Class pitch with feedback

We prepared a pitch for our idea and presented it to the class to see what they thought of our idea.
Their opinions will help us to predict how well our film will be received as they are within the planned target audience.
here is their feedback.




From the start until 2:40 is our pitch for our idea and after that is the feedback.
At 2:40 right after our pitch josh raises a concern that it might not actually be a thriller, we were already aware of the fact that if we arent carefull it could start to leak into a completly different genre but we are confident that we carefull thought and good planning we can prevent this from happening and keep the film on thriller grounds.At 4:40 sam asks if we think we will actually be able to fit it into 2 minutes, again we think with carefull planning there will be no problem with fitting it in. At 5:40 Rob suggests ways for us to use sound in the film to enhance the film, the sound will be smething we think carefully about because it does have a big effect on a scene so thinking carefully about the choices of sound we use will make abig difference. at 6:30 matt gives the idea of having the nqt have a quick conversation with the headteacher in a corridor this is similar to what we had first planned but we originally planned to have the nqt talk to another teacher were as having her speak to the headmaster will kill two birds with one stone and help to introduce the two characters faster. At 9:00 mr hood came up with a good idea of repeating the bell ringing but with 2 different sounds and showing the two different reactions to it, this is a good idea that we are thinking of adding in. At 10:00 mr hood gives us a list of a few films he thinks we should view to give us ideas on how to show certain conventions in our film. At 10:30 mr hood points out that we will need to make sure there is an age difference between the people playing the teachers and the people playing the students so we will make sure that there is an clear age difference. At 11:50 mr hood suggests using a contrast between black an white and coulor to show the differences between the hypnotised students and the regular students, this is another very good idea that we are looking at adding in. the rest of the recording is mostly either people asking questions to clarify things in there head or people suggesting ideas that are already ideas that we had planned to implement. over all the reception for the idea was good aslong as we think carefully about how we go about showing everything.

Conventions

This is a list of conventions we plan to use, develop and challenge during our film.


Conventions being 'Used'

• Crowds of people
• Good Teacher/Bad Teacher
• Brainwashing
• Physco people
• Day and Night Scene's
• Uniformed Personnel (Suits, School Uniform)
• Cliffhanger

Conventions being 'Developed'

• Schizophrenc
• Tension building - slow editing and music
• Camera work - Panning

Conventions being 'Challenged'

• Teacher's personalitity changing to bad
• Children split personalitity
• Challenge school - Nice and safe enviroment - Evil
• Using the school bell for bad convention
• A Female being Captured

Group ideas

• A mentally ill police man commits a murders subconciously and then investigates the case, only to discover it was himself who commited the crime, he then tries to pin the murder on a fellow police man, unsuccesfully. We thought this idea may be very difficult to achive, aquiring police uniforms, police locations and fitting enough information into the short clip we thought would be difficult to do. This idea was put forward by me and our group helped develop it. It uses alot of Thriller conventions.
•  A school is training children to kill, we extended this idea further thinking about hypnosis from items such as school bells or school screensavers, we also thought of the teachers bieng in control of the pupils using the school bell. This idea is much more approprite, locations, props and costume would be very easy to aquire and there are lots of conventions which could be challenged with this idea. This idea was put forward by Adam Holland and the group developed it to this stage.
• Tom Fisher came up with the idea of having a Tree which could spread its roots throught the ground, breaking through the surface and taking people, this idea develops and challenges alot of thriller conventions but with no access to specialist special efects we doubted this film would look proffesionall enough or believable. Our group discussed these points to develop the idea further.
• Sam Clarke put the idea forward behind a film about a hanging incident, the effects and make up are possible for this idea but no one in or group could think of a believable story line to fit this idea into but it was a very good approach from sam as it challenged a lot of thriller conventions.

Out of these four ideas, our group came to the conclusion of using idea 2, we felt it was the easiest to produce but could be done to the most professional standard aswell. In my next post we discussed the conventions this film could use, develop and challenge and later we will present the idea to our peers to gather feedback and help improve our idea.

