CGI

CGI stands for Computer Generated Imagery. It is a visual effect.
CGI allows the people working in film to control what is happening a lot easier than using loads and loads of extras in a crowd scene, or constructing miniatures for effects. Almost every film made today will have some aspect of CGI to give their film better effects.
CGI was first seen in movies in the 1973 film Westworld.
The film was based around robots living around humans. A bit like 'I Robot' starring Will Smith. Another example is Jurassic park; action scenes with real life actors amongst dinosaurs. This gives a really good effect and makes the movie come alive and allot more exciting for an audience as they were realistic images.

Over 30 years since CGI was first introduced, most films will use this type of computer based technology, even for the smallest things.






Avatar is a great recent example, without CGI this film could not have been made so successfully, or even at all.
With these amazing effects, avatar was made to be exciting, thrilling and the lovely shots and scenes you see on your screen make it so successful.

CGI allows more freedom in ideas for films, as the effects can make them happen allot easier, allot quicker and with the most amazing effects.

Title

Ensnare means to trap or gain power over someone by dishonest or underhand means.
We chose the name Ensnare as our final choice. We sent out a poll to the two media classes to chose what they would prefer.
most people chose Ensnare, so we went with their choice as we did want to have our title as persecute. But in the end went with the audience's choice as that's who our film opening is aimed at, and the whole point of our opening.



The next decision was to chose our Institution, We decided on 'AS Films Presents'
simply because its our AS media work, and mine and Alanahs initials.

Text font

We used the font Portagol ITC TT on the mac editing program iMovie. I chose this font because i thought it suited the genre and the style of thriller we have made.
I think it really stands out as if the text is nailed to the screen, and each letter is bold and in capitals to make it powerful. This suits out story line and the music.

Film schedual

This is our film schedule. We made it together and both took a copy of it.
This helped us massively to get our shots filmed with the amount of time we needed. Also because we live in different places, it helped for us to be organised in getting to the locations we needed in plenty of notice. The snow did mess our schedule up a bit, but because we left enough time to record each scene with extra time, the extra time came in useful so we could still follow out plan in an organised way.

Audio

We didn't have much talking in our film.
At the beginning we had screaming and heavy breathing from the girl holding the camera.
Also we has the script below;


Girl: ' I can't believe you made me late
my mums going to kill me,
its fine I'll take the shortcut home,
yes okay I'll text you when i get home,
i promise, okay, bye.'

We decided to use little voice as possible so the audience was drawn in more to the filming shots rather than lots of talking. I think this worked well because it makes the audience wonder what is happening in the opening. This is a convention of a thriller film.

Planning

-Film Institutions
Warner Brothers Film is a major film studio's, which is an American producer of film and television entertainment.
They own half of The CW Television Network.
Warner Bros. has other subsidiary companies; Warner Bros Television, Warner Bros Animation, Warner Home Video, New Line Cinema.
-Mise en scene of our film;
There is one scene where the camera zooms in to a knife resting above note pads on top of the newspaper which is placed on a desk, on the newspaper is a girls face circled in a red pen, this gives connotations of murder, warning and lust. The audience get an instant idea that there is a young girl being victimised in the film, either murdered or being followed.
There are photos stuck to the wall above the desk also linking into the thought of murder and someone stalking them.
We have a scene in the woods, this was in Hitchin in the dell, we used a Windy path so it was easy to run whilst holding the camera, this scene works well to create uncertaincy in the film.
Lastly, we filmed at Alanah's house, in her long hall way, i like this scene as everything is placed in the scene as you would see any other house. The shots then go down the stairs into a cellar. We moved things out of the cellar to make it look empty, which gave off a cold, spine chilling feeling.
We also set up 'the dark room' at Hitchin Girls school, we changed the lighting so the room was the right brightness and we made a glowing red colour by putting a red cover over the lights.
I also got hold of some pictures off google and flickr.com and i hung them up on the pegs where the photos would be developed in the room, i filmed the photos with the background light flickering on to them. I really liked this effect in the film.
-Audio;
We tried to find something un-copyrighted for a backing track but nothing sounded effective and went well with the speed of our film.
We used the artist Charlie Clouser, his music appears in the Saw films, but luckily for us his music isn't a well known track. Its called Just Begun.
-Location;
We tried to film in Codicote woods where i live because it was a quite area and a large woods, we would get a good effect when dusk, but group members found it hard to get there at the same time, so when we could of filmed it was too dark!

so we then filmed in Hitchin, and had help from our actor Laurence Goldsmith in getting there.
We also then decided that our film would look better the darker it is, but have two flash lights to show more confusion and so the audience have to really focus onto the screen.
But we adjusted the brightness and contrast on the macs, this made our shots grainy, but we loved the effect to kept it in as it made an even better chaotic effect to the scene.
Many locations were used in our shots ;
The desk scene was set up in Alanah's living room.
The darkroom shots were held in the dark room at Hitchin Girls' School art department.
The shots of a 'man' walking down the stairs was held Alanah's cellar.
-Character Planning
When we first planned our opening we liked the idea of having a tall big bulky man dressed in all black with bulky shoes as that was our main focus we wanted to get, and fragile girl dressed in innocent white to give a contrast on the personality's of the characters.

