I...I don't wanna

It's time to say goodbye - enjoy reading the blog (if possible)

regret not being able to elaborate on my 'The Next Step' posts, but oh well - there's always the next blog

Omar 'sushi2300' P.

Evaluation 1 - 'In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?'

Above is a  9 frame sequence from the opening sequence of the thriller movie me and my group shot. 

The frames above will be used as examples for the conventions that will be talked about. The conventions I want to bring to attention are;
- Title + Text
- Camera movement and angles
- Camera shots/framing
- Mise-en-scene
- Editing

 Title and Text
Our opening had one of our characters 'playing' with a red liquid representing blood. With this we wanted to add red to our title to symbolise that there will be blood in the movie. The title is in the middle putting all attention on it (there's nothing much else in the frame anyway). Most thriller films (Terminator 2, The Departed) have their titles on black backgrounds or something similar. It is usually acompanied by some non-diegetic sound to set the scene. Our title is done in a simialr manner where music plays when the title is there although instead of a black there is a misty red background. Adding more red means there will be some more blood in some way in the movie, the mist adds a sense of mystery and accompanies the unseen person in the sequence as you don't see who it is (some enigma code is added).
The text (both titles and credits) used also suits a thriller movie. The font type used in 'cracked.' The text is cracked in a few places which could mean the movie or a character is also 'cracked,' he's not sane or there's something wrong with personality of th character. It could also be a glimpse of the type of genre used.

Camera Movement + Angles
We moved the camera in a few shots to follow the character as seen in this frame. We tracked the character's feet as he walked along. We also used it to follow the character up the stairs, as seen in frame 2. We also panned the camera up in one scene when the character was buttoning up the white coat (seen on frame 5).

We experimented with the high angle shot seen in frame 8. Usually this means a weakness of a character although here instead of the weakness of one character compared to another we wanted to use this high angle shot to show that that our character does have some weakness, the control he has over his 'hobby.' We didn't use any zoom elements in any of our scenes since with all the movies i've seen i havn't seen many cases in which a zoom is used. Mainly cuts/quick cuts are used when the camera wants to go closer.

Camera shots
From what i've seen the most common type of shots used in thrillers are close-ups, especially in the beginning of a movie (as seen on Se7en and Kill Bill). Another type of shot commonly used are long/establishing shots to show the audience the setting and to show where the action will be taking place. Our sequnce lacked establishing shots but mainly focused on medium close-ups (mainly of the lower body), extreme close-ups and a few close-up shots. We have examples of some mid-close ups above such as in frame 6, 8 and 9, where you see the body and hands of the character. We have an extreme close-up in frame 5 where the camera is looking at the breast pocket of the white coat our character is wearing. There is a close-up shot in frame 7 on the flasks the character is handling. This shot focuses more on what the character is doing with the objects he has available to him instead of the actual character himself.

                                                                                                        Mise-en-scene and Character Intro

The main focus on this was the lighting which wasn't too bright (although in some scenes i had to edit the brightness as there was too much natural light). Most, or probably all, thriller films focus on the lighting being dim, dark, gloomy or any other similar lighting, especially if it's a psychological thriller. Lighting is used to set a tone and atmosphere to a scene and the lighting we used was dark and gloomy. We wanted to show that it wasn't a happy movie and that it might not end in a happy ending as the first character we are introduced with is obviously not good. We are also shown in frame 6 the tools he has at his disposal. Very precise tools such as scissors, scalpels, tweezers - our character seems like he is dangerous and he doesn't like to make a mess. This could suggest he is intelligent. The location shown looks like a normal building which goes into a lab like room, not the scariest places in the world but it could suggest that the character, who is walking around the building, is very familiar with the place. We use this setting since we wanted to give off the feeling that the character is somewhere he is comfortable in and is why we we wanted to use something which looked more normal than scary.