Opening titles

Here are some example opening titles, as our film will only be about 2 minutes long titles  will play an important role.

the star wars titles are the first thing the viewer will see and are before the film actually begins,they use a clear fairly bold font that scrolls upwards, it is a very simple title but is effective.The back ground to the text is space which clearly demonstrates that the film is a sci-fi.










the titles appear just before the start of the film and are very short, they feel very modern with computer type font and an animated "thing" next to it.










this simply starts with hitchcock introducing the film instead of using text this is an interesting way of introducing the film which hitchcock used several times so this could be thought of as a conventional thriller opening.








the titles are played in a crystal ball and are kind of played as the begginig of the film is paused in the background.










as in psycho this simply starts with hitchcock introducing the film instead of using text.

Thrillers-examples

Here are a few examples of existing thrillers to give us an idea as to the kind of thing we will be making.



This clip demonstrates a seemingly common convention of normal people getting caught up in things outside their control, were by a seemingly normal and mundane circumstance rapidly changes into one that is traumatic or potentially life threatening.





in this clip things are a little bit more psychological as we are unsure of what exactly is happening but we are given a sense or urgency and the feeling that something big is going on.

Thrillers- Conventions

We will be making an opening for a thriller film for our course work, here is some initial research on the conventions of thrillers.


Conventions Of thrillers

Thriller is a genre of literature, film and television that uses suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements. The primary subgenres of thrillers are: mystery, crime and psychological thrillers. After the assassination of President Kennedy, political thriller and paranoid thriller films became very popular. The brightest examples of thrillers are the Hitchcock’s movies.
 plot twists, red herrings and cliffhangers, menace, violence, crime and murder The cover-up of important information from the viewer and fight/chase scenes are common methods in all of the thriller subgenres. Though each subgenre has its own characteristics and methods. Common methods in crime thrillers are mainly ransoms, captivities, heists, revenge, kidnappings and, more common in mystery thrillers are, investigations and the whodunit technique. Common elements in psychological thrillers are mind games, psychological themes, stalking, confinement/deathtraps, horror-of-personality and obsession. While elements such as conspiracy theories, false accusations, paranoia and sometimes action are common in paranoid thrillers.
Characters in thrillers include criminals, stalkers, assassins, innocent victims (often on the run), menaced women, characters with dark pasts, psychotic individuals, terrorists, cops and escaped cons, private eyes, people involved in twisted relationships, world-weary men and women, psycho-fiends, and more. The themes of thrillers frequently include terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit, or romantic triangles leading to murder.
Thrillers mostly take place in ordinary suburbs/cities. Though sometimes, they may take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently ordinary citizens unaccustomed to danger. However, more common in crime thrillers, they may also be "hard men" accustomed to danger, like, police officers and detectives. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common.

Famous thriller

The god father

The dark knight

Fightclub

Psycho

vertigo

The Main Task

Our task is to film the opening two minutes of a full length fictional film, we will be making a thriller as we decided that it is the easiest genre for us to do as a sci-fi would have required a large special effects budget a rom-com has a smaller target audience and is harder to write and a period drama would be difficult to create because of the level of accuracy required in costume and set creation.

Preliminary Task

This is our preliminary task, we were asked to make a short film that demonstrated our understanding of the rule of  thirds, the 180 degree rule and that we know how to avoid jump shots and how to use the shot reverse shot technique including two lines of dialogue dialogue and how to do a match on action sequence. 
Making this short film helped us familiarise ourselves with everything that we will be using for our actual film.
I think for what it was it was successful, all the parts of the task were met and achieved.
We learnt how to do a match on action shot and a shot reverse shot as well as learning how to avoid jump shots and continuity errors. 

Welcome

Hello this is my as media blog, it will follow the flow of my work through the course.
I am working in a group with Adam Holland, Sam Clark and Tom Fisher. Our group is called Atlas productions.