Our thriller "Hidden"

My final thriller:

Evaluation question 7 "Looking back at your preliminary task , what do you feel you have learnet in the progression from it to the full product ?"

Evaluation question 6 "What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product ?"

Here is our thriller with all the annotations about the editing and all the other effects that we have used .

Evaluation question 5 " How did you attract / adress the audience ?"

As I mentioned earlier , the best age audience for watching our thriller is about 16+ . We decided so for many different reasons , so for example one of the main characters in our thriller is a boy who is roughly 17 years old and so , for the audience who is the same age as him will just be easier to understand him in some situations , as maybe they had the same experience or their friends had a similar experience . For the audience who are older that 40 for example will be a different view on some of the things . So , personally I think that the age of the main characters has a really valuable influence on the audience’s point of view before they decide whether to watch it or not . 

Also , we did;t want to make a film only for a teenagers , so the second main character was a man in his 60

Evaluation question 4 "Who would be the audience for your media product ?"

Who would be the audience for our product ?

I think that the best age range for our thriller would be from about 14 years old , as we haven't filmed the whole film and it's just the beginning , some people might just not understand it and find not interesting . Also I would say that  Personally I think that our thriller is very different from the ones that we usually see on the TV or in the cinema , as there is no blood or any unexpected and scary moments , so I would say that is why the age limit is that low . Ideally we wanted to make a thriller that more people could watch and if we would put 18+ it will be not appropriate for those who are under 18 . Later on I will publish some videos reporting some of my friends and teachers about thrillers in general and about our thriller as well . I've asked some questions such are :

   1). How old are you ?
   2). What is your favourite genre of film ?
   3). What do you usually expect to see in a thriller ?
   4). What is your favourite thriller and why ?
   5). Would you go and see my thriller ?

Each interview took me about 2 minutes and the questions were quite simple and straight forwadr , but I was just really interested in other people opinions .


Here is a short list of people and their answers to my questions


DANEL AZIMOVA 

• She is 17 years old 
• Her favourite genre of films are melodramas
• When she watches thrillers , she expects to see people fighting , guns and blood 
• Her favourite thriller is Taken because you never know what is going to happend and what to expect 
• She said that she would watch our thriller beause she thought that when watching an opening sequence you did't know what could happend and why the boy was looking for something in someones house

 KSENIA TAMAROVA

• She is 18 years old 
• Her favourite genre of films are comedies
• When she watches thrillers , she expexts to see blood and suspence 
• Her favourite thriller is the one girl because she found it very interesting to watch and quite scary at the same time 
• She said that she would watch our thriller because she found it interesting and she also said that she has an idea about what can happend next and she also mentioned that she really like the main character who played a fantastic role 

ANDY BOHUTSKY

• He is 18 years old
• His favourite genre of films are comedies
• When he watches thriller , he expects to see action 
• His favourite film is ''Taken'' , because he likes the plot , the main actor and suspence 
• He said that he would watch our thriller because it really builds up suspence from the beginning and he as the audience want to find out what is going to happend next

MARIA KULIK

• She is 16 years old 
• She did't really mention a genre , but she said that she likes old films from USSR and she also said that she doesn't like American films 
• When she watches a thriller , she wants to see something unusuall and unique
• Her favourite thriller is "Agent 007" , because she likes the main actors in the film and she also likes that the film keeps audience's attention 
• She said that our thriller is very interesting and that she would go and watch it 

PIT 

• He said that he is extremely old ( as doesn't want anyone to know his age )
• He doesn't have the most favourite one , but he quite likes rom. comedies and older films
• Something that gives his brain a bit of thought 
• He doesn't really have one , but he likes the one that can make his brain think during the whole film 
• He said that our thriller has to be extended , but it looks really good 

Evaluation question 3 "What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why ?"

What institution would make your film ? 

For the institution that I would like to film my thriller I chose the 20th Century Fox . I chose it for many different reasons . I am going to list some the main reasons now . The first one is because this is an American film studio and as we know America is the best in film industry . The other reason is that it is one of six major American studios , which straight away gives us a certain reputation of the company . Another interesting point to take into account is that it is currently owned by 21st Century Fox and formerly owned by News Corporation . 

Talking about the reputation , I want to mention some of the most famous distributed films which includes the first two Star Wars trilogies , Ice Age , Maze Runner , X-Men , Home Alone , Night at the Museum , Power Rangers , Taken and others . I’ve just listed some of the most recent one and the most famouse one . Looking at all the films that thisinstitution has created , I want to say that for me it’s the perfect level of filming and editing films . So , obviously I would love my thriller to be fillmed in this studio , but looking at this situation realistically , my thriller is a low budget film , as we haven't used any expensive equipment and as it was fillmed in the school library . So , me and my team can only dream to be fillmed in the studio like this , so we are probably looking at a British company .

