Final Thriller Film

Audience Feedback

Make comments Gabby, J and K  (Andrews blog), Charlotte and Phil (Andys Blog)

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Title sequences (Jodie)

• The first title sequence I looked at was Inception.

Jess Brayne - Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product uses many of the conventions that identify to the thriller genre.

• The use of antagonist/protagonist is used in the form of the teenage girl and the mysterious kidnapper.
• The kidnapper also fulfils the role of an enigma character; a character or item that remains a mystery to the audience to build suspense.
• The narrative of our media product is told in such a way that it leaves the audience asking questions and wondering what will happen next, keeping the audience on the edge of their seats. Cutting between two different characters, the girl leaving college (protagonist) and the man unlocking the cellar door and preparing for what is to come (antagonist), creates a feeling of tension among the audience.
• We shot our opening in such a way as to hide the identity of the kidnapper, creating a more tense feeling and also to create an amount of untrustworthiness about the character. A lot of the footage was taken from very high angles in order to show the difference in power between the two main characters, the kidnapper having more power.
• The clothes our two main characters wore also helped build tension and suspense. The girl wore normal clothes as a stereotypical teenage girl would in order to show that she was just a normal girl; this was to emphasise the characters vulnerability and overall innocence and to build up  level of sympathy amongst the audience. We had the kidnapper dressed in dark clothes to create a higher amount of mystery encasing this character, also, being dressed in all black makes it even harder to give the kidnapper an identity.
• The knives we used as props add more thrills to the opening of our thriller, the sharp noise they made as the kidnapper sharpened them, and the use of chloroform, made the tension even higher due to the malicious implications they gave off.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our main two characters represented particular social groups such as Gender, Age, Ethnicity and Social Class. The two are very different and represent their social groups very differently.

• Gender: The girl dresses like a stereotypical girl would, showing that she is a normal girl. 
• Alternatively, the kidnapper will, despite his almost lack of identity, will be presumed to be a male with a certain amount of strength and logic. We can, from his build and his stance, guess that he is male. We can also deduce that he is quite logical due to the fact that he has managed to plan the kidnapping and carry it out, presumably thinking of all possible eventualities.
• Age: Again from the way she is dressed, her general look and the fact the audience sees her coming out of college, we can see that the girl is in her mid to late teens. This can also be learnt through observing her behaviour and her facial features.
• The kidnapper, however, is harder to put an age on as we never see his face, or get any hint of his identity. Nevertheless, we can guess that he is a young adult, maybe early twenties, because of his build. Nothing else about this character really gives away anything about his age.
• Ethnicity: Unlike the other social groups, ethnicity is very easy to determine. The girl is white, of British descent.
• On the contrary, it is very difficult to appoint the kidnapper to a certain ethnic grouping without looking at his face, which we never get to do.
• Social Class: social class is determined by someone's wealth or behaviour in particular situations. The girl comes across as being upper-middle class, she enters her house through a very large kitchen, implying that she has a lot of money. This can also be given away by the way she dresses and that fact that we saw her at college, which we assume she would regularly attend.
• Once again it is harder to define the kidnapper's social class because of the efforts to keep his identity secret. Although, we can gather that he must have a decent amount of money in order to purchase all the props he would need to carry out the kidnapping.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

A small British distributor like: Revolver, Metrodome and Icon.
How many copies? £1500 each
Where to release: A small cinema like: The Duke of York's, Brighton, The Cornerhouse, Manchester or Hyde Park Picture Palace, Leeds. This is because a small company would not have lots of money to spend on distribution unlike Hollywood for example.
Eventually maybe Lovefilm or Netflix or maybe online for xbox if the film became very popular.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

