It is very common to see this style of credits in all different genres of films as it is professional looking. The use of bigger font alongside smaller font in credits looks effective and consistent. An example of this is in ‘Panic Room’ .
At first, using LiveType we designed our opening credits in red and with a flickering effect but we felt it looked quite amateur and not consistent enough to look professional. Below is our first idea.
Our final idea for our credits was influenced by the 'Panic Room' credits. We used Motion software to do this. We used various effects and precise timing to reach our final product of credits. We used the 'Fade out word' and 'blur fade in' whilst altering the face, outline, glow etc characteristics to make it look good.
Below is our finished credits:
We conformed to the convention of using red text for the titles as this is common in thriller films as it symbolises danger. We decided to use red as it connotes blood, rage, forbidden, fire and alert. We applied a 'particle emitters' effect to create an out of control, chaotic effect reflective of her mindset. We then altered on the settings, how far out the words would travel and in what direction.
Our media product uses the forms and conventions from real media products because we have been influenced by scenes from “What lies beneath” when the character in the bath and suddenly gasps.
We decided to do a similar thing in our thriller. We tried to imitate this shot but incorporated it into when the young female in our thriller wakes from a nightmare.
We were also influenced by the film “Se7en” with the way that they have styled their text in a childlike way.
The credits inspired us for our film. We took the idea of childlike writing and used it for the violent writing on the walls.
The Unborn influenced us to use the cloning effect.
As you can see, there is a reflection of someone else in the mirror looking back at her. In our thriller, we decided to show our characters mental state by using the cloning effect and placing an evil hallucination of her in the mirror to stare back at her. We hoped this would challenge the minds of our audience. This also indicates the sub-genres of a psychological thriller.
What is a Psychological Thriller?
A psychological thriller is a hybrid of two different genre films. Throughout the film, as well as the typical traits of a thriller, elements from the mystery and drama genres are often incorporated. Thrillers also border the horror genre quite often.
A thriller would typically try to emphasize the intensity by focusing on the plot rather than the character. However a psychological thriller contrasts the typical thriller by emphasizing the character either equally to the plot or more.
In our thriller the character is emphasized equally to the plot. During the opening, both characters are introduced quite strongly. You get a real insight into the girls problems which reflects her personality. The camera is focused on her the whole way through the opening and props such as her pyjamas, bedsheets and the makeup on her dresser represent her character. How she is still young and naive, yet so troubled and mentally unstable. However the plot was emphasized equally as much, shown through the dream she was having and the use of the other (evil hallucination) character. The newspaper articles that are shown introduce the storyline because it shows what has happened previously and sets the storyline for the rest of the film. The childlike writing shown in the dream also gives the viewers an insight to the plot because it represents her mindset which is the main focus throughout the film.
The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.
In our thriller, the typical deceptive games are between the main character and the evil hallucination. The evil character that doesn’t exist other than in her imagination is shown to be demolishing her mental state. In the opening, this is shown when the young female is rocking backwards and forwards in her bed. It is clear that she can hear voices in her head because she is blocking her ears trying to stop/block out what she can hear. Another example of this is when she goes over to the mirror and the evil hallucination appears in the reflection but disappears as she turns around. This is evidence of the hallucination trying to demolish her mental state.
Suspense can sometimes be created through one character solving the problem within their own mind. Usually the problem is something that has happened to them in the past which they are trying to come to terms with.
Our thriller is about a young female who was abused when she was younger; both mentally and emotionally. Therefore she is trying to solve problems from her past. At the time, she wasn’t old enough to understand or properly remember exactly what was done to her. Her uncle stopped the abuse when he knew she was old enough to know it was wrong and tell someone about it. Because of this, she is now suffering from hallucination and unnecessary guilt over events she wasn’t involved with.
Whilst the audience may not be excited, they should be gripped by the story and glued to their seats.
We are confident that the opening to our thriller will keep the audience wondering what is going on and want to continue watching. They will be ‘glued to their seats’.
Our thriller focuses particularly on the stereotype of a young woman. The main character is a young woman who’s mental state is not stable. She is portrayed as emotional & naive. Our target audience is young people aged between 16-24. The girl in our thriller is not like the typical young woman who leads the normal life which you can clearly see in the opening. However because of her age, it allows many young girls to be able to relate to the way she deals with situations. An example of this is in our thriller when the young woman wakes up from the nightmare she is having. Once she feels the dream is over she walks over to the mirror to reassure herself. The key thing young people need when moving from adolescence to adult life is reassurance and this is shown in our thriller opening.
Universal Pictures would be the kind of media institution to distribute our media product because they have distributed more films that are similar to our media product . They have released lots of thriller films such as The Unborn,Psycho and Skeleton Key.
It will be released as a blockbuster meaning that it should be available in all cinemas.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience, like the majority of other thrillers is young people ages between 15-24. We are aiming for it to appeal to both males and females.
Above is a picture of two people. This is a perfect example f our target audience.
The reason why we chose this particular age group as our target audience is because when we were researching thrillers using the website www.pearlanddean.com/, we discovered that this is the age group the majority of thriller films target. An example of this is shown in the picture below:
(This is a recent film that is yet to be released called 'The Girl Who Played With Fire').
We predict that our target audience will shop in places such as Blockbusters and HMV.
The music that they will most likely be interested in are the song found in the top 10 charts.
From watching a variety of clips from thrillers, we feel that some examples of TV series our target audience will be interested in are ones such as ‘The Afterlife’ and ‘The Ghost Whisperer’ as they share similar conventions to the typical thriller movie.
How did you attract/address your audience?
What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing the product?
The strengths of the camera were that we could use the tripod to keep the camera steady and being able to zoom which meant we could get shots exactly how we wanted them to turn out such as the writing on the wall.
The weaknesses of the camera that we used were that it was difficult to film some scenes because we couldn’t film it using the tripod so we had to shoot these scenes holding the camera this was difficult to try and keep the camera steady. Also when we were downloading the film onto final cut pro there were complications because it kept dropping frames.
The problems that we faced whilst filming was problems with lighting because we found it difficult to prevent shadows we resolved these issues by changing the light we used.
To create the music we used in our film we used Soundtrack Pro to edit the music we had we also used Garageband. The challenges that we faced whilst creating the music was not being able to delete a part of the track without more than we wanted being deleted.
Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
The progression from the preliminary task to creating the opening to our thriller has taught us how to improve our editing skills using final cut pro, using editing effects such as the cloning effect. We also expanded on the use of camera shots.
The camera shots and editing that we used during our thriller were Close up, tilt shot, the cloning effect, mid shot, high angle, over lapping, panning, low angles and over shoulder.
The editing and camera shots used during the preliminary task were limited compared to the editing and camera shots used in our thriller. In our preliminary task we used:extreme close ups,180 degree rule,long shot,point of view,medium shot match on action,panning and shot reverse shot.
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