Editing
Our editing mainly consists of cuts from one place to another following our character to where he is going and to what he doing. Many thrillers use quick jump cuts as many things are usually happening at once and the jump cuts fill in to audience what is happening. we didn't use any jump cuts since we focused on the simple idea of following one character doing what he is doing, we wanted to show the audience he is doing something but wanted them to ask the question 'what?' - since there aren't so many things going on at once we didn;t need to speed up any of the cuts and used a steady pace when going from one camera shot to the next. We got this idea not from a movie but from the openings of american drama television shows, the two main ones  'Dexter' and 'Six Feet Under.'

This opening doesn't include credits but the main focus is the shots and how it cuts from one to the other.

Evaluation 2 - 'How does your media product represent particular social groups?'

We have the female gender being shown as the weaker sex in our sequence. We didn't focus much on the character itself for too long as she wasn't the main factor in the sequence. Although if seen in this frame one can see that she's a young female probably in her late teens or early 20's - we've shown her as being tied up and a victim of a male villain.

Our main idea was to focus on the male character and what he was doing. We didn't show much of the male character but we wanted character type similar to Christian Bale's character in 'American Psycho' who was a successful business man wanting to fit in with urges to murder. Like in 'American Psycho' there is a male character who is dominant to the female gender (as seen on the right) just like in our sequence. Since we didn't give a lot of information on our male character we can't say much about ethnicity but our main idea was to show a normal everyday male who can't control his urges to murder, like the character in 'American Psycho.' 

Evaluation 3 - 'What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?'

'Psyche' is a more of an independent film which would be based in the United Kingdom. The first idea is that it could be directly sent to DVD instead of going on screens, although taking the movie and showing it in film festivals (eg. Sundance) could be a goos first step to see how well it does. We can them decide what the best decision would be for the movie.

The UK film council has been distributing and funding movies for 10 years including films such as Kidulthood and Bafta and Oscar winning 'The King's Speech.' Although a comapny like Paramount Pictures may be more reliable, since they have been around for nearly 100 years, the UK film council would be a better choice as they are situated in the UK and distribute non-mainstream movies to the audience as seen in previous movies.

Evaluation 4 - 'Who would be the audience for your media product?'

Our project is a psychological crime thriller with elements of blood, although we didn't want to put too much in as it would just be seen as a horror rather than a thriller, like the 'Saw' franchise. Our main inspirations were movies such as 'Se7en' and television openings from 'Dexter' and 'Six Feet Under'- this was for our film opening idea. We got a character idea from the movie 'American Psycho' and wanted to do something similar. Both 'Se7en' and 'American Psycho' are classed as 18 where most of the audience for it were males aged 18 and above;

Above is a demograpgh breakdown that displays viewers ratings on the movie Se7en. Most males and females above 18 rated highly, the younger generation and those above 45 rated lower. There is also many more men who rated meaning more men watched the film.


We did not want to be restricted to just 18 and older so we wanted something similar along the lines of those 2 movies but not as gruesome so that it could only be watched by 18+. By getting information from our questionairres from many school mates (aged 15-18) we figured out how to tone it down so that the movie would appeal to 15 year olds as well as 18 and above (18-26).

The target audience of our product is between 15-25 years old, older teens to mid twenties. By looking at movies such as Se7en and American Psycho we decided that our movie would fit that audience range the most due to the type of genre it is and the content that is displayed on scene. Our product also shows blood meaning there would probably be a bit of action in there as well as a male character being the dominant gender. Many movies with similar genres show males as the dominant. This means that our movie would also target males more than females.

Evaluation 5 - 'How did you attract/address your audience?'

http://ashwin-dabasia.blogspot.com/2011/03/evaluation-task-5.html 

This video answers the above question and is about the project that i was part of. Unfortunately i cannot upload the video on my blog at the time although it will be uploaded asap.

Evaluation 6 - 'What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?'

There are many different programmes and applications form websites that we used to make our media products. Some new to us while others we found familiar, there were those that took time to get used to where a few we got the hang of straight away.

The first new product, at least to me, was the use of a Mac conmputer. Personally I had never used one before and it took a little time to get used to. But it is because of this that we were able to use some of the programmes needed to make our media product as some applications only work on a Mac computer.

We also had access to a sony HD camcorder which was where we filmed all our scenes and takes. There weren't many problems with the use of the camera and it didn't take too long for us to get used to using it. The addition of a dolly helped with a couple of shots. 

