Coursework Evalution introduction/ question 1

Coursework evaluation

 My task was to create a two mintue media production, thriller film. The previous posts we have done helped to further my understanding on what to include in my thriller film, after constructing our individual narratives we was put into groups. I was put into a group with Bettie Cooper and Malu Pillai. Each member was assigned to different roles that were needed in order to create a succesful thriller film. My roles were director and producer, and I effectively carried out when and where to meet, positions of camera and characters and overall took my roles seriously. Bettie roles were screenplay writer and musical producer, the reason Bettie had these roles is because she is very creative and our group narrative was focused round her idea, therefor the screenplay writer had to be Bettie.
Malu's roles were director of photography and mis en scene co-oridnator. These roles were carried out by Malu because she has a good eye of how each shots should be filmed. Also Malu gave a good amount of input when planning the storyboards of our film, therefor mis en scene co ordinator was a role Malu was willing to for fill. Overall the group and I worked well to break down the film and split up our roles equally, in order to construct a successful thriller film. Bettie played a huge part in editing and bringing the the film Together. Malu took control of filming and keeping hold of the equipment for the group, and I brought in Freddie to help us film and came up with a lot of ideas that were used throughout our film.

1)In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The conventions of a thriller film include: Antagonist, low key lighting, quick cuts, shadows, tension building music, montage of shots and more. Throughout our media product we tried to include as many different codes and conventions but we mainly used, low key
lighting and tension building (with music and montage of shots) similar to 'Saw' and 'Sinister'  The use of tension building by montage of shots, and tension building music, outlines to the audience that it is a thriller film. It also puts the audience on the edge of their seats and builds up to a big scare, for example in our film before Bettie is revealed as the antagonist There is a build up, of a range of shots that linked into the music that was building up faster and louder. This was planned because in other successful films such as sinister they have a similar sequence of tension building before the big shock or scare. 

I also looked at the film 'the shining' and noticed that a shot reverse shot between a possible victim and the antagonist, this inspired me to use the shot verse shot in our thriller film. This was used when Bettie turns round to face Freddie, their is shot of the antagonist (Bettie) 
then the reaction from the possible victim (Freddie).  During filming this was quite difficult, as we had to make sure the camera was in the same place as Bettie. Also due to the ground being unequal in the forest, it took a long time to get the camera straight. But overall I think
then shot reverse shot worked well in maintaining the audiences fear for the possible victims in the forest. The inspiration I got from the shining was evidently constructed within our film. Undertaking the role of the director I ensured that the editing technique, shot reverse shot was done successfully. 

Another film we looked at was 'the women in black' this is where my group and I was inspired to use low key lightings. The low key lighting brings out an eery and scary feeling within the film, so this was inspirational and vital that we included low key lighting within Devour. In one of the scenes from women in black, the man is looking out of the window and the women in black's face appears on the window. The reason why this shot was so scary, was due to the low key lighting creating a eery atmosphere. Therefor in our thriller film we used different edits from Final Cut Pro to extract a dimmer and gloomy look to the film. Our thriller being filmed in the forest was very difficult as we only had about a thirty minute period were the actually lighting was naturally low key. Therefor using final cut pro's tools such as the filters 'Film Noir' and 'Luma Keyer'