DEATH WISH FINAL PRODUCTION

The audience feedback we got for our final production was generally good and with the opening sequence i feel that we achieved our task which was to create suspense and tension with in the audience. The strenght of the opening sequence were, good mise en scene, lighting and a variety of camera shots. Before showing the final production the typograpghy was red which from audience feedback was to dark and usually conventional of the horror genre. So we changed it to white which is more classic and conventional of thrillers, which met the audiences expectations when showing them the final production.

Death Wish Soundtrack

The use of our soundtrack was developed in music software "Garageband", which we used the Mac to operate the program. The  soundtrack was formed up of different element of specific beats. The use of the beats were used to create a suspenseful thriller that would contribute to the convention of thriller.

The use of audience feedback enable us to reflect on our product. This included the soundtrack that was recieved to be too cheerful towards the scene of the thriller. This meant that the cheerful sound was removed to ensure that suspense was built in the opening scene of our thriller.

DEATH WISH ROUGH EDIT

This is the rough edit of our thriller opening sequence. This was very useful to have as it showed us the mistakes we had made throughout the film which was decided by the audience feedback. The audience told us what our mistakes were and told us that this did not create any tension or suspense. The mise en scene in this sequence was very poor as we did not make the shots tight enough to restrict the audience from seeing everything for example when the camera pans to the door we see posters and a fire exit at the top which was very irrelevant. The shots were also very unsteady where we also used zooming. This lead to the camera focus being weak, as it was blurry and distorted. Due to the lighting in the room this was also poor as it took away the suspense. In this rough edit we also notice that the antagonists face is seen to early which doesn't create any tension or suspense which is very important to the conventions of a thriller.

The changes we are going to make are:

• Changing the setting of the dark room.
• Steady panning.
• More close-ups, framing and POV shot focusing on detail.
• The mise en scene and lighting needs to be changed.
• To create suspense by making the shots very restricted.

Location and Setting

This is the photos of our location the, dark room. Most of the equipment inside the room will be cleared out and most of it will not be seen because of the very dim lighting and also the framing of each scene where we will be aware of what include in the frame of each shot. The advantages of this room is that it has a lot of space to film in and put equipment in however we will not be able to remove everything because students work in this room.

Death Wish Storyboard

Treatment for Thriller Film

Treatment

http://www.adrive.com/filemanager?dir=%3E


Scripts

Chief Detective
You know that case you're following on?
Detective
Yeah.
Chief detective
Well someones closed it for you.
Detective
What!
Chief detective
We think it's a vigilante killing these people.

Location Recces

The locations will be set in Chestnut Grove School where we will be using the interior of the dark room and an office. The dark room is a good place to film this thriller because it is very conventional, enough space to work in and the lighting will make the setting more mysterious and which we hope will give our opening a slightly chilling and tense feel, and we want to create a sense of fear in the audience as this will immediately garb their attention. We considered that sound in the dark room will be very quiet which will also create the feeling of isolation and loneliness. The Office with in the school also has a good amount of space and has the dull and boring stereotype of an office which will hopefully make this seem more realistic. The sound consideration are that it may get to noisy from the children in the background which effect the film in a negative way. The lighting consideration is that the office has a good source of natural lighting which will also help to identify with the protagonist and antagonist.


List of Props

Table
Newspaper cuttings
Camera prop
Bloody knife or another tool
White theatre mask
T-shirt
Black bag
Folder

Glass bottle

Location

Dark room
Classroom office

Audience feedback on Pitch

We did our pitch to give our audience a sense of what out opening would be like. Arnold had gone to write the pitch while Philip had gone to research into props, Mise en Scene and music. The pitch helped the audience visualize what our film would be like and Ibrahim created the questionnaire and analysed the results. We put all of this information on our pitch to give the audience an insight into what we were trying to achieve and why we think it would be successful. Once we finished our pitch we were given feed back from the audience. They identified a possible problem that we had not previously thought about. We want to shoot our opening sequence in a dark room in the school, but obviously we did not think about the actual lighting within it and permission in which we can work in it, to overcome this we will shoot by using artificual lighting made from a tourch or a coloured red light bulb.

Questionnaire and Audience research

For our pitch we created a questionnaire so that we were hoping to gain a broader understanding of what our audience will want see in a an opening of a Thriller film and therefore begin to shape the needs for the viewer. What we were trying to achieve in this questionnaire is that we wanted to see what the public believed in the conventions of a Thriller so we asked questions which were appropriate to the opening sequence. We asked questions on their particular interests in thrillers with examples of their favourite thrillers, soundtrack, stock locations and if they preferred liner or non linear narrative which I think is very important in the thriller genre (full questionnaire on Philip's blog).

Some of the questions we asked were:

1. What is your favourite thriller?
2. What interests you in thrillers?
3. What type of narrative do you prefer?

The results of the questionnaires were very interesting and gave us a good insight into what people expected of a thriller film. We found out that some things that we asked were what people expected in a thriller film and some options were very popular. The soundtrack was very much split between, this did not help at all so we will have to use our initiative to decide what will suit our opening sequence. The question which asked what was your favourite thriller film which was, "Silence of the Lambs", "James Bond" and "The Da Vinci Code". Also, what we didn't expect was that people found violence and horror was what made a good thriller film, this gave us some more ideas into our storyboard in what we can use for the script.

Planning of Titles and Typography

These are what we are considering as our typography. We wanted to use something which is complex and hard to make out but understandable. The complex idea will reflect on the story-line, we also wanted something puzzling which we done through the newspaper cuttings which also help get across the story-line and themes of the film.

Consideration of Sound

Music is going to be very important for our opening sequence. It is going to set the mood of the film and it is also going to connote the thriller style that we are trying to create. The soundtrack to a film is vital and if you get it wrong you can convey the wrong meaning. We have been discussing what type of music we think would be appropriate for our opening sequence, and we have come to the conclusion that we should use Dramatic like music which will hopefully build up tension and suspense. After having this discussion I went home and researched different musics for different thrillers which helped me think of something similar which will make the opening sequence more conventional of a thriller.