Our target audience would be, predominantly, males in their teenage or early adult years. This is because the thriller genre is preferred by this target group. I found this by doing a small survey of my friends on Facebook. I looked at the BBFC standards website to determine what certificate to place upon our thriller. After careful consideration, I have decided to classify our film as a 15. This because it could contain strong violence and strong language under circumstances of frustration and anger. This decision is also based on the certificates of films of a similar nature, such as: Inside Man, The Negotiator and Die Hard.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted this audience through our storyline, which contains violence and suspense. We found out that this is what our target audience liked to see in a film. We also attracted our target audience by not having a really far-fetched storyline that was unbelievable. Although this thriller is aimed at males, females may feel sympathy for the female character and this makes them want to watch the film to see if she survives. This connection of sympathy can be used to attract all sorts of people to watch a film, as can the premise of mystery and suspense.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Sound/video clip.
Rough script:

• Camera: Shot distances, how effective it is to get close, how to frame things better (we had to re-shoot parts as there was either lots of unused space of feet/tops of heads were cut off), tracking and how the dolly made too the camera wobble on the tiled floor so we improvised, how to pan and not have unused space during, how to make angles effective and show power or give the impression someone is being followed, 180 degree rule (we broke it and had to re-shoot)
• Lighting: We had problems in the house when we panned because by the door it was really light but further in it was not, we solved this later in the editing. We created different moods through the lighting, in the cellar it was very dark lighting,
• Editing: How to cross cut, we had problems editing scenes together so they didn't jump, we had to change the size of some shots as there were unwanted things, like light stands, in the background,
• Sound: How to remove all sound and overlay a sound track, how to accentuate specific sounds, of parts of sounds, to improve I think we need to spend more time as the sound track become annoying and doesn't fit the film properly
• Titling: I knew nothing before, now where to place names/the title, how to change fonts and size and colour,

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

I feel I have learnt:

• Better framing
• Use of more shot types, especially close ups
• How to track and pan effectively
• How to edit things together more smoothly and how to use cross cutting
• How to edit sound and change the volume of only certain points
• How to construct a character better, mainly through their costume and subtly little actions
• How to get cut effectively so the shots don't drag on
• How to speed up clips enough for their purpose but not so they look comical
• How different types/positions of lights can change a mood

Jodie Cruttenden- Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of the real media products?

What makes a good thriller?

• A good thriller should showcase intense excitement, it also should gradually build up suspense. A thriller is supposed to provide thrills for the audience, it's also involves a protagonist and a antagonist. The audience has also got to understand the characters so they don't get confused or lost in the plot, but the plot can't be too easy to understand otherwise the audience will simply loose interest.

Conventions of a thriller

In order to make a successful thriller it should contain...

• Suspense
• Enigma
• Antagonist 
• Protagonist
• Disruption
• Threat

(Click on the links for definitions)

• We made sure our thriller contained all of the above. There was suspense, and we showed this by cross cutting between the male and female. The female was blissfully unaware of what was going on in her own house. A house represents safety and a place to go, but the fact she was unaware that an intruder was in her house puts her in threatening danger. The disruption in the thriller was when she was kidnapped and woke up in the cellar, this again would increase the suspense. This is where enigma comes into the thriller, its where the audience are given a situation but with no answers, so they have to solve what is going to happen.This is another strategy to keep the audience hooked. Obviously in a thriller there has to be an antagonist and a protagonist. Which we made sure we included.

• Before we filmed our thriller we had to research thriller openings. It was interesting to see what directors had decided to to, for example- the plot, camera shots and the editing.The thriller openings I researched were; Arlington road, The Machinist, panic room and P2. None of these thrillers really influenced our thriller but it was helpful to just watch the openings and see how they were all constructed.

To ensure our thriller opening would hook the audience we needed to ensure we covered all of these areas; Editing, Mise en Scene, Camerawork.



Todorov's theory

• We applied this theory to our thriller opening. 
• The beginning of our thriller starts with a 'sense of normality'
• The girl is shown leaving college, this scene was a quick scene to ensure the audience didn't become bored.
• The climax would be when the two characters are shown. When the man is sharpening the knives, whilst meanwhile the girl is travelling back from college, completely unaware of what is to come.
• The event is when the two characters meet.
• This would be when the female character discovers the body in her home, and then is kidnapped and finds herself in the cellar.
• Because we filmed a thriller opening we didn't show the problem being solved/restoration.
• By doing this it hooks the audience and will make them want to continue watching the thriller.

