By syed Muslim abbas zaidi

before making my final project which was itself a big and important

thing to do, I decided to take a survey or kind of a research asking people that what kind of movie they prefer to watch and the reason behind it. I asked my friends, neighbors and cousins who said that they like to watch action thrillers, suspense and comedy films. I knew that comedy was very hard to pull off as its not easy to make a comedy film which could really attract the audience and could have something new so I made my mind and decided to go for an action thriller film. When I asked my friends about their response to an action thriller film so their answer was that they’ll watch an action thriller with a good story as well as some good action sequences as every second Indian film is an action film but not everyone watches it as it doesn’t have a unique selling point, same old story and action that’s why it was very hard for me to think of an opening which would attract the audience and the genre could be clear to the audience and something which could build their curiosity level !

As I said before, the genre of my film “the chase” is action thriller as

nowadays audience prefer more of a suspense or action thriller type of

films and because action thrillers also has an element of suspense for

example the Bollywood film “talaash”. The conventions of a typical action

thriller film has been challenged yet used side by side by my film THE

CHASE.

The film follows the convention where the antagonist has a hidden identity

that the audience will uncover as the film progresses. Its based on two

friends who are the main protagonists being followed by a spy , often the

antagonist goes out for revenge from the past event. by watching my film,

the audience will get a clue of this convention. The convention has been

challenged where the antagonist have been shown in a high key lighting

rather then a low key lighting but the convention showing half faces of the

antagonist, shots of the antagonist being cut quickly aiming to hide their

identity is used frequently in this film

Back of spy to hide

identity

Half face of the

antagonist

Main actors/protagonists

Many of the other conventions are also used side by side in my film THE

CHASE such as fast paced editing specially in the scene where the

protagonist's friend is seen dead and also where the antagonist follows the

protagonist. other conventions such as close up shots of the characters to

show their expressions and fast pace music are also used in my film for

example when the protagonist found his friend dead, a close up shot

showed his expressions as well as when he was hiding from the antagonist,

his facial expressions were shown through close up shot. After he found out

that his friend is dead and something suspicious is going on…fast tempo

music started, giving a clue that some action is underway. This film

challenges one convention of an action thriller that is a diegetic sound of

breathing where in a scene where the protagonist hides from the

antagonist, he breathes very quickly. I have shown it in slow motion and a

fast tempo music is there rather then a diegetic sound of breathing. In my

video I’ve also used a lot of variations in order to complete a single clip or

shot for example when the guy took out the pistol, it took me three shots to

complete that sequence starting from the close-up shot of the gun being

taken out of his pant then a shot showing him loading the gun followed by

an over the shoulder shot showing the gun being pointed towards the main

character. These shot added variety to my film.

close-up shots to show expression

s

Point of view shot different variations to complete a shot

Over the shoulder shot

I have seen many action thriller movies but I find the film “ghajini” very

appealing. Although its an Indian film but deals with a lot of action thrill and

suspense. My work is somewhat inspired by this film although it’s a film

based on a person dealing with a disease of short term memory loss but he’s

constantly searching for a guy who killed his girlfriend . Also there is a scene

where the antagonist spies on a girl. Well there is another film which again

inspired me was again an Indian film called “hate story 3” in which two

people are living their life peacefully until a man arrives who was seen

watching every move of the protagonists as if he was ready to plot a revenge,

this story is somewhat similar to my story where two friends are enjoying

their life but aren’t aware that someone is plotting against them and is spying

on them.

Well the social issue described in my movie opening is very much common and very alarming nowadays and that is target killing, murders and revenge taken by people not realizing that it’s a huge sin and a crime in this world.

Today’s youth is very energetic as well as hyper . They enjoy things with full energy and also destroy things with full energy as nowadays our youth thinks that committing a crime is no big deal or even killing a person or destroying a life is considered very normal so my film targets on those issues which todays youth, rich or even poor people have to bear and that’s target killing or getting killed because of a revenge taken by someone

My film emphasizes on the youth of the modern world as they are the

people who are mostly interested in crime thriller movies and it’s a genre

that somewhat suites them too as the people shown in these kind of

movies who become target of murders or target killing are mainly youth

which means that they’ll be between the age of 16-30 . This age group is

my targeted audience as people older then this age group would be least

interested in watching a film of this genre and people under this age

group won’t either find it interesting or understand it as people below the

age of 16 are mainly interested in comedy films as they are unable grab

the depth that thriller movies provide.

