Q6: What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product? 

 

For my planning the ideas that inspired me and my group the most were YouTube videos and internet on various thrillers similar to the one that we were planning. I would say that the thriller openings we took most inspiration from were The Walking Dead and True Detective. This was because our planned mise-en-scene was very similar to both of the former and inspired us to find a similarly deprived area.

Comparison Shots:

 

 

As you can see I have print screened both of these shots of YouTube to show one how one of our shots was inspired by a shot from the Walking Dead.

For our vox pops, we used our mobile phones to film each other speaking about how we think thriller are filmed effectively and what thrillers we liked the most.

 

For my research, I mainly looked at different thriller openings with my group on YouTube to see what would be appropriate to a thriller like “HUNTED” would be. We looked at a range of different thrillers, from The Walking Dead to The Da Vinci Code. In the end we wanted a more post-apocalyptic feel and look to our thriller as opposed to everyday environments, taking cues from The Walking Dead and True Detective. For our soundtrack, we had to be careful when selecting this aspect due to copyright and patent laws in place over many music works. In the end after many setbacks, we found a very good copyright free song on YouTube that had the effective western feel that we wanted to capture for our thriller opening. Since we could only edit our movie on an Apple Mac, we had to use a not-for-profit converter engine called YouTube to MP3 Converter in order to download the track. We then transferred it onto a USB Stick and copied it onto the Apple Mac in order to combine it with our footage as one of the final touches in our editing process.

 

 

What I have learned in terms of digital and HD cameras is how to utilise their ability to focus on one shot whilst leaving the foreground or background in a more blurry state, an example of this is the facial shot we took of Conor in order to create a deliberately surreal camera shot. I focused the camera on a distant tree so it focused on it and then made Conor stand close-up to the camera blurring his face. I have also learned to edit more effectively with my group due to me using the cameras HD upload ability onto a Mac or PC.  The impact that we wanted our audience to feel during a majority of our camera shots was that of slight fear and disbelief at things going on, whilst at the same time making them feel uncomfortable as for all they know it is a realistic situation and it could happen to them. Examples of these are the gun, which is filmed from a high angle position to represent its ability to easily kill or severely maim somebody; this creates a typically exciting but unnerving feeling amongst the audience. It is also filmed in terms of the golden mean. Another example of this is, the watch, which is yet again filmed from a high angle position so the audience gets a clear view of its face, which connotes a feeling that time is running out, yet again unnerving our audience.                                                                                                                                               

 

 

 

 

 

	This shot shows the gun whilst being filmed from a high angle position to signify its ease of use and the ability to easily take a life. The line also shows its usage of the golden mean rule.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                    In terms of editing, I have acquired new skills, such as being able to apply audio and visual effects to our thriller opening and use apply desaturated colours to the whole movie to make it look bleaker and darker than it actually is. I have also come to basic terms with the Apple iMovie software and many of its functions and capabilities.  Examples of this are me importing our footage via the cameras data lead and other things such as our downloaded soundtrack via USB Stick. Our footage and the way it is edited keep our audience interested and hooked into our thriller opening because, the way some shots are edited, such as the black and grey periphery around all of our shots and the increased saturation on the shots with the bullets, create tension and make the audience wonder what is going to happen to the protagonists. We also heavily edited the pacing and frameworks of our shots to make it feel and look more dramatic, such as merging two shots together to make them quickly switch between each other to increase our audience’s expectations and tension for the sequence. We did use some visual effect filters such as some black and white during our overview of the tree line in the sky. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

			These shots here show part of the transitions that occurs TWICE. They quickly switch between each other between intervals of about half to three quarters of a second to increase pacing and make it more thriller like than it would have been before, increasing tension. We did this by cutting down the duration of these shots to about 0.5 seconds each and then blended the shots together so they switch between each other on Apple iMovie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                         

We did not use any other technologies apart from the highly sophisticated Apple iMovie editor software to create all the effects and pacing as said above plus more. The reason why we did not resort to using additional software is because this is probably the best on the market in terms of what we wanted to do and since we were under time constraints, there would have been no point in seeking out additional software to use.