The first application we used was blogger which we needed a google account for. It allowed us to make a blog so we can record all our work on the number of different blogs we have. As it is accessable via the internet a browser was also required, i personally used Safari. 

Safari was the main browser that i used to do most of my work and research. I also used mozilla firfox many times but not as often as safari which i used both at school and at home.

We were then introduced to the non-linear editing software Final Cut Express. This is where most of our video editing happpened. All the cuts twe shot with the camera were put on the Mac and then put in Final Cut Express so that we could get the best takes and fit them in the scene to make a flowing sequence called our thriller opening sequence.

- The interface of the Final Cut Express application

We also used the Adobe After Effects application available to us, more specifically Adobe After Effects CS4. In here we did some of the video editing and added a few effects, well the only thing we changed of the video was the brightness and contrast. We mainly used this application to create and work with the text and integrate it with the video.

Garageband is another useful application we used which is only for the Mac. We used this and the enormous number of loops it provided us to create our soundtrack for our opening sequence. It had a wide range of sounds from a great number of instruments as well as other more 'wacky' sounds.

The ever so popular youtube allows you to upload your own videos as well as watch what other people have done. This site was one of the most useful in terms of research into other thriller film openings and allowed us to embed those videos to show exactly which ones we did research.

What work would be complete without the use of Google. Probably the most important factor for our research it allowed us to find many different sites, including art of the title, IMBD and more, for our research.

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

In our preliminary task we were unprepared. We didn't plan everything and a lot of the things we did weren't in accordance to the proper thriller genre. We though if we got some good camera angles and we did something spooky, that our preliminary task would fit the thriller genre - we were wrong.

We hadn't done any research on our prelim task and so we didn't know so much about how the conventions of thrillers worked and how important they were to making a successful opening. We didn't take into account the various elements needed at first. We had also just got started with all the equipment and applications on the prliminary task, we didn't know too much about them and couldn't use them to maximum efficiency.

We began the creation of our opening sequence much differently than we had for our preliminary task. We didn't just make an idea on the spot, we had many different ideas on what we wanted to do and how we were going to them, if we could add things from all our ideas and put it into one finished product. We also did our research into the thriller openings and movies and how the openings of thrillers lead to the movie and the story it portrayed. We even used openings from television shows to broaden our perspective. This allowed us to get a better idea of how thriller movies work and correspond with the audience, something we did not do in our preliminary. Using real life products as inspiration (movies such as American Psycho) helped immensely.

We were also a lot more comfortable in the use of equipment. We were more used to using the camera and applications which allowed us to shoot our scenes with a variety of different camera shots and angles suited to our genre and story.

We learned a variety of different camera angles and shots and used them better than we had in the preliminary task;

Medium close-up shot of the victims upper body

Close-up of character's feet as he walks alongs

                                                                                        
These are screengrabs of shots we used in our thriller sequence. We used some of them in our preliminary task although with not as much efficiency. In our preliminary task we were to absorbed in the idea of using many differeny kinds of shots at once (even though there wasn't much going on) and making them as 'extravagent' as possible.

A high angle shot we used in one of our scenes

Although there are still things that could have improved. The soundtrack for one didn't exactly fit the purpose 100%. Unfortunately our original music editor/creator was not present and could  not create the music so we had to improvise. We could have also improved on our setting/location, there were many places we could have explored although alas it was not meant to be.

 

Soundtrack

 

 A screen shot, taken by a member in my group, of him creating a soundtrack for the thriller production. The application 'Garage Band' was used for this process where it's vast amount of sample tunes and loops allowed us to experiment with the music to create what we thought a suitable track which would go well with the sequence as well as emphasis what we wanted to show.

The Next Step

My next move would be to research on marketing ideas and distributor ideas. To look into the different types of institutions, major and minor, and to compare them to find out which one would most likely produce our film. Looking into film festivals would also be a good idea.

Hmmm...i need to find out whether there's any other work that i need to do. Oh, of course - screen shots and research of past projects would be a good insight, the screen shots are evidence that i've done something (because reading the whole thing isn't enough).

