Final Ident

This is my final ident. I added even more visual effects when 'Enigma' appears as again, I think it makes it look more professional and interesting for my audience.

Further Progress with my Ident

Following my initial changes, I need to alter my ident even more to make it look like a real product...

1. Sound

When the cat is in the frame I think silence will more more effective than sound as this will add to the secretive and mysterious mood which I have already created through the colour and slow motion, as well as the black cat itself. When the production name comes up I have chosen a sound effect which is also quite mystical, therefore it suits the rest of my ident.

2. Production name

My production name is going to be Enigma.

Definition: a person or thing that is mysterious or difficult to understand.

This obviously goes with my ident as every denotation I have included is to create the connotaion of mystery. This also goes with the thriller genre as a convention is to create an enigma.


3. Visual effects
I have also added some effects when 'Enigma' appears as I think this makes it look more professional.

Progress with my Ident

I have started to make changed to the original clip I got from YouTube...

1. Cut the clip

I have only used the end of the clip as I think the framing of the cat is better as you can see all of the cat in the frame. I also like how it dissolves out at the end, I think this adds to the mysterious mood that I want to create in my ident.

2. Slow motion

I think slow motion works well as it also adds to the mysterious and secretive mood. It helps to draw the audience in.

3. Colour

I added colour to my ident to make it look more professional and aesthetically pleasing. Purple is the main colour I chose and this is because it has a lot of connotations which are also connotations of black cats.

INDIGO - wisdom, experience, dignity

VIOLET - intuition, elegance, destiny, inspiration, magic

PINK - perception, vision, insight

Beginning my Ident

This is an idea for my ident. I thought of the idea of using a black cat because many people have superstitions about them. This then goes on to create the effect of mystery. Other black cat symbolisms are intelligent, secretive, supernatural, and independent.

I will cut this clip down, add effects, sound and a production name to make it original.

Video from YouTube that I will develop

Ident Planning

This mind map will help me through the process of creating my ident as it includes everything I need to consider when making it. It also includes what makes up an ident - the brand, identity and logo.

Filming

I needed to complete my filming on two different occasions, due to lighting. The attack of the girl needed to be filmed at night and the scenes of the girl walking and the man driving needed to be filmed in the daylight.

I was going to film the girl being attacked (scene 1 and 4) in this alley way. However the weather delayed my filming. The actress would of had to sit and lie on the floor which would have been unfair to make her do in this wether.

I gave these to my actor who was doing my voice over for me. He recorded his voice on the video camera whilst reading the script I gave him. This worked successfully.

This sheet was a rough shooting script that I used on the days of filming. I found this better to use that my neat, final shooting script as it was all on one piece of paper.

I started filming at 8:30am for the driving part (scene 2). The weather was perfect for this scene due to the mist. I thought this created a brilliant atmosphere to shoot in as it gave my shots a more mysterious tone to them.

Unfortunately one of my lights didn't work for my scene of the attack in the dark. Luckily I rented out two pieces of lighting equipment from college, so I did still achieved what I wanted to achieve.

Something that went well was the filming in the car. I thought it might be difficult to get good, clear shots as it could have been hard to hold the camera still, however the outcome was much better than expected. This shows that my cinematography skills have developed since beginning the media course.

Making Changes and Adding Bits In

After completing my storyboards and my shooting script I have decided to make a big change to my idea. This is because as part of my audience feedback from my first draft shooting script I was told that my shots are repetitive and could get boring. My idea is also inspired from Collateral, one of the thriller films I analysed when doing my research. I have made part of a shooting script to represent my changes.

This will be the second scene, following the attack of the girl, and before the flashback of the girl in the field. I will have to eliminate some shots from scene 3 (the flashback) or make the shots shorter to fit this new scene in. I think this change will make my opening sequence more interesting as it will give it more of a narrative.

Detailed Planning

I chose my actor for this new scene specifically. The car he owns (above) is also perfect for a part in a thriller movie. This creates representations of the character, such as wealth, that he is 'up to date' and also innocence because of the colour.

A male character is always conventionally the one who is out to save the 'damsel in distress'. Propp, a narrative theorist would describe my male character as 'The Hero, who departs on a search (seeker-hero), reacts to the donor and weds at the end.' My actor who will play this character is a good choice as he has a very natural serious face which will connote 'that he means business' to my audience. He is a good age (early 20's) as he shows that he is young enough to have ability and old enough to have experience.

He will wear a dark polo shirt, where the colour will connote power and the style will connote class. This goes against conventions of the thriller genre as this type of character would usually wear a suit.

Photographic Storyboard

This photographic storyboard just gives a representations of the shots. Its main purpose is to focus on the cinematography of the product. It does not include the same location, costume or characters.

Final Storyboard

A storyboard is another compulsory task when producing a media text. It is helpful as it gives the creator a better representation of what the product may look like, following the shooting script. 

Storyboard Development

Final Shooting Script

Detailed Planning Prezi

Detailed Planning

Before I begin my final shooting script I am going to do some detailed planning of the mise-en-scene I am going to include in my opening sequence. I will explain why I have made particular choices, what this suggests to my audience, how it represents particular people and places and how it will target my audience.

Audience Classification Research

I want to suggest rape in my opening sequence when the girl is being attacked, however I wanted my audience to be aged between 15 - 25 and didn't know if suggestions of rape was aloud to be seen in a 15 classification so I did some research. A 15 classification is aloud brief scenes of sexual violence therefore my target audience can remain aged between 15 - 25.

