THE FINAL DRAFT OF MY THRILLER OPENING SEQUENCE

Ladies and gentlemen I would like to show you the long awaited opening sequence to Close Cut, thank you to everyone who took their time to read over my blog and here is what you have been waiting for, so sit back and enjoy the show.

EVALUATION QUESTION 3- WHAT KIND OF MEDIA INSTITUTION'S MIGHT DISTRIBUTE YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT AND WHY?

In this post I would like to talk about the distribution companies that I would like my media film to be shown on for the first time and in the future, after we had undertaken research into where thriller movies where most comanly shown and we found that they were distributed and broadcasted by smaller companies like netflix and independent film companies compared to the big movie names like paramount and universal, so from this we decided to use netflix as the main platform because in this day and age all people do is watch films and programs online instead of buying DVDs as the unknown films online have great reputation for having good story lines upcoming actors on the rare occasion there are thriller movies that are produced by big named companies for example girl on a train, once our movie has gone through the stage of premiering online it will not go to DVD and will stay purely on the online platform. another reason why we chose to use netflix is because of the wide range of thriller movies theyu have on their platform, i would like my film to be amoung the big names such as Inception and The Shinning, when people thjink of thriller films they imediately go online and the first thing that pops up when you type in online movies is netflix so its great for marketing as a upcoming film.

EVALUATION QUESTION 1- IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS

In this post I will be talking about how our opening sequence compares with the codes and conventions of existing thriller movie, I would firstly like to point out that in my opinion I think that our thriller movie is completely unique and I have never seen a film with such an obscure story line and idea, the idea of a stalker who likes to cut hair has never been done, there have been existing films where killers liked to take certain things but never hair so we chose and idea that has never been done, the music we chose to use is in complete juxtaposition to the shots on screen we chose fast paced and joyful music compared to the eerie stalkers den on the screen, but we did use a sound effect with was very creepy during the following scenes to create suspense for the audience which is a well known convention in thriller movies, most of the camera angles and shots we used were stereotypical thriller movie shots but we showed creativeness by making our own security camera shot by using simple editing and a higher camera angle, I have never seen a shot like that in a thriller movie so we have gone against the conventions there to be unique.

here is a powerpoint to back up my thoughts on how we used or challenged the codes and conventions of a stereotypical thriller movie using examples from my film and examples of existing thriller films in comparison.

EVALUATION QUESTION 7- LOOKING BACK AT YOUR PRELIMINARY TASK, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE LEARNT IN THE PROGRESION FROM IT TO THE FULL PRODUCT?

In this post I will be answering this question through a voice clip of my thoughts on my finally product, what I liked about it, what I didn't like about it and how I think if I did it again, what would I do differently, these are my honest thoughts on my film, please enjoy!

EVALUATION QUESTION 2: HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

In this post I will be talking about the social group that our opening sequence targets, we haven't chosen to target a minority but to show the people that are unaware of problems that young teens can face what actually happens,  I belive that the opening sequence sends a key message, it shows how teenagers can get groomed, stalked and followed whilst being completely oblivious, the biggest thing in this message is the unidentified stalker as people do not know who follows them as they appear to be blended in with surroundings and the public, on the other hand we have shown to the people who might be following these teens the damage that they can cause from an outsiders point of view, we have shown them how worrying and creepy it is that they have chosen to stalk these young people and how the public must look at them.

the reason we have chosen to target this audience is becuase there are nmot many people who have the bottle to do so and we would like to take it upon our shoulders and try and help these people but by putting our own twist on it through the cutting of hair. 

EVALUATION QUESTION 6- WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES FROM THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTING THIS PRODUCT?

