Planning: Character Representation- Miss Gibbins

Character representation is very important within films simply because it allows the audience to understand the narrative of the film better. Also relationships between the audience and the characters can be built.

For a film to be conventional and effective It's important for it to have a variety of representations and characters so that it meets the audiences expectations of the characters personalities that should be within the film.

Main Characters within my thriller:

• Amy- young girl 9 years old
• Sarah (Amy's Mother) 35 years old
• Frank (Amy's Father) 37 years old
• Shadows- mysterious character(s)

Roles within film, Facial expressions, Body language, Costumes and Impact on the audience:

Amy is a 9 year old girl who lives with her mother and father. She enjoys spending time with them and they have a fulfilled and happy life together. One day Amy starts to see shadows moving around her house which is the start of the main story line. Her role in the thriller is to be the most innocent of all the characters, she will become emotionally attached to the audience. This in turn will create suspense and tension among the audience as they will start to feel care for her safety. For the character representation for this character we have decided that she will wear casual everyday female clothes such as a skirt with leggings and a top. Also by doing this the audience will think of her innocence and may feel sympathy for the character which will create a relationship between the character and the audience. During the thriller, the audience will see Amy at her very lowest, while she tries to understand the moving figures around her formerly safe home. Her body language will make her seem fairly innocent and open, until she is confronted by these shadow characters.

Sarah is Amy's mum and is 35 years old, she is loving, intelligent, caring and beautiful. Her role in the thriller is to be the one who looks after Amy the most, she is more like a comforter for Amy and her father, however as the audience will become emotionally attached to Amy due to her innocence Sarah will act as a comforter for the audience, to tell them that everything will be fine when infact it won't be. For the character representation for this character she will be seen wearing formal clothes a lot of the time to show she works a lot. Her body language will be able to tell the audience that she acts as a comforter for the family and the audience, however they will soon understand that she isn't as strong as she makes out to be. Her facial expressions will change dramatically through out the thriller as one point we see Sarah comforting her daughter and husband

Frank is Amy's father he is a business man who is busy but still finds time to be with his family. His role in the thriller will be the 'hench man' and the inquisitive character, this is becaus ehe is the character who tries his best to protect the rest of his family using brute strength. Throughout the thriller we will also see Frank venture off into his own home to find the intruders. he is the man t For the character representation for this character, we will see him wearing a suit to show he works, he will have a clean shave and a classy hair cu to show he is a business man. Frank will try to flout his strong and inquisitive nature around in order to show his authority within the film. The facial expressions will show that Frank is not vain but does admire himself to be a man that has done well for himself.


The Shadows are the mysterious characters in this film, they are presented to the audience as the intruders of the household and they add and build suspense and tension among the audience as their faces are completely white. They won't have body language/ facial expressions but their presence will be felt.

Conclusion:

 Due to me analyzing the characters within our thriller film has helped me understand each characters purpose and it has made me think more about the background for each character. From looking at the description of each character my group know how each character should look, act and how they will be seen by the audience. The character representation helps the audience relate and understand the film easier.For my group to help them do this we must think about each character thoroughly.

Post- Production: Audience Feedback: Miss Begum

What is audience feedback?:

Audience feedback is where we had to ask the people who watched our production what they thought of it and did they find it conventional to the thriller genre. Doing this is very important due to the fact that my group as a production company are able to see if our production was in fact successful or not, furthermore, it is used to see if we could make money from distributing the film. If the feedback we get back is negative then we are able to rethink where we went wrong and develop our abilities to improve our thriller production.

Before creating our thriller film we had to run a questionnaire in order to gather some research on the likes and dislikes of our target audience. We created a questionnaire in order to help my group with the creation of our thriller film. The questionnaire helped us do this as we were able to make the film relate to the public’s responses. Furthermore, the questionnaire helped us to make our thriller film conventional to the thriller genre as we are able to use the questionnaire as a base line to create our thriller around; for example: the theme chosen was psychological; due to this we have based our thriller film around the theme of psychological trauma. When looking at the response from the questionnaire, it was clear to my group, that our target audience was 15-20 year old people of a mixed genre who all wish to see a thriller film containing suspense, tension and surprise. This information was essential to our group as we then knew who our target audience is and what they wanted to see within our thriller film.

