completed our filming, we then had to upload our film onto the Macs. Macs specialise in movie editing, and although it took some adjustment and time to get use to, after we had stayed behind school for a few days and played around, we soon enough got the hang of the Macs, and learnt where to save our work to etc.

Once we had uploaded our movie onto the macs, we then had to open it with iMovie.
iMovie was pretty easy to use and to understand. Once you had uploaded all of your movie scenes onto there, you seletcted your best scenes and put them in chronological order. You were then able to cut shots in to two, and use the audio editing tool adding sound effects, a voiceover or background music. What was really helpful about the iMOVIE is that it updated your changes immediately, allowing you to preview and edit your soundtrack. What I found easiest to use on the iMOVIE were the effects tool, which allowed you to either slow things down or speed things up. What me and my group used best were the transition tool, this was where you could transition clips from colour to black and white- which we used in our opening shot. Once we had completed editing on iMOVIE, we then saved our work to a folder.

Lastly, we were then introduced to LiveType, which neither member of our group had ever used. I think that we would all agree that we found this the hardest, as it was an extremely long process and we had to be very patient when getting used to the format. LiveType supports five different tracks; titles, graphics, objects textures and video. We only used two of these tracks, which were the titles and video. Once we had uploaded our video, we then had to create our titles. This was a very stressful process and we were undecided on what title font to use. Once we had finished our draft, we recieved positive critism about our titles. The feedback from the audience was that our titles moved to fast, and at times were difficult to read. We then went back on LiveType and changed our font, as well as the movment of our font, which our audience were then able to read efficiently.

However, something that was introduced to us this year was a website called blogger. On blogger we would blog everything that we had learnt and researched, then this would then go towards our target grade.

Here are some screenshots and printscrrens that me and my group took as evidence of us using iMovie, LiveType etc.

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

5. How did you attract/ address your audience?

The first thing that me and my group choose to do was to upload our opening sequence onto YouTube. As our film is trying to specifically target teenagers/young adults we felt that by uploading our video onto YouTube this would be a beneficial way of approaching our targeted audience and appealing to them. Pratically every household has the internet, and YouTube has been associated with thousands of people or things being known or even becoming famous.

We also gained some brilliant feedback and opinions from other YouTube users.

We then progressed a further step by posting the video of our film onto Facebook. When researching into Facebook I discovered that it has more than 600 million users and is the most popular social networking site to ever be created. This could attract my audience even further as by posting the video onto facebook, if people enjoyed it all they would have to do is post it onto their wall etc. You are also able to comment on the video posts, and therefore me and my group would have easy access when receiving our feedback- whether it be good or bad.

We recieved a fantastic 39 comments, all of which were extremely postive or were positive critism. It really helped me and my group improve on our opening sequence as not only were we able to gain feedback and tips from our media teachers, but from what our target audience thought we could improve on. Here are some of our feedback that I have specifically used for my blog as me and my group found them the most useful, and therefore it enabled us to address our audience more successfully.



We also filmed a classmate giving us some feedback on our thriller opening sequence whilst he was watching it.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our certification for our film would be a 15. It isn't certified as a 15 because it's really gory or is crude in anyway, but because we expect our film to have extremely scary connotations such as creepy, eerie music and low key lighting to set a particular mood and help build the suspense.

We choose thriller as our genre as we thought that it would most likely appeal to our target audience. Our audience is targeted at mostly teenagers and young adults, mostly ranging from the ages from 15 to early twenties. We felt that our genre would appeal to this specific age range and thrillers are probably one of if not the most successful genre in cinema generation. By our group being similar ages to our target audience, we have personally seen and experienced the impact that the thriller genre has on a teenage audience and people in their early twenties. Common methods used in thrillers are mind games, physchological themes, deaths and stalking. Young adults and teenagers are very open minded and enjoy the over-dramatic plotlines and stories that could arguably be said are at times un-realistic.
Our main characters are also teenagers themselves, and therefore our audience might be able to relate to them on many different levels. Perhaps they might be able to show some understanding towards a character, or how they might be feeling. For example during our very first few shots, one of our characters Brooke is seen running through the forest, for our audience to presume that she has been drinking at a party by the props that we have used.
The stereotype of teenagers and young adults are that they're constantly out drinking and taking drugs. So therefore not only can they relate to this character within the first few seconds, but they can also learn from the mistakes that this character might be making. Here is a photo that I have taken of friends drinking when they've been out.
However I'm not suggesting that our film targets only teenagers that drink, I'm just relaying the fact that their may be some similarities between the teenagers regarding the characters in our film. Generally we are targeting outgoing groups of young adults of both genders.
When researching Thriller movie genres on the internet I stumbled across a website called IMDB (international movie database.) On this webpage it featured a voting poll on users favourtie thriller movies. When looking further into this voting poll, i discovered that the majority of the 'favoured' thriller movies were rated at a 15 certificate. These movies included 'The Black Swan,' 'Memento' and movies that you can see in this print screen like Batman Begins and Heat. This reinforces my accusation on how the perfect rating for a thriller is a 15.
We also targeted this age group as we didn't want an audience that would be impressionable or influenced by the storyline.