Editing

• The editing has got to be quick to keep the audience interested. In our thriller opening one of the main techniques we used was Cross Cutting. The use of cross cutting enables you to switch between scenes which  then creates suspense and will keep the audience watching and wanting to find out what will happen next. We used cross cutting a lot at the beginning of our thriller, it cut between two different locations, where eventually the two characters met. Cross cutting shows the audience that the two characters are linked.

                                                     
Here is an example of cross cutting used in a thriller.

• The male character is the Antagonist- An antagonist is a person who is opposed to, struggles against, or competes with another; opponent; adversary.

• The female is the Protagonist - The protagonist is a character in a story, usually the main character. It is very often that the Protagonist is facing an antagonist, which is against the protagonist. the antagonist is usually portrayed as an evil person or creature, and the protagonist often wins and defeats the antagonist at the end.

Mise En Scene

Costume/hair/make-up-  

• The male character was wearing dark clothing, his identity was also hidden.
• Whereas the female character was portraying a stereotypical teenage girl and wearing a hoodie and jeans. This emphasises the fact that the female is vulnerable, innocent and unaware of what is to come.
• Both characters are represented through the use of costumer, hair and make up.

Settings/props-

• One of the best props we used in our thriller opening were the use of the knives. The noise that they made when the kidnapper sharpened them really set the mood of the opening. We had three settings used in our opening, the college at the beginning where the female left, heading home, completely un-aware of what was to happen. The second setting was inside the house, where the female character stumbled across a body, and then was kidnapped. This is where the final scenes of the opening were filmed- in the cellar.

Lighting-

• The lighting was quite dark. It created a sense of mystery and set the mood for the opening. Low key lighting represents mysterious and is another technique for creating suspense.

Sound-

• If we could go back and improve anything about our thriller I would definatley improve the sound we used for our opening  It was the same music throughout the opening which we shouldn't have done because it got dull and repetitive and the suspense of the thriller started to wear off.

Camerawork

• There were a range of shot distances and camera angles used. We did this because it increases suspense and creates questions for the audience. In order for the audiences questions to be answered they would have to carry on watching the thriller opening, this is another strategy in which hooks the audience.

Some of the techniques we used were:

• Panning

• Low angles

• Extreme long shot

• Close ups

A thriller has got to have a range of camera shots and angles otherwise it would become boring. The videos that I have embedded are examples of what we included in our thriller.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In our thriller there are two characters; male and female. Both of these characters represent different social groups. 
The social groups that are included in our thriller are; 

• Age
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Social class

(Click the links for definitions)

Male character- antagonist:

• Young adult, 
• British white male, 
• Lower class/middle class

Female character- protagonist:

• Young teenager/adult
• British white female
• Middle class

• Age

There are two characters involved in this thriller, a male and female. The age of the male is unknown, but you can interpret that because the female is shown leaving college that her age ranges from 16-18. The females body language appears to tell the audience that she is young, she appears as if she is innocent. The clothes that the female is wearing and the way that she acts suggests that she is of a young age.

• Gender

There are two genders represented in our thriller; male and female. The female portrays a typical stereotyped young girl. Notice that the male is presented in a negative way. This is a contrast between two characters. Maybe it is slightly bias as the thriller was created by three females... But then again teenagers/young adults are presented negatively in social media so some may say that our male was a reflection of stereotypes. 

• Social class

Our thriller shows our male as a lower/middle class character. This is shown by the clothes he is wearing, all black and simple, his identity is also hidden and he is involved in a kidnap so he is more likely to be lower class. Whereas on the other hand the female is obviously a middle class/upper class character. Clues are given away which tell you that she is a higher social class then the male because the female enters an open kitchen and arrives home by a car and attends college. She is also dressed like a stereotypical female, all of this suggests that the female has money. Whereas the males identity is never revealed so we can't interpret what actual social class he belongs to but I'd say he was a lower one than the female. The male must have some sort of income as he can afford clothing and props for the kidnap.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?


