Film Opening - Final Product

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4bBIKXJaA

Our final piece.

Representation of Characters

Representation

We decided to represent our characters with a link to our audience research. Form our audience research; we were able to conclude that the part of thriller films people are most interested in is the plot.  So, in order to reflect this we developed a plot which centres on a very twisted and disturbed man. We played heavily on the mental state of the man, and emphasised that he was not ‘stable’ by the darkness used in the shots he is portrayed in. Also, the ‘shaky camera’ POV shots show his ‘world’ – which is very sad and lonely, and he has to rely on staking people he doesn’t know for ‘company’. It is also shown in the dangerous chemicals and construction materials shown – they show that he has the tools he needs to do something very serious and threatening, and that he will do it.

We represented the stalked girl as a typical teenage girl, wearing normal clothes and behaving normally. We made her the stereotypical girl, who is easily scared and loves spending time with her friends. We wanted her to be believable in order for our piece to be believable. All background characters were also represented in this way, to increase believability and relate ability.

By Georgia DeBranco-Chessum.

Minutes 28/1/15

Minutes Record Sheet
Date: 28th January 2015
Where: G2
People Present: Georgia DeBranco-Chessum, Alex Horn, Grace Blick & Daniel Parsons.
Matters Discussed:
Today, Georgia and Alex completed the editing of our final product.
Daniel and Grace tried to sort out the problems we have with acquiring our preliminary task.
Grace and Alex then burned the final product to DVD.


Minutes recorded by Georgia DeBranco-Chessum.

Minutes 26/1/15

Minutes Record Sheet
Date: 26th January 2015
Where: G2
People Present: Georgia DeBranco-Chessum, Alex Horn, Grace Blick & Daniel Parsons.
Matters Discussed:
Today we finished all of our allocated jobs and began preparations for our evaluations. We then started to write our evaluations.


Minutes recorded by Georgia DeBranco-Chessum.

Minutes 23/1/15

Minutes Record Sheet
Date: 23rd January 2015
Where: G2
People Present: Georgia DeBranco-Chessum, Alex Horn, Grace Blick & Daniel Parsons.
Matters Discussed:
We continued with our individual jobs that had been allocated.
We also had a group discussion ahead of our editing process.


Minutes recorded by Georgia DeBranco-Chessum.

Analysis Of Possible Settings



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAKhqewUk24&feature=youtu.be

By Grace Blick

A Powerpoint made into a video 

Outline of plot and character

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXt-OQuF-sQ






By Grace Blick


Powerpoint made into a video format

Costume planning and analysis

Costume planning and analysis.

Due to our media production being a thriller, we have decided to use bold, dark colours and basic clothing as this will portray the sinister and simplistic yet mysterious ideology behind it in the hope to create an eerie atmosphere of uncertainty representing our chosen genre theme.

We decided to have two fundamental characters throughout our media piece and have several individuals that would have minor parts in it for very short periods of time; it’s these people that would not be the main focus of costume design. The two characters that would be the main focus throughout are John played by Daniel Parsons and Lucy played by Grace Blick.  

We decided that Daniel, playing the character of John, would wear very dark colours as this adds an element of mystery, darkness and even death. By wearing black, Daniel would be perceived as a dark character, of which he was. Daniel plays a psychopath who has a manipulative and sly work ethic making sure he pursues what he sets out to do. By wearing dark clothing, it gives nothing away about him or personality; it keeps his identity and certain aspects of his personality hidden; he remains a blank canvas giving away no details of his life, however still leaves a sinister, dangerous and mysterious impression on the audience. By wearing a shirt and formal trousers, it suggests to the audience that the character John is a male, most likely older than his intended victim who still attends a sixth form and may also sustain a job. His clothing is not dirty nor worn in any way, this can suggest that he either takes good care of himself and if he does have a job and there is a possibility that it is well paid and he can afford to make himself appear to be very representable, however this could also mean, furthering on from the mental state of psychopathy that he has other issues he has to deal with mentally like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Once we decided on how Daniel’s character would present himself, we then went on to deciding how Grace would portray her character Lucy. We decided to dress Grace in very bland and simplistic colours as this too gives nothing about her personality away to the audience. However, by making sure she was wearing black and white patterned trousers, the black represented a darker, cautious aura, yet the white symbolises innocence and this could be related to the fact her character is still seen as an adolescent due to her attending sixth form and the geometric, bold print also added an element of curiosity to her, something in her life wasn’t as simple and carefree as it may seem. Grace’s character is very representable; well dressed and clean. From this, the audience can assume that she is well looked after and takes pride in herself. From the outside world looking in on her, she appears to be a normal teenager, attending sixth form to better her knowledge, gain an education and hope to pursue a career she so desperately wants.

Other than the two main character played by Daniel and Grace, there were several other people we hope to involve within the short film. One character that we incorporated was Georgia Debranco-Chessum, who would be playing herself. Georgia would be wearing casual clothing that would still have an element of formality due to her attending sixth form with Lucy, Graces character. Anyone else involved within the production would be wearing smart but causal clothing as it was set within a sixth form and this would keep an element of realism about it.

 

Alex Horn

Font Analysis

The letters of this title do look like they’ve been worn away. As if it has been written on the wall to and have been scraped away after years of being left alone. As the audience with this font we would expect some action in the film and maybe being set in an apocalyptic area. Such as a zombie world or even a war zone. Either way we would expect death and violence with possible horror.