15 Classification

• strong violence
• frequent strong language (eg 'f***').
• portrayals of sexual activity
• strong verbal references to sex
• sexual nudity
• brief scenes of sexual violence or verbal references to sexual violence
• discriminatory language or behaviour
• drug taking

18 Classification

• very strong violence
• frequent strong language (eg 'f***') and/or very strong language (eg ‘c***’)
• strong portrayals of sexual activity
• scenes of sexual violence
• strong horror
• strong blood and gore
• real sex (in some circumstances)
• discriminatory language and behaviour

Annotating my Voice-over

In my voice-over I have tried to include clues and hints of what might happen for the rest of the film to make my audience carry on watching...

Voice-over

In my thriller I am including a voice-over, which is conventional of the thriller genre. I didn't really know where to start when creating my voice-over as I haven't thought about the characters life in detail. This made it difficult for me as I didn't know what has happened in his past and what will happen in the future (the rest of the film). To help me make a start on my voice-over I went the website thescriptlab.com and read the article 'Top 10 Voice-Overs In Films' which included snippets of voice-overs from films such as Sunset Boulevard, The Shawshank Redemption and Fight Club.

This is what I have created...

"My inconspicuous life, lead to my legitimate life to being crushed. The whole act was a misconception, I thought no one knew, when in fact, I was the one, I was the one that was oblivious, caught up in malicious behaviours, ravelled in immoral attitudes.

They were good, they were undoubtably good. Proficient and skilled. I thought that I could use easy answers to shortcut myself to success, instead, they were used to shortcut myself to defeat. For some beings in this world, their legitimate lives don't matter, a percentage don't even have one. For me, it did matter, Jennifer mattered."

Changes to my Idea

Despite all my feedback being positive about my idea of the titles, I don't think I am going to carry this through. Here, I have used snippets of storyboard to represent my changes and I have explained why I have changed my ideas.

Audience Feedback on my Shooting Script

We handed round our first drafts of our shooting scripts in our media class and wrote on what we did and didn't like. This was a helpful task as it shows me what other respective media students think will be successful and unsuccessful therefore helping me to improve my ideas and shooting script.

Shooting Script

A shooting script is compulsory task when producing a media text as it tells us exactly what shots we need to take when filming. This has also helped me a lot as it has helped me imagine what my final product could potentially look like, meaning I can make changes dependent on this.

Audience Feedback for the Name of my Product

These are the completed question sheets that I handed out to my media class to help me choose a name.

I created this bar chart to present the results I got from my audience feedback. 

This has ruled out four of my options. Out of Fatal Innocence and Beyond the Light of Day, I prefer Beyond the Light of Day. This is because it sounds more inconspicuous and mysterious than Fatal Innocence does.

Choosing a Name

As I haven't got a name for my thriller film yet, I jotted down any names that came to mind on Notes on my iPhone.

I then chose the five names that I thought were the most 'catchy' and created a little question sheet to hand round my media class so I can get some audience feedback on what is the best name.

Final Idea

I wrote my final idea up and then annotated it with media language. This will help me as it will give me a clear indication of what I need to include to construct my product.

Audience Feedback

All my audience feedback was positive which makes it harder for me to develop my idea as I haven't got any criticism to bounce back off. However, I have summarised the audience feedback I did get...

I also got some more audience feedback off a member of my media class who wasn't present when I presented my pitch of my initial ideas. They suggested that I include close ups in-between my titles to give the audience more clues. I am going to carry this forward.

Presenting my Pitch

Development of my Pitch

I have uploaded the pitch I created on PowerPoint. I did this so I could present my initial ideas to my media class in a simple way that everyone would understand.

Initial Ideas

Following my initial potential ideas and my audience feedback from my survey I have been able to develop some initial ideas before I create my final idea. These initial ideas will help me with my final idea as I can present them to an audience so I can get feedback which will help me improve my idea before coming up with a solid final idea.

Survey Summary

When I use these results to develop ideas for my product I will have to consider than 70% of the answers came from females, meaning it could lead my idea to a thriller than would be more prefered my women. I want my target audience to be a mass audience of both men and women.

Again, over 60% of my answers are from people aged between 18-25, which could create misleading results of what my potential target audience want as my results don't included any feedback from people aged between 26-35. If I depend on these results too much to create an idea for y product I could potentially narrow my target audience as some ages may not like what I have included.

The results to this question is good as it shows that my potential target audience are into different genre films meaning that they a different kinds of people which will give me a varied opinions on all my other answers.

Over half of the participants prefer to watch a psychological thriller compared to other sub-genres. This is already helping me with ideas as I can now refer back to my sub-genre research and see what is conventional of a psychological thriller, which may help me develop some initial ideas.

Most people chose red and black as colours you'd most expect to see in a thriller film. This is understandable as they are conventional denotations included in thriller films which connote danger and power. Every other colour has also been selected which is also understandable as you are bound to see other unconventional colours in a film. The bright colours could even be used to create constant between the red and black.

Over 60% of people have selected a gun which is probably the most conventional prop in the thriller genre. Only 7 people have selected a hammer and this is probably because it's more conventional of the horror genre. Few people agreed that no props would still create an effective thriller film.

10 out of 30 people would prefer to be introduced to two characters in an opening sequence of a thriller film. This will help me develop some initial ideas. I will probably introduce only two characters in my opening sequence.

Everyone agreed that music makes a film more effective. This is good as I will definitely be including diegetic and non diegetic sound in my opening sequence, meaning my potential target audience will think it's effective.

Most people would prefer to see a conversation which. If I developed this into an idea it could be quite powerful, although I would have to think of a lot of powerful and effective dialogue, but at the same time not give too much away. Someone suggested on the comments that they would want to see 'insights into the plot without any answers' which is conventional of a thriller opening sequence as it makes the audience want to carry on watching.

This has helped set myself a challenge to create an opening sequence that my target audience will want to watch. It is important that what an audience is watching has an impact on their feeling as it shows that it is a powerful film. This shows me that I am going to have to use all aspects of media language to help create an opening sequence that will make an audience feel tense.