How our film developed from prelim to main task

                           

            Looking back at the preliminary task, there are significant differences between the prelim task, which we filmed and edited around October and the Thriller, which we finished filming around February and finished editing around late February-beginning of March. In the prelim task, it was the first time that I was introduced to the filming progress. In the prelim task each group were given out the storyboard by the staff this made it much more easier for us to film because we know what kind of shots we need so there are 3 shots that we used, which are over the shoulder, wide shot and close up in total we put these 3 shots and line it up in to 12 shots in total. However, when compare our thriller with our prelim, the camerawork in our prelim looks far less professional because it was our first time so we did not actually know how to use the equipment in result the colour from one scene to another is different while in our thriller is look far more effective and convincing.

            Initially in our prelim, our main idea is to learn how to film and edit so we did not focus on making it look realistic like in real life situation therefore we did not focus on mise-en-scene all we had we just a corner of a room, a light and a props of a can of spray while in our thriller we want to make it realistic as real life situation as possible. In order to do this we choose to represent Mise-en-scene by focusing on using props, lighting, costumes and actors. By using proper costumes, police uniforms this makes our thriller looks more realistic and by using guns as our props this helps creates the sense of danger and violence which is our main ideas for our thriller. In contrast with the prelim, which we did not have any props. In term of actors, in our thriller we have the middle age man to play the father. This makes it more realistic and more convincing, which down the line make it more effective than our prelim because in the prelim we used 2 teenagers, which are not very skillful in term of acting.

            Overall, we didn’t find any difficulties in term of editing. Frankly, both tasks are quite similar in term of editing. In our prelim we did not focus on creating any meaning, so we did not use as many different types of shot. We used shot reverse shots, match on action, low angle and high angle.

            However, in our thriller we slightly used different types of shots. We used eye line match and match on action to helps create tension, low and high angle to imply the power of each individual character.

            As a group we worked very well together on the thriller partly because we spent time together and got to know each one much better. This massively helps in term of decision making because we know that we can rely on each other. Also because we gained more experience along the way such as we know more about how to use the camera, how to pull out the best use of lighting and how to get the most of different camera shots such as hand held shots which very useful for us because it helps massively on building up the tension. However the most vital experience is that we know how to use Final cut pro much more efficient than when we did our prelim task.

           In progress of making the thriller, we also used the program that we did not have a chance or not necessary for us to use in our prelim which is the Adobe After Effects. we use this program to create the murder scene in our thriller, in this scene we put the crosshair in and black out the edge of the shots to create the image as we as the audiences are looking through the sniper's scope

    

Our thriller "UMIA"

Our Preliminary Task 

How has digital technology been used in our thriller

             The descriptions in dept of technology used in our thriller, Umia has been put as annotations in the video.

Make a PowerPoint saying how you addressed your target audience

our target audience

 In order to make our thriller success in the market we need to identify our audience group. To do this we use the website www.uktribes.com to help us identify the target audience. We came to the conclusion that our main audience are emos, metalheads and scene kids. Because our thriller is quite similar to ‘The Expendables’ so there will be actions and a lot of tensions involved. This will caught the emos  and metalheads attention because they listen to metal and heavy rock which is aggressive and we will use heavy metal in our thriller as well.  We also use Russian mercenaries which fits into the stereotypes of Russian of being aggressive.

               

                The stereotypes of emos and metalheads are that they like to listen to heavy, dark , loud, hardcore  metal and rock music. They also like violence and death. Which again fits to our thriller because there will be a lot of killing, bloods and death involved.

                according to the research the type of movies and TV shows that emos and metalheads watch are the normal movies that normal people watch such as Sons of anarchy, Breaking bad, The Walking Dead. however form the list of example we can see that they mostly watch the tv shows which involved drugs, dead, bloods and violence which again related to our thriller in term of violence.

Here is Chaos Sorrow, he is our ideal target audience. Chaos loves heavy metal bands and music, such as Megadeath and Metallica. Chaos wears dark clothes and loves really violent and aggressive action films and thrillers, which is exactly what our film is about. Also, Chaos likes to have lots of friends round who he plays guitar with, and they then watch films on the Xbox 360, and from their they can see our film on Xbox LIVE as we are going to market it in such a way through Magnolia and therefore not specifically try and aim for the cinema.

