Solemn

Here is the final edit for our opening 2 minutes of a thriller.

Evaluation 7

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

Here is a video of us explaining how we have developed and improved from our preliminary task:

Evaluation 6

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

Throughout the making of our thriller, we have learnt that many types of technology are needed to make it. We also learnt of the importance of the internet when marketing and how new technologies such as smart phones can help you in many different ways. Here is a video explaining the technologies we used:

Evaluation 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation 5 on Prezi

Evaluation 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Name: Claire Martins

Age: 18

Studying English Literature and Philosophy at Cambridge University.

Has a part time job as a sales assistant at Debenhams. Enjoys going out with her friends for meals and movie nights. Her favourite foods are spaghetti, fruit and donuts and enjoys going to Nando’s at the weekend.

Her favourite film is Mean Girls but also enjoys thrillers such as The Perfect Getaway. Her favourite TV Shows are 90210 and Friends and she enjoys listening to her favourite artists, Jessie J and The Script. She enjoys dancing and performs in ballet recitals on a regular basis.

Name: Lewis Harley

Age: 19

Works full time at HMV

Lives at home with his mum and younger brother, Greg.  Enjoys watching films and listening to loud music. His favourite bands are Metallica, Nirvana and Arctic Monkeys. His favourite TV show is Family Guy and his favourite films are the Final Destination series.

Enters skateboarding competitions often, has come 2^nd place in the Southend Over 18’s Skateboarding competition.

Enjoys eating junk food such as pepperoni pizza, hotdogs and is always seen hanging out at Burger King.

These are the type of people we are aiming our thriller at because they're middle class, sociable people but also people who enjoy films. We are aiming at groups of friends and film lovers to come and view our thriller at the cinema as these are the type of people who we think will enjoy it the most.

Evaluation 3

What kind of media institution might distribute you media product and why?

Slogan Ideas

For our poster, we've decided to use a slogan as we think this would be a good way of advertising. We want to create a slogan that will stick in people's mind, raise quesions and make them want to see the film. Here are a couple of ideas we had:

We thought of 'Life isn't as pretty as it seems' as it relates to the little girl not being so cute and pretty anymore however we felt this had a slight comedic side to it and didn't suit the film genre well. This also applied to another idea of ours 'Life isn't always a ring a roses' which we came up with as the nursery rhyme 'Ring A Roses' will be in the background of our thriller.

We liked using the word 'life' in the slogan as we thought it related to the film well because the little girl loses her life during the car crash.

We also liked using the word 'innocence' because the girl loses her innocence when she becomes possessed. For example 'Little girls aren't as innocent as they seem' was one of our ideas however we felt that this wasn't very original and had probably been used before.

Other ideas that we had that arnt shown on the image were "little girls are sweet, so is revenge" and also "innocence lost". Both of these were good, the first one mentions that the character is a young girl, which reperesents innocence itself, where as the second one says the word, however wer thing it is too short and wouldnt mean much to the audience.

we also thaught of "innocence is captured, revenge is released"- this was good as it had rhythem to it, and could be easily remember by the audience, ewhich is what a slogen should do.   

There was also "innocence leaves and evil takes over", we didnt like this one as much as we thaught it was too blunt and didnt leave as many questions as previous ideas.  

We will ask the public which one they like best, so it isnt just our opinion and we can get different veiws on it.

Poster

Here is the final poster for our thriller 'Solemn'. We have included the title of the film. credits, a slogan and the BBFC rating of 15. We decided to use a forest setting to show that she was isolated and completely alone. We liked to use the building blocks in the scene as it is relevant to the young age of the girl and it stood out well against the background. We also put the BBFC rating and credits on to make it look more realistic like a real poster.

Zone D Logo

Here is the logo we have created for our production company 'Zone D Productions'. It will feature at the beginning of all of the films we make including the opening 2 minutes of our thriller.

Editing Diary

Here is a video explaining how we edited our thriller and the problems we faced.

Car Location Problems

A vlog talking about the location of the car and some problems we had.

Taking Photos For The Poster

During the whole day of filming, we also took photos for our poster as we wanted our main character in the same costume for the poster as she had in the actual thriller opening. We wanted her to look isolated so decided an extreme long shot would work well for this. We also wanted to include the teddybear to show her innocence.

One of the first locations we tried was on a public footpath but we felt that this didn't look right and that the white line in the middle of it took the attention off of the little girl.

We then searched for some other locations and found a forest that looked like it suited the thriller atmosphere well. We had a look around to see where a good place for the girl to sit would be and found this area.
 

We placed the 'SOLEMN' blocks near the front of the camera so that the title was clear for the audience to read.

Here is the final photo we will be using for the poster. It will have other things such as the rating, slogan,credits etc edited in later.

Risk Assessment

Before filming at a new location we did a risk assessment each time.