In this post I will be talking about how we progressed in the production and editing we took part in, what we used and how we used them. We got taught how to use a standard video camera and tripod, this process didn't take to much to learn about but it's a skill that I hope I can use in the future as most cameras need the same maintenance,  once we had completed the filming we were given masterclass lessons on how to compose a simple opening sequence matching the basic codes and conventions of thriller movies, it was then up to us as individuals whether or not we wanted to add extras and change anything, I found this a big problem because me personally I don't class myself as very skilled when it comes to technology and computer skills so this is where my group members shined so I think I could've contributed more when it came to that side of our movie.

EVALUATION QUESTION 4&5- WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT? & HOW DID YOU ATTRACT/ADDRESS YOUR AUDIENCE?

In this question I will be answering two of my evaluation questions, firstly, I will talk about who our target audience will be, we decided the target audience through composing a question aire that we gave to 10 random sources, we decided to target the age group of 15-16 year old by making a psychological thriller movie with good actors and actresses, we attracted this audience by creating the psychological story line of the stalker cutting hair to keep the audience thinking further along the storyline in their head to make them want to watch on to see if they were right, 
The actors and actresses we chose to use are unexperienced but they are extremely confident and will attempt to take on any role they are told to as it's they're qualifications on line so they know how they want to acting to be done, I think that with the research we undertook we did well to meet our audiences expectations of their perfect thriller movie so we should have a wide variety of people wanting to watch our movie and enjoy it.

here is a video of our fellow pupils watching our thriller opening sequence for the first time, we decided to film their reaction as they are the first people outside of our media class to view our film and this is a special ocassion for aspiring directors to broadcast their work to the public, after they had seen the films we kept a few people behind and asked them questions about wether or not they enjoyed the film? every single one we asked said that they did, an aspiring journalist james said, "i really enjoyed your film and i like that it sent a message to vulnerable girls to keep an eye out becuase evryone can be targeted".

TESTS FOR LOCATION/ LIGHTING/ PROPS

in this post i will be talking about me and my groups decision for the correct location, the correct lighting and props. the first thing we decided was chosing our location, we took one look at the store cupboard in our school and knew straight away that it was the right location even though we did not look around for any other places, this was a bit irational as we should have kept our options open because there might have been a better place but becuase we never checked we wont know, the only other location we used was the local trainstation and we chose this because its a public place and more realistic, it will always be open and wouldnt be effected by weather because it is under cover. the reason we chose these is becuase we knew that they will be easily accessible and wont cost too much time or any more to use and get too.

next, we looked at the lighting for our locations, with the trainstation i did not need to worry about lighting as it used natural light in the day and in the night the eerie dark sky was the perfect scene setter for a thriller film. on the other hand in the store cupboard we had to create a DIY light stand where we stacked book boxes ontop of eacother and rested the desk lamp on top of it and held the angle in the correct place that we wanted it, here is a photo of my group finding the perfect spotlight to shine on our murder board.

DRAFTS FOR FILM

This is my first draft of my thriller film where we were on our first trip to the college to start editing, it is the shortest of our draft as we were very inexperienced and didnt know how to do a lot of the editing techniques, seeing as ollie a boy in my group has done lots of editing before we let him take the raines and let him give it his best shot to give our opening sequence a start.

this is our second draft and even after one masterclass on editing there was a massive improvement in the techniques and we created a pretty much complete opening sequence which only needed a few tweeks, we mainly focused on getting over the two minuet time that we had to meet and once we had done this our main focus was on making the finishing touches to the film.

the main thing we were planning on changing was adding a security camera shot with a high angle, this was the highl;ight of our filming and editing as we were the only people to think of an idea that complex and once it payed off we felt like our movie had an advantage over the rest, here is a photo of thisn security cmaera shot.

WORKING ON OUR SHOT LIST

This is a post where i will be showing you the shot list we have created, a shot list is to help us when we were out filming for our film but in my opinion i did not find it useful as i worked better with the story board as its a visual aid, here is a photo of our shot list. it isnt fully complete as we didnt know what shots we were 100% going to use after the first 10 as we prefered to improvise and twist the shotrs to improve them.

