BBFC

Now we have finished the film, we have looked back on the British Board of Film Class (BBFC) to see what we would now rate our thriller. From looking at what each certificate allows in films, we have decided to stay with certificate 15. This is an appropriate certificate as it then allows us to include adult themes, hard drugs, strong words, moderate-strong violence/sex references and mild non detailed sex activity. Films that are like this are ‘Good Luck Chuck’ and ‘The Uninvited’. In our thriller we have not used any of these features as we didn’t feel the need to include them, but later in the film there is then a chance for it to include any of the themes listed above.

Marketing

As marketing is one of the most important things for a film we decided to make this page to help to promote and market ‘The Existence’. As the social networking site, ‘Facebook’ has increasingly more popular, we thought that this would be the perfect way to get people to notice our film by suggesting the page to our friends who can then send it onto their friends to get more and more people involved. 

As ‘Twitter’ is becoming the new ‘Facebook’, we have also used it to promote our film as more teenagers are using it. We thought this would be a good way to sponsor our thriller as it would allow us to get in contact with the public to see what their views are and what they thought we could improve or keep in the thriller. Also, as people could re-tweet us, this would mean that more people would find out about the film.

Influences now the film has been completed.

As I saw the final product I realised that the previous influences of our Thriller didn't really fit well with our media film.

‘Black Swan’ is defiantly more similar to our Thriller "The Existence". It’s a physiological thriller that plays tricks on the mind with the viewer. In the film ‘Black Swan’ the main character is clearly getting stalked by something that is not human, this makes her do abnormal things that are unlike her personality. Our Thriller ‘The Existence’ also has an inhuman creature that can possess or control the main character.
Black Swan has everything that a psychological thriller has to offer, so we wanted to do the same.

Spell Check

As our blog is almost finished, It was important to spell check everything on the blog to make sure it the grammar was correct and made sense.   This involved looking at each of the posts and studying the language to see if there were any errors.

Music

We had a lot of trouble trying to find music to fit in with our thriller as nothing quite fitted with what was happening in our thriller. After a lot of searching between the group Alex found ‘Abducted’ which amazingly fit in with every scene! We chose this piece of music because as each scene was getting to a tense moment, so was the music which gives the audience a feeling of anxiety and it sustained the tension. Also, conveniently the music was just the right length for our film as we didn’t have music at the beginning which built up the tension as it was just Tabi sleeping.

    

Poster Influences

This poster has influenced us quite a lot on thinking about what to include in our initial poster. Firstly, the man looks very normal which immediately tricks the audience. He is wearing a bow tie which shows he could be a part of the business world. The red background shows the viewer that the film is a thriller and not a children film as it is a blood red which shows that death could be involved in this film. The line at the top reads ‘A man who has everything has everything to hide’ which could mean that the main character (Mr Brooks) has a deep secret that you will find out in the film, which again makes the audience want to watch the film. The date at the bottom of the poster tells the viewer when the film comes out which is vital information to sell the film and this has influenced us to include this on our thriller poster. The red mark at the bottom could be blood which gives the audience a clue of what the plot could be or what is going to happen during the film which is death. Also, the dot after Mr is the same blood mark as the one at the bottom. The edgy red boarder around the poster demonstrates that the film is edgy and thrilling. The colour of the boarder fades into black near the bottom which could intend that evil takes over this man in the film. The plot of the film could be included in this poster as the protagonist and antagonist could be one person. On this poster, the square of his face is red which shows that he may have split a personality or someone always with him. One of our ideas for a poster is to have the antagonist with half of her face with evil make-up on and the other side is innocent to show the split personalities that the protagonist has whilst suffering from schizophrenia. Also, the name of the main characters are included on the poster along with the directors name underneath to show the viewer who is in the film as they may like one of the actors usual films. The title of the thriller is one of the main selling points as well as drawing the viewer into watching it.

Soundtrack possibilities. (Not finished)

We looked at a variety of different music for our thriller. Using http://www.freeplaymusic.com/  it allowed us to find a variety of different styles of music that isnt copy write, therefore we could see what one would be most suitable. Initially, we decided on a classical music soundtrack, as this involved violins which created a fast pace tone for our thriller. It also involved certain music stings which would have been suitable for our thriller. However, once our thriller had been filmed we decided the classical music did not fit as our thriller was too modern. Now, we are looking at other soundtrack possibilities

Changing actress'

Our actress’ have drastically changed since we first planned our thriller film. First of all we decided to have Alex Fresco’s cousin (Georgia Fresco) as she has had acting experience from the west end and films with Madonna. The other actress we originally wanted to use Lucy Kane as she has blonde hair and would fit into the protagonist stereotype. When we initially tried to film, everywhere that we had planned to film was either locked or the lighting wasn’t correct. As these actress’ are not in our group or even school it was very hard to organise when and where we could film. We changed the protagonist to Tabitha Munday as she is doing Drama AS level and also attends our school. The little girl is now Alex Fresco as she is in our group, did GCSE Drama and is willing to act. Even though Tabitha attends our school, it is still very hard to plan when to film as she does a lot of extra curriculum activities outside of school.

Location of Shooting Thriller

This is the location where we did the first day of filming. This picture is found on Google Maps. We chose this location because it was unique and it was surrounded by a heavily wooded area which does fall into a stereotype of a thriller convention but we filmed on the pavement, not directly inside the woods. Many other media groups chose to use the same location which was a 'house' but we wanted to be different and change the location from the pavement next to the woods, to the toilets, to the bedroom.

Focus Group Findings

I asked a selection of people the questions that would identify conventions and stereotypes of Thrillers. This was helpful because we learnt what people expected and what they wanted from Thriller films.
Thank-you to those that took part and gave us their time to help us with the focus group findings.

Video Influences

The film The Unborn has a lot of similarities to our Thriller film The Existence. The Unborn has a haunting in it of some ancient demon called a debook and our thriller has a demon young girl in it. The Victim in both films are young females. The Unborn uses music to scare the audience and to help the film come across as scary; we will be using music that helps create suspense and tension when certain events are happening. The use of cinematography is important to the film The Unborn because when the demon appears the audience is always presented of him in a close up or an extreme close up. We also want to achieve this because in some cases it actually makes the audience jump and that is the effect that we want to have on our audience.