Questionnaire - Safia Shafi

Audience research

We created this questionnaire to help us with our audience research. We gave it out to people in our college to fill out and got some feedback which we put in a graph. Doing a question has really helped my group because it’s allowed us to have more of understanding of the thriller genre and what our audience are looking for. After getting the feedback we were able to narrow down our target audience and develop our idea. 

Questionnaire 1 ">

Weekly Update - Safia Shafi

This week my group and I did quite a lot but haven’t completed the task so we haven’t uploaded them yet, but we did complete the production brief and the results for our questionnaire have been uploaded.This week we also managed to meet up with our cast and take story board pictures and location pictures, so In the following week we hope to have our story board completed and uploaded.

Production Brief - Laura Collins

Production Brief ">

Audience research/Graphs - Safia Shafi

Graphs ">

Weekly Update - Olutobi Odeleye

This week we changed various things on our “Rebecca” Blog.
The idea we originally thought of had loads of flaws and received negative reactions, therefore we changed it to a more realistic, on the go, action short film. We also decided that it would not be effective for the audience, hence why we changed our Brainstorm and added more ideas, such as information on the
protagonist and antagonist. Moreover, we added more shots to our cinematography aspect. We have also uploaded the ideas of Codes and Conventions, genre research, audience research and opening sequence outline.

Opening Sequence Outline - Olutobi Odeleye

A young girl named Rebecca (Age 21) runs across the underground subway, crossing through corners and looking around worryingly. Her facial expression describes her as someone that is been victimised or a target of which something bad or mysterious is going to occur. Then this scene shifts to an unknown bridge location in which the environment looks run down where she continues to run. she then enters a park from the bridge route as she was running in a haste she staggers and falls, and hurts her leg, however she still got back up and dtsrts to limp. When Rebecca gets to the door of an unknown building Rebecca then pulls out her key from her pocket anticipated to get through the door, in fear she starts to shake trying to find the right key whilst dropping the keys, she then went round the back of the building trying to open the blocked out window, she still wasn't sucessful however at her second attempt she pushes the door open with her leg. Then the door flings open.

When Rebecca finally opens the door, this synchronised with Tom (Age 23) who is tied up to the chair and drops a phone simultaneously. Then camera focuses on the phone being dropped. The camera shows Rebecca still standing by the doorway breathless whilst gazing at Tom. (Then a Big “REBECCA” title appears on the screen, and there is a non diegetic sound of the police saying Hello? From the phone)

Codes And Conventions - Safia Shafi

Codes and conventions

All genres will have a set of ways that you can recognize them, this is how you classify different media texts into groups, and these are called codes and conventions. A code is like a really firm rule that is almost never broken, there can be: Character Codes, Plot Codes, Structural Codes, Production Codes. Codes and conventions allow the audience to understand what genre the film is, within our two minutes sequence we intend to apply the codes and convention of a thriller to give our sequence the feature and characterizes a thriller requires.

The conventions of the thriller genre are to do with sound and editing, E.g. quick cuts and camera angle changes, music that gives tension. Codes and conventions of a thriller include lighting, the use of shadow. Mirrors and stairs are also conventions of thriller movies. Codes and conventions of a thriller also include the following:



This are the typical codes and Convention of a Thriller.

Mise-en-scene

We are able to recognize a thriller through the use of location, costume and props. As a thriller has many sub genres the location costume and props of these sub genres are similar but different. For example the typical aspects of Mise-en-scene in a psychological thriller are, the location is often a psychiatric unit, mental hospital, or an old house. The lighting in many psychological thriller isn’t very bright, instead they use quite dim lighting as the lighting has a very big impact on how the audience see the thriller. In psychological thriller the costumes are very distinct as u have your psychiatrist who would most likely be wearing either smart clothing or a lab coat with a shirt and trousers, the character who is in the mental institution would perhaps be wearing hospital clothing.

Editing

Often in many thrillers the editing is very fast pasted with a lot of jump cuts, the type of editing used in many thrillers help build up a lot of tension and suspense.  The use of fast pasted editing and jump cuts often keep the audience entertained and draw them in to thriller more.

Sound

In many movies sound is very important, the sound usually goes with the genre for example in thriller you would have mysterious, action, fast up beat sounds depending the genre. If it were to be an action thriller then we most likely have upbeat fast past sound that would complement the action going on. The sounds in many thrillers often help engage the audience.

Surprises & Twists

Plays with Viewers Mind

From Killers Point of View

Flash Backs
Make Audience Think

The codes and conventions within a thriller mainly allow a female protagonist to be a victim of a dominant male character, often within a thriller you would get two points of view one being the protagonist views. Codes and conventions of a thriller also cover mise- en -scene for example props such as large knives, guns etc.

Genre Research/Claude Levi-Strauss - Safia Shafi

Claude Levi-Strauss’s Theory:

Claude Levi-Strauss suggested that we make sense of the world, people and events by seeing and using binary opposites everywhere. He observed that all narratives are organised around the conflict between such binary opposites.

Examples of binary opposites are:

·      Good vs. evil

·      Black vs. white

·      Boy vs. girl

·      Peace vs. war

·      First world vs. third world

·      Domestic vs. foreign/alien

·      Young vs. old

·      Protagonist vs. antagonist

·      Man vs. woman

·      Strong vs. weak  

Claude Levi-Strauss’s narrative can be applied to our opening sequence because he looked at narrative structure in terms of binary oppositions such as man vs. women which we have in our opening sequence, Rebecca vs. Tom. 

Script - Laura Collins

'Rebecca' Script

Shot List - Laura Collins

Shot List- Prelim Task

Preliminary Task - Group

Preliminary Task Script

Brainstorm - Laura Collins

Production Schedule - Laura Collins

Production Schedule ">

Introduction

In week one we aim to achieve a lot in regards to the planning and research section of our media coursework. Today we have learned how to create hyperlinks from our group blog to our individual blogs. We have also completed our Preliminary Task and, in doing so, learned a lot about the process of filming and editing. We have begun our Production Schedule and this should be finished as soon as we have allocated each group member with an equal number of tasks. This will help us to be organised and prepared. We have also almost finished our brainstorming and have chosen a genre, which we will soon be exploring more deeply through research.