After taking the audience feedback on board and creating our thriller film, we then decided to screen our finished thriller production. This was done so that the audience can see how there feedback has helped our group; but most importantly, we would be able to ask them for more feedback once they had seen our thriller production, this feedback would help my group to see if our thriller film was successful and conventional to the thriller genre. Screening the production and getting feedback on it was beneficial to my group as we were able to get a good  understanding 

(images from my production to go here)

POSITIVE COMMENTS:

Tom aged 18 said “the setting was really good as a house setting makes the film more conventional to the thriller genre".

This comment was beneficial because it showed that my group and I had successfully picked a conventional location that the audience could immediately respond to, which is something we were hoping to achieve.

Jim aged 20 said "The transitions between each clip worked effectively as it helped me to understand the narrative easily".

This comment was also beneficial because it made my group feel as though we had made a successful thriller due to us utilizing the research we had gathered from analyzing other successful and conventional thriller films.

Jane aged 16 said "The thriller film was great because i felt a heightened sense of suspense and tension throughout".

This comment was beneficial because it told my group that our overall production along with the sound track worked well and we were able to effectively create a thriller film that worked well with our created soundtrack.

CONSTRUCTIVE COMMENTS:

Lilly aged 18 said “at least two of the transitions were either too long or too short”.

This was a good comment to reflect on as I was aware that maybe two or more transitions needed a little bit more work, this has helped me as now i know i need to check over my finished production more than once.

Jane aged 15 said "at times it was too predictable on what would happen next"

This was also a good comment as my group now know that if we are to create another film then we need to work on our element of surprise as we now know that we need to work outside the 'norm'.

Mark aged 20 said "some of the sound effects didn't match the film"

This comment was good because it told our group that we needed to think about where we placed the sound effects and if we could have made the soundtrack work better in coherence with the actual film.

Looking at the feedback we had received, it was clear that my group did follow our brief and results that we had gathered from our questionnaire that was carried out before the creating of our thriller film. Now that we have all this feedback, my group now feel as though we have been able to create a conventional and successful thriller film.

Conclusion:

Conclusively, the audience feedback that we had gathered  was beneficial to my group even if we had already created our final product. This is because, our group are able to see if we were able to make a conventional and successful thriller film. Furthermore, the feedback received tells our target audience that we took their questionnaire answers into consideration and tried to implement their thoughts and ideas into our film creation. The last thing that the audience feedback helps us with, is that it tells our production company if we could make money from distributing our film or not. This is good as my group would know if we should add more to the film or edit it in anyway.

Post-production: Soundtrack of the thriller production: Miss Begum

Sound is one of those most important elements within the creation of films. This is because it sets the whole mood and atmosphere of the film. It is very important to plan out the sounds we will use simply because the sounds cause the audience to either be connected to the film or be vigilante in knowing that what their watching is a film with actors. For example if the audience see a gun being fired but hear an alien zapper sound they will become disconnected from the film, realising that it is make- believe where as if they hear a gunshot they will develop a relationship between the characters thinking the situation is a real one.

In order to know what the conventional soundtrack is within a thriller film, we also have to think about what that thriller may be; for example, it could be a thriller opening, a trailer or an actual film. This is why I would need to describe all the different sounds that could be used within a thriller film to make it conventional. Firstly, there are Non-diegetic sounds such as voice-overs. These can be used to explain an event within the scene that wasn't shown to the audience. This is used to give the audience a better understanding of what happened/ what is happening within the scene. Also it helps to create a suspense filled feeling as the audience are then able to determine what will happen next in the scene e.g. someone is going to die etc.

Secondly, there are Diegetic sounds such as the sounds from the TV or a radio which allows the audience to understand what is going on in the scene clearer; this is because the audience are subject to realistic sounds which makes the scene intriguing for the audience to watch.

Finally, there are off-screen sounds such as footsteps which are used to build suspense and tension e.g. creaking floor boards or a window smashing etc. All of the different types of conventional sounds used within a thriller film make it conventional to the thriller genre whether they are placed in the same film or they are used throughout.

In order to create the soundtrack to our thriller, my group used the programme entitled ‘Garage Band’; this program was used due to its wide selection of instruments that it allowed us to use and dissect sounds from. The program was simple to use which was why it allowed us to create a successful and conventional soundtrack that merged perfectly with our thriller film.