               As we mention that our main target audience are emos, metalheads and scene kids. However we also aim at the young-teen audience age 15 to 25 as our secondary audience. Apart from these groups, we also aim at mid 30's that will watch this film at night drinking beers and nachos, perhaps coming back from the pub late at night these kind of people. The reasons why we aimed at them as secondary target audiences are that our thriller is in the action/thriller genre, which similar to The Expendables, The Bourne trilogy and the Inglourious Basterds.

             From these films we can see that they are very similar to our thriller because they involve bloods, violence and guns which will catch the teenagers attention because according to the poll the majority of teenagers like to watch movies which involve violence blood and guns.

http://www.facebook.com/carl.sorrows

Name: Carl Chaos Sorrows

Email: chaossorrows@hotmail.com

Here, we have created an individual profile page for Carl Chaos Sorrows, who is the perfect type of person who we think would like our film. His goth/heavy metal like personality really connects with our film, 'Commando' being an action Thriller involving lots of fighting, action, deaths and gore.

Institution for our thriller

We have decided as a group that the most suitable film production company/institution to produce our film would be ‘Between The Eyes’.

This company has recently produced films of the same genre to ours, such as: ‘Welcome to the Punch’. An action Thriller production made from a mediocre budget, similar to ours. This also shows that this production company would be more likely to pick our film due to the genre. Another film that ‘Between The Eyes’ have produced in the not so popular British film, ‘Shifty’, also being an action Thriller, however has the involvement of gangsters instead of mercenaries. The main way that our film will generate revenue is primarily based upon DVD sales, as this is not the type of film that will hit the large popular cinema’s first time. As our film is a low budget British film it would not be a huge success in Hollywood, however our type of film would be popular in the gaming world due to the violence and action, which is very popular and would appeal to gamers, which is a huge market in the US, bigger than the film industry. We would then hope an American gaming distributor, such as ‘Magnolia’ would not distribute it to the cinema, but to Gaming consoles, such as: Xbox LIVE, PS3 & PC to get ‘pay per view’. Also, an effort would be made to distribute it to the television market, such as selling the rights to Television stations, such as: BBC, ITV & Channel 4 and also film channels like ‘Movies4Men’ located on Sky Movies, ‘Film 4’ etc. The production company, ‘Between The Eyes’ specialise in action Thrillers as mentioned above and from research they seem to be successful, despite being low budget, being made by non famous film companies & using first time film directors. The film production company, ‘Between The Eyes’ has a target audience of males between the ages of, 16 – 25 year olds and a secondary audience of 30+. We know this due to their history of films produced (as mentioned above) obviously appeal to younger men. If our film turned out to be a huge success in Britain then we might try to promote it to US. However, before even aiming for the US market, we would set our sights on Europe, and to do so we would try to sell the rights to our movie to a EU distributor such as 'Artificial Eye'. Because the company making our film is very low budget, to offset the costs of making the film we might sell the European distribution rights in advance, this would help us make some money to finish the film properly however it would mean we were left with only North American and British rights. As first time film makers this film would be about us building up a port folio of work rather than making money and building up our reputation and making bigger films.  In order for us to promote our film on an international scale we will take our film to film festivals in order to hopefully be picked up by a US distributor, such as the ‘Weinstein Brother’ who are known for picking up successful British films like ‘The Kings Speech’ and distributing them to them Worldwide to a greater market.

How have you represented social groups?

Firstly, we are representing the Asians as soldiers, as often in films Asians are the bad guys however in our thriller we are following the Asians and making them out to be good guys who we support and follow throughout the film. Once again, we want to represent the Asians as strong, violent and having a military background. We are not conforming to the general stereotype of asians, we are aiming to subvert this unlike in other films, such as in Rambo, Crouching Tiger & Hidden Dragon, many of the James Bond films & many Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee films.

Men are represented in our film as ruthless & murderous which is often the case in action thrillers such as The Expendables & The A Team. We wanted to represent the Asians as being very physically large, well combat trained and brutal looking subverting the physical stereotype appearance of Asians from being small, subservient & mathematically minded to tall, stocky, scary etc. The reasons for doing this is that we are conforming to the stereotype of soldiers and mercenaries in order to make them more imposing and to add to the action genre.

