Harry Higgins

Media Evaluation

Within a ‘Thriller’ there are many sub-genres and conventions which is what makes it so broad. These are called subgenres. A thriller provides the sudden rush of emotions and excitement that drive the narrative, sometimes at a constant, quick pace. It keeps the audience on the "edge of their seats", similar to a sensation of hanging from a cliff, as the plot builds towards a climax. A thriller is usually a villain-driven plot, whereby he or she presents obstacles that the character must overcome. An example of them could be an action-thriller or a psychological thriller or a crime thriller etc. The subgenre we chose to use for our thriller about is a psychological thriller. We thought this would be appealing to the audience because psychology plays with people’s minds, keeping them wondering what’s going on and makes the audience think on with what is going on. It also gives some kind of excuse to make the short opening on a cliff hanger. If the audience were to be told that it was a psychological thriller then they would look for mystery, they would expect to be thinking about what they are seeing. You don’t want to give all of the answers away at once. You could see it as confusing the audience by giving the answers to no questions.

Thriller Openings

The opening of a thriller, in reality, can be used for a trailer. At the start of a thriller, the most information that is given away, typically, is the titles. Especially in films like Se7en with its confusing credits which make the audience get mixed thoughts, making accusations just as though the film has started. It is vital that a thriller opening does not give away the start of the story line as it gives away too much information. It is known for thrillers to open straight onto the action. Making the audience ask question such as: ‘Why is this happening?’ or ‘What has he/she done wrong?’

Our Thriller

To make sure we kept the elements of a psychological thriller into our piece, we made sure we added the following things:

· Answers not given (the ending)
· Flashes to make the audience feel like they are in the action
· The character being confused on why the church is spooky
· Confusing movements (when the priest moves from different parts of the room)

Through-out our piece, we mainly used medium shots to show the priest and the boy in the shot. When filming, we didn’t think about the varied range of shots that we needed to catch. So when we had got back to school to start the editing process, we then noticed that we did not have enough varied shots. Which then had shown the lack of planning that we could have improved on beforehand. Having this in mind, we went back to reshoot some of the shots, getting those vital close ups, extreme close ups and long shots. As said before, to make our piece more effective we added in flashes when the tension built up a bit more. This took a few hours to do in the editing process as we had to zoom in quite far into the clip frames to get a precise moment to flash. There wasn’t much we could do about the lighting because obviously we were in a church and there were regulations we had to keep to. The sound wasn’t too difficult to insert as there were just sound effects and then the narration over the top. The only thing we found a real challenge was having to sync the video clip and the background soundtrack together making it sound good put together.

To make an effective thriller you need to have a certain amount conventions to make it that sort of genre. One of the most important conventions of a thriller opening is a good title sequence. This alone should give the most information out of the whole opening, and also, obviously giving away names of the team who made it. An excellent example of a great title opening is Se7en. Giving information about the character that the film is based on and also making us confused about what is going on. The audience should also be clear on who the key characters are. In this case, the key characters are the only people shown in the clip, this being the priest and the boy. It is also important to have a low-key lighting effect throughout.

Through this scene, there are a few bits of a spooky bit of narrative which is being said. Giving warning about entering the church and a quote about the devil. Quotes of this are said all across the clip. This wasn’t planned at first. We were given feedback from what we had from one of our class colleagues who said it would be ‘beneficial if you added some narration at the start of the opening’. In which we did do, however we spread it across the extract.

This is the part of the clip where the flashes mainly feature in.

The main opening we found inspirational is the Da Vinci Code. This is simply because they are very similar in the scenario. However, because they are so similar, we tried to make our thriller as original as can be. So although we were inspired a lot by the Da Vinci Code, we tried to make it as different as possible, using the same conventions.

Just like the Da Vinci Code, we decided to put our titles right at the front to introduce what the thriller maybe about and so the audience clearly knows what it’s called. Something that the Da Vinci Code may have considered but didn’t go ahead with is that we made our opening titles part of the action, as after we see the ‘Father of Sin’ title, it pans around of an establishing shot of the church, so we can see the boy walking into the church.