 

(image of where sound was used effectively within my own thriller to go here)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The soundtrack we created was somewhat eerie for the audience to listen to, this was done by using garage band in order to find other spectral-like sounds that could be merged together in order to have a desired impact and effect on the audience. The reason why we decided to create a thriller that had an unearthly feel to it was because we was inspired by the soundtrack used within the film ‘Sinister’, within this, the soundtrack makes the audience feel a heightened sense of suspense and tension throughout the film. Furthermore, because my group felt that the soundtrack used in ‘Sinister’ we decided to imitate and utilize some of the sounds they used within the film. My group’s soundtrack sounds as though a super natural being has been recorded during a haunting as the audience hear a low murmuring sound throughout until the film reaches certain climaxes where the sounds heard burst into a fleet of screams and sharp noises. This was done because we thought that the low murmuring sound would help to build tension and suspense while the sharp and louder noises would help to add surprise and shock among the audience.

My group thought that the most effective thing with my thriller was its ability to make the audience feel surprise/shock, suspense or tension at any given time within our thriller. This was due to the way we created our thriller; firstly we used a low murmuring sound throughout until the film reaches certain climaxes where the sounds burst into a fleet of screams and sharp noises. This was done because we knew that the low murmuring sound would help to build tension and suspense while the sharp and louder noises would help to add surprise and shock among the audience. This was the most effective thing about our soundtrack.

Conclusion:

Conclusively, the soundtrack that my group created has helped our overall production to create a suspense/tension filled atmosphere that surprises and shocks the audience at many times. Without our soundtrack, our film by itself would not have the same desired impact/effect on the audience. The impact our soundtrack has had on the audience is that they feel as though they have watched a successful and conventional thriller film, our overall production, along with the audience has been able to create a heightened feeling of suspense and tension among the audience. Lastly, I believe that my group’s thriller film was conventional to the thriller genre due to us following our target audience’s feedback on what type of thriller films they like to watch and feel the most affected by. Furthermore, we have merged the soundtrack with the film in a way that lets them both work in coherence with one another in order to inflict our desired impact on the audience, in turn making our thriller film conventional to the thriller genre.

Research: Narrative ideas (Miss Hawkins/ Ms Heath)

My idea: To start off the title of my thriller narrative was 'The Descendant'. In this plot we see a young man grow up without his beloved dad. Living with his mum he is a normal boy who goes to high school each day, however, he was blessed with special gifts/ powers which his dad also had, hence the name 'the descendant'. Throughout the thriller we see the young boy turn into a man who some may call a vigilante, how ever he is on a search for his dads killers, fortunately for him, they are also on the search for his dads descendant.

Yasmin's idea: The second idea was Yasmin's. Her thriller narrative was called 'Obsessed'. Her narrative plot follows the tale of a dad who becomes obsessed with his daughter after splitting up from his wife. During the plot we start to see the man battle through depression as he places pictures of his daughter up in an empty room with nothing but a rocking chair and a girls doll. the daughter's mum warns her not to go visit her father simply because she gets a sense of danger/ and anger within him. However the daughter does nit heed her warnings and chooses to visit her dad anyway. So every weekend the daughter travels to see her dad, but on this particular day he is not in and has left the key under his doormat, the girl then goes inside the house and starts exploring the rather large household. She then stumbles into the room where her dad has all these pictures, she is freaked out by the sight. Suddenly she hears her dad come in the house calling her name, he ventures upstairs to the room of pictures where he clocks on to the fact that she has seen the pictures, he then goes on a hunt for his daughter as she attempts to run away without being seen or heard.

Jemar's idea: The chosen idea was Jemar's; he called it 'The Awakening' and it is about as a young girl called Amy who lives with her mum Natalie and her father Tom. Within this film we start off by seeing four pictures on top of a fireplace showing family pictures within different seasons. The audience will not see the person holding the camera which will create tension and suspense among the audience. When the family arrive home they feel as though something is watching them, which it is. As we see the family become disturbed over little Amy's sightings of moving figures around the house, we also see each family member attacked mentally while they are sleeping, or while their awake, as they may see something look away and then look back again; they start to hear noises around the house and see what looks like shadows moving around the house. As we move through the opening scene we start to understand what is happening within this house hold and how threatening it is for the family who lives their. 

