Thriller Conventions

• Less gore than horror.
• Build suspense on the unknown.
• Use of imagination. 
• Plain titles. 
• Atmospheric soundtrack which set the scene. Some cuts coinside with this. 
• Quick, still cuts of the location.
• Shadowy and dark. Use of low key lighting.
• Use of narrative voiceover.
• Intrigue the viewier by leaving unanswer questions. Confuse. 
• Use of contast.

Camera Test

1. Two effects of increasing the video gain include an increase in the brightness of the picture. As well as this, the image may become pixelated as a result.
2. The shutter speed should be set to 50fps.
3. The shutter speed should be increased to stop the image being blurred and stop lines of light being dragged out. You are meant to increase the shutter speed even more when filming a slow motion scene to prevent the image being jerky, but to have a higher shutter speed means that the shot needs more light.
4. The purpose of white balance to insure that the footage being shot is realistic to the colour in real life, as well as stopping it from being too bright or dark and too yellow or blue.
5. Increasing the audio gain means that the sound recorded will be at a higher volume.  This can cause distortion.
6. To focus the camera you press the focus button and then twist the outer ring until the desired focus is obtained. You can then press the expanded focus to zoom in further and check that the focus is correct.
7. You would use the ND filter to darken the shot slightly. This can allow the image to have details brought out which may have otherwise blended in. e.g clouds.
8. Shooting in a dark location, a better exposure to use would be F1 since as much light as possible is picked up.

How has digital technology changed television?

Digital technology has changed television in several ways. The use of timecoding on digital footage allows for much faster and efficant editing, whereas analoge footage would involve scouring tapes, digital coupled with the use of computers means footage can be skipped to, cut and changed much more easily. Due to digital, HD can be transmitted and recived. This is due to the way the signal is transmitted and invites much less interferece. A digital style file can be much more easily merged with electronic devices. This is since these devices work on a digital digital format. Example of this are Youtube, syncing film with iPods, on demand television services. A greater number of channels can be sent on one bandwidth since digital signals can be compressed, yet this was not possible with an analouge signal.

The TV Screen

On a tv screen, the image is spilt into scan lines. There are 525 scan lines of pixels for TV’s in the UK. This divides the image up and the television lays down the image line after line. These lines are horizontal. Depending on which country you are in, the number of scan lines for a TV system varies. The number of frames per second also varies.

Resolution and TV Motion

The resolution of an image is the amount of pixels within an area. Pixels are a collection of millions of dots to create an image. The brain assembles the all these dots into an image. When there is a low resolution, the number of pixels is lower and this can result in having an unclear image where the individual pixels may be able to be seen.

In TV, at least 25 images are shown every second. This is enough for the brain to interpret the images in succession as an actual moving image. Each of these individual images in known as a frame.

Apect Ratio

Aspect Ratio

Widescreen = 16:9
Normal 4:3

Widescreen films have been available since 1953 whereas TV widescreen increased in availability later on. Films then changed to 4:3 to suit television. Changing films to suit TV is known as pan and scan. This involves re-editing the entire film to suit the smaller screen size. The central point of the shot remains whereas less vital areas of the shot are taken out. Pan and scan often means many areas of a shot which a director purposely composed are not included. This can cause a film to lose essence as many pieces of the film are left out e.g. reactions from surrounding characters or the location of the film etc.

Without using the pan and scan method, the whole of a widescreen image can fit onto a normal television but a letter box effect appears, with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Also, putting a 4:9 image onto a 16:9 screen can be done in two ways. The image may be stretched to fit the screen, but this often makes the image out of the proportion. Another method is to pillar box it and have two black bars on either side of the image (opposite of letterbox).

Letterbox effect:

                             
Pillarbox effect:

http://www.azpbs.org/digital/grfx/pillarbox.jpg
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