Alanah Sullivan was the girl because whilst we were filming up in the Dell, there was a creepy sound and we were scared of so i told Alanah to get it on camera so it would give a real good effect on our audio, and a chaotic shot. I then recorded Laurence’s shots in a still, slow mode to create a good contrasting effect on hierarchy of the two characters .

Evauluation

Question One- In what ways doe your product use, challenge or develop forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product is a thriller film because it shows conventions of a thriller genre throughout, we were influenced for ideas from the film Se7en.
We it as a base because we liked the opening and thought it worked well as a thriller making the audience tense and a constant wonder of what is going on which draws them into watching more and more.
We have a mysterious character that is shown at the beginning and you cannot see his face throughout. At the beginning of our opening we have used a behind shot where you see a short metal pole as a weapon in his hand, the other shots are of the character walking down stairs where you can only see his legs and feet.
We also have another character; a female at the very beginning running away from the other character, and you can only see her feet. We liked the effect of this, and I think it worked really well with having the mystery of the characters and by only hearing digetic sounds of heavy breathing and screaming, also the thud of metal pole.
We repeated some of the shots we took quite a few times to get the audience engaged, but to do this we had to speed up our shots a lot, but this gave out opening a really good effect as it sped up the pace. We also have the shots different effects by speeding the shots up, reversing them, speeding them down.
I think you can sub-genre our film to a psychological thriller a there is not a lot of psychical action going on.
We tried to keep our opening from being a horror as much as possible, and it worked from our mystery story line and by having the scenes short and snappy.
What I liked most about our film is where we filmed in the 'dark room', a set up in which pictures of women dead were being developed, with the tint of red light and flickering lights gave a massive effect on our opening.

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

We wanted our film to be aimed at teenagers and mid-late 20's. The actors are teenagers also, aged 16 and 19, although in our film we have made the male look a lot older than 19 as we haven’t captured his face. Using a younger female in our film with a light innocent voice makes her a definite victim, also having a young teenager attracts the teen male as an audience, and the imagery of the young attractive girl will also attracts them more.
Gender in our opening is shown in a stereotypical way as the photos of the victims are blonde and young, yet we tried our best to go against the stereotypical characters as a young blonde innocent girl, and an older bulky looking man. But I feel having the stereotypical way is a convention of a thriller, especially horror films also and they always work well, and appeal to the audience.

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

I think a major institute such as Warner Bros or 20th Century Fox. We would prefer to go for an independent company as there is a lot more freedom. From research I have made, they aren’t so based on the business side of things, more the making of films in general. Independent sales tend to be experienced and successful. They also tend to get better sales results because they usually have long and successful career backgrounds that include sales experience.










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

We thought the age 16 to 25 because of the content as well as the weapons used in it. We cannot pick a gender for the film, but personally I would say the male audience based on stereotype as I don’t think many females like the jumpy sort of movie and the first two minutes is very fast with flashing imagery. Our film is made to appeal to a younger generation as say 40 plus as I don’t think this film would be enjoyed by them as I’m sure they wouldn’t want having a fast rated, flashy scenes jumped in their faces. The younger generations late teens have a more of a sharper eye to these films and could pick up on the little things quicker. Also it is a lot more jumpy than a normal e.g. action thriller.
We then thought of putting our age certificate up higher to an 18, but I then decided that because we haven’t actually used gory scenes, that we would keep it to a fifteen so age groups of 16 would be able to legally watch this film.

Question 5. How did you attract/address your audience?


The audience is constantly put in the unknown character, which makes the audience engaged on the screen even more to work out who they are, it also makes the audiences eye focus on everything else on the screen more e.g. the weapons used, photo's, and notes written on the desk. This creates suspense by showing the audience into the plans and almost the mind of the murdering character without letting them know too much on what's going to happen next.
This is what I liked about the film Se7en, and what we wanted to base our film on to have the same effect.
Camera angles are a key point to address an audience’s eye. We have included; hand held shots, worms eye views, close ups, extreme close ups, high angled shots etc. I think there is one shot which shows the desk through a mirror you can see the desk but you can also see a reflection this would attract the eye as it is a convention to a thriller film, and plays on the audience’s eye.

