Used: Our thriller opening uses themes of the main protagonist’s life being in some kind of jeopardy; this is shown in the suspense-filled chase scene, in which the audience is lead to believe - via the tense hand-cam styled shots and the jerky POV shots - that the character being chased is essentially running for his life (coupled with the fact that the commander simply tells the agent to “take it down”). This theme is also used in the opening of The Da Vinci Code, in which an old man is being chased through a museum by an unseen threat (who keeps his face well-hidden by a hood) - and once again, the audience is left to presume that he will be killed if caught. The primary difference between this use of the theme and ours is the type of shots used; even when in POV, The Da Vinci Code does not use a hand-cam approach, keeping shots smooth and steady - and it also uses considerably more high-angle shots than our thriller does.
Developed: An often-used convention of thriller films is the prevalence of POV shots to create tension in the scene; we have developed this by adding camera filters to some point-of-view shots. The escapee’s POV is layered with colour enhancement, blur effects, distortion and extreme glow effects; this is to illustrate and imply possible themes of human experimentation or augmentation (for the purposes of foreshadowing). Usually, POV shots are only used for setting the pace of the scene as opposed to giving any serious hints or details as to the character’s circumstances. One example of this the shower scene in Psycho, in which a POV shot is used to give the audience a view of the killer, and to make them appear imposing - whereas, our thriller’s POV shots reveal and imply so much more than that.
Challenged: A trope that our thriller challenged is the ordinary running order of film credits; we had our title at the end of the credits, and did this to enhance the title’s staying power as well as to provide a more potent and impactful ending to our opening sequence. The fact that it is at the end of the opening gives us the opportunity to emphasise it with louder sound effects, more exciting visual effects and a larger size; we wanted the title to leave a long-lasting impression on the audience, and make it memorable. Compare this to Panic Room, in which the title is dropped part-way through the opening credits. By comparison, Panic Room’s title isn’t quite so distinct from the other items in the credits as ours is (and adding to that is its lack of extra effects).
Used: Another standard thriller feature that our opening replicated is the convention of the protagonist being isolated in some way. In our thriller, this is represented by the character literally being in a lone struggle for his life against the staff of a government facility. You see worm’s-eye view shots of multiple people dressed in black suits running through a corridor, probably reacting to some kind of emergency alert - and the alarm itself was triggered by another worker in the facility. In short, this implies that there is an abundance of people who are trying to capture and eliminate the escapee, whereas (until the end, at least, where the “isolation” trope undergoes a surprise subversion when the government agent allows him to escape) the escapee is simply one man against all of them. This is similar to the Manchurian Candidate, in which nobody believes the protagonist’s theories about corporate brainwashing - and a similar kind of isolation occurs (with multiple antagonists against a single protagonist).
Developed: We developed the typical convention of good versus evil in our thriller by having the character who appears to be the primary antagonist of the scene turn into a good guy at the last possible moment; the two characters are out of sight of the government facility, and instead of capturing and/or killing the escapee as we expect (as a result of the voice commanding him to “take it down”), he releases the prisoner. This creates a sort of ambiguity about the ethical codes and morals of the characters involved in the scene; we don’t at all know at the start of the opening that the agent will turn out to be a good guy, and turning him into one at the 11th hour springs a surprise on the audience, and challenges them to think about who the real villains are in this film - or even if there are any. Consider it a thickening of the plot. Compare this to, for example, Batman: The Dark Knight (as rudimentary as its thriller elements are), in which The Joker is clearly the bad guy the whole way through the film, and doesn’t show any inkling of changing sides at any point in its duration.
Challenged: This is a somewhat difficult trope to explain, but I noticed when writing an earlier post that I made (on music in thriller films) that they all included some form of “natural”, non-synthesised instrumentation to balance out any electronic sounds. I opted for a completely synthesised soundtrack, in order the give the sound a distinctly mechanical, quantized feel; I thought that it alienated and unsettled the audience to a somewhat uncomfortable degree, accentuating the eerie and un-human aspects of the scene - which in turn relates back, once again, to the themes of possible human experimentation and loss of humanity that run throughout the piece. Compare this to all three soundtracks that I cited in the aforementioned post on music in thriller films, in which even the music from the techno thrillers featured natural, human instruments mixed in with any synthesised elements; none of them were 100% electronic, which mine was.
I’ll take this opportunity to reiterate that this thriller’s soundtrack was written, produced and mixed with the footage entirely by myself; it’s a completely original composition.
2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?
At this point, I'll refer you to the answer in the form of an embedded Prezi presentation. Simply click "Start Prezi" to start it.
3) What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?
This question was a group task, and the answer in full can be found at our film's Wikispaces entry: http://nfgsmedia.wikispaces.com/gatekeeper
4) Who would be the audience for your media product?
