Social Groups and Portrayal

We wanted our characters to be conventional for a thriller, but we also wanted to represent a certain social group for each character.

Harley's portrayal was the innocent victim being stalked and harassed, we made sure she was put in attractive clothing that her hair and makeup was perfect in all the shots and that she stood out from a normal person. This was to show that she is going to be a victim and allows the target audience to know how vulnerable her character is.

Jacobs character is very bold and we wanted him to act very protective and portray the real concerned boyfriend type to appeal to the target audience. He wasn't really as important as Harley because obviously we wanted focus the whole attention onto her as a victim so the real main shots we had of Jacob, portrayed him as concerned and protective.

Our last character was Bola who was only shown once as the plot breaker, this means that we had to really decide where to put his shots and we put his shot of him and Harley right before the trailer started to pick up speed and the shots became faster.

Overall I think the group of characters worked well and you can't tell as an audience who the stalker is this was because we chose the right costume and the lighting and location correctly. The only thing I think I may want to do again or what I would re do would probably be, more shots of Bola but I think the balance that we have at the moment is secure.

Why we chose a thriller.

As a group Harley and I, didn't feel that we wanted to create a simple trailer we wanted to give ourselves the challenge of something a little more in depth. Although it is quite common to produce a horror trailer. We both sat down and brainstormed ideas and we both came up with the idea that we wanted to do a thriller.

 The films that helped our decision were 'Obsessed', 'Gone' and 'Fatal Attraction' these all run along the same sort of narrative. They all include victims and a basic thrill plot line.

We wanted to use the stalker plot but give that plot a twist. So by creating various shots of both male characters we would make the audience indecisive about who they think is the stalker. This was an idea I particularly liked, the twist is you are made to think that the mysterious friend who suddenly came back into Harley's life is actually stalking her, however the twist is that the stalker is actually her boyfriend.

 This idea worked well because it wasn't a normal plot and I think from our trailer you could actually produce a good story line and great film.

We did however before we produced the trailer, come up with an actual story line. With the thriller genre you have to make sure all the pieces fit and we did this by sitting down and writing out a story board. Quite a short one, but one that would make sense and we did this because we needed something basic to work with. 

Voice over

When it came to creating our voice over for our trailer, we considered everything before we made the decision to actually put the voice in.

The things we had to consider were what gender the speaker was going to be and what accent the speaker was going to read in.

At first we had a male speaker and that was conventional, and we did like this to begin with and then we proceeded to add an American accent with the male speaker. This however didn't feel right for both of us, it was unconventional for a British film from our point of view to have an American voice over. 

We then sat down and played around and watched a couple of trailers to gather some ideas about what a typical thriller voice over has. We then came to the conclusion that in most of the thriller trailers that we watched, it was mainly the victim speaking and then in this case it was Harley. This was the complete opposite to what we had originally planned, but we both felt like we needed to fit the typical conventions of a thriller and create the voice over from the victims point of view to then connect with the target audience and to keep the voice over in a British accent. 

All in all this went relatively well we planned previous scripts and there wasn't any problems with this. We made suggestions to each other before and after and finally came up with a script for Harley to read over the top of certain shots, that we found to be important. 

Character and Film Comparsion

When we were researching for our trailer, we were continuously brainstorming ideas together making lists and updating them.  Most importantly though we had to do our own research, with this we found a couple of really intriguing thrillers that lead on to making our decision for our final idea. That was the stalker narrative and the victim being harassed by a unknown caller.

 A film that inspired us a lot was the film called 'Obsessed' that starred Beyonce, this film had a really interesting narrative. Beyonce's character thinks that her husband is cheating on her and then is confronted with a situation that she cant really handle but the woman she is confronted with is crazy. 

In this sense the narrative is similar to the film 'Obsessed' but in comparison in terms of shots and sound the film 'Gone' is similar to what we based our shots on.

That's one of the posters for the film obsessed.

And this is one of the posters for the film 'Gone'

In a particular shot in the film 'Gone' it seems also exact with how we have portrayed Harley, at the end of the trailer we see Harley's character behave abnormal this is similar to the end trailer of 'Gone'.

This shot in particular is similar with the lighting, looking like it was taken in a night mode and also the positioning that the actress is in seems similar to the way Harley is when she is crawling up the stairs, in the fast shots towards the end of our trailer.

