Most movies have 3 possible intro types. It can be a discrete opening (like we decided to make our media product). An opening sequence where it goes straight into the story/plot and the other type of intro is a mixture of both. Most thriller movies start with wide shots of an important location in the movie or extreme close ups of a prominent character in the movie, such as the ‘se7en’ intro. In most thriller movies the institution that produces the movie is identified at the beginning as is ours, e.g. ‘CANDIstudios’.
The purpose of most thriller movies is to give off suspense and make the audience jump at unexpected times. For thriller movies, certain types of music and titles (font) can be used to compliment the movie and make it even more suspenseful. Sound can go a long way in aiding the raw movie with more tension. Good suspenseful music/audio can turn an ordinary intro sequence into something more sinister and frightening. Fonts used in the titles can be as effective as the audio/music. Commonly used fonts are serif and sans serif. Serif is used in more traditional and serious movies, such as drama movies e.g. ‘The Pelican Brief’. Sans serif fonts are modern and are regularly seen in thriller movies. The type of font will, most of the time will be in direct correlation with the type of movie. In our case, we decided to use a bold sans serif font to follow the recent thriller movie trend.
Our movie rarely challenges thriller movie conventions but embraces them. We wanted our movie to come across as a real thriller media product. We went for a slow seductive opening sequence to confuse and glue the audience’s eyes on the movie. I feel this was accomplished well and embraces thriller movie forms. Our intro was very similar to ‘Arlington Road
'Arlington Road' opening
Our movie
'The Thing' remake opening 
Task two - How does your media product represent particular social group?
Our movie does not represent any social groups as no characters are included in the opening sequence we created. We wanted to portray a rugged and urban area. This type of opening is similar to ‘
Our movie
'Arlington Road'
Task three & four - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product an why? How will you attract/address your audience?
I found this interesting video post on a very popular video sharing website. It is a thriller intro project from other students and another sixth form/college. In this case YouTube has been used to release it to a much wider potential audience. The video has had over 11,000 hits, so the decision to release the video on to YouTube can be considered a success. In relation to our media product it is very similar because of the fact that 16-19 year old students made it and also the movie budget would have been low. Low budget projects such as our thriller intro is most likely to gain as much views as possible if the media product is released online. Video sharing websites such as YouTube and Vimeo can be very useful for amateur film makers. Unlike YouTube, Vimeo is a website which specialises for film makers. Video quality and resolutions are much better than on YouTube and most amateur film makers post on Vimeo to get noticed. Our own media product will get a screening cinematic screening at 'The Screen on the Green' and shared screening with other peers and the potential audience for our product, if released online is huge.
Task five - Who would be the audience for your media product?
The audience that watches our media product will most probably be in the same age group as us. A typical audience member would be, Daniel, 18, is a college student who loves music, owns a blog about technology and is a thriller movie fanatic. He enjoys going out with friends, eating take-outs and shopping at 'Blue Inc.' He also enjoys social networking. This is what you would find in his bag:
Task six - What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
(In separate post)
Task seven - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
At the begining of the AS media studies course I had not used a MAC operating system before, therefore I found it difficult to grasp the basic controls of a mac, such as a simple 'copy and paste' job or capturing a screen grab. However after using a MAC regularly In class I started to function the computer fast and smoothly without much fuss. I am also planning to purchase a MAC computer or laptop because I really enjoyed using the exclusive software and the general feel of using something different than PC.
Preliminary task
Looking back at our preliminary task, I feel we have made obvious and natural improvements of our media product. When we began our preliminary task I found it difficult to even function the JVC digital tapeless camera and generally the use of it. In another practice task called 'card game' (which is also posted on the blog) I forgot to turn off light filtering so the end result was very dark, which we did not want. As we progressed through making our product I checked all the settings on the camera were correct before beginning to film shots.
In the preliminary task we only used the most basic of shots, we did not use many shot types or use many (if any) effective camera angles which resulted in our preliminary looking very basic. The framing of this exercise was atrocious and even worse so because a tripod was used. However as we were watching more and more real thriller openings we discovered the camera was rarely in a static position for a period of time. So with inspiration from Arlington Road we decided for the camera to be constantly in motion, which gave a good 'out of control' effect and gave the movie a level of tension and suspense. The mise en scene in the preliminary task was very limited as it was only a practice project however as we progressed to the final product the mise en scene included a wide area with various shots and angles.
Clip from our final cut opening
However as we progressed through the making of our media product we learnt how to effectively use a variety of shots in different angles. My editing skills with FinalCut Pro drastically improved throughout making the final product. In the preliminary task we barely used any video effects or clip transitions. However after naturally getting better because of good practice tasks such as the preliminary activity, we managed to use many video effects and transitions in our final product. The video effects and transitions we used worked well in aiding our product look and feel like a real thriller opening to a movie.
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