Foundation Production Portfolio

Me and my group decided on a thriller with a sub genre of a Physiological thriller. We have all the codes and conventions of a normal thriller with added in conventions from Physiological thriller. Also we have added in our own codes and conventions to develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products. We added our own codes and conventions to make our Title sequence and opening more unique so our audience is more drawn into the opening and does not stereotype our thriller with other Physiological thrillers.

I have done research on the codes and conventions of a thriller. I have found the codes and conventions for

Camera – The camera position Is very important when filming for a Physiological thriller because you will need to get the right angle to sense what the character is doing. The codes and conventions for camera in Physiological thrillers is quick camera movement to show tension. A physiological thriller is all about audience tension and they would like to see what happens to the character and how they think. So by doing a close up like we have done in the picture below it creates suspense and keeps the audience thinking which in turn will stop the audience from getting bored and then this means they are more engaged into the film. The typical conventions of a Physiological film for camera would be to have a range of shots that show the characters mood as Physiological thrillers mostly show the “state of mind of the character”.

As you can see this close up shows a smirk from me and this will make the audience question why I just nodded at smirked at Lukes character which will draw them into the movie. Also a close-up is very popular in Physiological thrillers so we used the conventions of a original Physiological thriller with the camera by having close ups, mid shots and pan shots which are all used in popular Physiological thrillers like Shutter island.

The codes and conventions for the editing side of our movie. I done research on the editing of Physiological thrillers before weshot the opening and found that if we wanted to follow some conventions of real media Physiological thrillers we would need to have obtrusive editing as this is popular in Physiological thrillers like shutter island and the butterfly effect, both very good films as the way they were filmed was very different but still followed a typical Physiological thriller but changed the order.

When introducing Luke and My character we used Obtrusive editing alongside with parallel editing to show the passing of time between two separate characters but interlinking their journey together as they both see each other but have different journeys to get to the destination. We used another convention of Physiological thrillers being quick cuts between both of the characters on the journeys to create tension between them as the audience will start to see that they are going to see each other but they will want to know the reaction of both Luke and I when we do finally see each other. So we are using the original codes and conventions of a normal Physiological thriller.

We used Iconography which made us put Luke's motorbike scene in to create a more action feel for a couple of seconds as you wouldn’t expect a motorbike on a Physiological thriller as it is more from action and adventure. But we decided to use this and we liked it when we used it as it challenges the conventions of a Physiological thriller and therefore made our Opening original and got the audiences attention. Typical Physiological thrillers use the characters to create tension but we decidedto use the props like Lukes motorbike and Chelseas mum putting the poison into the cups as this made the audience think for themselves and not see the characters facial reactions. By using props to create tension it challenges the conventions of a Physiological Thriller.

Setting – The setting is very important for a Physiological thriller and usually the codes and conventions of it a couple years ago would be a mental asylum or prison, but now Physiological thrillers are happening more and more in reality and not much on prisons but normal everyday characters that go to work but just focuses on the stress of them like butterfly effect. The most popular thriller I know would be pulp fiction which had a very modern era and was filmed in bars and cafes and houses but still you could see every character and how they reacted in different senerios. This is why me and my group decided to go along with a modern Physiological thriller and based it in reality outside and in a house to try get the audience engaged more as they wouldn’t be expecting a normal prison or mental patient kind of thriller, it would be new to them and that’s why we picked these settings for our opening. The conventions are being challenged to some extent but we do also use the conventions from typical Physiological thrillers.

Sound – We as a group analyzed different Physiological thrillers like Seven, Shutter island, butterfly effect and taken etc, This allowed us to see the types of music and sound coming from typical Physiological thrillers. As a group we wanted to have eary mysterious sound that drew our audience in and created more tension between me and Luke and then spooky music that made you wonder when Chelsea's mum was putting the poison in. The music at the beggining is eary but then gets faster as me and Luke switch scenes and go to our destination to build up tension for the audience as they are waiting to see what happens when me and Luke see each other. Also the music for Chelsea's mum scene is mysterious so we had 3 different types of music for our opening which we got from “FreeplayMusic”. We made the decision on sound as a group and I believe the sound goes very well with our opening.

We have four different characters in the opening to our film.

Me playing a young man – We would stereotype me being a young male heading out a building in formal dress so upper-class – middleclass. I start of the nod between me and Luke which could mean I'm showing respect to him but then it changes as after Luke nods at me I start to smirk and walk of so this could show tension and a sense of rivalry between Luke and My character. We did not add my race or ethnicity as it had nothing to do with our opening. But some people could stereotype me as a young Asian male coming out of a building and looking for trouble as I look at Luke.

