Dear Moderator

Welcome to my Blog (G321)

My finished construction (thriller opening sequence) can be found here.

Here are the links to each of my evaluation questions: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

All posts labelled research can be found here.

All posts labelled planning can be found here.

Analysis tasks can be found here if necessary. Scene analysis. Opening scene analyses. Poster analyses.

Any other posts which may be relevant to coursework can be found under the sidebar titled "Quick Links To Coursework" -->

(If embedded links don't work then I have the URL's below each of them on the relevant blog post)

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

https://youtu.be/BwjJ4dd9zog

Script:

Locations & Narrative:
With our narrative we have conformed to conventions of the thriller genre, for example we have chosen to leave the opening on an enigma so that it is not clear why the protagonist was kidnaped or whether she is alive or dead.

For our settings we were influenced by the thriller shutter island which gave us the idea of using the typical beach scene for our opening sequence it gives a sense of distance and separation.

By showing the waves lapping over the camera and it then dipping under waves, our audience feel the same entrapment as what the victim would feel, it then makes the audience empathise with that character as oppose to the villain character.

Gender:
In our thriller opening we included three male characters and one female. Following Propp's character types, we stereotypically used a male villain. This is used in almost every thriller, examples are the James Bond films and the Dark Knight Trilogy that all contain a villain that is of the male sex. The Bane in Batman is seen as very muscular and powerful over the other characters due to his physical build which we have attempted to replicate by using an actor who is much bigger than our victim.

Another convention our opening scene met is the typical 'damsel in distress' type character, being the female victim. This links to the 2008 film Taken which also features a teenage girl as the 'Princess', relating to Propp's character types. She is very weak and is kidnapped within the first few minutes of the film and the character is vulnerable as there are only two teenage girls and no males.

Costume/ props:
Our antagonist character is seen wearing a dark hoodie, this is used to hide the characters identity and create an element of mystery. We chose him to wear dark colours which have negative connotations such as evil, hate and death. This is typical for the thriller genre for a villain character. Additionally by choosing this costume it helps him stay hidden in the shadows which was shown to be very effective especially in the house party scene as he blended in to the background. It is very common in thrillers for masks to be used and in general for the villain's identity to be kept hidden, an example of this is displayed in the beginning of The Dark Knight film.

Something which was significant for our characters costumes was that of the costume of the extras. One of the friends in the party scene is seen wearing a yellow hoodie-style jumper. We used him to portray future events of the sequence. The colour yellow connotates happiness, joy and energy (reflective of the protagonist) however this colour also represents caution and warning which we took as foreshadows her untimely demise later on in the thriller.

In most thrillers the female characters are seen as objects and are sexualised (Mulvey’s Male Gaze Theory) however we tried to subvert from these conventions and present her has a normal teenage character, this was partly helped that our actor was basically representing herself for the thriller.

Colours:
In the production of our thriller we decided to effectively use colour for impact. The use of colour is representative of the main character's life. To begin with the scene at the party we saturated the bright colours in shot to make it vibrant and alive. This gave the idea of strobe lighting as well as making the actors stand out (in contrast) to the pitch black background in that scene. This scene with the bright colours is designed to represent the life of the victim which at this time is complete and radiant.

There is a variation of colour for the beach scene where we used black and white shots as inspired from the 1960’s thriller Psycho. By taking all the colour from the picture it makes the scene seem incomplete and vacant. The DE saturated shots are unconventional as typically they show events in the past, however, with our thriller it in fact represents the present (the morning after the party).

Sound:
Starting off with non-diegetic sound which is sound characters cannot hear in the diegesis we created a soundtrack. We used Garageband to compose what we believe is a typical thriller backing track. We based it on the Bank Heist music from The Dark Knight because it was a very eerie and added tension to the scene in certain areas. We also used other tension sound effects to add atmosphere to certain areas.

Diegetic sound is also important in our thriller due to it being significant sounds which the characters can hear. A good example of this is the noise of the sea which is paramount to the rest of the title sequence not only as it displays the setting but also relate to what ends up to the protagonist.

Secondly the sound changes from the main sound track and slows down to an eerie wind blowing noise combined with the noise from a violin, we used this again to signify the life of the character which fades as she is seen to die at the end of the clip before the credits.

Finally, the tension is at its highest point during the POV shot of the victim drowning amongst the waves because it shows her struggle since we cannot hear any background noise, simply the bubbling sound which was added in the editing stages. This particular part is powerful as the audience are unsure if she is dead or not. Furthermore, the music ends abruptly presenting the disturbance of the equilibrium and her possible death.

