Question 1

Forms and Conventions of Film Openings

In this video it shows all the conventions and Forms in our thriller opening and explains what we did and why we did it.

Question 2

Representation are ways which how the media portrays a particular group and over exaggerates about them. For example young youths are shown as people that wreck things and are immature. The group that we are targeting  are young people from ages 16 - 30 year olds. We decided this was our target audience as when we researched,we thought that people from 15 - 30 year olds mostly go on online dating websites and start to date.

The main social group we are targeting in our thriller are young people as the characters in our film are young adults. Young people are represented as people that are really immature, bullies , in gangs and stupid. They are usually presented as the "evil" people and that they ruin a lot of things whereas girls are represented as smart, good and innocent.

Our representation is presented in a really similar way where Joyce is a really innocent and sweet person which helps the audience understand that she is going to be targeted but also at the start Alan is also presented as a smart person until after the title which changes the audiences views about the Alan. Our characters are young people that are trying to find love over online dating. As we can see Alan is wearing a suit which makes him look a little older which shows to Joyce he is mature but she does not really know his age. This makes the audiences be aware of going into unknown peoples houses and  shows danger of online dating and be aware of people that they meet. This is represented as a negative representation that we tried to put through of teenagers.

Question 3

Presentation1 from alanv3

Question 4

In most psychological thrillers, Box Plot is aimed at mostly from ages 15 - 30 because younger people would not really understand the story much and it might be way to horrific for them whereas older people would have more of an understanding and would understand the story which would give them more of a thrill. Our Sub-Genre is psychological thriller, this is also one of the main reasons why we made the movie from 15+ as younger people would be to frightened to watch the thriller.

Another reason Box Plot is targeted to young adults is because it contains interests of what a teenager would do such as, love, dating and more. By doing this it makes teenagers be aware of what they are doing and to make them safe. By doing this, it makes the audience think that they could be the next people for this to happen and make them even more scared.

We had many great feedback from our students and they loved how the music went well with the thriller such as "It was really good" and "I love effect of the music at the end". This shows that the audience were interested in our thriller and was really effective towards them at the end of the opening. We gathered most of our feedback at the independent cinema and overall, our feedback was mostly positive from people with the age of 15 - 17 which was our target audience.

From talking to many other people who watched Box Plot, I found out that females were mostly interested and scared of the movie as it was a woman who was being targeted in the actual movie whereas males said they only liked the action when she gets knocked out and found it like a comedy. Since our Sub-Genre is a Psychological thriller, it is originally supposed to target males more than females but as a female is being targeted, females gets more frightened and more aware. Also since the female in the thriller is aged 16, It would get people from around her age even more frightened which is why are target audience of the film is from 15 - 30 as we realized that that is the age where most people date and go on online dating websites.

Question 5

Our target audience for our thriller is from 15 - 30 years old which we decided as a group as it is the age where most people go on dates and do online dating with unknown people which makes them aware of what is happening.

As a group we decided to make the sound of the thriller really loud and tense as we found out the more high beat the sound is, the more you get adrenaline as we found out from all of our experiences on thrillers. The mise en scene for this is mostly from he's and her costumes which gives out that they are both getting ready to go out on a date which shows us that they are both in formal wear. By having formal wear, this reveals to the audience straight away that they are dating and are going somewhere formally.


The location of the opening is towards the mans house which makes the audience worry about what is going to happen to the woman as it is an unknown place. By doing this , it attracts all the females as they would get worried about themselves if they go into another persons house.

We reached our audience through a cinemas screening where the whole of the AS media students all came together. Our target audiences were from ages between 15-30 which most of the people in AS are 16  and 17 years old. This helped us a lot as they were our target audience.

These are some feedback we had from them:

 

 

 

 

Question 6

Question 7

While we was doing prelim project, it was much easier to edit and much faster as it was not as long and complex of our thriller. In our prelim, we had 3 main rules such as having match cuts , shot reverse shots and 180 degree rules. We filmed our prelim according to all these rules which was difficult to do as it was our first time actually learning about these rules but as time went by we got used to it and it was actually really simple to do but sometimes gets confusing as we forget which positions we are in. In our prelim, our match cuts was not really as smooth and did not flow much. During the time making the prelim, we did not add any interesting music on as we did not know how to add it onto the video which made it really dull and boring. We made sure we had different types of shots such as long shots , medium shots , point of view and over the shoulders.


Our final project, i believe that we took in everything that we had in our prelim video and improved it by a lot in the thriller. We took all our skills from our prelim video and tried to follow the skills towards our thriller which enhanced it more. By knowing these skills already, filming our footages was much easier and straight forward considering we learnt most of the skills we needed in our prelim video.While we were filming our thriller, we made sure that we always followed the 180 degree rule as we thought it was really important in filming whereas in the prelim, we forgot sometimes which made us lose a lot of time while we was filming.




