Finished Thriller

White Virgin Media's 
"Conspiracy"

Evaluation Q7

Evaluation Question 7
Here is our question seven that we created as a group. We put our audio on top of the video and spoke about what we did to improve our thriller when looking back over our preliminary task.

Evaluation Q6

Evaluation Question 6
Here is my question 6 evaluation, in which I presented on Popplet, discussing research, planning, construction and of course the evaluation that I have done.

Evaluation Q5

Evaluation Question 5
Here is my answer to my evaluation question 5. I have spoken about how I attracted my target audience, and what I did to hold their attention.

Evaluation Q4

Evaluation Question 4

Q: Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our media product would precisely be for people aged 12+. As a thriller, it would be suitable for children going into their teenage years, and on wards. This particular audience would watch our film because it will easily appeal to them. We have kept in mind the thriller conventions that we have needed to make it appear as a thriller. These thriller conventions such as a cliffhanger or an enigma or even a maguffin have been used in many other thriller movies that we have researched and reviewed, and we have got our inspiration from there.

We have stuck to the stereotype of a thriller appealing to a male audience also. The characters are all male, and there are no female characters included. I would say that our opening would appeal more to a male audience than a female audience, but that does not mean that it won't appeal to a female audience at all. The movements that each character made weren't particularly exciting, they were sort of mysterious and un-predicted, but they made the thriller even more mysterious, so it fitted with that genre's stereotype.


The audience feedback we received were from two females who watched it - and although they seemed to enjoy what we had created, when I showed it to a few boys they seemed to find it more exciting and interesting, especially when the mysterious device (enigma) came up on the screen towards the end. They said that we could have included more point of view shots and could have explored more thriller conventions that would make this opening more appealing to them.

Evaluation Q3

Evaluation Question 3

Q: What kind of media institute might distribute your media product and why?

As a group, we had to consider that our film is unlikely to be distributed by a major film studio since we are only small, British filmmakers.

If we were really making the film and there was a possibility that it would be considered, we could premiere it on something more likely than having it as a big blockbuster movie in cinemas. It could be shown on television for example, on a channel like Film 4 or the BBC. By having it on here it doesn't necessarily mean that it is going to be unsuccessful, because there are many things on the BBC that have started off small but have then become a great success later on.

There are also small considerations we could make like if it would be on a simultaneous release. Big time movies would probably be shown in the cinema for a few weeks and then months later would be released on demand or on DVD. However, in our case it would be distributed on TV, or might even go straight to DVD, which is what less successful films tend to do nowadays.

In reality, we could probably distribute our film on YouTube, because in the modern day world the internet is becoming a bigger and bigger thing, and even becoming YouTube famous will make you a great success nowadays. From the top of my head, I can think of lots of YouTubers who make amateur movies and make it big on the internet, and that is good enough for them.

Evaluation Q2

Evaluation Question 2
Here is my evaluation question 2 in which I presented using Easelly. In this answer I talked about how our media product represented certain social groups, and then talked about how it appealed to men more than women because of these certain social groups being presented.

Evaluation Q1

Evaluation Q1

Here is the answer to my evaluation question 1.

Screening & Audience Reaction

Initial First Screening & Audience Reaction Video
Today I spoke to a couple of my friends and gave them the exciting opportunity to watch our thriller opening "Conspiracy" for the first time.
I asked them to watch it and filmed their reaction. Then after, I asked them what they thought we did well and then what they thought we could improve on. The video is self explanatory.

"Conspiracy"

White Virgin Media's 
"Conspiracy"

Here is our final piece of editing put together to form our completed thriller opening, calling it Conspiracy. In the final version we added in our studio ident logo and also we added in a few other names throughout the credits.

Designing/Making Title Sequence

Designing/Making Title Sequence
When making the title sequence for our thriller opening we considered what position we would put the credits and what font to use, as well as in what order each part of the sequence would go in also.

To start with we decided to add in our studio ident logo which represents our group. This shows our audience that we have thought about how we are going to present our group and that the following work that shows up after this is what we have created and what we have achieved.

Next we considered what subtitles were going to appear on screen and appear as credits. We took into account what font we were going to use and what colour it was going to be displayed as. We decided to keep the house style the same, therefore we stuck with the same font throughout the credits and ordered all the credits up so that each person was introduced.
We added our own names in the credits, but we also had to take in consideration that only one person could have a certain part. For example, we couldn't write down my name for the music and then write it down again for the editing. After including all of our names somewhere on the video credits, we realized that we had to make up a few names like "Eddie Schtook" in the video to make it look more professional and like the opening of a real life movie.

Designing/ Making Ident

Studio Ident

This is our completed studio ident. It is the logo for our company, White Virgin Media.

The image shows a blonde girl sipping from a Starbucks cup, with a chain strapped around her waist. To inspire us for this ident, we simply looked at general daily stereotypes in today's society, and then decided to make our logo a parody of typical "white girl" stereotypes.

We looked at most white girls that we know generally. Stereotypically, white girls are known to always hang out in Starbucks and drink coffee. They also wear long scarves with little skirts surrounded by their long hair. (Of course this is only what we have considered from the stereotype).

Sam drew this on paper with a pencil, and then added colour into the drawing using Photoshop onto a Mac computer. We also added in the ident text on her hair at the bottom.

