Task 1: In which way does your media produce use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

 It psychologically challenges the conventions of a classical thriller product as the opening isn’t set in a dark area and isn’t placed in some wood in the middle of nowhere.
The audience has come in expecting a generic movie filled with the typical aspect of such a movie and they are greeted with the mind chalenging images.

The music to the opening sequence is dark and mysterious, this reflects in the shot choices as every shot changes from normality to obscurity. Each shot is cut using brain scans showing the mental element of the film, this has developed from the opening sequence of The Andromeda Strain mixed with the opening sequence of Seven. this showed that we looked at two opening sequences that are very obscured looking, the opening to Seven reveals basic ideas as to what the movie is about, and opening to the andromeda strain shows that the movie is about espionage and government secrets. This keeps to the conventions of a media thriller product.

The shots begins with beauty and then changes using light to more graphically challenging images, such as the computer mouse which changes to a dead mouse.
And the window in which we don’t know what to put on the green screen.

The idea of what our thriller has changed several times in the past weeks working on them. It started by bieng a psychological thriller based on the paranoid fears and a scitsophrenic’s mindset. The idea has now shifted to a time changing story incorperating hand written letters and showing time passing using the dead mouse, the melting ice cube and the hand written letters bieng incorperated into the sequence as opposed to the brain scans that we were using to show that it was a thriller based on the psycosocial behaviour.

Intro to still photography, basic composition and Photoshop.

In our first week at Hurtood House we learnt about the rule of thirds in photography photos.  

The red circles are hot spots, the lines come in in the thirds hence rule of thirds.

to create an effective photo you must keep in mind the rule of thirds and hotspots.
here is an example I have made using the poster to the Matrix, the yellow lines are for the thirds and the hotspots and the red lines signify the sight lined which are looked at while making the poster, they are used to guide the eye to the important places on the poster

account of shoot day

we arrived on set on friday the 21st of January after having set up a basic outline of the set the night before, we recieved more probs and mockups to make the set more realistic, the set we created was pretty accurate according to the immage of the set we came up with. Once having set up the set we realised that we could not have the correct focus on the objects chosen in accordance to our story board so we had to move parts of the set to get the right focus and later in the day place tracks to move around the set for our tracking shots.

we started with the easier shot which was that of a lightbulb flickering with the brick wall background, for this to work we had to move the suspended lightbulb forwards and place the camera at least a meter away, we then had to place a redhead light aimed at the wall which would turn on at the same time as the lightbulb. the shot consisted of about 1 minute of footage of the light bulb flickering and going out and turning on. this shot worked exactly as our story board had intended exept the light bulb was on the other side of the screen.

the next shot was a five part shot as we had to shoot a minute of the glass with a computer mouse, then a minute of the dead mouse, another minute of the mouse placed differently, the footage of the dead rat and finaly the footage of a drop of oil going down the whine glass. the shot hopefully will come together nicely.

 The third shot is that of an ice cube melting in real time which we will now fast forward and then reverse to make it seem as if a puddle tuned into an ice cube.

 to set up the next shot we had to start weeks in advance geting some fruit and allowing it to rot, then setting it up into two identicle fruit bowls having rotten fruit in one and good fruit in the other, then setting up two tables, one to place the bottle of wine and the next to place the fruit bowl we then set up the tracks and set up the camera on the Spider Dolly, we then had to repeat the shot panning across focus pulling and panning all at the same time, this did not work very well but eventually we managed to get it right. we then changed the good fruit bowl to the bad fruit bowl and repeated the shot.

we also set up a window in the studio and placed a green screen and shot that for about 1 minute which we will then place a city scape into. or something else on the green screen. the lighting was slightly stronger on one side so we had to set up another light on the other side to balance the green.

we then needed another shot which we did by using smashed glass and making it fall in front of the camera which we shot in slow-mo to use possibly as a transition or as a new shot placing titles into it.

the lighting for our set we used a wash to light the whole set, at diferent strengths of light depending on the mood needed and the way in which we shot it. we also used a light bulb that hung from the cealing which we shot flickering to place credits into, and finaly red head lights to light up more specific areas of the set and to light the close ups better, such as the ice cube, the lightbulb and two for the green screen.

pre filming we decided to go with slow clasical music to make it seem calm and slow it down, so not contrasting the footage that we have shot, it was decided that me and Anushka in the group would produce the music.

my role in the shoot day changed from setting up the shots,this involved handling a dead mouse and rat, lighting, setting the lighting, camera man and melting ice using hot water and a pepette over the course of about half an hour. this altered depending on who was doing what.

planning our film sequence

Planning our film sequence

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this is our first plan for the thriller film sequence opening.

what is a triller

thrillers are designed to keep the audience on the edge of their seats till the end of the movie, thrillers are designed to cover many different genres that are recognised largely by movie goers such as; misteries, murders and cheesy chase scenes in the woods.


generic conventions of trillers:
1. Plot twist
2. keeping people unsure about what is going to happen
3. a lot of action
4. often chaotic
5. have resourcefull heroes and exotic settings


thriller plots can vary widely, very intelectually chalenging, spy thrillers, supernatural themes and scientific and medical.


a popular theme is spy thrillers, a spy vs an unpopular enemy in exotic locations= LIKE
these are so popular because everyone likes a bit of action suspense and exotic locations.


some thrillers are challenging and can attract slightly more intelectual people to the cinema, these tend to involve some phsycological aspects which can get intelectual audiences to start analysing the character.


thrillers are often Hybrids, this means that they are not just thrillers, you can have any mix of the following and many more:
1. action-thrillers
2. adventure-thrillers
3. sci-fi-thrillers
4. crime-thrillers
5. western-thrillers
6. film-noir-thrillers
7. horror-thrillers
and even
8. romantic comedy thrillers


thrillers are massively suspensefull, arguably the best director of this was hitchcock. he would cover up information, this added more suspense and tension keeping the audience more on edge. this normaly would build up to a climax later in the film.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsobNoNJzOc
this is the link to a video of thriller conventions i could not get the embeded code as it was blocked...

analysis of film sequence

ians moveboard

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mood board

Horror presentation I H

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