There are many ways on how we could distribute our product, for example:

• Youtube
• Love film
• Netflix
• Metrodome
• Itunes

Why these distribution companies?

• I thought Youtube because Youtube is used by millions of people and it would be a good way for people to watch your thriller, it's also easy access you don't have to have an account to watch videos and you don't have to pay. The other reason I thought Youtube would be a good distribution choice, is because it's online and because our target audience is aimed at mostly teenagers, our generation spend the majority of our time on the internet so it would make sense to distribute it online.

• Lovefilm would also be a good company to distribute our film, as would netflix because you can now download your film instantly onto your home media platform, such as- computer, xbox, wii. Game consoles are now playing a bigger part in the way films are watched as Microsoft realeased a statement saying that their xbox live members are now spending more of their time watching tv, and films and listening to music on their platform rather than playing games.

• Itunes and Metrodome are the final choices for possible distribution companies. Itunes is extremely well known, although the prices aren't exactly 'cheap' they aren't too expensive. It would obviously be a lot cheaper then going to the cinema, or buying the dvd from a dvd store, as they are all going into administration anyway because the internet has taken over.

How?

• You can advertise your film anywhere. Could have adverts on Youtube playing before a video, on apps, you could have pop up adverts. Social networking sites- Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

• The target audience for our thriller would be 16-20 year olds. Maybe even older then 20. The thriller would hopefully appeal to both female and males as there is a male and female character. So both sexes could 'relate' to the characters. It would be available for people in the United Kingdom, America and Europe because they could all easily relate to the characters.

• This audience would be the best audience as they are mostly teenagers, as are the characters in the thriller, and the first scene is at college so they could all have a sense of familiarity.

This pie chart shows the most popular movie genre for 2009.

• BBFC stands for british board of film classification. It is extrmeley important that your film has been watched and rated. After researching on the BBFC website .  I would say our film should be a 15. As the thriller opening shows knives being sharpened, which could be used for violence. It also would cause some distress to younger children with the kidnapping and when the female comes across the body in her home. 

5) How would you attract/address your audience?

• Our target audience is 16-20 year olds, both male and female , but probably mostly males. I said 16 because that's roughly the age of the characters that are in thriller , so they hopefully would feel they could relate to them. This hopefully would also make the film more enjoyable for the audience. It also would hope to keep them entertained because it's not an everyday occurrence that a college student is kidnapped and locked in a cellar.

• The pace of the film is relatively quick, with the cross cutting. The cross cutting produces enigma and also suspense and tension.

When I asked friends for their opinions on our thriller opening this was some of the feedback:

• "The one thing I can think of that I didn't like was the soundtrack choice, was very repetitive. I liked how you switched between the male and female character"

• "I was a bit confused at the start because it started at college and I thought it was a thriller film. It was good, just the start and the music was a bit dull"

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

We used a range of technologies to create our thriller opening. These were:

• Final cut pro, garage band- I have learnt to use final cut pro. Never used it before until I started doing Media, it's very simple to use once you have got the hang of it. I know how to cut footage down, remove the sound, put filters and make a title sequence. 

• Camera movement- When we first filmed our college scenes we completely forgot about all the rules that apply to camera movement and framing. Such as we broke the 180 degree rule. So we had to re-film this, which was annoying as it was quite a lot of footage.

• Knowing how to work a camera is basic knowledge, but I didn't know how to set white balance on the camera at first, now I know how to do that. It's very simple and you should always remember to do it as it saves your characters from being a strange colour. White balance is very important. I also learnt that when you film something, to leave a gap at the beginning and end so you can always cut it, we were also taught to have lots of footage, so if anything was wrong with them we wouldn't have to go back and re-film them.

• Camera editing- we learnt what continuity editing was. We did learn about the important of the 180 degree rule even though we broke it, but we went back and corrected where we made an error. Another shot we learned that is useful is shot reverse shot which is mostly used when characters are having a conversation. Finally I also learnt about match on action, we used this in our thriller when the male was sharpening the knives and lifting up the chloroform.

