Bloopers

'Pyro' - Final Product (Group 7)

Evaluation - Q7 (Anna McConnell)

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

As a reminder here is our preliminary task, in order to successfully evaluate the progression from this to our final product and what I, personally have taken from this experience

Here is a podcast of my full evaluation:

Evaluation - Q6 (Anna McConnell)

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question 6 Final from AnnaMcConnell22

Evaluation - Q5 (Anna McConnell) (GROUP)

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Here is a group director's cut of our film opening whereby we collectively discuss how we attracted/addressed our audience.

(Due to technical difficulties the sound quality may be a bit quiet so full volume is advised)

Evaluation - Q4 (Anna McConnell)

Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Here is a podcast whereby I interviewed Liam Gavin, the typical audience member of our thriller, for his thoughts on our opening.

Considering that Liam is 17 years old, the 15 rating for our film is ideal. Due to the themes of abuse and alcoholism, this rating is ideal as the sensitive topics expressed may be difficult for a younger audience to comprehend and may, in fact, be too distressing.

The film we took influence from, Orphan (Collet-Serra, 2009) has also been given the rating 15 due to intense scenes, profanity and violence. This helped us in our research into our target audience as our thriller would run upon similar themes and, considering most of our group had seen or heard about this particular film, we recognized that it was ideal to lower the rating from an 18 to make it accessible for a person of our age group.

We interviewed our peers and showed them the opening of 'The Bourne Ultimatum' and 'Se7en' in order for us to gain insight into what thriller conventions people recognise most from the opening of a thriller. This information could be carried over to our own opinion. 

We then showed the first cut of our opening to 3 of our other peers in order to get their criticisms.

Referring back to our Survey Monkey we were enabled to work out the rating we should place our thriller as. A 15 was the most suitable choice

Evaluation - Q2 (Anna McConnell)

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation - Q1 (Anna McConnell)

Question 1 In what ways does your thriller opening use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real thriller openings?

9 Frame Analysis of our Thriller Opening

1. The protagonist striking a match in a dark room. This illuminates only the top half of her face and the use of shadows and lighting create an atmosphere of suspense and foreshadows her obsession with fire thus highlighting the relevance of titles within the first few seconds.

2. A panning shot of the hallway showing an empty alcohol bottle and a pair of both male and female shoes. This establishes the setting of the opening; it will be filmed in a house and will feature adult male and female antagonists.

3. A high-angle shot of the protagonist looking through a gap in a door at her parents arguing. Highlights her vulnerability. The banisters appear like prison bars which highlight her imprisonment in this unhealthy atmosphere and, using the rule of thirds insinuate that her mother and herself are central to the plot of the thriller.

4. A wide-angle shot that shows the male antagonist appearing to be distressed with a bottle of alcohol. The use of the alcohol bottle prop conforms with the stereotype that adult males are usually the ones to be alcoholics; we can infer this due to the idea that the bottle has mostly been consumed.

5. The protagonist looking through the gap in the door. A continuation of frame 3.

6. A close-up shot of alcohol being poured into a whiskey glass. This is a further indication of the male character's alcoholism.

7. A close-up shot of the protagonist burning a photograph which appears to be herself held by her parents when she was a small child. This frame is significant as the symbolism behind the burning photograph prop represents her rejection of past memories.

8. The title of the thriller: PYRO. The black background heavily juxtaposes the fiery

orange font thus representing how the dark aspects of the protagonist's life will be affected by a fire of some sort and that it will be significant. We decided on a fairly neutral font as the animated flames behind the text and the crackling fire sound effects that accompany it will take main focus in this frame.

9. The postwoman arriving at the house. Shows a continuation of regular life outside of the internal drama.

PROPS

The prop of a match follows the conventions of a thriller due to its dangerous nature and the use of lighting and shadows create an atmosphere of suspense and mystery

The prop of the alcohol being poured into the glass reflect themes of alcoholism, whilst further indicating the contamination of their family life as the class goes from clear to a murky brown.

TITLE FONT AND STYLE

In terms of the logo of our thriller opening, here is the final product we decided on. 

Pros of our title font and style:

• The use of colloquial language; the shortening of 'pyromaniac' to 'pyro' helps our target audience associate the title 
• The cutout of the fire in the background helps to portray the themes of our thriller, as well as adding animation to the 2D text.
• The font is easy to read yet effective in putting across our psychological thriller genre.
• The colour scheme is simple; black and orange.
• There is a suspenseful transition between the knocking on the door whilst the photograph in burning to the black screen with the title which leaves the audience wondering what will happen next.