I think that character comparison is very important and so is researching films and the way the narrative takes place in a variety of trailers, it gives a wide range of ideas. By creating this thriller we had a lot of ideas from watching previous trailers and i think from both of us it helped a great deal, when deciding what to wear, how the shots should be taken for instance this shot above is practically on eye level and this is to allow the audience to feel apathetic towards the victim whereas if we had taken this shot from a birds eye high angled shot the audience would have felt of a higher status. That's not what we wanted we wanted to make the audience understand the victims point of view. 

Character for our trailer

We had three main characters for our Trailer and these were;

Harley played the main role of the trailer/film, we chose to use her because she stood out in terms of looks and was attractive, she fitted the conventions of a victim in a thriller. With the Blonde hair and smile.

She played the role with confidence and I think she was happy with the outcome.

Her name in the film was the same in real life.

Jacob was the second main character for our trailer/film we chose to use him because we thought he was quite attractive and was confident in front of the camera, this is something that is important when you are choosing actors and actresses for films. Jacob plays Harley's boyfriend and plays quite a bold character.

Bola played the character of Harley's old friend, we didn't want to introduce him to early in the trailer but we also didn't want to much attention on either male characters, this is because the narrative is that Harley is being stalked by her own boyfriend, so we had to make sure that the balance was equal. We don't want the audience to know at all that the stalker is Harley's boyfriend so when we filmed the shots of the stalker we made sure his face his hands etc were completely covered. This worked well because it helped the narrative to take place and we didn't want anything to be revealed.

Choosing the characters was quite difficult because we had to make sure that the chosen people felt comfortable when filming, and this wasn't always the case. We did take a while to find somebody to play Harley's boyfriend but i think the chosen person worked well and was attractive enough and made the character clear to the chosen target audience.

Technology and Equipment used

We planned shortly before filming, by brainstorming about what camera/cameras to use to get the best quality shots for our trailer. We thought hard about the type of quality we wanted and therefore used a variety of different cameras. For example we first used a Panasonic 3ccd camera as we felt that it was the best quality camera out of all of our choices It also gave us the chance to use the night mode that the camera included, this gave us the effect for the last couple of shots of our trailer. It made the shots look scary but not to scary that the trailer genre spilled over into a horror. We wanted to keep certain conventions of a thriller and this was quite hard to not spill over into the horror genre because the two genres are quite close.

 We then used a flip camera because the master shots and location shots were perfect with a flip camera. Our last camera that we used was the Iphone 4s this gave us clear and good quality shots. However we did have difficultly with the zoom with the Iphone 4s but we overcame this issue by using different shots from the previous cameras that we had used. The Iphone 4s had an 8megapixel camera so overall it definitely had the best quality for such a small device.

We made sure that we made a list of the equipment that we were going to use, and made sure that we were able to access this equipment before we started to film our trailer.

We used the tripod in order to keep the shots still and focused, the tripod allows the shots to seem more steady and of a better quality to hand held camera.

Production and Studio labels

We had a variety of different effects throughout our trailer, omething that we used as part of opening credits, this effect was fast and blurry and then we added text over it to accomplish our production and studio label.

You need to create studio and production labels so that, the audience knows where your film has orgianed from. We have also created our own becasue we didnt feel comfortable copying another company's.

We created the 'eyelook studios' by taking a picture of an eye and editing the eye so that it was brighter and then added text over the top of the image, it was quite a simple procress for us both.

This logo was created from a basic picture of an eye and then the added text over the top, made the logo seem like a real company. This was simple and quick to make we didnt have any problems with this side of the trailer.

We also then created the opening 'Prime production' logo. This was created by having the background moving image as fast and blurry effect and then adding the name of the logo over the top of the effect. Adding this into Final cut was quite easy. However the process of making the logos did take some time.

We chose to use white text over the top of a black blurry background because this allowed for the logo to stand out for the audience, this also helped our editing skills, because the background for the opening logo was a moving image, so we then had to learn how to add the appropriate text onto the front of the moving image.

Ideas for our trailer

Conventions of a Thriller film

Titling:

Most of the films that I have come across have had their credits placed over a black screen with non-diegetic music playing in the background to set the scene. It is common for some film trailers to start with a short clip of the film before showing the credits. Examples of this include: Kill Bill Vol 1 and The Terminator. Another typical convention of the titles is that usually the main actors/actresses’ names, directors’ names, and the most important production companies are made apparent in the credits.

