Our Thriller Opening: Retribution

Media Evaluation - Question 7

In this question I will be talking about the differences between this task as well as the preliminary. I will be talking about the improvements which we have made and how we have developed with our skills to create our final cut of  thriller opening.

The first thing was the video camera the camera we used. The camera quality is extremely important as for the audience to review our thriller they would need a it to be of a decent quality so that they can enjoy every bit of the thriller. A clear quality will allow them to understand whats going on, no pixelated shot. In order to do this we had used a HD video camera.

In the  preliminary we have used an iPad which our teacher had given us to film the task. As we can see the iPad quality has shown to be quite grainy, we should be able to see the outline of the person below (on the left). There wasn't a way in which we could improve the lighting. However our final cut the HD video camera allowed us to increase the lighting if needed. This meant that even if the environment seemed dull it could be sorted. When looking at the final we can see that the images are a lot clearer. We can see this on the right (man with a gun).

 

Overall we had learned that using using a good video camera makes a huige impact on the final product it means that everything will be more clearly which will allow the audience to understand exactly whats going on.

 

The next thing was use of tripod. This made a huge impact on our final cut. As when we did our final cut it allowed us to take shots without any motion making the finish seem unprofessional. Having a tripod in the final meant that it would be more appealing for the audience as they would be able to focus without wonder why there is so much movement. However looking back at the preliminary we can see that not using a tripod meant there was motion in the shot which was not needed.  

 

Overall having a tripod was an advantage it meant that we could have a more professional finish to our piece. The tripod also had many other features which helped us through the process when filming our final cut.

 

Another thing which had been improved from the preliminary was the lighting. In the preliminary this had shown to be a difficult task as with an ipad we couldn't add more lighting to our piece and switching on class room lights weren't very helpful. In our final cut our video camera had a feature which allowed us to increase the lighing even with all the lights turned on. This meant that the characters could be seen more easily throughout. This feature had shown to be helpful in our final cut through all the outside.

 

 

Overall this effect allowed us to make our thriller opening the best quality possible this meant that the audience wouldn't have a problem when trying to see which character it is and what is exactly happening throughout the opening.

 

The final thing is continuity which in our preliminary hadn't been done very well when switching scenes it had shown to be quite different which didn't create the impact of continuity. This may have meant that the audience was getting confused. However in our final cut we had considered this slighly more which meant that the audience wouldn't get confused throughout the opening. Overall we have learned that continuity was important.

 

From our preliminary our skills and understanding has developed so we can make our final the best we possibly can. We have improved our skills so the overall end visual product will be clear. This will give it a professional finish. For the final cut the quality, effect of continuity and lighting has been improved.



 

 







sound

dragon This track is called Dark World and the one above is from a copyright free website called incompetech The track above we created in garage band

Media Evaluation - Question 6

Evaluation 6 from Jeet_Kaurr

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shot log updated

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 The shots we used were all quality checked however there were some scenes that we had to redo many times due to the bad lighting rather than the shots themselves. It took less takes nearer the end of filming as we were more determined to finish the film and we had less issues due to the practice we had leading up to the end.

Shooting schedule updated

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What is Mise-en-scene

This is a french term which means what is put into a scene or a frame

The five elements which make up mise-en-scene are:

• setting and props
• costume, hair and make up
• facial expressions and body language
• lighting and colout
• positon of characters and the objects

Torodov's Theory

Editing day 4

This day we were which sorting out small things which would make our piece perfect. We showed it to our teacher to see if there were any other improvements to be made which we couldn't notice. She did notice a few mistakes so we took them into account. It was that we had got the position of the character wrong tto fix it we had cropped the shot to fix it. On this day we also added in our distribution company's name which was MGM as well as the title of our opening at the end. Now our thriller is ready to be exported.

Editing Day 3

On the third day again we were adding more transitions and cutting parts off which we didn't like. However we started adding sound in we got sounds it such as gun clicks as well as other soundtracks which we gained from a copyright free website. We also created our own track as we were looking for something in particular which we couldn't seem to find online.

Editing day 2

On the second day we were deciding on which application to use it was between imovies and final cut pro. We decided to use imovies as it was a much more simple application and its quite easy to pick up commands.

