(A) (A) Planning: The organisation of time and equipment
The first element of organisation of time and equipment during the Foundation Portfolio task was planning the locations of where our Thriller opening would be set. We took photos of these settings, enabling us to plan any props we felt appropriate and see if the lighting was bright enough for the scenes. This was effective as it meant we had planned ahead and knew how to dress each setting accordingly. The next stage of planning involved my partner and I writing down the order of the shots and what each shot would involve, which we then turned into a storyboard; beside each shot we wrote how long the shot should last. This allowed us to plan how long roughly it should take to film the whole thriller opening. A problem that occurred with the time planning was the weather, as it got dark earlier than we had expected and so we didn’t get to shoot as much variety of footage as we would have liked. I think an improvement would have been to plan to film on more than one day so there was more time to finish our work proficiently. Another problem we faced was setting up the camera and the tripod; we hadn’t tried to use them before the day of filming, which was a mistake as it took a long time for us to get to grips with it. I think we could have improved our planning further by using more equipment such as an additional camera, which would have aided us to film two shots at the same time as we had planned.
We organised time and equipment much differently in the Advanced Portfolio task; we were much more thorough with our planning which meant filming was more efficient. Despite changing the song we were going to use for our music video, we managed to plan effectively. We learnt from last time that filming all on one day isn’t enough, so we planned two days on which we would film and had two piles of equipment for each day so as not to carry around any unnecessary extra weight. We also planned to have two cameras and tripods for the filming this time, as last year we realised how useful it would have been.
(B) Planning: The efficient choice and organization of actors, settings and props.
For the Foundation Portfolio task, we chose actors who we thought best fit our Thriller Opening. For example, the female villain had red hair to signify danger, the child had blonde hair to signify vulnerability, and the parents of the child knew each other so we felt they would be a realistic couple. It was easy to organize our actors as we used my mum, dad and younger brother and my partners mum; we just had to find a day they were all available. We chose settings which we felt evoked certain emotions and used props to enhance this. For example, we used the living room of my house and made sure the lighting was warm and that warm coloured props such as the orange pillows were used to evoke a homeliness and comforting feel, with drawn curtains to imply the parents’ protectiveness of their child. These props were already at my house so were easy to organise. The setting where the female villain lived we chose to look bare and empty to reflect her life, but for the flashbacks we chose colourful props such as the pink tablecloth and the decorated Xmas tree to symbolise a happier time. We chose a park for the setting in which the child gets kidnapped as it is an unsuspecting, innocent place; it didn’t need any organising. The alleyway outside the kidnappers’ house was chosen as alleyways often signify danger in thrillers, and we used an air vent in the wall with pieces of fluff blowing away as a prop to symbolise her desire to escape from her house full of sad memories.
The only problems we encountered were some actors arriving late which meant the delay of filming, but other than that the actors, settings and props had no problems.
In the Advanced Portfolio task, planning locations was a little trickier as we planned to film in a numerous amount of settings. Firstly, we planned to shoot some scenes in a nearby maze, but after ringing up and enquiring about permission to shoot there, we discovered the maze hadn’t been open to the public for two years! However, as we rang early enough in the planning process, we were able to adapt the storyboard. We used shotlists to organise each and every shot we were planning on filming and wrote the setting, outfit, props, and actors that would be needed for each shot. This enabled us to be well prepared so we knew exactly what we were going to be doing on the day of shooting so as not to waste any time. We then made notes on the order we would film our music video, so that we could film all the scenes with each outfit if it was featured more than once. We planned shot locations, and circled things in pink if we only needed the female actress for those scenes. This meant we could plan to shoot all the scenes without the male first, then shoot all the scenes with him after. We ticked them off as we went along so we knew what shots there were left to film.
I think this shows progression as we were more organized; we knew the order we wanted to film and had the storyboard to refer to, we planned to film with the female for the first half of the day and scenes including the male for the second half of the day. We planned another day of filming for settings further away, such as the ‘tea party’ scene. We knew which outfit and props were needed for each scene. We even met up the day before shooting to write a final list of things to remember whilst filming. I think we did this more effectively than in the Foundation Portfolio task.
(C) (C) Planning: Scripting and/ or storyboarding
Despite needing scenes of family interaction, we didn’t use any scripts for the actors, just told them where they should be and what they should be doing, and showed them the storyboard if they were unclear. Luckily as they were a family already they acted like a family naturally. The only planned scripting we used for the thriller opening was the scenes involving the child and the kidnapper. We didn’t need to do drafts as one of the scripts involved the kidnapper reading the child a story which we felt was symbolic to our story, and the child didn’t have many lines; he had to count from 1 to 10 and say ‘it hurt me a bit’, both of which were fine. Our storyboard came from a list of camera shots which we adapted into a storyboard, including settings and the time it should take to last. We didn’t encounter any problems with the scripting because there wasn’t enough for problems to arise. We didn’t particularly face problems with the storyboard, but we did make quite a lot of changes in the editing stages, so I think it would have been useful if we had shot more raw footage to play around with.
Again, we didn’t script much during the filming of the Advanced Portfolio as there weren’t many scenes for which this was appropriate. We gave the female actress the lyrics to the song prior to filming and the song file so that she could learn the words and tune to the song so the timing was in sync with the song when we came to edit. Because the shotlists and storyboards were so thorough and precise, we were able to film all the scenes with the female first, then all the shots including the male after. Due to the amount of outfit changes and locations, we had written the order to film which would enable the least amount of outfit changes and moving about from one location to the next.