• We had lighting for our thriller. This is another mistake we made, some shots were too dark, or there were some shots where you could see the light stand, we corrected all of this on final cut pro. There was an issue where when we were filming someone took a photo to put on our blog and the flash showed up in the footage but we managed to get rid of it. There was also another issue where the camera showed that the lighting was fine  after we had done the white balance but when we played it back on the macs it was way too dark.

The final thing I learn about was sound. I didn't know about all the different types of sound. Such as:

• Diegetic sound
• Non diegetic sound
• Foleys
• Sound added during filming (synchronous) 

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

• I feel that since the preliminary task we all have come along way. I had no knowledge on what to do at the beginning and now I can do it. I would say I've greatly improved on how to use final cut pro, as before I was not very good at all.

• The prelim was set to film at college, whereas the thriller we were allowed to film it anywhere we wanted as long as we had some sort of permission.

• I am also a lot better at using final cut pro, garage band and blogger. They all played an important role in completing our thriller.

Photos from filming (Jodie)

This is the chair we used as a prop.

Another prop

Greg ready to go into the cellar

More props

Lighting all set up

Rope being cut

Becky Fermer - Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of the real media products?

Conventions of a Thriller:

Suspense

A state of uncertainty or excitement, keeps the audience awaiting to see what is to come.

Enigma

Elements of the story are not presented in the narrative, therefore this intrigues the audience.

Restricted Narrative
Where the audience know less or the same as the character.

Unrestricted Narrative

When the narrative shows the audience more than the character.

Protagonist

The defenseless and innocent character, often seen as female.

Antagonist

The adversary of the protagonist, appears the most dominant, however they are seen as the bad person.

Confrontation/disruption

The arrival of a force or character which opposes normality, creating a problem.

Video of Steven Spielberg on what makes a good thriller:

• In this clip, Steven Spielberg proposes that the story is the key success to a good film, no matter which genre it falls into. He also makes it clear that there is no point in making a film unless there is a story worth telling, which results in the thrills following from this. The thrills of a thriller need to make the audience want to bite their fingers, meaning that they need to feel anxious and intrigued as to what it going to happen next. 

Editing

• Our thriller uses the aspect of suspense by using the use of cross-cutting editing, to create  a build up of tension and uncertainty as the film goes on. At the start of our opening, we cut between two different locations:

- Man (antagonist) unlocking a cellar door

- Girl (Protagonist) leaving college

Example of cross-cutting in our thriller:

Setting 1

Setting 2

This creates the impression that at this moment in time, the two characters have nothing in common with each other, however as we move on through the film, the audience begin to sense a connection between the two of them, suggesting that the characters will eventually meet. This shows Unrestricted Narrative where the audience know that the male character is going to capture or harm the female somehow. In addition to this, our thriller also shows Restricted Narrative where the audience are unaware of the relationship between the characters and their life history and backgrounds. This therefore makes the audience feel intrigued to watch on. The disruption occurs, when the female character notices a dead body in her living room and is captured by the male character. 

Example of cross-cutting in Thriller films:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OD0h7WcgJ5w

Structure of a thriller narrative (Todorov's Theory)

1) Normality  (Equilibrium)

2) Disruption    (Dis-equilibrium)

3) Resolution/closure

• In our thriller opening, we first start off in a state of normality as we see a normal everyday girl leaving college. This marks the beginning of our film, and requires a short set-up, meaning it doesn't last for too long. 
• As we get to the middle of our thriller opening, we are faced with the disruption where the two characters meet and the tension increases.
• However, due to the fact that our media product only displays a thriller opening, we didn't have to show a resolution or closure, which creates intrigue for the audience, as they will want to continue to watch the film to find out more.

Camerawork

• In our thriller opening, we altered the camera angles and shot distances, in order to hide the antagonists identity. This increased tension and suspense raising questions within the audience; who is this person? what are they up to? what are they doing? The fact that the male character's (Antagonist) identity is never seen, creates an enigma as we don't know who he is and what he intends to achieve from his abnormal actions. However, we decided that his character is disturbed and lost, as if he has experienced something dark in life. This is one of the main restricted narratives of our thriller and i feel that it keeps the audience intrigued and interested to find out more.

