Joewoodhall99's Blog

media presentation

http://debsidowu.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/135/ (Link to the blog entry with the powerpoint on it)

This our final cut of our thriller opening sequence:

The main changes we made, as stated in my Rough Cut blog entry, were adding more sound effects, increasing the level of sound continuity and making the titles more appropriate.

The one difficulty we came across was when we used Adobe After Effects to create a day to night conversion allowing the scene to look as if it was shot at night. We had trouble rendering it as the computers we used were not able to handle the memory needed to do it. We therefore decided to scrap that idea and produce it regardless.

I think our final cut of our thriller opening sequence has been highly successful and was a fun task to complete.

We got 28/60 for our rough cut of our thriller so we had a lot of changes to make to increase our mark.

Our rough cut:

The feedback we got from our rough cut that the visual continuity was good but the sound continuity was failing. The real sound we had also clashed with the sound effects as it was overpowering due to the noise in the background of other cars. We were told to scrap the real sounds completely and only use sound effects which proved difficult as there was a limited amount available to us. Adding these sound effects will create a more realistic scene as they are all the ‘little’ noises that people rarely actually notice but make a huge difference in the overall production.

Another criticism was how bad the titles were. They offered no relationship to the thriller in their font, colour or size so we decided to completely remake the title sequence.
We also decided to extend the time of our initial title sequence as our thriller currently did not meet the minimum time limit. Instead of re-filming to extend the time, lengthening our title’s was the most applicable option in our case.
We will try to extend the title’s to roughly 25 seconds. We will animate them and add digetic to make the 25 seconds not look extended just to make the time limit. We will have them introduced before any footage is shown to set the scene and give the audience an inkling of what is going to happen.

Overall we do not have much to change and should not take more than a few hours to complete.

Characters involved:

Anne-Marie Nicholson as the protagonist.
Barney Nash as the antagonist.

Outline of the thriller

The basic plot our our thriller is that the protagonist is driving home and comes across an oddly placed pram in the middle of the road, she inspects it but finds nothing except a doll. She pushes the pram to the side of the road and walks back to her car. As she reaches her car door she realizes it’s open, not the way she left it. She reluctantly drives on but within a few seconds the antagonist appears to be sitting in the back of her car. The thriller then blacks out leaving the audience on a cliff hangar.

How it meets thriller conventions
A crime at the core of the narrative is shown towards the end of the thriller as the antagonist has unauthorized entry into the protagonists vehicle. The audience also percepts that more crimes will come after the black out such as rape or murder.
Our thriller offers a subdued complex narrative structure, with false paths, clues and resolutions as before you even meet the antagonist there are clues placed in the narrative. The doll in the middle of the road heightens the tension as it’s an unusual item to find plus the stereotype of doll’s in thrillers will be in the back of the mind of the audience. It’s used as a false path as it is not directly linked towards the antagonist at first but towards the end a relationship is shown mainly through non-digetic sound.
The titles used in our thriller look as if they have been written in blood which reflect an aspect of the protagonists psychological state and give the audience an idea of what will happen. Although there is no blood in our thriller the ending leaves the audience of a cliffhangar and lets them make up their own decision of what will happen which the majority of will be centered around death. Therefore I feel that the titles were a good representation.