MANY THANKS FOR LISTENING!
Written, presented and editied by Russell Dewing
www.russelldewingmedia.blogspot.co.uk

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

https://youtu.be/Ria4jlwAu6s

Script:

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

About:
In my preliminary task I had to be able to use a variety of techniques which would become significant for my final piece of work. The task involved working in a group of three to produce a short sequence which showed that continuity was key for a media production.

-The first was match action which is getting the shots to line up correctly (so they look believable) using long shots, close up’s, POV and panning. Something which we liked and kept on to for our thriller (at the party and when the protagonist is in the sea at the end).
-And secondly was the 180 degree rule which is used for dialogue. The idea of this rule is so that the audience do not become disoriented with lots of different angles, by keeping to one side of the line this makes it much easier for the audience to understand the scene. Something which I did not use in my final production however it was useful information for when a scene which required a conversation would be required, regardless we used this for when we spoke in the preliminary task to demonstrate our skill and understanding of why it should be used.
-It helped me work as part of a group

We managed to get a few good shots in the preliminary video however costumes and props were very limited and basic since we were using those provided by the college, there was no real theme or genre for this either since we did not go through much planning and no storyboard was used… we simply wrote a few lines and planned it out as we went… something which we would steer clear for in our real production. We took the opportunity to mainly to practice our techniques. With this first stage a few minor errors were made regarding continuity and editing although identifying these mistakes we as a group were then able to address this for the actual production.

Characters:
There was little thought go in to the characters we simply said we needed a protagonist and an antagonists. It was merely a comical fight scene between the two characters with a “who wins?” ending. For the preliminary task we had to film ourselves as we had little time to arrange for actors this therefore might have made the scenes look a bit strange as we were really sure who we were playing as in terms of the characters weren't given a story.

When it came to the actual thriller opening we took a lot of care and planning when casting people for it. We used characters our own ages as we were able to cast them easily and it also appealed to our target audience which were teenagers meaning how the characters appeared was more realistic since they were teenagers/ students representing themselves. We used teenagers as the protagonist (victim) as well as extras who were at the party. We were also able to get help from family members to play older characters since it would not appear plausible if it was a teen playing the antagonist, also they would loose some of the mystery and fear factor since he would not appear as scary or powerful. This gave a principle of binary opposite as it was not only a fight for the audience of good against evil but maybe a slightly more controversial theme of young vs old which could cause split opinions between an active audience.

Sound:
In our preliminary task we used iMovie to edit our sound where we simply got a soundtrack from their database and overlaid it with our video. Diegetic and non diegetic in preliminary task using the sound of doors closing and footsteps as well as when the character falls to the floor. This was very useful when filming our final thriller we could then identify where appropriate sounds should go within the clips.

When it came to editing the sound for HIGHTIDE we actually created the audio in garage band and combined it with other sounds found on there including atmospheric non diegetic sounds overlaid to the backing track and diegetic sound such as the wind and ship rigging noise in the credits. NOTE we also included the noise of waves in the beach scene to help bring the setting to life however we did not have diegetic sound for the party scene as it was set in the past.

Editing:
From our preliminary task we probably learned out most valuable lesson which was making sure we had backups of our shots, this was down to use having issues uploading them to the computers. We took this on board and made sure each scene was filmed a couple of times, this was also useful for continuity in case some shots didn’t match or if we felt they weren’t to a good enough quality for our thriller, this was noticed when filming our thriller at the party scene and we decided to adjust the lighting and film it a couple of times to see what was best.

By having everything filmed early it gave us much more time to play around with editing techniques as well as going out if necessary to re shoot certain scenes if we felt they weren’t up to scratch.

When working on the preliminary task we used iMovie this piece of software was easy to use for this task however it is not as professional as Final Cut Pro which we decided on using for our thriller as it allowed us much more freedom with editing and the tools available this gave us the capability we could fine tune certain clips in more detail.

With our preliminary task there was little editing required as it wasn’t very complex we just placed the clips in order, there were no visual effects used. When editing our final product HIGHTIDE we looked at various tutorials and websites on how to edit in Final Cut Pro, this was done so that we could improve visuals such as lighting as well as make certain scenes e.g. the beach scene, have an essence of time passing through the fades.

MANY THANKS FOR WATCHING!
Written, presented and editied by Russell Dewing
www.russelldewingmedia.blogspot.co.uk