• Furthermore, the majority of our camera angles were from a very low angle, especially during the scenes where the two characters meet. This suggest a difference in power and status, in particularly making the male character the more dominant and the female character weaker and more vulnerable. In many thriller films, such as The Usual Suspects, low angles and close up's are used to suggest a difference between power and status.

Mise en Scene

• Lighting - Our lighting was very low key during our thriller opening, in order to cast a more dark and mysterious mood. 
• Costume, hair and make-up - We made the female character appear as casual but not a normal stereotypical female, in order to create a confusion about her character and to make her appear as a less obvious victim, compared to what we see in most thriller films (e.g. The Disappearance of Alice creed). This was done by dressing her in everyday twenty-first century clothing, such as jeans and a hoodie, so she didn't look like a glamorous or girly stereotype (e.g. High heels and lots of make-up). 

On the other hand, we made the male character appear very dark and bleak, by dressing him in black and concealable clothing in order to hide his identity.

• Setting and props- The knives used in our thriller, were put in place in order to build up the suspense and to thrill the audience. The sharp and fatal sound that they created, increased the tense atmosphere., making the audience aware of the characters disturbed ego. Furthermore, our setting was based around a cellar, creating a more dark and bleak mood. adding to the suspense of the film.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

• Our thriller opening consists of only two characters, one male and one female, however, they both represent different social groups, such as gender, sexuality, age and social class. Our two characters fall under these particular social groups:

Male character (antagonist) - Young adult, perhaps middle-class, British-white male.

Female character (protagonist) - Teenager, upper-middle class, British-white female.

• Age: 
  In our thriller opening, we can see that the female character is a young girl, from the setting, body language and her clothes, hair and make-up. At the beginning of the film, we see her leaving college, suggesting that she may be on her way home from a normal day of college. Furthermore, her clothes also suggest her age group, where we see her in casual jeans and a hoodie, the typical twenty-first century female outfit. Her body language appears casual and innocent, making her appear harmless and original within her environment.

• Gender:
  Both representations of gender in our characters, show negative impressions, where the characters are displayed in stereotypical ways. The male character is bold, superior and disturbed, therefore the audience view him as a threatening male. We see this through his costume, body language and the way he is positioned in the frame. His costume is very dark and concealing, hiding his identity. Furthermore, the way in which his body language is used, for example when he is sharpening the knives very slowly, this suggests he is a very fierce character. The composition of his character within the frame, implies that he doesn't want to be seen and intends to stay discrete and secretive to contain his independence.
  On the other hand, our female character is not seen as a stereotypical female, however she is a helpless victim, with no strength to fight against the male. She is weak and vulnerable, with little knowledge of what is going to happen to her. We see this through certain areas of mise en scene, such as her body language, facial expression, hair and make-up. Her body language is very timid and weak, when we see her trying to tug and pull her way out of captivity, with her facial expression showing fear. Furthermore, her hair and make-up suggests a typical everyday girl. She appears casual and beautiful, but not too posh or glamorous, with no intimidation about her.

• Social class: Our thriller opening shows our female character as an upper-middle class female. We can see this through aspects of mise en scene; the setting, props, hair, costume and make-up. We see her enter her house through a big open kitchen, suggesting that she has a fair amount of money. The audience also see her as quite a wealthy character due to the way in which she is fully and appropriately dressed, and the college setting in which she regularly attends. On the other hand our male character's social class is never quite made clear, due to the regular aspect of his identity remaining concealed. However we assume that he must have some money due to the use of props that he has obtained, such as the long sharp knives and chloroform.

3) What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Who would distribute our product?

• As our target audience for our thriller film is teenagers and young adults, i felt that our product would be best distributed through online sites, such as You-Tube or iTunes.They are smaller companies, and therefore have lower budgets.

Why?