While we was planning our storyboard we had much more ideas and
confidence while we was planning our final project whereas in the prelim, we had to keep changing scenes. In our thriller, we followed our storyboard throughout while we was filming but changed a fews things to improve our thriller and make it stand out a bit more as we thought our old ideas was not as good. Before changing any of our storyboards,  we always talk as a group first and talk about the pros and cons about changing it before just in case there would be a problem with it. As our thriller was much longer than our prelim, we added more scenes and shots.


During the prelim we did not know much about camera angles and shots. We had to learn but using the JVC camera to get used to it and understand how to actually use it. Our shots on the prelim was not as bad as it looks but we had to retake many shots which wasted a lot of time and it seemed like we were behind in time. While we were doing the prelim we learnt about the rule of thirds, 180 degree rule and all types of camera shots and angles. We were really struggling as only 2 members knew how to use the camera and had to teach the other 2 members which was really helpful and that improved our teamwork skills.



Our camera work improved a lot as we went along. At the start of the thriller, our camera work was still a little off, so while we was filming our progression on camera work came along really well. We shared the camera around so everyone could use it to understand the camera angles and shots. During the prelim video, we did not know much about the camera so we just randomly did shots where sometimes the top of the head is not there but as we filmed more, we started to know about the rule of thirds and other  rules that we needed to improve our camera work. Also during our prelim , we did not use much movements such as tilt and pan whereas in our thriller we used all sorts of types of shots. As a result we had much better shots and angles than our prelim video and we a varies of shots which enhanced our video more.


After filming our footage we edited our video. In the prelim our editing was just standard for example we just added all the clips together and merged them together. We added only one transition which was fade in/out which was alright but a little dull and boring. At the start, everyone thought editing was really hard and difficult but we started to get used to it. I was our main editor and I have edited previous things before and used final cut pro in GCSE which really helped me along the way. I was not really a professional on using the program but still managed. The rest of the group had no idea of how to use the editing software so i had to teach all of them on how to do it which made them gain a new skill on editing. After watching the prelim video, i realised my editing skills were a bit stiff which i had to improve on to make it flow more.


When we edited our thriller, we knew all the basics of editing and knew how to use the program more. After filming, we had many clips so we did not want to make the mistake we did on the prelim so we decided half of us would separate the clips so it would be much easier and more flexible. While editing, I learnt different types of transitions and syncing everything together such as the sound and different types of clips.In our thriller our match cuts improved a lot by making more flowable and more in sync together. At the end my whole group knew how to use the software which was really useful instead of one person editing all the time. This made us have enough time to spend on blogging and editing.



During this project I have developed new skills such as leadership,communication,teamwork, editing and camera work and also most important of all meeting new people and making new friends. Also I have developed my skills in AS media even more. I did media studies in GCSE which was only the basics of media and knew about most of the shots already but in AS, I have learnt new things such as rule of thirds and 180 degree rules. I have also learnt how to use new softwares such as Final Cut Pro and Sound Cut Pro which could be useful in future for me. I really enjoyed working with my team and loved every single part of this project. However, we had a few problems with each other half way through the project which was solved real quick and everyone had their own difficulties. The things that I would have changed in our project would be the lighting where sometimes it was dark and light which was a big problem for us as we filmed in different times but anything else, I would not have changed. I really enjoyed my Experience and picked the correct group to work with as they were all focused into this project.

This is a picture of everyone having break at the location that we was in. We had really fun together and had laughs but when we had to get down to the work, everybody was actually focused onto doing the work. Some people did not know how to use cameras and how to edit but that got solved real quickly which really impressed me as they were all fast learners. I had great fun and made new friends in the end and it was a real privilege to work with this group.

Production Schedule's

We had a big problem on our Production Schedule as it was hand written and nobody had a scanner to scan it and when we took pictures it was blurry so we made a digital one to make things much easier and clearer.

Problems I had during editing

As i have edited many videos before, i did not use the program final cut pro before and i had to quickly adapt to the software which was really difficult. I usually use a program called Sony Vegas Pro 11 to edit all my videos which I believe is much better because it has much more effects and was much simpler for me to understand. Also as I have a PC at home and not a Mac, it was very difficult for me to get used to the keys and buttons on the Mac. During editing the thriller, i got to learn the program more and started getting used to it which helped me gained more skills on the program. Most of my team members had difficulties on editing so during editing myself, i had to help them and tell them what to do on the software as they were a little slow. As a main editor, i had to teach my team on how to edit aswell so they could understand what i am doing and if i am making any mistakes.

Feedback From Teacher (Marisa)

This is a feedback from Marisa. She helped us a lot during our thriller and also Rebecca aswell but unfortunately we did not record a feedback from her. Their feedback was pretty much similar and it helped us improve our thriller from the draft to the final edit. Thank you for helping us improve.