Thriller Opening: First Draft

Thriller Opening: First Draft

Recently we completed our first draft for our thriller opening. We added in cross fade effects, and I chose the music to add into it. There is also some diagetic sound in background of the video which we toned down a little so there wasn't too much wind overlapping the non-diagetic sound.

We also added in titles with our names and our group name. However, we did not add in our studio ident and the titles aren't as effective as they should be, so we are going to work on that when we improve it later on. The opening is effective and works well, there are just a few things we need to polish up to make it fully completed. 

Editing

Today we worked on editing our 2 minute long thriller opening.

We went out some further filming last week and used some of it in our opening. We also added in some audio and sound, so we're near completion of the project. We used the program Premiere Pro to edit some of our filming. We discovered that there were some parts of our thriller that we may have needed to cut, for example. the part where Michal walks down the street because it is far too long, and also some of the angles I used with the camera weren't accurate or were a bit shaky. From this, we learnt that we could go out and after editing some more we could film the parts in which we needed to improve on. This would mean rein-acting any scenes, but at the same time it would encourage us to improve our work.

First Day Of Filming

First Day Of Filming

Today was our first official day of going out with filming and sound equipment to film our thriller for AS Media Studies. We traveled to St. Paul's in central London to do this and we managed to get a few things done and dusted for what we are going to officially use in our thriller. We experimented with the different camera angles that we know of and also we tried to keep in mind what aspects of a thriller we would interpret. We managed to create a sense of suspense we added in the music, but that was done later on when we were editing it. Also, by the end of our filming we created a cliffhanger which is a very typical thriller convention. We did this by ending a very brief text message conversation between Michal and Sam abruptly, and the audience don't know what it is Michal is talking about when he says "got it". Today was a successful day and we managed to get a lot of work done.

Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment
On this sheet I have examined what would be a risk when we are filming for our thriller opening. Some of them are more risky than others, and I have explained that and said how to overcome these risks and stop them happening.

Location Sheet

Location Sheet

Here is the location sheet we completed as a group. Here we have discussed where we filmed our thriller opening, when we did it, who was involved and what the temperature and daily atmosphere was like when we did it.

Shooting Schedule

Shooting Schedule
In this document I have recorded what days we filmed and what shots we did, as well as the props and the location of where we filmed.

Costumes & Props

Costumes & Props
In our thriller opening we used various costumes and props. Some were pretty basic and others that we used were actually well thought out and structured. I am going to be talking about who wore what and who used whatever prop and explain why it was significant.


Sam's Costume





Sam dressed very modernly, as did the other characters in our thriller. He wore a hoodie and an over the shoulder bag - they were plainly coloured, which emphasised the fact that this is for more mature audiences. His costume stayed the same throughout, and he remained at the balcony for the whole of the opening.

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Michal's Costume
Michal wore a winter coat and a pair of jeans. These were also darkly coloured. Since our thriller didn't include any female characters, it fell into the stereotype of the thriller genre being male dominated, and so therefore each character in Conspiracy dressed like a modern day, middle class male.

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Josh's Costume

Like the other characters, Josh kept his outfit the same. He wore a grey coat, black trousers and converse. We don't know much about his character, but he seems more villainous than Sam or Michal. Like the others, his clothes were also dark and modern. This look in my opinion is very suitable for a thriller opening.


























Props
We didn't use that many props, but the ones we did use we thought out well. First of all we had the mobile phone (iPhone 5S) in which we used towards the end when Sam received the text from Michal. Then we used the mysterious device which was actually a Nintendo DS game cartridge, but we covered up the gaming information on it when we filmed. The aim of the mysterious device was to create a sense of enigma for the audience. At the end of the opening, the audience are left wondering about what is on that device and why it is significant, which then leads on to Conspiracy being left on a cliffhanger.

Here are screenshots of the props being used in the actual film:

3rd Production Meeting

3rd Production Meeting
Today was our third production meeting, and we decided to plan out the dates in which we were going to go out and film. We had already decided on our location, and then we agreed that we wanted to try and attempt to finish filming before Christmas 2014. After today I am confident that we're all ready to go out and film - so we collected a boom, a tripod and a camera and are going to spend a day filming to try and get as much done as we possibly can before we bring what we've done back to class and show everyone so we can get some feedback and see where we can improve.

Animatic

Animatic
This is the animatic video that I made by myself of the storyboard we created for our thriller opening. The drawings are fairly accurate and similar to our actual thriller opening. I even added in the same non-diagetic sound that we used in the video in our animatic.
There are 24 frames here and every little shot is included within the storyboard. By watching this before you actually see the opening you can understand what is going within the sequence and then compare it to the thriller later.

Storyboard

Storyboard

Here is the storyboard that we completed for our thriller opening. It is basically the mind map of each scene. We set up what we were going to do and then after we filmed we made sure that we took down notes on each scene and each camera shot so that Sam could draw each little detail out. 

Shot List

Shot List
Here I have described on this sheet the shots that we used in our opening. There are eighteen altogether and I have spoke about what each of them do individually.

Treatment

Treatment
Here is the treatment sheet I filled out for our thriller opening "Conspiracy". I gave it a tag line and I also talked about the props, costumes and thriller conventions that we used to make this successful.

2nd Production Meeting

Today in our second production meeting we discussed how we wanted to express our thriller opening. We talked about what types of shots we wete planning to use and which character was going to do what.