Owing to its distinct sci-fi stylings, our thriller would probably be suited to a more nerdy, scientifically-minded audience member, though still has more than enough mystery and broad “action” appeal to cover enough bases as a mainstream thriller. Our ideal audience member would have to be of at least moderate intelligence to understand the complexities and more scientific parts of the plot, and would likely be male, as the majority of sci-fi fans and “nerds” generally are (though I long for the day when women are just as equally represented in nerd circles as men are). Social class, disability and race are factors that I’d suggest don’t really matter, as they’re not represented differently or discriminated against in our film - though we would like them to have enough money to actually buy (a ticket to or retail release of) the movie, and enough of the “nerd” factor to want to purchase some merchandise.
In addition to that, they’d ideally be young; somewhere in their 20s, and either a university student or working professional. It’s not worth over-specialising beyond that, and the film will likely appeal to those in their late teens or early 30s, too. Their beliefs would ideally include a strong moral stance against human experimentation, and a distrust for governmental authority; although we’re not asking for a conspiracy theorist, someone with a suspicious, cynical and inquiring mind would fit the bill nicely. They should have a strong stance against discrimination of any kind, and libertarian attitudes towards social freedoms and a disdain for arbitrary governmental control.
5) How did you attract/ address your audience?
This was another group task, and for the full answer to this question, please read all of the annotations on the final version of the YouTube upload of our thriller opening (embedded below):
6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Mac OS X: I have learned, from using Mac OS X in this project extensively, that it has absolutely no benefits whatsoever over a more open and non-exclusive operating system such as Windows, yet despite this, media industry professionals still cling to Macs like a baby clings to its mother. Its interface is clunky, imprecise, overly reliant on the mouse, and the whole OS is simply just a very slow, poorly designed and poorly optimised experience to chug through. Speaking completely literally, I have learned a variety of Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts, as well as getting to grips with the insane user interface and navigating through Finder. Christopher Columbus probably had an easier and more enjoyable time traversing the Atlantic than I did wading through Finder’s idiosyncrasies.
Final Cut Express: I have learned how to use the timeline to splice and cut footage, add copious effects and filters to said footage, insert text, music and generally make a very nice-looking video. I was quite impressed with Final Cut Express, actually; I found that its timeline worked in a similar way to that of Logic Pro, which I’m accustomed to in Music Technology. I guess that Mac-exclusive pieces of software like Logic Pro and Final Cut are the reasons behind the media industry relying on them so much - although, Adobe Premiere (and not Final Cut) is generally used professionally, and it’s also available on Windows (and often comes out first on Windows, with more features, optimisations and a better interface). It is, in fact, worth noting that I composed the entire soundtrack for the thriller entirely in a Windows-exclusive digital audio workstation named FL Studio - thus proving further that Macs haven’t been necessary (or even particularly relevant) since the ‘90s. I’d perhaps like to suggest that they’re running almost entirely on their former reputation.
YouTube: Confessedly, I’ve not learned anything new about YouTube in the duration of this course. I’m actually a YouTuber myself, and have a channel onto which I upload music - so annotations, tagging, uploading, and privacy settings I already had expertise in prior to the start of the course. I have, however, learned optimal settings for exporting videos in Final Cut so that they don’t lose too much quality when converted to YouTube format, and so that the upload process doesn’t take too long. I didn’t learn anything else about YouTube itself, though.
Blogger: Blogger was a completely new technology as far as I was concerned; having never blogged before, I was surprised as to how much HTML code was needed to fix mistakes and problems in the default Blogger script. Things such as <center> tags often broke, resulting in misplaced pictures, broken formatting on objects such as video embeds and dishevelled text. In addition, I learned about how to tag different posts correctly, and use the default Blogger post editor (bearing in mind its poor browser compatibility) effectively. As well as that, I also learned of the shocking disconnect between Google’s Docs system and their Blogger system, as well as the differences between “Blogger” and “Blogspot” and the unimportance of the URL’s suffix (e.g. “.co.uk” or “.com”). I personally prefer the ease, reliability and simplicity of tumblr.
Canon Legria Camcorder: Having never operated a camcorder before, (not for any kind of serious filming, at least) all of the filming techniques used in the production were almost completely alien to me - though I didn’t need to be shown more than once how to transfer footage from the camera to the Mac. What I found difficult about this particular model of camera was that it filmed in interlaced 50fps, making down-scaling to YouTube’s 30fps a real chore for the Macs to convert - and de-interlacing the footage took more than enough time in itself. As well as that, the camera shot video in MPEG-2 format, which then had to be converted to H.264 for the final render (and because the camera’s native 1080i tends to scale well into the more standard 720p format, we converted to the latter resolution for said final render). Aside from the formatting issues, it was a relatively easy camera to use, and remained stable even when zoomed, with very little motion blur or shakiness on hand-filmed and close-up sequences. I also learned how to attach and set up a tripod, and that the piece of plastic that locks the camera into said tripod is essential if you want to actually use it.
7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
This question was another group task, and to answer it, we expanded the number and depth of annotations on the YouTube upload of our preliminary task; all of the possible improvements that we thought we could make to it are all present in the annotations, and we took all of these factors into account when filming and editing our final product. Here's the video embed:
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- END OF EVALUATION -
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