These clips will be accompanied by slow- paced music as the audience start to see Amy becoming disturbed by her viewing of something standing outside her house looking at her. She screams and her dad comes running and thinks its nothing until he sees the figure himself and becomes disturbed about what he has seen, his wife comforts him and just tells him that it was nothing.

All the sounds and images build up the tension and suspense in the audience when the family is looking down a corridor they see a shadow walking slowly around the corner, just as it's about to turn around the corner the opening then ends and goes onto a black screen where he hear screaming and the title screen comes up saying "The Awakening".

Film Influences:

Paranormal Activity 4:

After watching this film, my group decided it would be the main influence for our thriller film. This is due to the similarities in the narrative/plots in both our film, and Paranormal Activity 4. Firstly, the film is set inside a family home which is said to be the safest place possible for a family, however, when looking back at my groups questionnaire responses we knew that we should play around with this stereotype in order to have a big impact on our target audience.

Sinister:















Sinister is the second main influence of our thriller film, this is because this film has a mixture of all the elements my group wanted to put into our thriller, these were; suspense, tension and surprise. This film does this exceptionally well which is why my group chose to use this as an influence.

Conclusion:
By using other successful films as influences to help us create our own thriller film means that we are able to use all of their strengths to improve our own thriller film  enabling it to have a large impact on the audience and it to be conventional to the thriller genre. My group are able to have confidence in our thriller film due to this, as we feel as though our film has worked around the influences and has been able to create the film depending on the responses we had from our questionnaire.

Questionnaire and results- Miss Gibbins

In order to create our thriller film, we needed to create a questionnaire in order to gather some information and research on what our target audience wanted to see. This in turn, would help us when it comes to actually creating our thriller film, so that we would be able to make it effective on our audience and conventional to the thriller genre.

Pictured above, is the questions I asked our audience. When counting up the results, we found that that the majority of the group liked and watched thriller films more than the other genres. This was a great result because we knew that we could focus on the thriller genres conventions instead of placing a mixture of other conventions inside our film in order to make it more effective on our audience.

This question was asked because it was essential in helping us to plan and build a base for creating our thriller film as we could always relate back to our target audiences answers. The questionnaire would therefore help us when it comes to creating a certain impacting effect on the audience; furthermore, when added to our research of other thrillers, it is able to help us to make our thriller conventional to the thriller genre.

The next question we asked people was “when watching a film, out of the themes below, which theme do you prefer”, this was how we decided on our thrillers genre. The most chosen theme was psychological, due to us setting the film inside a house with a mystery character; we decided that this would be the best place to have the biggest impact on the audience as a home is supposed to be safe.

The theme of our thriller was basically the most important question we could ask the public; this is because the theme is what our thriller will be based around. The theme most chosen being psychological, helped my group majorly as we had a good idea of how we could make ideas conventional to the thriller genre while relating to the chosen theme

The last majorly important question we asked was “what do you think has the biggest impact on the audience”, when asking this, we was relating to suspense, tension and surprise. The most important joint elements were suspense and tension with surprise trailing by only two votes. Due to this, my group decided that all of these elements were needed inside our thriller film in order to have a much needed impact on  our audience.

In our thriller film we didn't choose a single element to be the main one due to our results. This in turn means that our thriller film will have a better impact on all people. Firstly suspense helps create surprise as the audience don’t know exactly what will happen so when something pops out onto the screen they will jump up and get surprised by what they see. Tension helps my group to keep the audience entertained at all times and hooked to the film.

Conclusion:

The creation of a questionnaire has helped with the creation of our thriller film because we are able to make the film relate to the public’s responses. Furthermore, this would help us to make our thriller film conventional to the thriller genre as we are able to use the questionnaire as a base line to create our thriller around; for example: the theme chosen was psychological; due to this we have based our thriller film around the theme of psychological trauma. When looking at the response from the questionnaire, it was clear to my group, that our target audience was 15-20 year old people of a mixed genre who all wish to see a thriller film containing suspense, tension and surprise. This information is essential to our group as we now know who our target audience is and what they want to see within our thriller film. 