Camera movement:

Tracking and Pan shots are most commonly used in Thriller films, to help generate interest and create mystery. An example of this is in The Dark Knight (the bank heist scene) where the camera tracks the group of people. The shots will usually consist more of close ups and extreme long shots to establish location and to show the raw emotions of the characters.

Camera angles:

Heavily used in thriller films is low-level framing and occasional high angles. Also the use of tilted shots can be effective as they help to add to the disorientation and confusion of a scene. 

Mise-en scene:

The general location for the shooting of thriller movies tends to differ due to the film, therefore meaning that there is a range of different locations used in thrillers. Most tend to be in remote locations and involve the households and the road. Lighting is a key aspect used in various ways in different films to create animosity. Thrillers tend to have very low light in dark locations to minimise how much the audience can see. It is also used as a lot of thrillers involve scenes at night.

Editing:

Jump cuts and cross cutting are commonly used throughout thriller films as they help to display when multiple things are happening that we are unaware of and the cuts help to fill us in. They allow the audience to make assumptions on what the story or characters will be like.

Sound:

All films that I have analysed have had non-diegetic music playing in the background and creating a sound bridge to create a certain atmosphere. These tend to be from voice-overs which help to tell the story. A lot of the time silence and blank points are used to help to create suspense. This works very well to build up tension and tends to be a strong convention for thriller films.

Poster ideas

 For our poster we are thinking about creating the illusion that Harley is running away from somebody but the audience do not know who it is, the background to the poster is dark and mysterious and reflects the genre of the trailer that is, psychological thriller.

 When we were taking photos of Harley we made sure that we captured the lighting in the right way so that it looked like the light was coming in from the window so we made her position herself on the floor with light coming onto her face. 

We did have some difficulty when we designing the poster because we had to take photos of Harley previous to making the poster and therefore we had to edit her in and that was difficult because we had to develop our Photoshop skills when we were editing the picture of Harley, scaling down the photo and making it look as if she was already in the frame to begin with.

The orginal photo looked like this:

And over time we have learned to develop skills via photoshop to edit the picture of Harley into it.
We took a variety of different shots of Harley so we knew what sort of angle and postion we wanted her in for the poster. We then decided on a photo of Harley where she was positioned on the floor looking up to give the impression that she was kinding from the 'stalker' we had to fix lighting issues with the picture and Harley and I worked on the different effects that we needed to make the poster look realistic. The hardest part of this task was trying to put the photo onto the orignal image and making sure we used the feathering tool to make it look like she was already in the scene.

Music and Sounds

When creating our music for our trailer we focused mainly on making the audience feel tense and then linking the shots with the music, this generally was used towards the end of the trailer when our shots were faster and much quicker than the start of the trailer. The speed of the shots was very important, when linking the music to match the timing of the shots.
Most of our music was created via garage band the music software provided for us on the Apple Macs. This software was quite easy for us to use and we made sure that we practised creating a practice song.
 For the first part of our trailer we used the music that we created on Garage Band and this mainly consisted of the sounds of clarinets as we both felt that this was very ominous and mysterious sound. The sort of sound you would hear in a thriller, for example the movie 'Taken’. Other sounds that we found to fit the shots were basic sound recordings like, a phone ringing and a dog barking. These were previously recorded and then added into Final Cut Express. This again is used in most thrillers as it convention to have a variety of different sounds. It also intensifies the mood with a varied choice of sounds. We then took advantage of this concept and especially adding in a lot of sound effects for the final hall of our trailer. For example: The shot of the dog barking was a voice over and so was the sound of ‘please don’t hurt me’ made by Harley. These sounds were recorded from an Iphone. Other sound effects for example the pulsing sweep were found via garage band. Most of the sound that you hear at the beginning of the trailer is quite slow based an created on Garage Band mainly using the 'pulsing sweep' this was used to join all the sounds together into one soundtrack. Towards the end of the trailer, we then sped up the sounds and the soundtrack so that it fitted with the fast paced shots. This is something that is very conventional with thrillers, as the music builds up throughout the trailer allowing the audience to understand the narrative, it then speeds up to engage the audience and intensifies the whole trailer just by the loud and fast sound track.

I think that the music worked well, because we varied all the different instruments. My favourite part of the music was the connection between the two types of music in the trailer, we used the pulsing sweep from Garage Band and that then connected all the shots and the music together. It created the scary thrilling atmosphere for the audience. This anticipation worked well for a thriller because in most of the thriller trailers we had researched built up the atmosphere by not only speeding up the shots but by using the music to intensify the mood.