DIFFICULTIES WHEN FILMING AND EDIDTING

In this post I will be talking about the difficulties that our group faced when we had to plan and film our opening sequence.
Firstly, we were faced with a problem in our first few media lessons where two of our group members dropped out of the group and the class overall, by this time we had already set jobs for when it came to the research of finding the right plan for our film, so between a group of three we had to do group work set out for 5 people to manage, so 2 people had to do more and 1 person had the easier route.
Secondly, we were challenged when it came to casting for our opening sequence as we had to choose one person from our group to be the main protagonist, because this was such a big role none of us wanted the responsibility so we had to go to our teacher and ask her who would best suit the role of the stalker and she chose Rhys for his hight and stature.
Finally, our biggest problem was when finding time to film after school times, this was a problem because we couldn't always film during school times as we didn't always have the same free lessons as we picked different subjects and had to keep up in those as well,  also outside of school it was hard because I had work and driving lessons and so did my other group members.

TARGET AUDIENCE

In this post I will be talking about our decisions on choosing the correct target audience and creating the right story board and camera techniques to meet this decision.
When discussing what was the right choice my group peers both agreed with me as I wanted to target our age group as teenager, I though that this would be the right choice as we know firsthand what people our age like, me personally when watching a thriller shot I like to see exciting and unique shots that you don't usually see, so baring this in mind we chose to create a CCTV shot with jump cuts giving the impression of a lag in the film, if that was me I would be drawn into watching the rest of the film for more shots like that. Here is a photo of this CCTV shot in our opening sequence.

LOCATION OF FILM

In this post I will be talking about our choices of locations in our film, we based our film around only 2 locations but used them effectively as we made them seem like different locations.

The first location was a stationary cupboard that was part of the media departments, in this room we set up in one corner of the room with our murderboard and a desk lamp providing as a spotlight to make an eerie ambience, we set up the 'stalkers' stationary millimetre perfect to show his OLD. Here is a photo showing our murderboard in the corner of the stationary cupboard, with the spotlight on it.

The second location we chose was at Pencoed train station 10 minutes up the road from our school, we ustalised both platforms and used them in the day and night, even though it was the same location the different lighting made it seem completely different, there were no troubles when it came to accessing this location because it is used by the public on a daily basis free as charge, the constant flow of trains going through platform fitted perfectly with the stalkers obsession of trains. Here is a photo of this location in the day and in the night.

We chose these locations because they were easy to get too during school times as one was in the school and one was by the school so we could get to these freely with no problems.

PROP LIST

In this post I will be talking about the props that we used in our film and behind the scenes of shooting our film.
• Sony camcorder with 40x zoom,
• 2x tripods (1 small and 1 large),
• murder board with photos of the victims on,
• scissors, pens and plastic gloves (stalkers belongings)
• desk lamp to help with the lighting,

We did not have many props and extras in our film because the actors and their characters tell the storyline for themselves and do not need anything to help them on their way.

WORKING ON OUR STORY BOARD

In this post I will be talking about our first attempt of creating a story board for our opening sequence. On this draft we sketched a small drawing of what the shot will be, then we gave the shot a name with a brief description of the shot, also we used our media terminology by saying what angle shot we used and what type it was. Once we had done a few drawings to make a shorter version of a story board to start we labelled our drawings in order of where the sequence will go.
Before we started creating our story board we disggussed all of the possible shots we could chose and threw them all into a mind map to find which ones would be more effective, this brainstorming session was good because it helped us narrow down what shops would be suitable and which shots wouldn't work , for example we had a certain shot that we were going to chose primarily for the mis en scene but because of this mind map we realised that the shot didn't match with any other shots.
Once we had established all the shots that we wanted to use and the ones we didn't we created a final storyboard that we took out every time we went filming so we could look for a guideline, there were a few times that we didn't follow because we thought of something better on our feet.