We can then see that in the DVC (Da Vinci Code), there is a man rushing where in FOS (Father of Sin), we see him taking his time, doing what he does daily which is going to pray. In a way, they are both in a same situation as they both need to get somewhere. Also, I have noticed that it is the same shot type. They are both walking at a diagonal from the camera and they are both walking towards the camera.

At about the same point in the two extracts, we get a look at both villains. And in both pieces, we don’t get a clear view on who it is. The only thing we should have looked at is using a low shot for the priest in our thriller to make him look more dominant than the boy and to make the boy look more vulnerable.

In this instance, we have both took a different approach in what happens next. In this case the DVC was making the audience aware that someone was watching whoever was running away. And in our thriller opening we made it clear that this character was taking caution because it seems a bit too spooky.

Now we have established that something is there. With a clear shot on the DVC of the villain and of a close up on the FOS showing how he is scared of something. It is clear to us that both characters are in distress which obviously builds up tension.

At this point, we see that the DVC have revealed their character where as we have chose to keep our villain hidden for more questions to be asked by the audience, which is a typically convention of a thriller. This is the bit in FOS where the main flashes start to happen causing, again, more confusion to the viewer.

As the DVC is still carrying on cutting to the action, FOS is, still, gradually building up the tension, as the priest gets closer and closer to the boy. On the DVC it’s a completely different story, there is still a lot of tension shown as the villain gets closer and closer to the man. This is what makes it so similar to FOS.

The Key Characters

The Priest

Although it’s quite hard to see, the priest out of FOS and the character in The Da Vinci Code look and seem to be very similar. They are in a very same situation. The appearance of them seems to be similar. The only factor I can point out is that we can slightly see the villain from the DVC where as on our thriller opening, we see nothing but his/her hand. In regards of the role of each of the characters, they are both playing the same sort of role. They are both having a chase. They are both either looking for someone or picking on a victim

We thought that because of the massive similarities from the Da Vinci Code, our priest would be the fantastic match for this character. The priest/demon on the Da Vinci Code has a very violent way in getting what he wants where as our priest uses secrecy to kill. Our character obviously doesn’t want anyone to see his face and the demon in the DVC obviously has a little less to hide. Obviously giving more questions for the audience to ask.

The Boy

There isn’t much variety in what I could compare ‘The Boy’ from in our thriller opening. All I could think of is vulnerability and insecurity. With this in mind, I chose to compare The Boy to the child of the police officer from the Face Off. Both characters are wearing everyday clothing of what they would normally wear on a normal day. The y would both be acting like a normal every day person of their age.

Q3 is in the form of a voice over on a separate clip (Which will be on another post of my blog)

We thought the best age range for our audience is 12 and above. Simply because it does contain horror scenes which wouldn’t be suitable for younger children. We would also make sure people who are epileptic wouldn’t watch it because, of course, it does contain quick flashes which could cause an epileptic fit. It would mainly be aimed for males as we find that they are more interested in this sort of thriller than females.

The research we did do was looking into different thriller film openings. I mainly researched in three different thrillers so I could explore different sub genres so I would realise what would be the best sort of thriller for our film.

Mainly, we found from our questionnaires that we gave out that people liked more action-thriller. At this point when we handed them out, we had already started our planning for a psychological thriller. So with the action in mind, we tried to make it more eye catching with elements of action in it. We saw that thrillers are more appealing to the younger audience so we tried the opposite of modern to mark the audience more educated about the old fashioned way of living.

In 1984 Parliament passed the Video Recordings Act. This act stated that, video recordings offered for sale or hire commercially in the UK must be classified by an authority given by the Secretary of State. The President and Vice Presidents of the BBFC were designated, and charged with applying the new test of ‘suitability for viewing in the home’. At this point the Board’s title was changed to the British Board of Film Classification to reflect the fact that classification plays a far larger part in the BBFC’s work than control.

