1. Firstly, I was given instruction to produce a preliminary task of creating a short clip of a person walking up to a door, opening the door and entering another room which would then lead into a conversation between that person and another.
2. Secondly, I was asked to create the beginning 2 minute clip of a film in a group with a genre of our choice. In my group were Thomas Arch (http://tomsmediathoughts.blogspot.com/), Danielle Gisbourne (http://dannigisbourne.blogspot.com/), Georgia Entrican (http://123mai.blogspot.com/ ) and myself (http://hellogracesmedia.blogspot.com/) and (http://gracepickardmediathriller.blogspot.com/) We decided to name our film institution ‘Creative Film productions’. We chose this name because we felt that it is linked to the idea of film creating as well as giving the group a unique persona. We decided to produce a clip with a thriller genre because we believed that it would be challenging but at the same time exciting as it would require a lot of imagination and we already had some great ideas for that theme. Our main aim was to create a chilling ambience for our audience as well as producing a well made movie. The name of our production is ‘Fixation’.
In What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
As soon as my group had decided on a thriller genre for our two minute movie, we began to research already existing films, with the same thriller/horror theme, for inspiration and ideas. We looked at a variety of scary movies, such as: ‘The strangers’, ‘Them’, ‘The ring’, ‘The grudge 3’, ‘Final destination’, ‘Saw’, and ‘Hostel’. The three main thriller films, however, which we focussed on mostly were, ‘What lies beneath’, ‘Psycho’ and ‘Creep’. We looked at the trailers for these films using ‘youtube’ to study the general atmospheres of each film. We then went on to look at certain sections of each individual film to research more thoroughly into the cinematography, editing, Mise en scene and sound in hope for inspiration for our own production. Overall I felt that the textual analysis played a vital role in making the film as it helped our search for a setting, script, music choice as well as many other things. ‘What lies beneath’, a supernatural thriller film directed by Robert Zemeckis, had a huge influence on the setting of our film. When we first began discussing ideas for our plot we wanted something unique and visually exciting. When we watched the trailer for this film we noticed that it include a number of bathroom scenes, which grabbed our attention instantly. When we investigated more thoroughly into these bathroom scenes we looked closely at the editing and cinematography of shots which gave us lots of ideas for our own film. One of the shots we took and developed on from ‘what lies beneath’ on is shown below compared to our own footage.
A scene from What Lies Beneath
The film ‘Psycho’ (1960) directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, was a film that we used the least ideas from but it was still extremely helpful as it gave us an insight into a proper classical thriller, which is globally known for its bathroom murder scene. One very influential theme which we took from ‘psycho’ was the idea of black and white footage. Although this film is featured in black and white throughout, we decided that we would develop this idea and change only selected shots into black and white.
We developed on this idea until we decided to make all the shots from the murderers point of view without colour, and the remaining shots in normal colour contrast.
As well as creating more suspense and tension, we felt that this would show a clear difference between how the murderer see’s the world compared to everyone else.
Here is a link to the bathroom scene in Psycho
For me, the most useful film for research out of these selected three was ‘creep’, directed by Christopher smith (2004), because it provided us with a wide range of ideas and techniques to include in our piece. When we watched the film trailer on you tube, we noticed that occasionally the cinematography was filmed from a characters perspective, and often in these shots the camera was shaky. For example if the character was walking, running or breathing heavily. We included this technique within our film introduction when we shot footage from the murderers perspective. For example, when the murderer is walking up the stairs, demonstrated in the picture below. Watching this trailer also highlighted the impact of quick-cuts and flashing images which we tried to include throughout our film to provide a sense of chaos and tension.
Creep film
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