Gracious R Tapa- Evaluation Question 1 : In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 

The Title of the film :

 

- For our Title 'Bound To-get-her'  , we chose to conform to the media thriller title conventions as we are appealing to a more mainstream audience. After conducting our product research, we discovered that red and black are colours mostly used in thrillers as they contain strong symbolism behind them.We chose to have a black background as it is a powerful colour which evokes strong emotions and a feel of emptiness. Black is the colour most commonly associated with secrets, power, violence, evil and the end,which is why we thought it would work well within our thiller opening. We then used red as although red is commonly used to represent blood and death, we figured we could use it for the other meaning behind it which is passion,infatuation and fire.

 

Setting /Location

 

- Our opening was shot in 2 main locations, those being the toilets and a drama room. We overall wanted to create a feel of emptiness and isolation, and those 2 locations enabled us to achieve that ambience. We were able to manipulate the lighting in both locations to create the conventional dark lighting seen in thrillers. The gory suspenseful thriller 'Saw' had quite alot of dark lighting and is normaly set in 1 claustrophobic location which we thought we could echoe. We managed to  achieve the dark lighting by using black cloths and the built in lighting in the drama room. 

 

Props

 

 - As directors we chose to keep the props/mise en scene and the use of dialogue to a minimum in order to avoid complications and also focus of the acting and camera work. As our opening  is set in a school, we had to make sure that the constumes and the mise en scen communicated that. We had the female protagonist in her school uniform indicating her role and age, we also then had the janitor in a janitor's costume to correspond with his role as well as a trolly. The most important prop we used in the opening was the set of keys, which are also used in thrillers such as 'The Skeleton Key' . Keys represent power and allow you freedom but can also be used to lock and unlock secrets that you want to keep hidden, and we incoorperated them to portray that the female protagonist might be the Janitor's secret he wants to keep away from the world around him until he's ready to give her the keys for her to be able to unlock her future and fulfil her purpose.

 

Camera work and editing

 -The conventional camera shots and movement used in thrillers are
              
               
- Close ups for example in Hitchcock's psycho







- Pov shots for example in kill bill


 

- By using our Storyboards to plan a variation of shots, we were able to use camera movements and angles such as tilts, pans, close ups and canted angles to keep the movement in our opening constant to ensure that it didnt become too repetitive and kept the audience engaged.

-Inspired by thrillers such as Shutter Island, Psycho and Seven we realised that we should not use too many long shots but instead to vary our shots and correspond them with the pace of the action. In post Production we found we had many long shots so we had to chose the best parts and cut them down, aswell as incude smooth transitions such as dissolve to make it more fluid.

 

Title Font and Style

 

- After doing some title research on the fonts and style for titles we decided to use a shattered and distorted font to represent the relationship between the characters. The font idea was similar to 'The Grudge' font which we altered and made our own. we did alot of research on the type of font and style we wanted and tried to insert complex and higly appealing animations to the font however we ran out of time and we still had not managed to perfect our skills on after effects. Therefore we went for a much more simpler font, style and animation.

 

Story and how the opening sets it up

 

our storyline is about a girl who gets bullied and a janitor kidnaps her in order to mentor her to get revenge on those who hurt her but at the end you can see the stockholm syndrome taking place. Our opening sets it up by :

- establishing the characters

- introducing us to the set and location the movie is going to be shot in

- and giving the audience an insight into the storyline through symbolism, and signs but in an ambiguous way therefore the audience can piece the pieces together.

 

Genre and how the opening suggests it

 

Our opening suggests the thriller Genre as elements such as these resemble those of a thriller :

- The dark, distorted music suggests that of a thriller as it foreshadows the trouble ahead. This is seen in thrillers such as Seven

- The dark and contrasting lighting, creating mystery and creating a dark atmosphere, suggesting the dark path ahead

- and the isolated , confined locations which represent abandonment and loss of hope aswell as help

 

How Characters are introduced

 

- in the beginning of the opening, the camera pans and finds a distraught small girl looking in the mirror. This hints to the audience that the story will centre around her, the flashbacks are then used so the audience get an insight on what she's been through and the abuse she's suffered. We then see a tracking shot of a man walking away from the camera but his face is not revealed until he looks in on the little girl in the bathroom. The fact that this man looks into a little girl suggests his psychologically disturbed nature and tells the audience that a relationship between these two characters is going to be formed.

 

 

Audio Research

For our audio research im torn between a more
abstract composition of music or either a more
conventional tone of music in relation to the thriller opening.
As our storyline is unconventional and has a twist in the end, a more abstract sound would create suspense and ambience, also adding a meaning behind to our thriller. However as our thriller is more mainstream and would be produced by film production companies such as paramount pictures, 20th Century Fox , Universal etc.

Composed by Balthazar, the first soundtrack is from Winter Voices, a game a narrative-driven, episodic, role-playing game set in an imaginary and timeless world at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The battles' music reflects the intense emotions of the young character and the dreamlike atmosphere in which they take place. The electronic soundtrack first starts off with a drum that slightly sounds like a metronome, the music then builds and an electronic piano comes in as the music crescendos, different instruments then follow creating tension.