• With the expense of the cinema and media retailers such as HMV in administration, the majority of the population tend to purchase their chosen cinema films online. It is now easily accessible for people of any age, gender or social class, on top worldwide sites like iTunes, You-Tube, Love-Film and Netflix. 
• This later brought me to the decision that distributing our product through online institutions, would make it more successful in being presented to our target audience.

How?

• Pop-up advertisements in apps purchased on websites like iTunes and  Google Play Store.
• Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, companies can share the film link through their fan pages. This will help our film to become more global, for those interested and increase the viewer ratings.  
• On-screen advertisements at the margin of the web-pages.
• Recommendations - Viewers watching similar films on these websites, can see recommendations for our thriller.
• Adverts/ trailers in other movies.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

• I felt that young adult and teenage males would be the target audience of our Thriller film. I did some researching on the internet and asking people on social networking sites, like Facebook, including family and friends, and found that the most popular film genres were Mystery-Thriller.The majority of people who i surveyed that stated this genre were older teenage boys or young adult males. On the other hand comedy was more popular with young adult females and teens. 

• Following my own survey, i also did some research into the worldwide film genre. This graph below shows the most popular movie genres in North America 1999-2012, from the total box office revenue.
• I found that the Thriller genre seemed to be fairly low in the scale, when compared to other popular movie genres. However this graph of statistic does not identify certain genders or age groups.

Graph from Statista.com

Top 5 Thriller films from www.screenrush.co.uk (as of 6/4/13)

1. Inception 

2. Pulp Fiction 

3. Black swan 

4. Fight Club 

5. The Departed 

• These films were reviewed by users of the site, and most of the reviews were stated by males. This therefore made it clearer for us to categorize the thriller film genre under the male popularity.

Inception Trailer:

BBFC Guidelines

• From researching and reading guidelines from the BBFC, i would class our film as a 12A/12. This is due to the fact that it contains sharp weapons and moderate violence. However, it doesn't contain strong language or discrimination that may be unsuitable for young teenagers.

BBFC Classification Guidelines

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

• After we decided that our audience would be for young men or teenagers, i felt that the narrative of the story, a girl getting kidnapped, would be a more intriguing topic for this age group and gender. 
• After doing my own survey of people's preferred film genres, i found that hardly any girls stated that they liked thriller films, therefore the plot of a girl coming home from college and getting abducted into a cellar, wouldn't appeal to many females.

• The pace of our thriller opening, was fairly rapid from the cross-cutting that we created into the sequence. This therefore produces suspense and enigma . 
• I asked friends and family who are of our target audience, and found that they often feel sympathetic and compassionate towards a female victim in a film, however their view would change if the victim was a male character. Therefore, the female victim in our story, would help interest the male audience and create a appealing impression between them and the character.

• After showing our film to a few people i know, i got some feedback on their thoughts and impressions of the film. The majority of them were positive, however many stated that the sound irritated them a little, therefore it could be improved.

" Very interesting, great casting. Soundtrack got on my nerves a bit, therefore it may put other people off watching it"

"The sound effect of the blokes footsteps at the end was very effective and creepy. Maybe a bit too fast paced, however it made sense"

"The fact that the male remained anonymous, helped sustain the conventions of a real thriller, and i really wanted to find out who he was. The sound was very long and continuous"

• After receiving this feedback from family and friends, i found that the males preferred it more than the female audience that i asked, however they did mention that the soundtrack didn't reflect the mood and what was going on, compared to actual thriller films. 

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Camerawork:

• During our first episode of filming, we were so busy concentrating on our film and camerawork, that we forgot to consider and broke the 180 degree rule. Therefore, this meant re-shooting a big chunk of our footage, however the second time round, things were more more successful.
• In terms of the technical aspects, i learnt how to set the white balance on the cameras, in order to avoid unrealistic colour casts. I also learnt about sandwich, which is when you have to leave a gap at the beginning and end of filming, to avoid any cutting of your footage. This can easily be removed when it comes to using final cut pro.