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

There was a lack of camera's available to us when we needed them, limits on how long we could have the camera which meant you had to pick a certain day which was best for all of your group which was very inconvenient as we had to film away from home. Also the snow days were a very big problem, and lost us on a lot of filming and editing time, so we had to do some of our film in our own time, which was hard in getting everyone together.
We had one other problem whilst filming We had used a different camera which is a lot better than the school ones as it had a lot more effects you could use on it, whilst filming the tape was being pulled out of the plastic container which ended into losing all the film from our tape, luckily we only lost one scene as we uploaded the rest.

But apart from that I actually found the filming and constructing of the film very enjoyable, and the rest of the time we had no problems in filming, and could use our filming schedule.



I new exactly how to use a camera in record but it was really different and interesting to have to have certain shots which would enhanced our thriller which I enjoyed as it was more of a challenge, the cameras were not amazing but they worked well, we didn’t really need an amazing camera with quality shots for our film, because we wanted the fuzzy obscured look to our shots anyway, as it suited our film.
I was not on the other hand familiar to using the software so it was good to learn the different techniques and editing options to make our film have higher standards.
We found that looking for un-copyrighted music was very hard, especially when we knew exactly what sort of sounds we wanted, so in the end we looked for copyrighted unknown music.

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

In our preliminary task for all our shots we chose to have natural lighting, but in our final one we wanted different lighting for each seen of our shots to give a good effect.
The dark room was very effective, it took a lot of setting up as the lighting was hard to get perfect; not too light and not too dark, we did managed to create a very bright red light, by red cellophane and a table lamp.
Secondly we hardly needed to edit our shots in our preliminary task; we just had to cut things out of it. We did a lot of editing on the macs for our final project; time, lighting, colour, sound, transitions ect.
We used a lot of our film considering our outcome after editing it was only one minute and forty eight seconds; I think we used fifty four minutes of our actual film.
With out final opening, I think it took me and Alanah a lot more work than we thought it would be because our preliminary was so easy and simple with the setting, lighting and we had to time we needed to reach.
In the progression from out preliminary to our final, I feel I have become a lot more confident on the equipment we needed to use, editing the film and constantly coming up with new ideas that would be effective in our film. It was a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be, but considering the other media class had two more weeks to complete there’s than us I feel we did really well to reach the deadline.

Being able to identify shot types has improved in my knowledge, this also help improve our film as we were able to use a more varied amount of shots.
The thing I would change if I had to do this again was to plan in so much more detail than we did, and always have a backup plan. Because we all couldn’t get into Codicote to film at the same time before dark, we had to change our location and use torch lights, and adjust the contrast and brightness, although in all honesty this made our film a lot better. I think this because me and Alanah tested recording it without the torches through the day and edited the shot to black and white to make it look like they were set at night, but it just didn’t have the same chaotic effect as our original shots were.
Overall, I am so happy without film, I just hope our audience enjoys it as much as me and Alanah have in the making and outcome.


















Questionnaires.
We asked these questions whilst the two media groups were watching our opening.
1. After watching the two minute opening, would you want to carry on watching the film?
2. Does the font we've used on the credits work well with the film?
3. What do you think we should change in the 2 min opening?
4. How does the opening make you feel whilst you're watching it?
5. Does the lighting work well?
6. Can you guess what the story line is?
7. How do the characters make you feel?
8. Does the title of the film fit well with the opening?
9. Do you think the opening fits well with the thriller genre?
10. What age certificate would you give the opening and why?

We handed out fifteen questionnaires, but unfortunately only six of them came back, meaning all of our results are out of 40% of people we wanted.
Results;
For Q 1. 6 out of the 6 questionnaires we received back answered yes
Q 2. All answered 'yes it worked’
Q3.
Maybe a few moments of normal filming
cuts happened very quickly, hard to get an idea of what was happening
a bit repetitive with the shots
Perhaps make it less repetitive
Nothing
Less jumpy
Q4.
Scared
Its foreboding, so worried for the character
Suspense and tension
Interested
Two people said Tense
Q 5.
Yes, dark and dingy
Yes
Yes
Yes it was effective
Yes, dark gloomy
Yes but it was fuzzy

Me and Alanah were quite disappointed with the last answer, generally because we deliberately chose this effect because we thought it worked well for the viewers eye.

Q6.
A man murderer
Based on Se7en
No - somebody's going to be killed?
Someone is a murderer
Murder? - Hence baseball bat rolling down stairs?
No

I thought this was good feed back because it shows we did well with including the thriller conventions. Also this is what I wanted to aim to do when planning our film; make the audience feel confused to engage them.