This shows progression as previously we hadn’t planned as much which meant we were less prepared and unsure on the day compared to the Advanced Portfolio where we were confident in what we were doing, which meant filming was much quicker and more time efficient.
(D) (D) Research: Initial target audience research
We researched our target audience in out Foundation Portfolio task by firstly researching what a thriller was, and which category of thrillers our thriller opening fit into. It turned out our genre of thriller was a psychological dramatic thriller, so we researched this and discovered typical conventions used by this genre that the target audience would enjoy, and tried to encompass it in our own Thriller Opening. We then researched the target audience in more depth for our genre, which turned out was women aged around 30+ and also between the age brackets of 16-25; 35% of the thriller viewers sample were students. We researched the topic of child abduction and the mentally ill on the internet, and found various questionnaires that indicated this is a particularly intriguing topic for our age brackets. This was useful research as we were able to include elements of psychological dramatic thrillers in our thriller opening to fit our target audiences’ needs, such as using a female protagonist as in ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’ starring Julia Roberts. The only problems we encountered were that it was difficult doing primary research for our target audience; finding enough 30+ females to interview and give questionnaires was difficult as we could mainly only access the 16-25 age group as this is ours also.
For the Advanced Portfolio task it was easier to research our target audience of 14-25 yr olds, as we discovered from researching our Foundation Portfolio task that it is much easier to get primary research when using your own age bracket. We not only handed out questionnaires in class, but researched online to discover the elements of music video our target audience enjoyed. After noting our target audience was female, this also helped drive the plot of the music video, focusing on a story many females could relate to and encompassing fashionable clothes and accessories and feminine colours such as pink. We discovered more females like electropop (our music genre) compared to males after a survey we handed out to 20 males and 20 females established this fact. Another survey we carried out focused on the age of females who enjoyed elctropop, with a noticeable majority of 14-20 yr olds and an equally noticeable minority for 30+ year olds. We were able to establish what these females enjoyed in electropop music videos by researching and analysing music videos of this genre and taking elements out of them for our own.
This shows progression as we did more primary research which is more reliable compared to secondary research, and given the fact that we were creating a product for our own age bracket gave us an insight into what elements we would enjoy.
(E) (E) Existing media practice/ products
In the Foundation Portfolio task we researched what a thriller encompasses, and the conventions of thrillers. From this, we could derive whether we wanted to challenge or conform to these conventions. Similarly, we researched how to make a thriller opening like Alfred Hitchcock, a famous filmmaker of thrillers, and used his methods for inspiration such as his advice that ‘Suspense is information’ and to use ‘surprise and twist’. This was useful because we knew his advice was clearly worthy as he is so successful. We also watched and analysed many thriller openings and noted down methods they had used. A few films I analysed included ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’, ‘Strangers on a Train’, ‘Se7en’, ‘Hostage’ and ‘The Usual Suspects’. This was useful as I adapted many ideas from each film, especially those with occurring themes that must be common in thrillers such as keeping the main character unidentified to maintain enigma. Watching ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’ was useful as it was as the same sub-genre as my thriller- dramatic psychological. I used ideas from this movie such as high angle and low angle shots to depict the power of the character on screen, using some shaky camera movements to demonstrate the characters instability, and using small, skinny white font for our titles to suggest the fragility and innocence of the child in our thriller. ‘Strangers on a Train’ was also a psychological thriller, and we used some elements of the films opening such as blurring the identity of the villain and fastening the pace of cuts as the opening draws to an end. ‘Hostage’ was also about a kidnapping, and we found ourselves using similar colours to evoke danger; black, white and red. I chose to analyse ‘The usual suspects’ as I knew this film included flashbacks, which helped me decide how I wanted to make mine; it should show, not tell and have a clear, smooth transition. We made sure the audience knew when the flashback began and ended by using an eye opening and then closing as if we were looking back in her memory.
The research of existing media products for our advanced portfolio task was quite similar as we researched music videos within our genre, but in a lot more depth and detail than in our thriller; we also analysed a lot more to give us a range of ideas. We especially took lots of ideas about props, clothing, accessories and lighting from artists like Katy Perry and Lily Allen as they are also female electropop artists. However, to establish our artist, we also researched music videos that our target audience also enjoy, researching elements such as editing, camera work, sound, and mise-en-scene. We also noted down any other ideas and inspiration we took from watching these videos. A few examples of ideas we got include the high angle shot in Ashley Tisdale’s video ‘Kiss the girl’ which emphasised her eyes; an important detail for female artists. We also included scenes similar to that in ‘Barbie Girl’ by Aqua as our star image motif was Barbie and we thought it would be good to have some subtle links such as including a split screen of a female and male on the phone to capture both their reactions, including the male in the background but ensuring the female artist is closest to the camera to engage with the audience, and the scene with the bird in the tree with a blurred image of Barbie behind we particularly enjoyed and incorporated into our own video. Other music videos we researched and analysed included Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’, ‘Take on Me’ by Aha, ‘We both reached for the gun’ in the film Chicago, ‘Love Drunk’ by Loick Essien, ‘Number One Enemy’ by Daisy Dares You, ‘The boy who murdered love’ by Diana Vickers, ‘Booty Call’ by the Midnight Beast, ‘Monster’ by Professor Green and ‘Hole in my heart’ by Alphabeat.
This extensive and detailed research provided us with the knowledge, ideas and inspiration for our music video and shows great progression compared with the 5 thriller openings we analysed for our Foundation Portfolio.
