Question 1

Conventions of a film opening is what is what is supposed to be in a opening a a film. 

Here is a list of the conventions of a thriller opening: 

• Film opening to give insight to the characters, location and narrative
• Provide teaser to the story
• Special/sound effects
• The sound is scary, atmospheric, eerie, builds tension 
• The opening should have titles (title sequence) 
• There can sometimes be dialogue which could also provide teasers. 
• Producers identification (production company/producer)
• Sense of mood 

Conventions of a title sequence is listing of the actors, production company, distribution companies, the title and many more. Here is a list of how the titles should go: 

• IDENT
• Production companies 
• Distribution companies 
• Well known actors 
• Movie title
• More actors 
• Music composer 
• Casting company 
• Costume designers
• Film editor 
• Production designers 
• D.O.P
• Executive producers 
• Other names added depending on the movie genre 
• Director

Question 2

The meaning of media representation is how media categories people into certain groups making it easier to recognise. For example one category could be teenagers or disability.
The social group that our thriller is targeted to is male and female aged 15-25 who love socialising with other people and they would go on dating sites.

Our representation fits the typical representation of teenagers as it targets males who want to get women but can also be very evil and that is how our actor Alan and females who are looking for love without any knowledge and can be very vulnerable which fits our other actress, Joyce.

As you can see, Joyce is wearing a top, long skirt, jacket with her bag and phone and this would be the look of a normal, average teenage girl who is about to go on a date. As for Alan, he is wear a shirt with a tie and a suit trousers which also a normal teenage boy would wear when going on a date

Question 3

Question 4

Thriller films are targeted to both male and female between the ages of 16-24. This age is the main target even though there are some thrillers that have been made which were targeted to a younger people. The target audience is aimed at this age range because some of the storyline's are quiet hard to understand, it may contain senses that some viewers may find disturbing, would contain a lot of swearwords, sexual senses and a lot of violence.

In psychological thrillers, the target audience is male and female from the age of 18 upwards and this is because some of them contain a lot of violence, swearwords, sexual senses and some psychological issues could disturb younger viewers. Another reason why it is targeted to is area is because older audiences would understand it better.


Box Plot's target audience is male and female from the age of 15 upwards and this because our psychological thriller does not contain and swearwords and sexual context and the violence is mild. Also, our psychological thriller is easy to understand. The reason why we chose this target audience is because the plot of the thriller would be relatable to a lot of people therefore it would make them feel as if it was their own story being shown but just in a scarier way.

Question 5

This is the feedback after our thriller was viewed in the cinema by everyone who is in AS and does media.

The response that I got for the official video compared to the rough cut was really good. We took all advice/help that was given to us and used them and therefore, our thriller was a success and we got a really good response from the audience while watching the thriller.

While improving the rough cut, it was mentioned that it was unclear who the target audience was and also, the type of thriller it was meant to be but when the final cut was made and viewed, people could clearly tell who the target audience was. The only thing that we could not do was to pass off our thriller as a psychological thriller. Instead, it came across as a comedy thriller.

The way that people were able to view our thriller was through the cinema on the 25th March 2013 and that was the only way and day you could view our thriller

Question 6

Question 7

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

Feedback From Student (Ami and Rimello)

The feed back we had from both of our class mates were pretty much similar. They told us to make the scenes much shorter as it kind of got boring if you keep seeing us walking. They also told us some of the shots was too dark and they could not see the faces of the actors. We asked for which types of sound we should add in and they both said we should add in a romantic sound at the start and at the very end of the thriller a horrific sound as it gives more tension.

Week 2 & 3 of Filming

Week 2 & 3 of Filming 

For the second week of filming, we changed location because the house where we were filming was not available. We then moved to Alan's house which is in Peckham. We chose his house because it was the closest house to get to.
These pictures of the location:

This is the street that Joyce will be walking down to get to the house

This is the view of the house that scenes will be taking place.

This is the living room where the main scene will done. In here is where Joyce will be told to wait and when Alan leaves, she snoops around till she finds the box and Alan attacks her.

Week 2 and half term

During the second week when we started to re-record the whole opening scene again we got most of the scenes done which was good as we had only a limited time to do because we could not borrow equipment over night. We did this recording on a Thursday and we had roughly 2 hours to film. Because we didn't finish recording, we had to record over the half term on a Monday and on that day we had roughly 3 hours more to get everything done. At the end, we got all the recording done and we were really pleased that finally, everything was done and all we had to do is wait to get back to college after the half term to edit our work. 

Week 3

On the Monday that we return from the half term and had a media lesson, our teacher reviewed our work and she gave us things to improve on and redo on our recording. The things that we had to add was a close up shot of Joyce applying her make-up, create more dark looking shots to create the thriller essence and to also have a clear shot of the weapon that will be used. The very same week on a Wednesday, we went to Alan's house to re-record the whole opening scene again as Joyce had changed her hairstyle and if we recored that, it wouldn't be consistent. we started recording form around 4pm till 8pm and at the end, we was able to get all the shots needed to come and edit on Thursday.

On Thursday, we watched all our footage back and realised that we had got some good footage but all the outside scenes were dark as we started recording at 4pm. Even though we knew that we were going to have to re-record the outside scenes, we edited the footage that we had got because we needed a rough draft by Monday. 

 

Here are some pictures from week 2 and 3: 

Recording an over the shoulder shot of Alan opening the door for Joyce.  

Dionne recording the scene where Alan is walking down the stairs to go open the door.  

Dionne recording Joyce and Alan walking up the stairs to the living room. 

Alan helping Dionne to position the camera to the right angle to get everything in the frame.  

PLANNING - Treatment

The reason the film is called Box Plot, is because the main character (Alan) has a box that he keeps pictures of all of his victims in and no one has ever found it except in the opening where Joyce does. The film is a about a young adult male who had a troubled past which has caused him to have some psychological issues but he has never been diagnosed with anything, as he doesn't feel there is anything wrong with him. He has an account on many different a social networking sites which he uses to meet girls and lures them to his house where he kills them. Killing them is nothing to him, it's like a game. Joyce is just another girl who gets caught in his trap but there is a twist as she finds the box but before she can escape he kills her.

Initially it was only meant for Joyce to get trapped and not killed at the end of the thriller opening but we changed our idea so that she gets killed in the opening. What would happen in the rest of the film, would be that we get to see life through his eyes, in a stream of consciousness style and It will look into why and how he has become the way he is

PLANNING - Target Audience

The target audience for our Thriller is ages 15-29. we chose this age group as we thought it's easier to convey a message to people our age. Although the age profile for thrillers, especially psychological thrillers, is older we thought that as we go through similar situations so it's easy to relate. Our storyline is about a male and female who met on a social networking site and deciding to meet up and go out on a date. However the male character is a serial killer and he uses social networking sites to lure girls, in order to kill them. We done research and it showed that our target audience are the most active users of social networking sites.

The graphs show that the most active users of social networking sites is our target audience, predominantly 15-24 year olds which falls into our age bracket.

What we are going to do during workshop

We are going to all come in on Monday and Thursday at lunch time and Wednesday at 3 o clock. During this time Alan and Attila is going to try to finish off the editing and try to finish adding the titles by Friday as it is our due date of the project. Dionne and Joyce would start to blog about what has happened during our filming and keeping our work updated as much as possible. On Wednesday, we would swap over. If we have enough time left, we are going to try to redo the scenes that we need a little bit work in and replace it with the scene we have currently.

We are also going to be blogging at home and keeping our blogs updated as much as possible. Also Alan would be making the sounds for the scene with the help with Dionne.