I guess finding ways to improve the rough cut of our project is an ongoing thing (until it ends) so experimenting with the applications would be a good idea. Working on ideas about our logo is a must do as well.

*sigh*....all this to do, so....much time
huh, how anti-climactic
(for any of you who take offense to the above comment or don not take it as a joke....It was a joke)



PS - Progress + Responsibilities

Todorov + Propp

Propp
8 character types

Hero - the one who saves the day, by usually saving someone, solving something or defeating somebody (usually a bad guy/villain)

Villain - Enemy of the hero. Tries to stop the hero or destroy/kill him.

Dispatcher - Is usually the one who sends the hero on his journey or tells him the information which leads him to the journey with him ending up as the hero.

Donor -helps move the story along by providing something vital to do with the story, whether it be to the villain or the hero.

Princess - The hero's reward ('be the hero, get the girl'), and is most of the time the one who needs protecting from the villain (at least in fairy tales anyway).

Father of princess - the one who awards the hero, usually with the princess (unless he's very overprotective).

Anti-Hero  - more of a rival than an enemy. He tries to stop the hero form accomplishing his goal.

Helper - helps the hero in a variety of ways (providing information, as his partner etc).

Todorov
5 stages

Equilibrium - A state of 'equilibrium' is created, the story begins and is explained - basically a happy phase in the film.

Disruption - an event occurs which disrupts the equilibrium creating some kind of trouble.

Recognition of disruption - disruption event is now recognized and characters set goals to try to resolve the problem.

Attempt to repair disruption - characters try to fix the disruption by any means necessary to get back their normal lives. They have to face obstacles to accomplish this.

Reinstatement of equilibrium - disruption is fixed and the situation is resolved. Things go back into a peaceful state and a conclusion is announced.

After Effects Work - Screenshots

A screen shot of me working with the video. Here i am working with the brightness and contrast of the video. Our original footage was shot on a bright day (either we were stupid or had terrible luck....I'll let you decide) and our chosen genre needed the video to be a bit darker. So messing around with the brightness and contrast was required as i needed to make the footage darker.

A similar screenshot to the one above,although this time i am working with the text/titles which need to be added in the movie. Here i am working with the text, trying to time where the text should go and where it would fit in the video. It isn't easily readable, but i was working with many key frames as well as a couple of effects (linear wipe and changing opacity of text) to fit in with the footage. I was also using a mask which added more key frames and work for me - fun times.

DVD Cover analyses and comparison

We first see the stunning picture of what seems to be San Francisco which is in the background, a bridge in the foreground and the faces of three people above the city. Firstly, we are not shown the whole bridge, we are shown a portion of it with the rest covered with thick fog or mist. This element adds a sense of mystery, spook and gives a glimpse of the type of genre the film is - thriller or maybe a horror.

We are also shown a whole city, or at least most of it. This could mean that the movie is set or happens all around the city, but adding the thick fog could give the meaning that something terrible has happened in this city and that there is no escape. The thick fog covering the bridge could mean that escape is impossible for the characters in the movie which gives us more information about the type of movie (what genre) the movie could be -still swaying in favor of either thriller or horror (or a mix of both).

we also see three faces above the city, these are most likely the main characters of the film. Shown above the city could symbolize them as the ones who will try to stop the terrible thing that has happened in the city - the heroes. Although doing this would tilt the genre slide to more of a thriller than a horror film as introducing characters like that would give more of an impression that they are trying to deduce something, to solve the mystery of the city - more of a thriller than a horror.

The title of the movie is clearly seen as a white glow of letters. The 'O' in Zodiac is different from a normal 'O'. It has, what looks like a sword through it, or some sort of symbol. This could support the theory that there is a mystery in the city and the three characters we see before us must solve it.

Above the title of the film are the actors names, more specifically the three names of the actors that are shown on the cover. This is used to promote the DVD by showing the big name actors that are in the film. Below the title it says "From the director of Se7en and Panic Room." Another way of promoting the movie by saying that the movie was directed by the same person who directed other big movies. Both these titles are smaller than the title of the film as the most important part of the cover is to show the title of the film, this is so the movie can be promoted by other means than just advertisement (word of mouth).