CASTING FOR OUR OPENING SEQUNCE

In this post I will be talking about our decisions on the actors and actresses for our opening sequnce, firstly our main protagonist the stalker we chose a member of our group to be the actor for this because we know he will be fully committed to acting and he would be willing to do anything. We chose him out of our group because of his stature of how tall he is and how mascalling he is, having a butch manly protagonist works because it shows his power and Braun over the vulnerable girls who are being stalked. The character Rhys our actor will be playing has a story behind it , the stalker is a paranoid psychopath who has an obsession about following vulnerable teenage girls to train stations and from there house not to kill them but to take a locket of their hair to cherish as if they are his loved ones. Next, when it came to deciding on the actresses for our film we stayed inside our media class and chose the four girls who are working on their own films, we have 4 girls who will be in the film, Caitlin, Hannah, jasmine and jade. The characters they will be playing are themselves because they don't have to change themselves in anyway, the characters are normal stereotypical teenage girls who go to school and go out with their friends but they are misfortunate in the fact that they have attracted a stalker who a taken a powerful fond towards them, all the 4 girls are linked through friendship in the film which makes it easier for the stalker to go after them. These are the only characters in our film and who acts them, there aren't many characters but they are very effective to the audience.

WORKING ON OUR SCRIPT

In this post I will be talking about our decision to not have a script in our opening sequence, we have chosen to do this because we think that not having any speach or narration in our film creates a modity of suspense for the audience and the background music we have chosen can help to tell the story, in the past there has been very few thriller movies that do not need speach to tell the story so we have gone against the theory of you need to tell the story through dialog, this gives our film its own unique attribute because of the fact we don't have dialog. So with our planning for the opening sequence we do not need to make a script because of the detail on our story board and shot list.

ANALYSIS OF THRILLER FILM TITLES

In this post i will be talking about existing thriller film titles, i will evaluate how they can be effective and how they can not be as effective if they are bad representatives of the genre thriller.
One of the most famous thriller films is Alfred Hitchcock's infamous Psycho, i have chosen this as an effective title because it is in my eyes a perfect example of a title that not only matches the theme of the storyline in the film but it matches thriller on a whole, in my opinion it is so effective because it is only one word and even though this is the case it tells you so much about the film before you start watching.

Next, in my opinion for a negative representative i have chosen the title Silence of the Lambs, even though this a prolific thriller film the title isnt as effective as the contents of the film, the title is meaningless when comparing it to the plot, that is why when deciding on a name for our film me and my group tried to link it in with cutting hair and we finally came across the name 'The Last Strand' because our film is about cutting hair we chose this name.

Also, an effective opening title sequence should contain names and production companies, it should contain star actors and actresses which usually just one name fills the screen to show their importance in the film, and the directors name along with the editors should be shown on a larger scale as well but the other credits such as the camera crew, hair and makeup etc should be stereotypically shown at the end of the movie in the opening credits of the film. On the other hand, even though the big names like actors and directors are shown at the beginning they are also the first names at the top of the closing credits leaving the ones that haven't been shown till the end when people don't usually whatch up to that point.

DECIDING A SONG FOR OUR THRILLER OPENING SEQUENCE

When thinking for a song we were primarily looking for inspiration on the internet, we were looking for a song that you wouldn't usually match with the genre of thriller but the song works because its so opposite that it makes the scene uncomfortable for the audience. whilst we were doing this research we came across an excellent example of this from the well known horror film Insidious, here is this example.

The song in this scene is in perfect juxtaposition but the lyrics 'TipToe through the window' is exactly what the little boy is doing in the scene which is the only link between the song and the scene which makes it work so well.

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After we had done a lot of thorough we came to a group decision and chose this song called Cut Your Hair by the Pavement.

This classic song is not one of the first songs that comes to mind when you think about thriller music but we came to this chose because it fits almost too well with our plot of a unknown psychopath who has a fixation about cutting strands of girls hair.