Planning: Storyboarding- Ms Begum

What is a Storyboard?:
A story board is a graphical representation of a narrative that has been created, within the storyboard it shows each movement of each character scene by scene. Storyboards may look like square boxes on a piece of paper but they are used by every film maker in order to make filming the actual film less stressful and it also means that the actors, directors, camera operators etc. know what to do and when to do it without having to stop and talk about how they will plan out the next scene.


Storyboards need to contain information about: cinematography, iconography, lighting, actors, sound, narrative, location, duration and the Number of shots.
Including all of these in a storyboard will make producing the scene a lot easier as the producer and the director can work with and around the information they have on the storyboard. Storyboards also ensure that you don't forget any shots/ scenes by accident they make it easy to know where you need to edit the film e.g. fade to black, straight cut etc.

Our Task:
In this lesson we were working within our groups to create a storyboard that represented the narrative my group chose to use. To do this we had to think about how we wanted our thriller to look, how long each scene would be, the locations, dialogue, sounds, lighting and the actors/ people needed to film that shot.

Our storyboards:

Above is the storyboard my group were able to come up with, it's features include clear images and the micro-elements we will use in our thriller. It is well organised and clearly presented, this will help us when it comes to filming our thriller as we can easily understand it and we now know who is needed, when they are needed and where they are needed in each shot. Furthermore, the storyboard  helps us to be sure of our narrative as we can gather an idea of how it will look after filming.

Conclusion:
From creating my own storyboard, i believe it will help me and my group when it comes to filming due to us having a clear understanding of our narrative and how the shots should look when it comes to actually filming. A storyboard will make producing the scene a lot easier as the producer and the director can work with and around the information they have on the storyboard. Also it will help to ensure that we don't forget any shots/ scenes by accident and it will make it easy to know where we need to edit the film e.g. fade to black, straight cut etc.

Planning: Preliminary task- Miss Begum

What is the Purpose of the Preliminary task: The purpose of the preliminary task is to learn how to operate and use a camera. During the task we had to experiment with the camera by playing around with different camera techniques, including the angles, sizes and movements. This was all done to help us gain some sort of experience of filming before we move on to shooting our own thriller films.

Introduction: The preliminary task is where our group is given a camera and told to go out and experiment with the camera enabling us to get used to using the camera. Furthermore we are supposed to make a short scenario in order to show that we have gotten used to controlling and holding the camera effectively.  The preliminary task also tells our group who is the better person behind the camera.

The scenario: In our preliminary task we didnt follow the normal conventions of having a conversation between anyone. Instead we showed two people walking with minimal conversation, and we only focused on the camera angles and movements of two people walking. We chose a few different locations and then edited the clips in order to make the film flow with clarity.

                                                                 

Group Roles: During the preliminary task our group had separate roles in order to carry out the task for example; I was the director of this task and the camera operator, this is because i know how to organize fairly well and i have an eye for different angles and camera movements. that were the group roles and why. The editor of the preliminary task was a joint effort of all the group, this was because we suggested that we needed to all put in our efforts to edit the preliminary task to our best abilities.

Difficulties?: During the preliminary task we was faced with one difficulty, this was the editing of the clips that were filmed, this difficulty came about because my group was not to sure about how to edit the clips and place them together, however,due to us practicing on the preliminary film, we were able to overcome this difficulty and edit the clips together so that they flowed with clarity, and people could understand it easily.

                                                           
Paragraph 4:  Using a hand held camera recorder has helped me to see in myself that I have he eye for angles and angle sizes e.g. Reaction shots/ mid shots etc. These techniques have been developed by my whole group and we now know and understand what is needed to make a thriller film conventional to the thriller genre and we also feel confident to the point where we can look at any genre and create a conventional film for it.

The last technique I have been able to develop and use is to edit the film and clips in order to merge them together to make them flow with clarity and make it understandable for the audience. I will admit that the editing stage came with a few problems and complications, however these were problems were erased with hard work and practice. Within my groups thriller there was many different transitions entwined between the merged clips, these varied from fade to blacks, to montages, to fast-paced editing, these transitions enabled my thriller to look and seem high quality and it also helped to make my thriller look more conventional to the thriller genre. 

Conclusion: This task has helped me and my group significantly in creating our own thriller, this is because i now fully understand how to use final cut pro and edit my clips together. Furthermore taking part in the preliminary task has helped me to develop and train my skills of directing and filming a production and then editing it to make the clips understandable and effective with in an audience.