Now I want to give a rundown of the history of this company , because I think that it’s very important to know and understand how the company was developing and who created it . 

Twentieth Century Pictures’ Joseph schench and Darryl F. Zanuck were the one who began merger talks with the management of financially struggling Fox Films after that the manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters helped make it happen ( and who later became the president of the new company ). 

Taking about the name of the company , it was expected that the new company was originally to be called Fox-20th Century , even though 20th century was the senior partner in the merger . For many years , 20th Century Fox claimed to have been founded in 1915 , the year Fox film was founded . For instance just to have an idea , it marked 1945 as it’s 30h anniversary . The company’s films retained in the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their opening credits as well as its opening fanfare , but with a different name that has bee changed to 20th Century-Fox . 

Also the most favourite and popular biographies and musicals were recording in the Hollywood’s biggest studio , which is RKO and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . It also became the third most profitable film studio . 

Now I want to say what other famous films they have made and what was the budget of each one .

Looking at all the films that they have made we can see a range of different genres which means that the age group is different for every film . They make thrillers for the audience 16 or 18+ for example as well as they make cartoons for children . Here are some more examples of the films that hey have made . I am posting some posters just so that we can see a range of genres that hey have . 

Now , talking about the particular target audience , I want to say that for example not everyone like Star Wars and for example not everyone would go and watch it , so for this particular film there is a particular target audience . 

Evaluation question 2 "How does your media product represent particular social groups ?"

How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

Our thriller is about a boy who is entering the house through the window and searching for something that he knows has been hidden somewhere . He is looking through all the books on the shells when he starts hearing someones foot steps and then hides behind the wall . The owner of the house enters the room and takes a book with title ‘’Hidden’’ , which is the one where the memory stick was hidden . The man opens a book and when he finds a memory stick in there , he feels satisfied . that’s basically a short summary of our thriller .

( On this screenshot for example we can see their emotions and how confident the man feels and how scared the boy is )

Now talking about the main representations that we can see in a thriller , we are looking at two main ones , which are age and gender . The age between our main characters is significantly different . The man is in his 60th and the boy is a teenager . 

Looking at mise-en-scene , we are talking about the room in which the thriler was fillmed . We had to make it look like someones house , even though it went very well , it probably wasn’t the best decision to film in the library , but we tried our best to make it look like someone’s house and I think that it worked quite well for us . It looks like the person who owns the house is quite a rich person as starting from the windows through which the boy was entering the house , we are noticing the curtains that look very rich and also the table in the middle . (obviously we know that the table is for the student to do their prep) but in our thriller this table is a dining table . Looking at the cloths of the main characters , we can clearly differenciate the level of their wealth . Talking about the boy we are noticing that he wears black T-shirt , black trousers and black trainers . When we look at him we start comparing him to all the teenage boys . Stereotypically , boys of his age usually wear something comfortable and usually they wear jeans and quite simple T-shirts . Looking at the second main character , he wears a suit with a tie which looks quite expensive and smart . Comparing two of them , we might think that the men ( who is the owner of the house ) may be a businessman or something like that . 

Also , looking at the expressions of the characters , we are notising that the man is confident in himself and knows what he is doing . Looking at the boy we can see that he is scared that someone can catch him and I understand that the audience , when watching our thriller might either think that the boy is trying to steel something just because he does it every time , doesn’t have enough money ( maybe his parents don’t give him enough money or something like that ) . The other half of the audience might look at it differently and say that the owner of the house has one something wrong ( for example he could have killed someone and has photographs or something relevant to this on the memory stic which he hides inside the book ) and this boy wants to show people what he has done . Personally I think that our main character is a good boy and I think even though he wears all black ( which can suggest that black is something negative ) it is just his preferences . Talking about the lighting , we filmed it in the morning and we did’t need to use any specific and proffecional lighting as the natural light worked really well for us . As i mentioned earlier , we had to make the school library look like someone’s house , we had to move some of the things from there and put the relevant books ( which people in the evenings can usually be reading for pleasure ) . 

The next section of question 2 is camera angles . We used many different ones to make out film look more interesting so that the audience can not just look at someone’s back all the time or at someones fase (close up ) . Listing all the shots that we have used I can name some of the most important ones . For example we have used an establishing shot , lots of close ups ( to show the emotions of the person ) , and old shot ( whee we wanted to show that the main character is in a rush , that he is nervous while searching for something ) and this also builds up tension and make the audience want to follow the character and find out what can happend next . Also , all the shots at the beginning that we have to film for the titles , we made so that it looks good but so the audience can be able to read the names . Another important thing to mention is that the movement of the camera has to be relevant and has to move when it has to move . (These two screenshots shows the wealth of the house and we can also see that its not a modern house , which gives some sourt of a power )

I can’t really say much about edititng because we have done some transactions so that it flows throughout the whole film . Pace also changes all the time which suggests the emotions of the characters , as when the pace is fast , he is nervous or something like that , or when for example the pace is slow , he is not in a hurry and doing something that takes lots of time . 