Middle aged man played by Luke – We wanted Luke's character to be in the same sort of class as My character but a bit lower and we achieved this by having him dress less smart than me and smoking. The middle aged man will be stereotyped as a normal guy smoking. We wanted my character and Luke's character to have a difference in wealth so the audience would start to believe that me and Luke's character have a rivalry between us.

Chelsea's mum – This is where most of the stereotyping will come as it is a woman cleaning and cooking at first but then changes completely to the perception of her being evil as she is pouring poison into the glass, we do not know why, which creates tension for the audience. But still you don’t hate Chelsea's mum character straight away as you will want to understand why she put poison in the drink.

The main shouting “Hurry up they're here” this would be the husband shouting and ordering the wife around so could be stereotyped and is telling her to hurry up and people are here, which we then wonder what happens to the glass with poison in, who is it given too.

Our media represents the middle class and upper-class mainly, the main social group we have is Male and Female as there is only 1 female compared to 3 males in the film. The ending of the film the man shouts out hurry up and we see the woman chuck the cleaning cloth in rage as you can see from the picture. This could mean to the audience that the poison glass is for him and she starts to set out the table for guests but only one glass is poisoned, if the audience start to think they are aactive audience and are drawn more into the movie as they want to know what happens and Physiological thrillers are mostly about thinking.

The main social group and stereotype is between he male and female protagonist, at first when the female is cleaning we just believe she is ordinary woman and is cleaning the house, but as soon as she pours the drink and pours the poison is the perception of her is more stronger and independent but then we are brought back to woman being weaker than men as then the man shouts out and the woman listens which could mean woman are seen as more weak than men no matter what they do. But we wanted to make Chelsea's mum to look stronger as she is the main character and by not seeing the man we can say he is never there and when we watch it as a audience I wouldn’t imagine they have a good relationship as the way they are not seen together and that he shouts at her so it might not be husband and someone else. We made the lighting in the kitchen darker also to make the woman seem weaker than she actually is but when she is pouring the drinks then it becomes lighter but then goes back to dark to show the audience that the male is in charge.

I believe our film could be made into a big Hollywood studio film as it has potential to grow and can expand its audience to everyone and have action and still can be a Physiological thriller. A Hollywood approach would mean putting out trailers and snippets and then positional release it on cinema for everyone to watch. The main studio I would be interested in that could distribute our film would be Warnerbros.

I picked Warnerbros because they focus on more thriller genre doing films like inception, I believe if our movie came out with WarnerBros it will gain a wider audience as they are known worldwide for there popular films.

I believe Warnerbros would use our film because the storyline is good and has potential to grow and is not based on a certain audience apart from over 12 years old because of action and reference to death . By doing a Hollywood film it could be bad as I don't believe our idea is more of a film but is more of a TV show idea.

In my own opinion though I do think it could be made into a TV series being a rivalry between mine and Luke's character and the woman and man trying to interrupt. As I believe less and less people are going to cinema to watch films and TV series are becoming very popular like breaking bad and walking dead. Both series are weird not normal ideas but have become very popular and both are thrillers in there own aspect and both contain conventions from Physiological thrillers as we see the characters progress. We would be able to see how the young male played by me and Luke have confrentation. It could be on sky Atlantic as they normally do thrillers like “Arrow”. It would air every week. (My opinion)

But me and my group have decided to go with Warnerbros and I believe they do the best thriller films and would be able to distribute our film effectively and allow us to get as much of an audience as we can.

Age – We rated our film as a 15 which means you can only watch it if you are 15 or over. We decided this because we done a survey and our main audience was 13-18. We then went on the rating system and saw what our film contained and went with 15 as it is a Physiological thriller and contains some death so a 12 year old would not understand or would get scared of what is happening. 15 year olds will understand death and what is happening but some still might get scared as it brings death to the house. So our film is targeted at young people aged 15 and above.

Gender – I believe our film could be off both genre as it isn't all action which would mainly be to young males but this could be for females and males. When the females watch they can relate to Chelsea's mum being told what to do and the Males could relate to mine, Luke's or the male in the house character. I would want the audience to be active and relate to the characters as this means they are more active and drawn into the film as they are relating it to themselves and will want to find out about that character. So our film is targeted for both genders.

I got some feedback from people watching our opening

Sarah, aged 17 female. – “Your opening is good and makes me want to find out who got poisoned”

Ryan, aged 34 male – “kept me interested and the build up was tense”

I asked a few people to try get a idea of what they thought about my opening so I know what to improve next time and see what was successful. I have had a lot praise from people watching commenting on the fact we made it and kept it as a thriller and didn’t go of track and have a thriller but with all action in it.