In our thriller we chose a blonde girl. Stereotypically blonde girls are usually the hysterical character within a wide range of films, in our film we wanted to conform with this stereotype. This is shown by the blonde girl screaming 'DAD!' constantly, being terrified and we thought by choosing a blonde girl for our cast that this would be most effective for a terrified young girl.

The basic definition of a mercenary, also known as a defence contractor, is one who works for wages. In military terms, mercenaries are professional soldiers that are typically hired by a foreign government to clean up particular unrest that may be occurring in that country. The job is highly demanding and can be considered dangerous. However, for those with a military background, mercenary work can be a rewarding position for those that like the excitement of combat and aiding in resolving conflicts. So, in our film we want to represent our characters in this way to show an audience that the mercenaries have experience, this being physically muscular, looking older, visible scars showing they have fought before & looking professional, i.e. how they run, holding of gun, stance etc.

How has my film matched or challenged the conventions of a thriller

          The shot of the policeman stopping the car as shown below, subverts the usual stereotype of a policeman stopping a person for the right and good reasons. Also it subverts the usual opinion of a policeman because you would normally be on the side of the policeman and not thinking that he is the bad guy.

             The shot of the dad reassuring the girls can be seen likewise in the film Taken, it is almost the same as the main character reassures his daughters that everything will be ok, when it won't.

           The main actor being taken out the car is another example of a subversion of common opinion of policeman and fathers, up until this point in the thriller the audience has been on the side of the policeman, but now we see that he is the bad guy and that the father has done nothing wrong and is being taken out of the car for no reason.

           The long haired policeman with the rifle shot is a lot like an Expendables type of shot, showing the rifle and making it look like the main focus of the shot, as all of the audiences attention will often be focused on it because it is a weapon.

           

           The killer at the end shooting the blonde girl can be compared to various different shots from the film Shooter and in the latest James Bond film Skyfall, showing a sniper lying down looking at his target through the sight of his sniper from a distance, and then firing and killing his target. We wanted our sniper scene to look a lot like these examples because we think its looks good and effective for a end to the sequence and also its a good looking way to kill someone.

           

            The policeman hitting Simon completely goes against what we would usually think of a policeman doing, normally policemen dont hit normal people for no reason, it makes the audience realise that something it definitely very wrong and a bit abnormal. 

         

          The main actor on the phone looks like various shots of Colin Farrell in the movie Phonebooth, showing him on the phone looking worried and slightly scared. We wanted to get our actor to look scared like in the photo of Phonebooth. Because normally you see people on the phone and they are smiling and happy, however we subvert the stereotype of a friendly phonecall, into one of tension, worry, and suspense when you see the look on his face.

Editing:adobe after effect

As our thriller is a political action thriller (similar to the Bourne trilogy or Taken), it required a certain amount of special effects in order to add an element of excitement to it, as there types of films are known for their action, shooting and fight sequences. The one that really required the use of after effects the most was the shooting of Simon's 'deemed expendable' step-daughter Georgia. After Maggie, the real daughter is kidnapped, Georgia is left and attempts to escape but is picked off by a sniper from range, as no witnesses are desired and these guys need to send a message that will still leave them with a bargaining chip. For the sniper clip, we needed to do a few things to make it obvious to the audience that they were looking down the sight of a sniper rifle, and of course to kill Georgia. This meant that we had to create the boundries of the scope, a crosshairs (one long range and then a transition to the zoom optic), the sight recoil as the gun fires and of course, the blood as the bullet hits Georgia square in the chest. In order to create the sight boundries, we first had to create a background mask on the shot, then cut out a circle where we need the sight to be, center it on the target and blur the edges so that the target is in focus. Because we had two separate shots of Georgia stepping out of the car, it meant that we had to come up with a way to justify the sudden jump-zoom, so we added an optics change in to cover it up and enhance the shot. This was done with the use of more masking. Next, we added the crosshairs to both sets of optics, simply taking one from the internet, removing the white background in photoshop and placing it over the required shot. The recoil was done exactly the same way as the optic change, simply moving the mask where and when needed. The blood was an animated spatter effect that we put into the shot, centered on the target. In the final cut, there were two separate ones used to acheive the desired spread and volume.



The Zoom Optic. Note the boundries and blurred edges.

The Long Range Sight

We used a wide spread splatter like this one, only animated to digitally re-create the effects of having a high velocity round punch through one's vital internal organs.