The only sound that we have added is some sourt of music that builds up a tension and make the audience feel like something is going to happend now . The other sound that we have added is a heart beating of the boy ( so that the audience can go through the whole journey of him together ) . Also the heart beating is some sort of stereotype , as when the person is scared or nervous his heart starts beating faster and faster ) . So that the audience will have a feeling like the boy is either scared and is afraid that the owner of the house is about to come or the other option might be that that he is nervous . 

Evaluation Question 1 ''In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?''

For the evaluation question 1 I have to compare shots from my thriller to the other films shots that are similar . Looking at the first shot where Calumn is hiding behind the wall and comparing it to The Wolf Man (2010) , we notice the same composition of the characters , while not completely the idea of using a camera to show both the main character and villain in the same shot.

 Talking about their emotions , we get a feeling like they are both hiding from someone and like they are both scared because of something . the most noticeable difference between these two shots is the lighting , because in my thriller it is very light , as it was filmed during the day and in The Wolf Man its very dark around her .


We also have similar conventions to the character of Nathan Drake, in the video game series 'Uncharted':

Both characters are young, treasure hunters that often find themselves in dangerous situations.
 In terms of the camera , we can say that the shot with Callumn made specifically not to only show him and how he is coming from the outside , but it also gives us a sense of having in our minds how the room looks , even though we get only a section of it . Shot from the other film that I was comparing to mine is different , as it was made from the floor , which gives a feeling like we are there with the character . Like we are lying on the floor with him . So , this gives us a sense of us feeling the same as he does .




We have also used the same location/setting as films of the similar plot and genre conventions as 'Oceans 12' (2004):

These settings are both in historical buildings  which gives a connotation of wealth and class. Both rooms are of the same style , size and design. By using the similar settings/location we have made our thriller more engaging, adventures, and also suggest that there could be more to the plot.

Our Final Storyboard

Here is our visual mind map that Lara has made for our group . It really helped us throughout the whole process of filmimg and editing , as every time we were reffering to this mid map , looking at all the steps that we had to follow .

On the shooting day

Our shooting was on Wednesday and it started at around 9-30 am. We knew that we had to prepare the room before we start shooting , so we came quite early and started moving everything that we did't need . The aim for us was to make our school library look like someone's house , so it was quite challenging and we also had to select those books that can be in a usuall house . We did't want to have books with a title that can be not relevant , so we just put many different folders , different books ( mostly related with literature ). Here are some pictures from the shooting day :

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible and film media used to convey information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, and many other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate and complete work.
Also , talking about the process mainly , there are 6 stages of editing . The first one is logging , the net one is first assembly , the rough cut and variations , fine cut and lastly the final cut . 

Before we started editing our thriller , we were not quite sure where to put which shots , but when we came to a point where we had to make decisions very fast , we all worked as a group and solved all the problems very quickly . 
In the first couple of days when we had a chance to do our editing during the lessons , we were all sitting as a group , and deciмing whee to put which shots and my role was to help choosing shots and the editing them together . 

Another thing that we had to do was to review and select shots , we had to do it because not all the shots were relevant and useful , as we couldn't just put the establishing shots one be one . Also , another important thing was to name and the re-name the clip , as if you add a clip from the Brother to the Timeline , you have to copy clips within the Timeline , each of these clip instances is independent of the others and can have it's own name . 
As well as put all the good shots in , we had to crop some of the shots as hey were either not very well filmed or just not quite relevant . 
We also wanted our thriller to "flow" , so that's why we had to use a timeline , so there is a flow . And also , to provide a continuity , all the shots had to be on the correct place and the maximum layers that we have used were three . 

Another thing that we had to do was to review and select shots , we had to do it because not all the shots were relevant and useful , as we couldn't just put the establishing shots one be one . Also , another important thing was to name and the re-name the clip , as if you add a clip from the Brother to the Timeline , you have to copy clips within the Timeline , each of these clip instances is independent of the others and can have it's own name . 
At first I thought that it would be quite hard to edit our ilm , but the I just realised that its not hard , its just time consuming , especially each of our group members are doing at east one more art subject and it quite difficult for us to find a slot when we are all free and can all come and do the editting , but 

This is the name of the program that we have used for editing . It is called Premier Pro .