 

The next sound track starts off with a drone, following orchestral violins and other string instruments with a drum. This composition has a great effect as it keeps the audience guessing and if used in our thriller, it would keep the suspense going and also would createa spooky ambience. As sound is a very key aspect of any productions, we have to keep in mind what effect we're trying to convey and what sound would best suit to it.

 

 

Thinking outside the box: Foreign Expectations Of A Thriller!

Hansel and Gretal (2007)

After a stressful day, and spending the night in, I decided to watch a Korean Horror film Hansel and Gretal. The film is subverted from the original Brothers Grimm tale and similarly reminded me of Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber series.

The film starts off with Eun-Soo driving whilst
 talking to his pregnant girlfriend. A quarrel arises which leads him to crash and becomes unconscious. He suddenly wakes up to find himself in the deep dark forest to which he sees light from a lantern that a young girl is carrying. She introduces herself as Young-Hee as they head for her house where she and her family live. Their large house is in the middle of the forest called the "House of Happy Children". After entering the House, many cynical secrets are discovered and revealed  to Eun-Soo which he tries to run away from.

Watching the first two minutes of the movie showed traits of both a thriller and a horror film. The beginning is first set to introduce us to the deep dark forest which gives the sense of entrapment, being lost, a claustrophobic impression. The Soundtrack for the two minutes similarly remind me of The hand that rocked the cradle in the way that the music sounded childishly cynical.



At the start of the film, extreme close up shots were
used to show the toys the children would play with. however with the low key lighting accompanied by the cynical soundtrack, an element of unease is created within the audience.



The use of showing children's toys in a faded sort of effect look almost washable, as if it were only vivid memories. The shots look as though there are two shots of two different locations applied to on which confuses the viewers as we aren't what images should our eyes be concentrating on.


Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the twisted unexpected end to the movie. Even though this film is a horror, however i felt that the plot was creative in the sense that it was simple and unexpected at the same time.

I'm listening... Slender Man Sounds- Audio Research

As I do with my free time, I venture out into playing games and one which has recently caught my eye (or should i say ear!) is Slender Man. The successful horror game is where you are set in the dark forests with a torch and the aim is to go find these pages. however doing this you get the Slender San who occasionally appears in front of you, or to which you might run into. If you stare at the Slender Man or you hover around the are he is in or too long it is game over for you. Whilst playing this game I was influenced by the backing track of this. The emphasis of the footsteps and the crunch of the leaves made me feel cautious of where i was moving my avatar. With this sounds of the wind, birds tweeting were also accompanied to make the experience seem more realistic. The static electric guitar sound give it an edge to the audience as the obscured sound rounds off the game when you die in the hands of Slender Man. Even though this isn't a film and is only a game, I think that the influence in anoher media concept could be applied to our coursework. Both the game and out film have similar motives in which they are able to start to scare or in fact literally scare the audience. What we want for our audience is to be able to experiance the thrill and the rush of adrenaline to which i think the soundtrack of Slender Man does extremely well whilst also playing the game. 

Coming up with a production name and logo. (First draft of logo)

We began story boarding for our final piece, and we looked into production name and logos. We kept the name simple and clean having it the anagram of the first letter of each of our name.
Gracious
Anissa
Louisa
Pahi

 We chose to include a light bulb in our logo as it symbolizes generating and coming up with ideas. When included in our clip, we want to have the light bulb to flicker as Nyctophobia (being afraid of the dark) is seen to be a common fear. The idea of using a phobia in our production name foreshadows the movie genre to which we are to produce






Researching other film production logos, we are able to see that the glimpse of light or a light is a trending theme throughout.As we see with 20th Century Fox's logo the lights are being animated to move around the screen and to shine and focus on the logo.

Similarly we see this with Columbia Pictures the focus is on the woman holding the torch. The position of the torch is held to obscure the letter "U". The Ray of light branches out symbolizing hope and also the many ideas that it could branch out to.

Thriller Analysis: Skyfall Opening

I went to watch the most recent Bond film a couple of days ago and the opening was one that seemed to me to be pretty conventional of a Thriller and so I have decided to analyse it.

One of the key elements within the opening that atracted me was the vagueness and abstractness of the entire thing. A thriller opening likes to make use of a similar concept - images will be vague and almost always disorientating for the audience as it is like they're receiving parts of a jigsaw that do not yet quite fit.

There was also a lot of use of shadows and darkness which also adds to the disorientation effect and also helps to create a sense of mystery, while leaving questions within the mind of the audiences.

Moreover, as I watched the film in its entirety, I noticed how a lot of the images that had been displayed in the initial opening credits had been crucial to the plot in some way. For example, in the opening, there was a section wherein there were floating Chinese dragons. Later on in the film, the protagonist, Bond, is required to go to Shanghai where he goes to a Casino. It is here that the same Chinese dragons make an appearance. Little nuances like that are also used in Thriller openings, where a sense of foreshadowing and foreboding is created for the audience. These foreshadowing points are almost usually always addressed and possibly even resolved within the duration of the film.