The document discusses research methods and software used for a student thriller film project. Research included using YouTube to explore narrative elements, genres, and sound choices. The IMDB website provided information on thriller conventions. The "Art of the Titles" site helped with investigating title sequences. Blogger was used for research blogging and comparing to other student projects. HD cameras improved over low-quality DV and allowed more visual effects. GarageBand was used for soundtrack creation and editing. Photoshop and LiveType were used for the logo and title sequences. Final Cut Express was the main editing software to assemble shots, sounds and titles. The finished project was published on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

1. Research: Thriller Films When it came to researching we used Youtube, which I found to be extremely useful because of the fact that it helped me to research the necessary elements that were vital to deciding what would be included inside our production. Furthermore some of those elements included narrative idea, typography, mise en scene and types of thriller, and possible sound choices. Another part of research included looking at a wide array of different films varying in thriller sub/hybrid genres, and we essentially looked at them in detail so I was capable of getting an overall view of the various conventions involved, and the site was called “IMDB”. This site proved to be quite useful because it allowed us to research some older thriller that applied the thriller conventions in a different way. Since we were producing an opening sequence we decided to use a site known as “Art of the titles”, which had a large array of opening opening sequences, and broke them down into screen grabbed sections, this site allowed us to really investigate new and interesting way to try, and make our titles, and opening sequences to be one entire segments rather than two separate pieces.

2. Research: Blogger Another large part of both my pre-production research and production was Blogger, which was a site that allowed me have a blog that allowed me to post my research in and orderly fashion. Furthermore I looked at various other thriller blogs that were based on the same projects as us. It gave us greater ways of accessing materials we couldn’t get any where else. The two screen shots are of both my group blog (above), and another students thriller blog from a different school (left). I sometimes used various blogs like this one in order to make comparisons, and learn ways in which we could make our product seem original.

3. HD & DV recording When it came to recording our production, we initially used DV cameras to record, and it produced a variation of average, and awful quality footage, which we felt would hinder our film, especially because of the fact that we had an array of effects over-layed on top of the film. In addition I found that the DV camera had minimalistic effects, and there wasn’t anything that we could experiment with. However once we had finally had switched over to a HD camera we found that it had a learning curve because I’d never had previously used one, and the way buttons were layed out wasn’t standard. Furthermore I found that it had a far larger variation in capabilities, some which included depth of field, audio recording, more precise zoom control, all things that provided useful. This is one of the HD recording, and you can see the contracts on quality, when referring to the DV image. Both HD recording images have good clarity, and the image is just bright, and clear. In addition in the second image the light is just illuminating, and you can clearly see how defined and intense it is. This is an example of the DV quality image, and you can see the lack in clarity, and sharpness. Also the image seems grainy, and in contrast to the HD Images you can see definitive difference.

4. Garage band One of the pieces of software we used was in order to create the music for our production was Garage band. It was used to add effects samples of different music, as well as alter pitches etc. The arrow is pointing towards the layers of different sounds know as the track, and this would eventually form to make the soundtrack. They’re capable of being lengthened as well as have the pitches and volumes altered to become more or less dominant. In this screen shot the arrow is pointing towards the effects menu on each track. Each can used to apply or remove diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. In addition you’re capable of applying the film track separately in order to insure that the music is in sync with the film.

5. Photoshop Adobe Photoshop wasn’t commonly used because of that fact that we only used it to edit our production logo.

6. Live type Another piece of software that we used in constructing our final products was Live type. It was used in order to create the title sequence for the thriller, as well the main title. Above is the track layout of all the title that will appear over the actual film. Here the film has been added in order to know where the titles would appear. Furthermore you’re capable of altering the length of each title, as well as allowing multiple titles to appear at once. In the right hand side the screen shot is there section whereby we were able to apply various effects to it, much like the once used on our end title. Furthermore you could adjusts appearance, size, font, on screen effects e.g. fade, dissolve etc and much more.

7. Final cut express Another piece of software that we used was Final cut express, and that was used to edit the film its self. We were able to apply effects to the various shots, as well as use various editing techniques like shot reverse shot and match on action. It was the main core of our program used to piece all the soundtrack and live type together. Within this screen shot it shows one of the aspects of our final products that we were capable of altering such as “filters”, “Video”, “Colour corrector” and “Motion”. The screen shot above shows the Filters options One of the other aspects you can change is the colour in the “Colour corrector” menu. In this section you capable of altering the colour by adding slight tints to the shot or drastic colour changes such as black and white, sepia, negative etc.

8. Publishing methods We have published our work onto the internet on various sites. Those sites included Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The way by which it was uploaded to Twitter and Facebook was through our own personal pages. We have linked it from Youtube, which was also uploaded using my own personal account. Furthermore we have shared and linked it with various people including family and friends. Above is our thriller on Facebook, with some audience feedback. Above is our thriller on Youtube.