Target audience

our target audience is quite varied and our film could appeal to different audiences, such as teenagers and adults because our plot consists of someone who is in their early 20s so it could appeal to the older generation and the younger generation. it is quite complex so i would say some one in their early teens would find it too complicated.
However someone 15 and above would be the right target audience.

Our film has the right amount of complexity and fun that it is sure to grip any audience.

Character Profile

Character profiles

In our piece there are 3 main characters in the opening scene who play a significant part in the entire film if we where to film it all :


Rebecca : Female early 20s business woman has had a hard past a bit paranoid of her surroundings has something to hide and constantly feels like she is being watched however she acts ( normal ) on the outside concealing her real emotions. She lives alone because she is sooo focused on her career and the reason the stalker follows her is because some point in her life she has done something that has hurt him physically or emotionally. She went out with the stalkers best friend and the stalker used to like her.

Ollie : Male early 20s as well, is quite a cocky person and thinks he is very good looking. He is in a relationship with Rebecca and has quite an easy past. He used to be best friends with the killer but he betrayed him and went out with some one that the killer thought he could end up marrying (Rebecca) .

Timmy : The killer ( stalker ) HE STALKS AND COLLECTS A SCRAP BOOK OF ANY ONE WHO HAS EVER DONE WRONG TO HIM. HIS FIRST VICTIMS ARE HIS BEST FRIEND AND EX FIANCEE AND THE SCRAP BOOK SHOWS THE ORDERS OF HIS NEXT VICTIMS


Detective Sean Johnson :He is following the case as it happens and tries to uncover who is the next victim. He is not seen in the opening scene only his voice is heard through the answering machine .

Shot list

MCU (Medium close up) - Scrapbook turning pages

Zoom..

CU (Close up) - Photo

Fades out into..

POV (Point of view) of Stalker - Following Rebecca (non digetic, phone call of Rebecca saying, "shes being followed" , it muffles then it goes silent)

MCU (Medium close up) - Scrapbook turning pages

Zoom..

CU (Close up) - Photo of Rebecca and Ollie in scrap book. (non digetic, voice mail message of detective saying " Ollie should be careful and should phone the detective back")

Fades out into....

POV (Point of view) of Stalker- Voyeuristic shot of man eating chinese through window

CU (Close up) Answering machine bleeping.

THE SCRAPBOOK (BLACK BACKGROUND)

Location, Set and Design

Production Companies

Fox entertainment is an example of a successful production company with a long line of many successful productions. The fox entertainment group was founded in the 1990s, it is an American entertainment industry company that owns film studios, terrestrial, cable and direct broadcast satelite television properties. The company is owned and controlled by Rupert Murdoch.

Fox entertainment have successful movies such as:

.Bride wars

.Street fighter

.Marley and me

.Australia

.The day The earth stood still

Target audience

When talking about target audience within a thriller genre, we all can say that because of the codes and conventions of this genre the target audience is usually for students and above, because of the many story lines that suit the codes and conventions it would not be okey to show younger viewers.

Depending on the type of thriller storyline, In my opinion it would seem males would prefer to watch a action thriller film like The Bourne films, where as females would tend to find romantic-thriller films more interesting.

Young people would usually tend to watch thrillers with sex, drugs and violence because of the entertainment value it can give this age group, also more modernised thrillers would be watched by younger people than older becasue young can possibly relate to many of these modern thriller films.

Sub-genre's (Scary movie)

Scary movie is a well known sub genre as the creators use content from other films to create theirs, such as in Scary movie 1 they use the content of the thriller Scream to create a more comedy approach to it, in others they create spoof movies.

Scary movie produced a sceond movie because of the good effect Scary movie 1 had on audiences, it was creative, clever, funny and original which made it successful; so a second movie was released which the creators pushed the barriers by adding more content from different movies such as the horror movie 'The exorcist' etc.

Music

Music is a really importat feature, music can help provide the intensity of suspense which is a must have when producing a thriller film. An example of a thriller film using music to create this technique is Jaws; the suspense i.e. music is used before the shark is about to emerge or kill someone.


Another thriller film which uses music to capture the audience, is 'Valentine' where in is trailer it uses music as a climax, to capture the interest of the public to watch the movie and also to be entertained. The suspense music is found near the end; a high pitched sound, which is sterotypically used.

Lastly thriller films are sterotypically known to promote intense excitement and high level of anticipation and they do this through mainly music, as a character is approaching the climax of the story. Each of the clips use a fast tempo beat which could symbolise the racing heatbeat of the audience or the character in the dilema.

Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks was born July 9th 1956 and during his high school years he attended Skyline High school in Oakland, California before moving onto Chabet college in Hayward, California where he studied Theatre, and after two years, went to California State University, Scaramento. In his early career before making his block buster movies Hank had moved to Newyork to take on roles in movies such as He Knows Your Alone and also performed in Broadway showcase, these productions helped Hank land a agent Joe Ohla with the Micheal Bloom Agency. Hanks began to climb to the top with his portyral of a A league baseball manager in A league of their own in 1992. In 1993 had to successful movies one called Sleepless in seatle and Philidelphia and his portrayal led to "most critics agreed that his portrayal ensure him a place among the premiere romantic-comedy of his generation". Soon after in 1994 Hank had another successful movie Forrest Gump and also had recieved the academy ward for his role; as Hank started to rise as a big successful actor so did his movies where he stared in Apollo 13 and Toy story
Directing and producing was another adventure for Hanks and also delivered many of the best films of all time, he teamed up with director Steven Spielberg and they produced the film Saving Private Ryan, which won several awards such as academy award for best film. he had also directed, produced and wrote the following films:
.Green mile
.Toy story 2
.Band of brothers
.American Beauty
.Catch me if you can
.My big fat greek wedding
.The Terminal
.The Polar express

Match on match action

Match on match action is where you must apply in any video or the video may look from the audience's s perspective that it is out of synchronisation; this can also confuse the audience and the video would not be as good. The auidence can notice that there is no match on match action when for example the actor/actress performing has a shot of her with a cigarette in her hand, but the next shot of her there is no cigarette in her hand, and again the cigarette may be in her hand once more, therefore there was not shot of her putting the cigarette away and collecting it again.

180 degree rule

The 180 degree rule is very simple to understand, what it means is that their is a barrier you cannot cross when filming such as not going beyond a 180 degree line. Because when there are characters on set and you cross the 180 degree the characters change side which can confuse the audience.

For example football is a good example of this as it is the most important rule when filming football, if you do cross the 180 degree line in football it will confuse the viewers watching it being filmed(television) as the teams change sides; the picture above helps explain this theory.

Prelim task evaluation

In our prelim task was myself, Laura Walton and Paige lee edmunds, we each had a role in this prelim task; mine and Laura's were to act and Paige was to film.
Before we had started recording our video we first began to thought process what we wanted, needed to do for our short preliminary task. And what we thought of is an exchange where a character would come to a location and collect an item, we wanted this as it was very simple and easy when capturing the shots needed.

In our thought processing time we also wrote the specific shots we wanted at each point; our first shot is a high angle from the edge of the room we wanted this because it can help portray a CCTV camera watching the character, the second shot is a point of view shot of the character opening a door and to fit the criteria were we had to have 'match on match action' and to make sure we had a medium shot of the character openning/closing the door.

For the next part of our video we begin the conversation between the two characters, and again we had to have a shot included because of it being in the criteria this is 'over the shoulder shot'; were we decided to have the shot tight as possible to capture a really good 'over the shoulder shot'. During filming we came across difficulties as in our location there was not enough space to fit all our equipment such as the tri-pod, so we decided to shoot the film without. by doing this in each of our scenes we had to take as many shots as we can just in case human error produces a bad shot for example the persons hand shaking. The next stage of the prelim task was the continuity editing, this is were you can edit the video in the edit suite, you can apply music and special effects.

Prelim Task- information

For our prelim task we had to capture a small video clip but make sure we follow the criteria,
our criteria was:

Match on action
For example in your video clip if the actor has a glass in his hand then the next shot he doesn't, but the next shot the glass has come back; try to avoid carrying out this action

Shot reverse Shot
This technique is used in soap opera such as 'Eastenders' where the is a shot of one character, then other then back to the same character

180 rule
Cameras at football matches use this technique etc.

In my group there is Laura, paige and myself, we came up with the idea of a funny sketch scene called 'The exchange' it is a very simple scene which is why we decided on it, the type of shots we had to include is the criteria from above and also tracking, panning, over the shoulder, high angles, low angles and a wormseye shot.