Screen shot of
Garageband

Screen shot of Final Cut Pro

Sound:

• At the beginning of making our Thriller film, we had very little knowledge of how sound is used in film and sound editing. We learnt the basics and terminology of sound language:

Diegetic Sound

Sounds that originate in the story world, that the character can hear

Non-diegetic Sound

Sounds that do not originate in the story world, therefore the character cannot hear it

On Screen Diegetic Sound

Source of sound appears within the frame

Off Screen Diegetic Sound

Source of sound is not see in the frame

Foley Sound

Sound added after filming

Synchronous Sound

Sound added during filming

• I think if i had the chance to do it again, i would improve the soundtrack, as i feel it doesn't flow very well with our film.

Editing:

• From the whole process, i feel that i learnt the most through the editing technologies. I learnt how to add sound and create different effects using final cut pro, such as our titling and adjusting the format. 

What i learnt about editing in final cut pro:

Cross-cutting

Parallel Editing

Time

Pace

180 degree rule

Shot reverse shot

Match on action

Eye-line match

Space 

Sound Bridge

• I have also learnt about Blogger and it's format, gradually becoming more creative and experimenting with the use of visual techniques as well as the writing aspects. These include embedded video, screen shots, links and imagery. 

Screen shot of Blogger

Lighting:

• During the process of making our thriller, i learnt about low key lighting and lighting theory's and how they can create mood and atmosphere in a thriller film.

• I learnt that low key lighting is crucial when making a thriller film, as it expresses emotion and mood and symbolic character traits. 
• To create this effect, i learnt that it is best to have the key light on, the fill light very low and the back light very low or even off.

7) Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

• Since producing our preliminary piece of work, i feel i have progressed hugely in my technology skills, particularly with editing. This had made me more knowledgeable of the construction of film and expanded my ability and understanding of character construction and narrative.

Setting from the prelim, where we were only allowed
 to film on the college campus.

Setting from our thriller, where we had the freedom to
 choose our setting that we wanted. 

We also had more freedom in our thriller, to select our cast,
and use Mise en Scene aspects to represent their character.
In the preliminary task, we had to dress a girl up as a boy.

Editing:

• I feel i have improved in continuity and vision editing, however i wish i could have improved my sound editing skills to the best of my ability. Nevertheless, i am confident at using final cut pro, as during the preliminary task, i was unsure about many things. I had very little knowledge of the software and how to edit effectively. 
• Looking back on our product, i feel i worked harder and were more involved in the production, helping with my knowledge and understanding of making a media product.
•  During the editing process, i have learnt more about time, space and pace, which is vital in a thriller film, something which i didn't consider much during the preliminary task.  

Construction of character and story:

• This task needed more time, effort, dedication and thought, unlike our preliminary. I learnt about how you can use camera angles and shot distances to represent certain characters, through their age, gender and social status. Furthermore, i particularly learnt about how a fast pace makes a successful thriller, in order to grip and intrigue the target audience.
• Compared to the preliminary task, i now understand the conventions of a thriller and how to use aspects of camerawork, sound, mise en scene and editing to express a character. 

Continuity editing:

• During the preliminary task, we learnt about the 180 degree rule, shot reverse shot and match on action. These techniques were demonstrated clearly in our preliminary film, however during the construction of our thriller opening, we forgot about these important aspects of film making.
• A clear example of this is when we broke the 180 degree rule during our first day of filming, something in which we later had to re-shoot to correct it. However by re-filming this, we were more successful with our framing and were able to add effective camera movement, such as the scene where we follow the female from behind.

Camera:

• I felt that we were more risky in our thriller film, compared with the preliminary task, as we decided to experiment more with the camera. We wanted to make it less simple than the prelim, when we used a basic camera on a tripod, with little movement. During the process of our thriller, we used the pan, tilt and dolly to add more film techniques to our film. 
• All of these techniques, helped us to convey the characters in the way we wanted them to appear to the audience. 
• I was able to have more time using the equipment compared to the preliminary task, as there were less people in our group this time. I felt this helped me in developing my skills and understanding of film equipment.

Overall, i am generally pleased with our product and feel that i have come a long way since the beginning of the preliminary task.