We did have a problem with the music that we only established towards the end, after looking over our work, however this was quickly overcome when we tweaked the sound and found the clicking sound and resolved this problem.

Scenary and Location

For our trailer and to keep to the conventions of it being a thriller, we had to make sure that the location was perfect for this. Making sure that the lighting and sound was not to bright and not to loud but we were able to keep some sounds that we wanted for our trailer, for example when we edited the shot of Harley with the male character Jacob we edited out the rest of the background sound apart from her laughter. Other parts to our sound was our voice over was a male voice and then we decided to change it to Harleys voice, we did this because it is more conventional for the female to be the voice over as the target audience can then feel apathetic to the victim, it also becomes more interesting for the target audience because it creates a sense of realism.

The location we chose was Harley’s house for the shots of her scared so that it was more comfortable for the audience and so it wasn’t a drastic variety of shots for our trailer. We also then chose to shoot in Riverside Country Park, this was useful for our master shot at the beginning of the trailer, we also used this location for most of our shots because the area was convenient for our filming. We used a wide range of shots with this location from long shots with Jacob walking towards the camera to extreme close up of a male character’s feet.

I think the location worked well with our trailer because it made the shots look ery and ominous, the way that we used the wide shot for the opening of the trailer, allowed the audience to have an open mind of the film and not to be set with just one location. So we used a variety of locations; Harley's house, riverside, an open field and also town shots of cars moving. This variety worked well because there was a wide spread of ideas and it then allowed the narrative to take place.

Progression with the magazine

When we were researching for our magazine, we both looked at various other film based magazine. We looked at all the different positions that actors/models and then arranged for Harley to have test shots of what position was right for the magazine. We also had the thought of whether or not we wanted Harley in character from the trailer or as a model for the magazine image. We looked at magazine such as 'Film', 'Premire' and 'Empire' all of these magazines then helped us make our descision on what type of magazine cover we were going to have. Having discussed the advantages to having a character based cover, which were that the target audience would be attracted to the film itself and what it's about however, we then thought as a counter argument that having Harley looking quite attractive and bold as the front image would then attract people to see who and what her purpose was for the magazine and then entice the target audience to read and look at the magazine.

 We thought carefully about the place in which we took the image making sure that the lighting was bright enough for the image to stand out. Also because we choose a white background for the magazine cover itself we had to think about what Harley would be wearing and if it would look bold and eye catching. Therefore we chose for her to wear a black dress so there would be significant contrast in the colours on the magazine, this will then attract people to want to read it and want to see whats inside the magazine.

 When it comes to the disadvantages to our magazine, we didn't really come across major set backs, the only main set back throughout was really keeping up to date with all of work and research. We worked as a group to think about the colour scheme for our magazine and chose red and black because although the magazine is a March issue it's also a film magazine we chose a colour scheme to fit the conventions of our thriller.

We had our original image of Harley and then continued to edit the picture of Harley using the programme photo shop, this was something that we had to pick up quite quickly as we were using it for a significant purpose and it was the only picture editing programme. Once we had established how to use it we then cropped the original picture having a different coloured background, we then selected her and used the feathering tool to make sure that the sides of the image were smooth and didn’t look like we had just cut her out from a different programme. This tool helped the image look natural and it then helped fit the magazine perfectly. We choose a white background for the magazine as we thought it would be more effective and the image of Harley would then stand out a lot more making her the main character of the trailer and then the main objective for the magazine.

The finally we completed the end piece and the result i feel was quite good, we combined our ideas and made what we felt was an accomplishment of a challenge. We made sure that there weren't any gaps with writing and that the magazine consisted of colour and pictures to keep the audience focused on what we were trying to put across to the target audience. We named the magazine Prime after prime productions which is something that we include in our trailer.

 

Animatic

By making and creating our animatic we then understood the basic narrative for our film and had a plan of what we needed as a group to film and the right order that we need to edit.

By creating an animatic it allows us to have something to fall back on if we don't have anything planned, you can look back through your storyboard and animatic so that you know exactly what you are doing.

We used quite a lot of story boards for our because in our trailer we have a variety of fast shots. 

It's also useful to have animatics so that when you start to evaluate what it is that you've done as your final piece you can see what you have changed over time and what you have stuck with or if something has drastically changed. 
I filmed the animatic using a basic camera from home, however the format wasn't right when we were using the macs and therefore we came across a disadvantage, however we simply converted the video and changed the format so it could then be played and used for our blogs.