I have decided, personally, I think that we should make the BBFC age a 12. This is because it contains some horrifying scenes within the film. There would also be a small amount of violence in there from the priest and the boy. This wouldn’t really affect my target audience because not many younger children are interested in thrillers in general.

I am recording myself describing the following screenshots in a separate film document (Which will also be posted on another post on my blog)

Q6.

In this shot here, which shows our titles, we had to use the tool which stabilizes the shot. Because the shot is at a low angle, we found it hard to keep the camera straight as we had no professional equipment such as a steady-cam. We found that what the stabilizer does is zooms into the shot, allowing the computer to move the shot up and down when there is movement sensed.

In this shot, it shows the boy going into the church. We used this as an example to show the colours that we edited the whole video itself to suit the clip. What we did was we mixed the saturation and exposure to make a bright, but gloomy look to the shots. The main reason of why we did this was because when we got to the shots of the priest, he was very hard to see. So with this in mind, we had to edit the colours but still keeping in the theme of the genre.

This shot, is the next shot following the last shot I analysed. This shot follows the character as he goes over to the door of the church. We are trying to make sure the audience are aware that he is alone at that point, going for a normal prayer. This shot starts to watch him walking him towards us and then pans around to see him opening the door. Unfortunately, because of the equipment that we were given from school, the picture isn’t the best quality.

This shot shows the boy walking to his seat to pray. This part was the most important bit to do with sound because we had to get the timing right for the door to close and also for when the priest leans over 30 seconds later, and then the background noise would mute down a bit more.

We also had to use the ‘transitions’ tool to put in the black flashes. In which we had to set the time of the black flashes to 0.1s. This took us about one and half hours to do because there were so many to import into the video. I think that our ending result of the flashes turned out really effectively. We also tried out use fade to white instead of black but still found out that black were more effective.

Q7.

Before we created the actual thriller piece, we were to carry out a preliminary (prelim) task. The task given was that we made a one minute clip on a short conversation of some sort. It can be in any situation as long as we kept to 180 degree rule. This is where we have to keep to one side of the action. If we do have to go the other side then we would have to make it clear to the audience that this is what we are doing. For this we would have to have a shot of panning around the other side of the action. We also have to remember about shot reverse shot which is where you have in a conversation; the shot would go to whoever is talking. It can also be an over the shoulder shot. Doing this preliminary task really did get me set for the thriller piece itself.

I feel I have developed as a film maker because at first, I did not have a clear on what any of the terms ‘180 degree rule’ or ‘match on action’ or ‘shot reverse shot’ were. I now understand much more than that. I have now learnt have to edit all of the clips together, also using garage band to edit the voiceovers of the thriller we made. I have also learnt all the small details when filming such as pointing the camera angle down on someone to make them look vulnerable.

I feel that the prelim we made lacked on camera angles, and the environment we were based in definitely was not appropriate to the piece we presented. However, I did think that we used a big range of shots ranging from a close up to a long shot. Comparing this to my actual thriller, I am feeling glad that we did have the opportunity to make the prelim at first, so it gave us a small idea on what we are expected to do. It also trained us up on using the school Macs and more importantly: using iMovie. It also gave us an opportunity, after we had made the prelim to think more about how we could have improved it… which then we could take from that onto our actual piece and make sure we didn’t perform the same mistake.

Admittedly, for our thriller, we didn’t do as much planning as we should have done. Therefore, we were put into the position that after we had filmed, we were a little unorganised with our shots. However, we put other time aside and resolved the problems.

Overall, our thriller opening turned out to be very successful. At some points we were given feedback by our mentor that parts of the opening didn’t meet some of the typical thriller conventions which we did try and work on but with the time period we were given, there was nothing we could do about it. I think things like the sound was handled very well, we made good group decisions on what effects would be appropriate and had many discussions to come to an agreement on different music we could include. I also think that the lighting editing of the film has worked well, giving that spooky look to the thriller. All of these factors reminding us of the subgenre we picked to base it on which is a physiological thriller.