For this day we had a lot of time on our hands which meant we could be quite productive through the day but we were learning how to use the program which took up some time. This day also consisted of us starting to put the clips together in the correct order. We also started to add transitions and took off unwanted parts of the clips.

Editing Day one

The first day of editing really consisted of looking at what we had to see what we would be using within our final cut. This was quite time consuming to do, what we decided to do was to sort out videos from each day into good and bad videos. By doing this we had made it easier for ourselves to edit as everything would be organised. As we had a lot of clips to do this used up a whole day, we understood that it would make the whole editing process easier

Rough cut 2

Our second rough cut lasted 34 seconds. In the second rough cut we had shown more of the begining unlike the last one which showed more of the middle rather than the begining which made it harder for the focus group to understand on the rough cut. This time the focus group seemed to have a better understanding of what was happening through the video.

 

However there was one improvement which needed to be made which was from 12 seconds to 20 seconds in the video. This was due to the various cut which were made through that part it was also slightly shaky.

 

Otherwise as a group we had gained positive feeback from our second rough cut.

 

Filming Day 7

This was the final day of filming where we did the outside scene which is also the last scene. This all had to be done around the same time as it would create continuity for the outside scene. This is important as when watching the clips back the lighting must look partially the same to create the effect of continuity.

Throughout this day we did various different angles of the shot as then when editing we can make the thriller opening more effective. This will help create the effect of suspense. This was difficult as some parts we had to abandon the tripod which made it harder to keep the shots still. We managed to finish the filming this day.

Gender Representation

How a male is represented towards the audience:

• Men are shown to always be in control of the situation shown from a building being made to a robbery.

• In a thriller the main character are shown to be young if not they are shown to be energetic in some way.

• Darker raced men are usually portrayed to be the antagonist , the one who always seems to try and make everyone else unhappy.

• Always seem to have a good physique, having lots of muscle as well as slim, they never show a man to be fat.

• Portrayed to be physically attractive as well as self centered. 

• Older men usually shown to go after women much younger than them

How a female is represented towards the audience:

• The female always tends to be the helpless victim

• seem to have the ideal body 

• They never show a women to be fat or look different to a flat stomach and perfect skin

• seem to exaggerate a lot

• seem to get dragged into problems and always seem to be in the middle of the problems 

• Everyone usually seems to love her

 Gender representation shown in thriller openings

• Brick had shown the male to be strange as well as other expected features such as him being strong and confident. As per usual they had shown the female character to be the victim who had been shown to be weak and vulnerable. It almost made it seem as the women wasn't treated as a human but she was treated as an object. This shows how little power women are shown to have in a thriller.
• The next opening which I had looked into was the opening of 'Donnie Darko'. In this opening we don't really see any gender representations. As throughout this opening we see a strange man who is portrayed to be lost and confused towards the audience. However when then see the stereotype broken as the man is shown to be helpless rather than the women. Later on we see the man riding his bike which improves his confidence some how.
•  The third clip which I looked into was 'drive'. In this clip we don't see any women again like Donnie Darko. In this clip we see that the male is shown to be the dominate character however he is shown to to be a lonely person.
•  The next one that I watched was 'heat' this showed men to be secretive as well as dangerous they are shown to be focusing on a particular task. They are seen to be working towards a certain goal however we don't see any any women again.
• The last opening that I saw was 'TTSS' this showed that they had strong trust issues. However women were shown to be caring.
• The next opening which I looked into was 'Leon'. The man had shown to be strong, encouraging as well as mysterious. There was a part when we some the men having a talk with eachother however we saw no women suggesting that they are not important enough to be involved. 
• The next one was 'millers crossing'  shows against the stereotyping of men, they are of a low status no women are to be seen 

Rough cut

The rough cut which had been edited over all the takes which had been previously done. There were several different takes this is a small section of the thriller which had been compressed into about half a minute. This is a brief introduction to our piece which shows Sara walking into the park who is then shortly followed by her partner Marcus.

When watching this back there were some minors errors which we had noticed, by fixing small errors like this it will allow us to make our final piece to have a better finish the first error which we had noticed was at about 0:14. The error which we had noticed was that when Sara first started walking she had gone quite far and when we show her then walking towards the camera she is further back makes it look as an unprofessional finish, it also looked slightly grainy. This didn't fit the effect pf continuity.