As you can see from a contemporary example of a real thriller, the title font and style is similar in it's monochromatic nature and short simple title.


SOUND

Evaluation - Q5 (Megan Marsh) (GROUP)

The video below show cases us as a group reflecting on our opening 2 minuets and discussing ways in which we addressed our target audience.

(Due to technical difficulties the sound quality may be a bit quiet so full volume is advised)

Evaluation - Q5 (James O'Rourke) (GROUP)

The video below show cases us as a group reflecting on our opening 2 minuets and discussing ways in which we addressed our target audience.

(Increase your volume for this video as at some points you may find it hard to hear some of our points due to background noise) 

Evaluation - Q3 (James O'Rourke) (GROUP)

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

 


In terms of our marketing campaign here is our film poster presented on the side of a bus and on an ad-shell. This use of digital and static marketing is vital in capturing the attention of our target audience due to ideas that those of the 15-25 demographic are more likely to use public transport thus more likely to be exposed to this sort of advertising. 

Evaluation - Q5 (Harsh Makwana) (GROUP)

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

Here is a group director's cut of our film opening whereby we collectively discuss how we attracted/addressed our audience.

(Due to technical difficulties the sound quality may be a bit quiet so full volume is advised)

Evaluation - Q3 (Harsh Makwana) (GROUP)

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

 


In terms of our marketing campaign here is our film poster presented on the side of a bus and on an ad-shell. This use of digital and static marketing is vital in capturing the attention of our target audience due to ideas that those of the 15-25 demographic are more likely to use public transport thus more likely to be exposed to this sort of advertising. 

Pyro - First Cut (Group 7)

Here is the First Cut of our thriller opening, of which we showed to various members of our target audience to gain feedback which could be utilised for our final product.

Construction: Vlogging/Bloopers/Editing (Group Work)

Here is a couple of clips that we took during our filming and editing stages of our thriller opening's construction.... Enjoy!!!!!!

Vlog 1 is a short clip of one of our shots from our thriller opening where we used a skateboard to help create the same panning effect as if the camera and tripod were placed on a camera dolly, which we did not have while shooting this shot.

Vlog 2 is a clip of our group using the microphone to help us create a sound for the start of our thriller opening where our character blows out a match, we thought instead of wasting time finding a correct sound from a copyright free source we decided to record our own sound using the microphone and one of us producing the sound - as we felt this would make the shot more realistic.

Vlog 3 is a clip of our group in the stages of the editing process, here we are trying to establish a type of sound for our title of our thriller that would help to convey the conventions of a thriller more clearly for the audience.

Vlog 4 is a clip of one of our raw pieces of footage from our  filming process, we didn't really use this  clip in our final piece because we found that the brightness for this shot was too bright for our thriller opening and we found that at some points within the clip the footage wasn't continuous and at some points in would 'stick' - obviously where the skateboard that we used dipped into the partitioning between the floorboards.

DSLR Settings - Group Work (James O'Rourke 6124)

Here are some tips for when people film at night

Rule 1: Never go higher than ISO 1600 or the image gets 'Noisy' (Note the fussy part in the after photo, this is most likely the result of using too high of a ISO)

Rule 2: Keep your shutter speed between 30 and 50

Rule 3: Aperture should be between f1.2 and f5.6 (f2-f2.8)

Rule 4: Don't shoot in low light. Use all available light in shot.

For our thriller opening we are going to incorporate mostly rules 1-3 because we believe this would give us the correct type of atmosphere for our thriller opening. We won't consider much of rule 4 because we do not plan to shoot our thriller opening in darkness or in very low lighting. (Although we may consider shooting different shots using contrast between light and dark sections)

27.Planning: Shot List (Group)

26. Planning: Moodboard (Group Work)

Thriller Moodboard

Here are a few images in order to give an idea of the themes and imagery used in our thriller opening.

24. Planning - Script

Due to the fact that we have decided not to have any dialogue within our thriller opening, we did not need to write a script. An Example of a script we could have written if we had decided on incorporating dialogue would be like this:

Introduction to Foley (James O'Rourke 6124)

Foley 

Foleying is a sound effect technique for synchronous effects or live effects. It is a technique that is named after a famous sound editor, Jack Foley, who worked at Universal Studios. Foley Artists match live sound effects with the action of the picture. The sound effects are laid "manually" and not cut in with film. The rustling of clothing and a squeak of a saddle when a rider mounts his horse give a scene a touch of realism that is difficult to provide using other effects methods. Below is a video of behind the scenes of a foleying studio, where they use various objects to create sound for a few different pieces of footage.