Q 7.
Scared
Uneasy
Intimidated
Mystery
Nothing
Uneasy
Q8.
Yes
Yes
Yes
It is a creative name but I don't understand how it is linked
I don't understand what it means

This was disappointing as we had sent round a questionnaire in what the audience would rather have and the titles meanings, and they chose ensnare when me and Alanah would much rather of had persecute.

Q9.
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Q10.
15 because it looks like there could be gore or violence
15 - violence and blood
15 - may seem inappropriate for younger’s
15
18
15


Overall, it shows that our audience did like our film. I feel we are successful from these results and have done well in meeting the thriller conventions from the outcome of how the audience feels about our opening.
I am disappointed about the results about our title.
If we had handed out questionnaires out whilst we were filming, we would have taken all this into account, especially the comment about using less repeated items, slowing some of the pace and maybe some normal footage.

Preliminary planning and evaluation.

Shot one; This is a behind shot.
You will be able to hear digetic sounds of footsteps when girl is walking down the stairs.
Natural lighting from window to the left, so the setting looks realistic.
This is set in the basement of Hitchin Girls school.

Shot two; Actor (me) walking down the stairs again.
This is a high angled shot from behind, instead of having the same shot as before, to give a better effect and view on the surroundings.
You will hear digetic sounds of footsteps walking sown the stairs still.
Natural lighting from window behind.

Shot three; Actor walking down the stairs.
Long angled sot, you cannot see her face purposely; thriller convention.
Digetic sounds of footsteps from her walking down the stairs.
Natural lighting from behind window.

Shot four;Girl approaches the door.
This is a behind shot, mid close-up.
You still cant see her face, Digetic sounds are still there.
Set in Hitchin Girls school basement.

Shot five; Girl about to open the door.
This is an over the shoulder shot from behind.
No face is shown still.
Digetic sounds of door creaking open.
Hitchin Girls school basement.

Shot six; Girl entering room. Camera has switched to facing towards her.Mid close up- again not seeing her face creating mystery.Digetic sounds of the door creaking still and footsteps echoing.Hitchin Girls school basement.

Shot seven; The girl walks into room. Wide shot of girl walking into room looking through coats that are hung up in the basement,the camera captures he face blurred through the plastic sheet.Digetic sounds of footsteps.Hitchin girls school basement.

Shot eight; The girl looking around, this is the first time the audience can see her face. Shot from the side. filmed in Hitchin Girls school basement.


Overall i think our preliminary task was successful. I think this because it gave us a starting point to get into filming an opening of a film. It gave us practice with using the cameras, including different camera shots, audio, lighting and editing on the mac's.
I think this did help us develop to our final piece.
On the other hand, if i could change anything, it would be making our preliminary task about more of a challenge, as we used only one location at Hitchin Girls school and used natural lighting and did not include any music.
We did plan our preliminary task in detail, and found the perfect location to film in ( basement of Hitchin girls school ) i am pleased with the result, and pleased with how this was useful to us in our final outcome.

Research into thriller title

Cellar - Basement; Subterrane; Vault
Trapped - Circumvent; Ensnare
Light - Fluorescent
Void - Deprived; Abandoned; Obstruct
Bunker - Fortification; Shelter; Dugout
Alone - Abandoned; Forsaken; Forlorn; Solitary.
Cellar-subterranean vault
Trapped- rapt
pain- persecute, gouge

obsessed
Trapped persecute
enduring - ever lasting
force- vigour, exertion

Above is a messy mind map of ideas.


We then took our favourite four, and sent a questionnaire out for people to pick their favourite.

Persecute
-To oppose or harass with ill-treatment.

Circumvent
-To avoid or get around by artful manoeuvring.

Ensnare
-To trap or gain power over someone by dishonest or underhand means.

Forlorn
-Pitiful; unhappy because left alone.

We printed these names out for our thriller, and sent around a tally for people to choose which ones they preferred. We sent these around two media classes.
These are our results;

Target Audience

Our film will have an fifteen certificate


I want to aim our film to an audience that loves a good thriller story and a grossing horror to keep them on their toes at the same time almost cringing at the screen to create tension and excitement.
I think our opening will appeal well to 16year old - twenty five. Although the certificate age is an fifteen, i still think they will enjoy this and will not find it that disturbing in the short period of film time they will see.

Ideas for our thriller and storyboard

Our Thriller storyline.