The next error/improvement which was noticed by the focus group was that we should keep Marcus's identity a secret.this was noticed at 0:25. At this point we saw the protagonist Marcus watch is wife Sara walk into the woods. The focus group said that the impact of suspense isn't the same as if to if his identity was kept a secret. 

filming day 6

This is the day where we have almost got towards the end of our filming period as on this day we have moved on the the final scene of our thriller. Even though the filming begun on this day it will be carried onto another day to be finished.

Our biggest challenge for filming outside has shown to be time as we can't control the lighting outside ot the time it begins to get dark. This means that we will have to work fast or we will fall behind due to the amount of lighting.

filming day 5

For this day the plan was to carry on filming with what had been done previously. Once this was done it meant that we could begin to move ontto the editing stage of our thriller as all the scenes will have been shot.

The biggest challenge which we had was making it look  the same from previous takes. This had shown to be a challenge for us as we had been filming all the scenes over many different days which therefore made it harder for us to create continuity for the overall scene. In the end we did manage to do it after trying various different methods.

filming day 4

We had looked back at our previous takes which we had done and realised that the quality isn't what we were expecting and didn't have the touch that we were looking for within the piece. Due to this we had decided to refilm this, by filming it again it would mean that we would have more of a professional finish to our piece.

To improve this we had improved the amount of lighting which we had used however once we had done this we had then realised previously we had filmed when it was slightly darker which meant in order to carry on filming we had to wait for it to become slightly darker. Through this day we had filmed from many different angle. This would be helpful for our group when it comes to editing as there will be a range of shots to choose from which will mean the we can choose only the best ones to make our thriller the best it can be.

filming day 3

on the third day of filming we decided to do it on a weekend which means we could start filming from a sligtly earlier time, however it didn'tt mean that we could film later than usual. This is because this is the day we wanted to film outside due to the weather conditions it still meant that we had to work fast.

Working fast was vital as if we didn't we wouldn't have the best lighting as possible as we were outside. Even if we did begin the film at a sligtly later it would mean that the quality wouldn't be as good. As a group we wouldn't have the equipment to change the lighting outside. As well as filming later than other days wouldn't create the effect of continuity.

special effects make up and why its important

                               
Learning how to do simple special effects makeup will make a massive impact on our piece. In our case the correct type of effect to learn would be how to make a realistic bullet shot. This will be used in the scene where Arthur the antagonist shoots Sara the female  victim. We could decide to just drizzle fake blood on the side of her face however that wouldn't seem realistic as when someone gets shot there is usually some sort of crater left behind.

However when we actually put this idea into action it wasn't very sucesfully as our equipment wasn't the same high quality as were used in the video. This resulted in our group applying the makeup in a different way, it wasn't as effective as it could have been if we used the right equipment.

why using transitions will make an impact on our piece

when editing this will be an important aspect when editing our piece. Using transitions will allow our piece to flow better as each transition going into the next scene will give the audience a feel to the mood of the scene.

Filming problems we may face

As we have now practically finished all of the indoor filmimg with a consistent results. However our next scenes are going to be filmed outside in a park. This may be a problem due to the British weather. If we are not able to finish our scene in the park in a day it may be hard to have the effect of continuity as one day it may have just stopped raining making it look as a dull atmosphere and the next day sunny which wouldn't match when put together. To advoid things like this happening we must work fast so that we have the effect of continuity.

Another problem we may face is that the camera battery running out quickly. When we were filming inside we had a chord which we could plug in so we could still use the camera even without charge. Outside in the park we won't have the option of usinng a chord therefore we should come prepared with an extra battery or the battery having an extremley good charge and to work fast as a group.

Thriller openings: Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko Thriller Opening

Camera angles/shots:

The first camera angle that we see in the opening of Donnie Darko is a close up, this shot doesn't focus very long on the object. The object which the close up focuses on is a tree however it then slowly zooms out moving into the next shot where the whole scene is then viewed by the audience.