Red Room:

Hazard	Why is it a Hazard?	Level of Risk	How we overcame it?
Wooden blocks	Could get splinters	Low	Checked blocks and made sure everything was sanded down
High angle shot	Could drop camera on Jody’s head	Medium	Had 2 people holding and made sure the camera was secured into tripod correctly

Car Scene:

Hazard	Why is it a Hazard?	Level of Risk	How we overcame it?
Having the car moving	None of us can drive, would be focusing on filming	Medium	Parking the car
Parking on the road	Could get in the way of other cars	Low	Parked on the side of the road out of the way

Forest (for poster):

Hazard	Why is it a Hazard?	Level of Risk	How we overcame it?
Wooden blocks	Could get splinters	Low	Checked blocks and made sure everything was sanded down
High angle shot	Could drop camera on Jody’s head	Medium	Had 2 people holding and made sure the camera was secured into tripod correctly

The glass in the forest that was a hazard.

Shooting Schedule

On Saturday 31st March 2012, we will be shooting the whole of our thriller. To ensure that we get everything done, we have created a shooting schdeule which we aim to follow throughout the day. We have also made a table as to who is in charge of what props. We aim to be meeting at 9:00am and finish at around 5:00pm.

Props

Shooting Schedule

Voiceovers

Here is a video of us recording some of the voiceovers we are planning to use in our thriller. We used a microphone to talk into and also slowly sang 'Ring A Roses' as we felt that this song would go well with our thriller as it is an innocent song but we made it sound creepy by singing it slower.

For the actual voices heard in the thriller, we said things like 'We're going to the zoo today' 'Where's your teddy' and 'Happy Birthday Holly' which were meant to be memories of the little girls past life. We overlapped them all to make them sound creepier and as if she's getting surrounded and trapped in her past.

Finding & Creating The Music

To find the music, we searched on http://www.incompetech.com as they provided a range of royalty-free music which we were able to use in our thriller.

We used 2 pieces of music from this website. They were called 'Darkest Child' and 'The House Of Leaves' and were free to download.

We edited these pieces of music together, as well as adding in our voiceovers and 'Ring A Roses' that we had previously recorded. Here is how we edited the music in Sony Vegas. We have marked where each piece of music was put, including the voiceovers. We also muted the sound from the video as we didn't want any of it in the video.

Hair & Make-Up

On the day of shooting, we faced a problem with the make up. When we practised the costume and makeup, Maisie had done the fake bruises for Jodys face. Unfortunately, Maisie was busy the day we needed to film so we didn't have her to do the make up. Instead, we looked at a photo at what she had previously done and tried our best to copy it. Here is what Jody who is playing the main character looked like before the hair and make up had been done.

We used purples and browns to create a black eye look and other bruises on the face.

Here is the finished black eye.

For the hair, we gave Jody an off centre middle parting and put it in two ponytails. We backcombed the ponytails to show that she'd been in a car crash and also add to the thriller atmosphere. Here is the final look.

Practising Hair & Make-up

We practised the make-up for our thriller. The left side shows fake bruises to show she's been in a car accident. The right side is dark make-up to show she's turned dark and evil. We decided to use both of these make-up styles for our thriller. We will use the bruise make-up for the car crash scene and the dark make-up for the shot when she is evil, she will also have red contacts in this scene.

We also tried the make-up with red lips to represent evil and danger, however we felt this didn't look right and there was too much make-up and it looked unatural for a child to wear this so we will use red contacts to represent the danger instead.

We tied up her hair in bunchies to make her look younger and more innocent. The right side is more neat and tidy, this is the hairstyle we'll be using during the car crash, messing it up a bit afterwards to show that she's hurt. The left side is a lot messier and more rough, we will be using this hairstyle whenshe's possessed to show that she's not so cute and innocent anymore. To do this we straightened her hair and tied them up with small hair ties. The left side was then backcombed to get bigger and messier. We will use hairspray to hold it in place when filming so that there is continuity.

Making The Photo Frame

To create the photo frame, we took the pictures of each person individually as we couldn't have all of the 'family members' in the same place at the same time. For the parents, we asked Miss Thompson and Mr Shearing to pose as if they were in a family photo for us.

Here are the original photos of each person that we took:

We then edited them so that that there was no background meaning we could easily put the photos on top of each other, creating the illusion that all of the people were photographed together. Here is what the edited photo looked like, we created a 'green screen' behind them and then edited the green out:

Here is the final photo on the left, and the photo with the little girl edited out on the right. We made a video with the two photos fading into each other making it look like the little girl had faded away:

This means that the video must be edited in meaning that we cannot have an actual photo in the frame when filming. To make it easier to edit in, we have placed some green card inside the photo frame to act as a green screen. We will then add in the video to make it look as if the girl is fading away from her family. Here is a picture of what the original footage looked like with the green card in:

Here is what the final scene looked like with the video edited in. You can see that there is no green visible:

Finding Red Contact Lenses

For the end scene of our thriller, we needed red contact lenses for our main character to wear. Having red eyes will make her look evil and will represent danger. This will tell the audience that she is dangerous and possessed. 

We searched online for some contacts and found some on Amazon.com which we thought would work well. They had good customer reviews, both 5 stars so we could trust that they were good quality. They also came with solution so that we can take care of the contact lenses in between shooting whilst we're not using them.

Here are the contacts in the bottles they come in with a picture on the box to show what they look like when in use. We think they will work well and be effective in our thriller.