Costume and Props

 Outfit for the female character was a white top maxi skirt. Initially the agreement was for the outfit be a plain white dress to portray her as the victim but for specific reasons the costume had to be changed. We find that were still able to portray what we wanted to with this outfit, the white contrasted with the male figure's costume of a black suit. White often suggests a sense of innocence and purity it was important that somehow it was wore on the female character. The leather accessory was not discussed though it didn't destroy the aim of the costume.

On prop used was the Ipod Touch this was essential because that when the box is found. It was a choice between a phone or this and we choose this because  the phone was more lightweight and fragile whereas the Ipod was protected by a case a made an effective sound.

Editing

 This is an image of me editing the time line and trying to sync the video with the sound that we have. I tried to merge them all together so it would look correct with our video.

In this photo i tried to look for a problem with the titles as the fading and editing was wrong with the titles. I decided to add fades for the titles as it was the most simplest.









In this image, I tried to sync the scary music to sync with the ending, I noticed that the music at the end was really loud, so we decided to put the music down and made it more quiet. We also had natural sound in this video which kept on going out of place so i had to try place it all back together which was really irritating.





I watched the video again to see if there was any problems, i found out the titles were in wrong positions. I had helped from teachers and my team.

I realised that  the titles were not clear so I moved them somewhere else. I tried to find to place them on different colours which really worked.

Introduction to soundtrack

We have been introduced to soundtrack pro to use in our prelim and to use on our thriller opening. 

Soundtrack pro is a software that has lots of different sounds and instrumentals that can be used when making your own film or video. You can edit the sounds that soundtrack have to suit you. You can also add your own sound whether it is your own music or your own sound which is called foley sound. 

Foley sound is making your own noises. For example, if you have a scene where someone is closing the door but you cannot hear the closing of the door properly then you could do a recording of the door closing and add it to soundtrack pro to make sure it sounds the way you want it to sound and if you then wanted to, you could then add the soundtrack pro sounds and add them together to make the sound you want for your video. 

Health and Safety

The Health and Safety that we needed to ensure was that we also had the camera insight as we were going to a dangerous area. I also carried the camera as I was the only boy in the group so I had to make sure nothing happened to us. Another Health and Safety was that we always had to have the camera in a steady position so that it would not drop and break. We always made sure the Camera was no where near liquid so it would not break.We had to make sure we was not stepping on any cables when we had the lights and made sure that the tripod was not in a weired position.

What we changed from the draft

We changed many things from the draft to our final thriller. We had to cut down a lot of time of the thriller so we all decided to not do the shots of Alan and Joyce going up the stairs as we have already seen it when Alan went downstairs. As a result to this, we decided to cut them to upstairs after the dialouge they had together. We also thought that the shot when Joyce was sitting down was a really bad shot so we retook it to improve it. We also reshot the outside shot as the last time we shotted it, it was really dark. So we all decided to meet early at Alans house so that we could have the perfect weather. We also reshot all the shots when Alan was looking towards the camera. At the end we decided to add a different scene of Alan picking up the box so it would look more mysterious and sinister.

Difficulty we had during editing

The difficulties that we had during editing was that 2 of the shots that we did which was really dark. We could not retake the shots as the deadline was the day after. We decided to try find other clips that would be lighter which we did not have so we had no other choices and added it into our thriller. The lighting also made our continuousity not match together which made the group really fed up but we could not do nothing about it. In future we now know to look back at the shots we done before actually going into the next shot. We also found out that, looking at the video on camera and on the mac is really different because when we saw the shot on the camera, it was not too dark and thought we could add it but when we saw it on the mac it was really dark and we could not see peoples faces which is really dissapointing.

Titles added in the opening

The titles that we did in this opening were:

• Production company
• Distribution Company
• Actors
• Casting Company
• Music composer
• Editor
• Movie title
• Costume designer
• Production designer
• Co-producers
• Executive producers
• Producers
• Story makers
• Screenplay
• Director

We decided to do an tradition way of a title sequence as this is the main title sequence we all studied most. We changed the position of the movie title as we wanted to sync the movie title with the video we made.

Sound

We Looked at different types of sound that would match our opening in Sound Track Pro. The sound that we found was an acoustic sound so it would go with the romantic feel we wanted at the start of the film. We wanted a really scary sound at the end of the opening so it would look really frightening so we found a frightening sound but we liked 2 so we added both of them together which made a high tension sound which the whole group liked.

Foley Sound

After we showed our draft to the class it was suggested that we add foley sound and we thought this was a good idea but after we went to re-film some shots we decided to not use foley sound in our video as the house was really silence and we thought that diegetic sound would be much better to use than foley sounds. We reconsidered when we heard the diegetic and the edited sound put together and thought that the sound was really clear and if we added foley sound , it would sound less natrual.

Last time Filming

After the Feed back we decided to bring the camera overnight so that we could improve on our thriller. During filming , we reshot all the shots that needed improvement which was 48 hours before the dead line.