Actors in my movie opening are also teenagers to support that my

targeted audience. Although my actors comes from a lower middle class

background but that doesn’t mean that these type of things happen with

people belonging from lower middle class background infact things like

murder and target killing targets people from all backgrounds.

A. The USP (unique selling point) through which my film engages with audience is its music. The music inserted in the film is taken from various sites on the internet for example sound bible and even from YouTube! The film is divided in two parts, in the first half of the film, a slow tempo music is added where the protagonist and his friend is seen enjoying their life and living peacefully. Now this slow music also helps to create an impact that everything is ok and working well. In the second half of the film, a fast tempo music is added where the protagonist is in trouble after finding himself in an irrevocable situation.

Fast tempo indicates that some action is underway and something is going to

happen.

The characters I picked for my film were all my neighbors. As we had a good

understanding so they agreed to work in my film. They all belong to a lower middle

class but were very excited and enthusiastic about their roles in the film.

Universal pictures are one of the big six companies that rule the world film

industries as they financially very strong . They are mainly distributors of films but

as being part of vast conglomerates who are horizontally as well as vertically

integrated, they are now also involved in the production as well as the exhibition of

films but that doesn’t mean that they only distribute big films with big directors. A

film with a good story and a director financing them well is quite enough for them

to distribute a film and it’ll also help recognizing my work. it also deals with all

types of genres which makes my film best fit for universal picture as distributors .

As my film is a low budget film, it would be difficult to find a production company

that offers to distribute low budget films . That’s why I chose universal pictures as

my distributors as it deals with all kind of budgets.

Although I have been making a lot of videos in the past and I used to enjoy a lot but after becoming a student of media studies, I realised that there was much more to making a video then just holding the camera and recording a video. Media studies gave me a platform to prove my self as a film maker and not just that but it taught me many things as before studying media, there were a lot of things that I didn’t know about such as there were many angles of which I was unaware about such as the dutch angle, point of view shot and the art of using different angles while making a scene and the importance of choosing the right camera techniques. Through out this project I realised that the location of your video is also very important as if it doesn’t suit your video that it could mess up the whole thing. Also I learned to use different props as well as appropriate costume in my video.

I also got more confidence in using windows movie maker and

found many new things while editing it there and also learnt how to

download sound effects from youtube and use them in appropriate

places. When looking back at my final project I can identify the

things that I could have changed or added in order to make my

film THE CHASE even better and appealing, that is dubbing of the

dialogues delivered by characters and decreasing background

noise as then my video could have sounded as well as looked

better . I could’ve added two to three shots as it could help the

audience to understand the scene even better like when the

protagonist hit the antagonist with the bat , I could’ve shown the

shadow or the back of the enemy.

I think media studies is a very entertaining as well as informative subject which lets you use different kind of technologies like a dslr for the first time as well as lets you understand different aspects of media as well different terminologies that are used in media. I filmed my project with a canon 550d which was an amazing experience because the moment you hold the camera, you start considering yourself as a film maker and suddenly every other shot and story starts coming to your mind!

Although there are many software used to make or edit a video such as AFTER EFFECTS but I used windows movie maker as it was what my project required as after effects is a complex and difficult movie editor and my movie didn’t have any kind of visual effects and complex editing so MOVIE MAKER was quite easy to understand as well as a good experience to learn a lot of things about movie maker and editing a video.

The editing of my film THE CHASE was not easy as there were many quick

cuts as well as many audio effects and background music added to it. I

download a lot of audios like the gun shot sound in my film but something

just didn’t seem right as it sounded fake and animated until I found a perfect

audio on sound bible which suited my scene. I download slow tempo as well

as fast tempo music from YouTube which was a new thing as YouTube is

video sharing website which doesn’t support solo audio files but I found a

website which downloaded YouTube's video file as an mp3 file which was a

new thing that I learned and was very useful as well.

I didn’t use tripod for my shoot nor any kind of mics used for dialogues as

there were very few dialogues in my video and it was based mainly on music

and action.

I also learned to pan the camera without the tripod and filmed a shot but

didn’t add it in my video as the video became too long.