The Skull and the arsenal of weaponry surrounding it obviously resembles what the movie is all about. Guns, violence, and death informing that it is full of action. As for the title itself, there is not much to go on. It’s simple in shape however the number two does look like the same font you would see on military vehicles. Possibly indicating that the characters are connected to the army in some way.

In this title of the Matrix trilogy parts of the letters out of alignment as if it was a glitch with a computer. This is really effective as the actual story itself does evolve around a computer system that does have many faults with it. However if you haven't seen the film before, for me the title seems a bit misleading as the font does make the film look like it should include a horror theme within the movie but that isn't the case.

The font for this film I guess is supposed to resemble some kind of futuristic look but still has some essence of the past. As a whole, we think of futuristic texts to just be straight lines with no curves. For example the font in Star Trek only has letters in a kind of Square shape with sharp edges. Even this seem to be turned into straight edges. However this font does have the letters slightly curved which may resemble.

This is probably the most famous title in movies. The number refers to the main character and the last number is shaped like a gun informing the audience that there will be action within the feature film which will involve violence with weapons. It also show that the antagonist is some kind of spy with the number.

 Ignoring the fact that this film is called Alien we  can clearly notice from the font that the film would be set in the future and therefore have a sci-fi theme. However even with the name being included, there is no sense that this film will include some horror elements. The font is so simple with the nothing in curved edges it doesn't reveal much about the film. 

Daniel P

Minutes 21/1/15

Minutes Record Sheet
Date: 21st January 2015
Where: G2
People Present: Georgia DeBranco-Chessum, Alex Horn and Grace Blick.
Daniel absent.
Matters Discussed:
Today we (Georgia, Grace and Alex) continued with our allocated jobs.
Also, Grace attempted to get the preliminary task burned to a disc, however we had a lot of technical trouble so this is an on-going problem for us.
Georgia typed up and uploaded all of the minutes.


Minutes recorded by Georgia DeBranco-Chessum.

Minutes 19/1/15

Minutes Record Sheet
Date: 19th January 2015
Where: G2
People Present: Georgia DeBranco-Chessum, Alex Horn, Daniel Parsons and Grace Blick.
Matters Discussed:
Today we continued the jobs we set ourselves on the 12th January and we also allocated more jobs, which are as follows:
Georgia -Actors call sheets typed up
            -Representation, how will you represent your characters? typed up.
Alex      -Colour analysis typed up.
            -Costume planning and analysis typed up.
 We also decided that we would all work on the character profiles.


Minutes recorded by Georgia DeBranco-Chessum.

Minutes 16/1/15

Minutes Record Sheet
Date: 16th January 2015
Where: Drama Studio
People Present: Georgia DeBranco-Chessum, Alex Horn, Daniel Parsons and Grace Blick.
Matters Discussed:
Today we filmed again in the drama studio and around the school. The other main places we filmed were the science lab S10 with Mr Levesly and in the Product design area with the area director.

Minutes 14/1/15

Minutes Record Sheet
Date: 14th January 2015
Where: Drama Studio
People Present: Georgia DeBranco-Chessum, Alex Horn, Daniel Parsons and Grace Blick.
Matters Discussed:
Today we were filming in the Drama Studio and around the school building. We gained permission from the Head of the Drama Department Mr Carter and so we were able to a part of the studio that had dark elements, which helped us with our thriller.

Minutes 12/1/15

Minutes Record Sheet
Date: 12th January 2015
Where: G2
People Present: Georgia DeBranco-Chessum, Alex Horn, Daniel Parsons and Grace Blick.
Matters Discussed:
Today we reviewed the planning we had done in our previous session and allocated the following jobs:
Georgia - Explanation of how your audience research had influenced you planning.
            - Explanations of the shots and editing techniques we will use.
Grace    - Detailed outline of her character and the plot.
            - Analysis of setting we may use.
Alex      - Storyboard continued.
Daniel   - Detailed outline of his character and settings for our thriller.
            - Filming schedule.
We then started these jobs.


Minutes recorded by Georgia DeBranco-Chessum.

Minutes 9/1/15

Minutes Record Sheet
Date: 9th January 2015
Where: G2
People Present: Georgia DeBranco-Chessum, Alex Horn, Daniel Parsons and Grace Blick.
Matters Discussed:
We had a planning session, in which we went over what planning we still needed to do and went over where we were with the coursework.
We also started organising a filming schedule.


Minutes recorded by Georgia DeBranco-Chessum.

How did our audience research influence our planning?

How did our audience research influence our

planning?

From our audience research, we were able to conclude that an action thriller was the most popular. However, we thought that it would be very challenging to create a believable action opening due to the stereotypical high adrenaline stunts that action films entail, so we decided that we would go with the second most popular genre and chose a psychological thriller.

The most watched age certificate was 15, so we wanted to incorporate themes that would be suitable for this certificate. We decided to show no actual violence in our film, but we are including the issue of stalking, crime and we are showing a weapon, which are themes that some people may find distressing, however from our research into certificates this would be deemed acceptable in a 15 rated film.

We also found that the part of a film people found most interesting was the plot. So, we decided that our plot needed to be gripping and unpredictable from the start. We incorporated a lot of short scenes and blackouts for this, which helped to create uncertainty and mystery about the plot of our piece that would hopefully pull our audience in.

Mental challenges were one of the favourite challenges for characters to face. Because we were doing a psychological thriller this was perfect for us, and enabled us to incorporate an important factor in and have it gel well with our plot. Violence was the most popular element of thriller films, and so we decided to incorporate the idea of violence rather than actually showing it, in order to be appropriate with our age rating.

 

By Georgia DeBranco-Chessum