I believe I appealed to the male side of the audience by having the motorbike scene as males mostly like cars and motorbikes so it will create excitement and tension as you cant see the face of the person in the motorbike and will want to find out who he is and whys he stopping. The male audience can relate to all the male protagonist as they might be a young male or middle aged man having competition.

I appealed to the female audience by having one of the main characters as a female cleaning so the females can relate but then when she pours the poison into it, females might understand or relate why she is doing It. They know its wrong but they understand. I believe the female audience might believe we stereotyped females to just clean but we tried to make our female protagonist strong and when she pours the poison it changes the perception of women in a second

Luke said that by having her poison the glasses at home it gives her a perception that you cant trust anyone and that death is everywhere even in your own home. By having the audience think this it allows our idea of a Physiological thriller to go straight to them as the audience are questioning themselves and asking themselves who she is going to poision and why she would do this. We decided to zoom into the glass as it creates tension and for a second allows the audience to think about what is happening and what is going to happen next to show and create tension between each character and between the characters and audience and the audience will start to show relations to the characters and favour one more than the other.

We attracted our audience by using the female protagonist as the audience will feel sympathy for her as she is getting told what to do and bossed about. Also I believe I attracted and appealed to the audience effectively as me and my group while looking at camera, sound, mise en scene and editing was always thinking about our audience as they will be the ones watching it and we want to appeal to them and draw them into the opening. We want the audience to be active and not passive as a passive audience to me means being bored and not drawn into the media. I believe I have used the codes and conventions effectively and appealed and attracted. to my audience to make them a active audience

Towards the start of media in our continuity task I didn’t know much about the technology that we used for it and we wasn’t talking much as a group in the continuity task so I didn’t learn much from that but then we started to learn after we done our final cut for continuity task we realised how hard it was to make a 2 minute opening. As a group we started to plan and learn how to use the different tools to make our opening.

Towards the beginning me and Priyanka found the pan shot to be the hardest and if you compare my continuity task pan shot to our Chance pan shot you will see how we improved with time. Me and Priyanka spent at least 5 hours a week perfecting the pan shot which means we had a lot shots to use and delete for our final product. We decided once to change and not have a pan shot but it didn’t work out as it did not like right so we perfected the pan shot with a lot of practise and therefore that is why our chance final cut has the best pan shot me and Priyanka done.

I have never used a camera to film or a tri-pod so it was difficult for me at first but my group helped me a lot and now am very improved and good with both a camera and tri-pod and can use them by myself now. I believe my biggest problem is the camera shaking and this allowed us to have less time for editing so we kept on practising this when we didn’t have lessons so when we did film the camera did not shake like it did on the continuity task.

The program we used for editing is Adobe Premiere software I have never used before or heard about, but again for at least 5 hours a week someone would come from my group and help me with editing and show me how to add in sound or make a clip black and white and more. This allowed me and my group to have more time doing other things as if I was editing then Chelsea or Luke could be doing something else rather than me not knowing how to edit and just sitting there watching. I believe I am very good with Adobe Premiere now and am proud for my input for editing in the task.

I have learnt so much from the continuity task to the final product. To do a film you need the best organization skills and at the beginning we learnt that we needed more time to edit so we all exchanged numbers and started to be more social with each other which allowed us to have more time outside the classroom as we met up in-between lessons and at lunches and afterschool.

During the research task I have learnt that every genre has a sub genre either because we as a audience made it or because that’s the way that genre was going. For example every action or comedy movie mainly has a love relationship in to appeal to more of a audience. Also we split up the work load for the final product whereas on our continuity task everyone was just doing whatever with no communication. With sharing the workload it allowed us to get more work done and not have too much work for each of us.

For planning stage we decided to mind map our ideas and then further decide what idea we wanted by using a survey and asking other people what they liked and did not like. First of all we wanted to do a horror but scrapped that idea as we thought it wasn’t original and has been done before. By doing this it has taught me that it is better if you all strongly agree on one decision as then you can all be happy and know what you have to do to achieve the best grade possible. We all agreed to do a Psychological thriller.

We as a group have come a very far with camera, tripod and using Adobe Premiere and we have learnt how to make a strong opening to a film and also learnt other interesting things like about one of the famous directors Alfred Hitchcock, I believe we did have our faults and if we started to come together as a group towards the start we could of made it even better than it is but I am very happy with what we made and believe it is a very well done opening.