Beginning; flash back in black and white.
Set in the woods. Man/woman running away from someone, camera focuses in front to makes the audience feel they were her/him when running, then an over the shoulder shot, the person looks behind to see if the man running after them is there. Then from the front gets knocked out.
Next image is where they are on the floor, focusing on mans feet (black big boots, dressed in black also). Then image fades as they pass out.

Next image is in a cellar, photos and notes covering all the surrounding walls.
Pictures of dead people, and notes on planning to kill them, camera focuses on a few (close ups).
The cellar has very dim lighting, maybe a flickering or flashing lights in the background to confuse and keep audience on edge as the lights flashes on images then disappears.
Never see mans face, only hands.

Text; dripping, or flashing (suggests blood or fear).

Music
Flash back scene; digetic sounds- heavy breathing, foot steps. Background music when being dragged away.
Cellar scene; background music (like Se7en or SAW) a scratching, screaming music, with a strong deep sound, makes the audience on edge.




This is our original story board for our final opening sequence.
We planned the first part of our opening. We changed allot because we thought our changes were better. And some of the things we wrote originally were impossible to do.
We did not need to do a story board for the other part of our film; the flashes of images and recordings, because we know our locations in which we wanted to record and we couldn't put what we planed to do down on paper, as it would be so hard to express, and take alot of time because we had so many shots to take which we sped up, so our decsision was to go out and film which would give us alot more time rather than spending days and days drawing something that we would most probally developed and made changes throughout filming them anyway.



Shot 1 - Behind shot of the girl walking through woods
digetic sounds of footsteps and wind through the tree's in the back ground
very dim lighting; dusk.
We changed this shot in the end because we wanted it to be darker and use flash lights. We changed the shot to a blank screen at the very beginning with a girl speaking, fading into a black and white shot of trees and bushed being shown on by a torch; establishing shot.

Shot 2 – This is an over the shoulder shot, of the girl running; looking over her shoulder to see if the man following her is anywhere close.
Digetic sounds of footsteps and wind blowing through trees.

We changed this also to a hand held shot in the woods, very heavy breathing and panicky dialogue 'oh my god oh my god', and little screams or panic. We decided to change it because it was more chaotic and came across a lot better than this shot, this shot was also hard to capture with the dark setting.

Shot 3 - Shot reverse shot of girl being followed, this time you can see the shady character. The pace speeded up, and the dialogue builds up to create a tenser atmosphere.
We changed this shot to what shot 4 would of been a behind shot of the shady character holding something in his or her hand, a medium close up to ensure you cannot see his face.

Shot 4 - behind over the shoulder shot of a silhouette figure with some sort of pole or weapon in their hand, possibly a brick.
Digetic sounds of footsteps and the wind blowing through the trees again.
We changed this shot to a hand held shot, the girl running with it in her hand, with very heavy breathing and even more panicked dialogue.
We changed it because it was more face passed, not keeping the same shots all the time as it is a chase scene.

Shot 5 - Shot of girl turning around and being hit in the head with a baseball bat
again hand held and the sound of the weapon hitting her head and the body dropping to the floor. The camera would have acted as if she had been hit, so would have shaken a bit and dropped to the floor, capturing the man’s big bulky feet and possibly the weapon rolling on the floor. Then the shot blacks out.

We kept shot pretty much exactly the same, except you do not see the camera shake too much and the weapon drop. It does fade into black

commentary on directors from the thriller genre

David Fincher started making short films with a video camera he received for his eighth birthday. He was influenced by films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Instead of going to study film at school, David Fincher went straight to work on films, getting a job handling cameras for director John Korty and later joining Kortys boss, George Lucas as an employee at Industrial Light and Magic. At the special effects company.

Fincher worked in the matte department, getting his hands in two of the '80s most popular films; Return of the Jedi and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

He is now an Academy Award-nominated American film maker and music video director, he is liked for his stylish dark movies such as Se7en which came out in 1997, Fight Club and Zodiac.





Alfred Hitchcock was an English filmmaker and producer, he developed and reveled the suspense in thrillers. His career which lasted over six decades gave him enough experience to direct more than fifty films.
Hitchcock's approach to film was different, it was narrative and suspicious as he kept information secret about characters, he included twists and surprises for the audience and he loved to engage the emotions of the viewers.


Hitchcock's first British film was 'Blackmail' it was produced by British International Pictures, it was a major success. Hitchcock then was making on average a film a year, his 1935 film 'The 39 Steps' has recently been re-released for cinema and is also being shown in London.
In the 1940s Hitchcock broke through to America and Hollywood. He made several successful films, including Rope which was his first technicolour film.
After the 1940s, Hitchcock's work in the late 1950s to early 1960s may have been the highlight of his career, with blockbuster successes such as Vertigo, The Birds and world renown Psycho.