Independant research - Quentin tarantino

Quentin tarantino is a very successful film director, screen writer, producer, cinematographer and acto. When he began in the 90's he used nonlinear sequences to his films and a need for violence which is still containted in his flims toda. His films include:

Reservoir dogs (1992)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Kill bill (volume 1, 2003) (volume 2, 2004)
Death proof (2007)
Inglorious bastard (2009)

Quentin tarantino has recieved many awards for his films such as Academy, Golden Globe, BAFTA and
Palme d'Or. Quentin tarantino was born in Knowxville, Tennessee, he attended Narbonne High school in habour city, California for his freshman year before dropping out of school at age 15, Tarantino once said "When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films".

Tarantino has also been in televison and directed the fifth season finale hit show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; tarantino has also directed an epsiode of ER called 'motherhood'.

Past student examples - End of the line

End Of The Line from BDC on Vimeo.

Analysis

This short film is very clever and precise for the short clip, but the many camera shots and angles used deliver a really good thriller video. One of the interesting parts to this video is the continuous shots and angles when the character is walking down the street, this creates a lot of tension which is very effective for a thriller video; the creators have also used movement of the camera such as the tracking movement when the character is walking which creates someone following and also engages the audience because it can seem as if were are following this character. The video also includes non-digetic music, this music helps to create tension for the increase in volume to show where tension is at a peak.

Openning sequence to 'Seven'

Film:Seven
Director:David Fincher
Lead actors: Morgan Freeman, Brad pitt, Gwyneth paltrow

Titles: The titles gives a hostile atmosphere of how unpredictable it is, like the music and transitions are. A mixture of red, black and white in the title sequence these colours symbolise the outcome of the movie such as danger, death etc.

Shots: Point of view shot of morgan freeman's character picking up his equipment. Low angle shot when showing both detectives, showing power. panning shots of morgan's character when he is looking in the mirror emphaising his facial expression - could lead to what his character is feeling.

Movement:Tracking movement of morgan freemans movements.

Generic themes: There seems to be a linear squence to the movie. The character of morgan freemans's is strange his house is very clean which can prove his character is quite neat, perfection is his objective in what ever he does.

Sound: There is Digetic music as police sirens is heard i the background, and a radio playedm there is also the noise of rain. Non-digetic music played in the title sequence

Mise-en-scene: Rain gives symbolic colour of the movie being dark so we can assume that it will continue to be black until the rain as stopped.

Openning sequence to 'Momento'

Title: Momento, 2002,
Lead actors: Guy pearce
Director: Christopher Nolan

Titles: In the openning to the film the viewer notices the opennig credits, these credits are in blue and when change of credit, it fades slowly giving a cold feeling due to the colour and transition, this could maybe give the reader an insight to what the story line of the play could be, a dark and cold play but to add effect a slowness to give emphasis. Non-digetic music is played while showing the titles, where there is an increase in volume when showing the title 'Momento'

Shots: A high angle shot in beginning showing the audience the picture the character is holding to symbolise the power the picture possess's; a low angle shot showing the dead body to emphasize the death.

Movement: There is a tracking movement of the camera when showing two characters

Generic themes: A murder has taken place. The movie starts from the end instead of the beginning( a non linear sequence ); flash backs are used to add effect.

Sound: Non-digetic music showing the tiltes; Digetic music as there's police sirens etc.

Mise-en-scene: Naturalistic as everything is proved (realistic), nothing seems to be false. For objects we see a gun and bullets lying on the floor. the picture contains a person lying dead with blood splatterd on the wall

An introduction to thriller films

In this lesson we began by thought processing what we assumed what had to be included were in thrillers, theses were:
.Supernatural themes
.plot twists
.tense atmosphere
.Suspense
.Dark lighting
.stock characters
.Puzzles
.Camera shots and angles
The evidence for this was a film by last years media group, there thriller film which included these themes, the film was called 'End of the line' which we analysed to discover how and why the themes were used. It seemed the group had focused their attention on the camera angles and shots because of how cleverly organised it was and the impact it had on its viewers, for example tension was built through the fast and continuous change in camera shots.

We were then given permission to explore the other video's that the previous media students had created, which was very interesting as I was curious to find out why the groups used the techniques that they used, from my perspective camera shots and angles seemed as the most important tool to use when capturing the plot, but it as also given me and insight to the standard of my film, when I do create it.

Introduction

Hi my name is Percelle Ascott, and I am in the theatre strand and studying media as my additional studies. I am really passionate about theatre not just in the acting but the additional stuff that no one really likes which is camera work, lighting etc.
This is why I chose media as in the near future I hope to be apart of the theatre industry whether it involves acting or camera work; also I chose media as this would really benefit me when applying for university or a drama school.
In media I hope to achieve my full potential to do this i will put maximum effort into every objective that is give to us or every opportunity