The next camera angle used is a long shot, during this shot we see the scenery, I believe through this shot being used at the start showing the sunset as well as nature is that they are trying to emphasise how beautiful it is where they are. This long shot moves on from just viewing the scenery to the road/pathway where the audience then sees this man just lying there who looks unconscious, this makes the viewer’s wonder what’s happened as at a distance it makes them curious of the situation. We see this long shot progressing, it keeps zooming into the man lying down in the middle of nowhere on the road/pathway. Even though they shot is being zoomed in its still a long shot but as they begin to zoom in they start to move away from the scenery factor and then we see the man wake up which is where the next shot then begins.

The third shot we see used is an over the shoulder shot. At this point of the opening we see that the man is confused of where he currently is at this very moment. For an extremely short period of time we see from his perspective that he is stunned by how beautiful the location is of where he is at. Then in a circular motion it moves into the next shot.

The next shot that we see used is the medium which is where we see him sitting there just sitting there staring at what’s right in front of him which is the mountains, bushes, tree and just the beauty of nature then again it goes into a long shot emphasising the beauty of nature. They then use another over the shoulder shot again i believe that they are trying show how he sees the beauty of what’s right in front of him, they're trying to show his appreciation for nature. It then goes into a medium shot where we then see the man smiling as well as laughing and then moves out of the shot. Once he moves out of the shot it turns into a long shot where we then again see nature’s beauty.

Then we see a medium shot for maybe a second and then moves very quickly moves into a long shot we see him cycling on the road/pathway with a smile on his face it looks as if he's admiring the location of where he is. They then move into a point of view shot where we see from his perspective, we see the trees and the path in front of his it then moves back into a long shot where we see he has exited the scenery and into town. there is a constant switch between long shots and point of view shots at this point from when we see him riding his bike to his point of view where we see people walking on the pavement.

Transition/editing:

The transitions are shown right from the very beginning when they introduce the titles they all fade in this give a subtle affect to the beginning of the film.

The next transition is just a slow movement of them slowly moving the camera towards the left which constantly keeps moving until we start to the strange man on the floor in the middle of nowhere on the pathway/road. The movement through the scenery I believe that they are trying to emphasise how beautiful it is, how consistent the scenery is, its just everywhere you look you see the same beauty.

The next transition it where we see them zooming in onto the man. This transition makes the audience curious of why the man is just lying there, what happened to him, it makes the audience question what is going on.

Then there's this transition which I believe maybe be a dissolve/fade transition as when they show the title of the film 'Donnie Darko' it fades in to this ray of sunshine then all we see is white then fades out and we see the man on his bike riding away, This transition showed excitement making the next part even more exciting to know what it is.

Finally we see a cutaway transition used towards the end this transition is used many times towards the end. At this point this transition is used to show different perspectives of he man. It shows what he is seeing all directions and showing everything in its best light.

Sound:

The piece began in silence which was quite mysterious as it is silent. The silence makes the audience curious of what this will consist of. The silence creates an effect of suspense, the silence aspects is used quite a few times throughout this piece.

The first piece of sound we hear is the slight sound of wind this is when we see the scenery for the first time. This is a natural sound as they are outside just viewing the nature and it may have been created however the scene which we see it in makes it looks peaceful. It makes everything seem for realistic with small effects like these.

The next sound which we hear in this opening is the sounds of the birds which adds a sense of realism to the piece. As the sound of the birds in  a calm environment such as the scenery. The sound of the birds make it seem so beautiful and just a wonderful place.


Codes and Conventions:

The first convention that we see several times throughout this opening is the scenery. This convention makes the audience focus on just how beautiful the location is. The location will distract the audience from everything which is going on.

Another convention that we see when the opening starts is the strange man lying down in the middle of the road/pathway. This is a good convention as it makes the audience wonder what's happened to him. This makes the audience question things, makes them curious of the situation, this is a sign of a good convention.

The third convention which i saw through outs this opening was the bike in front of the man. At this point we saw the man which was supposed to be the main focus however we saw a glimpse of the bike, this made the audience curious of why the bike is there, and again they question the object.

The final convention which i saw in this opening was the 'Halloween carnival sign' the period of time we see this for isn't very long however it’s the first time we see it. This also makes us wonder if that’s the reason he came into the town because there's something there that he wants or just a carnival which he really enjoys. This is the sign of a good convention as it makes the audience question what’s happening and for a bit it’s a bigger focus than it should be.