At the bottom of the cover it tells the audience that the film is 'Based on a true story.' This could be said as another way that producers sell a movie - a movie based on a true story could catch many people's attention as it is something that happened and can happen in reality, it is not something completely made up. Realism is important in many movies, even if they aren't based on true events.

I chose this DVD cover as it is not a thriller film. I wanted to analyze the difference between a cover from a thriller movie and one from another genre, in this case James Bond Quantum of Solace - which is a spy action movie.

One can see that this is most likely not a thriller (or a horror) as we are first enlightened to a character, who is probably the main character, in a suit holding a gun. He is walking away from a building on fire and seems to be in a sandy place of some kind, maybe the desert or a country with rough ground.

The character wearing a suit shows that he is some symbol of authority, he must work for a high agency for a government, in this case he is a spy. Him holding a gun would say that the movie has some gun play in it which most probably means action. This is our second indication of what type of genre the movie could be (the first being that the character is wearing a suit). The character is also walking away from a smoking, burning building which most likely means that the movie will entail action of some kind, more specifically an explosion of some sort. The character walking away from the rubble would mean that he is probably the one who did it.

The lighting and colours of the cover is lighter than that of most thriller DVD covers. It is day and we can see the shine of the sun on the ground and on the character. Most thriller covers use darker colours of gray, blue, black and sometimes mix a little of white with the black (but never too much white). The title in the middle of the cover is white, but not a spooky white like in the Zodiac cover, but a white that goes with the bright light and colours of the cover. It could also be saying that 'the hero will win in the end.' '007' is identified in black to show the trademark James Bond sign although that's probably exclusive for the James Bond movies.

The way the characters are introduced, the lighting and colours, the titles are all used differently to show the types of genre for the film. The brighter lights and colour of the action film with the darker and dull colours of the thriller. The way the titles are shown is different, even thought they are both shown in white. The white goes well with the action movie cover as it is accompanying brighter colours of the cover and means something completely different than the white title of the thriller film. The title of the thriller movie cover has a certain mysterious glow to it which is supported by being seen with a black background (the sky in this case). The way things are shown on a cover and how things are mixed and matched give off very different feelings and show off each genre in a different way.

Progress and Responsibilites

My main responsibility for the project was to focus on the editing. To edit some of the video and to see what fits where. Although my main job in editing was to work with the titles and to time them in accordance to the video. Other jobs i have had was to help with the pitch, to come up with ideas of what types of shots to use and the mise-en-scene in those shots, help with the story and what we wanted to say from our opening sequence and to help with some research for the group as well as do some of my own for the jobs that were given to me.

I have watched many different opening sequences of different genres of thrillers and tried to match which genre would fit best with the story made for our opening sequence. Although films were not my only inspiration, i also analyzed a couple of opening sequences from television shows, and although the openings on television usually differ greatly when compared to openings of film (the titles are usually shown after the episode has already begun) there were a couple of shows i found which had amazing opening sequences;

Six Feet Under


Dexter


These two were my favorite examples of television openings, probably because I've seen the shows. Six Feet Under, a show about death. One could instantly associate the show with death from the title alone but the opening adds finesse to the title.
Dexter was also a good inspiration for me although it took a while for me to deduce why that opening sequence was used for a show like that. Pretty much everything Dexter does on his 'night' job is shown in the opening sequences, only less viciously, by using an everyday morning routine.

Of course this doesn't mean I've been neglecting film openings, that is our main aim. I have looked at different film openings from the thriller genre and some from outside the thriller genre to see the difference between thrillers and other genres and to know what to put in a thriller opening sequence and what not to put. A couple of opening sequences which caught my eye were 'The Number 23.' I thought both the movie and opening sequence went well together and that the message of the movie was clearly shown in the opening sequence, as well as making it frightening.


My first idea was to actually make an opening sequence similar to this, but the idea was shelved as the opening sequence was to include video footage (unless you were amazingly skilled at making opening sequences without footage).