Thriller evaluation

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

The media product that I have developed conforms to some thrillers like ‘The Shinning’ because they both build certain amounts of suspense they do this through the tone of music and the types of shots used which does not reveal to much of what’s happening. In my thriller, we tried to build suspense in conventional ways such as not revealing the face of a particular character. For us to build suspense we tried to avoid using close up shots on the face the reason being is that it might reveal a particular character which we want to remain discrete, if that is not successful we can lose the tension build up. We alternatively used close up shots on the boots and hands to try and hide the identity of this character. We also attained shots from behind the character, and tracked the characters from behind. We then see another character running away from someone or something, it is not completely obvious of what has happened which creates tension to the audience, this keeps them thinking.


To enhance the tension we also included music, this plays a crucial role because music changes the mood of the thriller and the audiences’ perspective. The music is almost a symbol to the audience, informing them indirectly that something crucial might be happening, which again raises queries which keeps the audience interested.

In parallel to my thriller, ‘The Shining’ is a good example of creating suspense, this particular film inspired us predominantly because it created tension really well for example, as we enter the scene we are immediately tracking the boy at a low angle from behind his tricycle, this startles the audience and raises some questions. As the boy pedals his tricycle further down the hotel corridor, the music becomes louder; furthermore the tempo becomes quicker which signifies danger. We used some of these elements and incorporated it in to my thriller.


How does your Media product represent social groups?

This thriller was constructed by us teenagers so it is mainly targeted at youths that are 15 and over. The main characters involved are males so it is assumed it is targeted at particular genders which are males. Gender is represented in a very stereotypical way especially in thrillers, men tend to be dominant and women tend to be passive this could be because in thrillers they don’t have a very strong role in thrillers.

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

Doing some research I found out that this particular company, ‘Pathe’ specializes in all aspects of film making such as production and development through to sales and distribution. I believe my media product would not be distributed globally. The reason for this is that to distribute globally you will need to have well recognized actors and directors to convince costumers to watch the thriller; also we do not have the funding to mass produce the media globally. However to make up for this, we will be distributing the media within the UK which would be released to small independent companies, it will also be revealed in a number of art house cinemas. Due to the fact our thriller is an independent British film with very little funding it is almost certain to be exhibited in art house cinema.

www.pathe.co.uk (global film distribution company)


Who would be the audience for your media product?

This thriller has a suspense build up and the audience needs to understand how it is being developed through out, because in thrillers not much is revealed and it is not completely obvious of what is happening, we need mature audiences which can relate to this media. Our main target age is 15 and over. Also the thriller mainly appeals to males who are 15 and over, due to the main protagonist in the film being a male. This is stereotypical in thrillers because characters who star in successful thrillers such as 007, Arlington Road and Collateral are males; therefore the male audience aspire to be like Tom Cruise and James Bond who are most often ‘heroes’ in films. There are a few females that are dominant in thrillers but they are still believed to be weak characters so therefore are represented weaker than men, this may result in women not watching many thrillers, women tend to be more dominant in romantic films.

I did a class survey and found out that:
• 63% of boys enjoy watching thrillers

• Only 37% of girls liked watching thrillers.





In this thriller we can have a combination of classes, whether it is lower, middle or upper class, but I personally think it is most suited to the upper class audience as they are university educated and may understand the suspenseful build-up better than the other social classes. And also the upper classes earn a lot so they can afford to go to the cinema as often as they want. But generally it all depends on what type of thrillers each of these classes may enjoy. It does not matter which class you are in as long as you enjoy the build up of suspense and like to think what will happen next? This genre is then well suited to those. A typical person who fits in to my target audience will be a 20 year old who works for an editing company, who is keen on going to the cinema at least once a week watching a thriller and also enjoys watching investigation programmes such as ‘NCIS’ and ‘CSI’ which requires you to think a lot and to predict the upcoming scene.

How will you attract/address your audience?

To attract and address the audience I can use advertisement such as using billboards, internet pop ups, sneak previews, newspaper adds, two for one promotion on cinema tickets. There are even fast food stores like McDonalds who are interested in advertising thrillers, they would not be advertised on happy meals because of the age rating of the film, but potentially be advertised on adult meals. Also to make our thriller popular we can advertise famous characters that inspired us to create our thriller. This will potentially persuade the audience to watch our opening sequence.

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

Before the construction of my media product I had to learn how to use the canon semi-pro cameras I have not used this type of camera before, so to improve my knowledge and skills, I did a special 1hour tutorial on using the camera. During the tutorial I learnt how to do the following things below:

• Inserting the battery
• Removing and re-inserting the DV tape
• Turning the camera on and off
• Recording/playback
• Attaching the camera to the tripod correctly and securely
• How to pan
• How to track
• Take static shots
• And how to use the focus

The bullet points mentioned above came in very handy when constructing my thriller, because all the points mentioned was used for example, when we had to take a high angle shot the tripod came in very handy as we could extend the legs to our desired length and take the shots needed, with ease we also used the tripod for static shots.

One advantage of the camera was you could alter the depth of focus. I felt this was a clever feature because we can make a particular shot blurry. This blurry shot was very effective as we used it to try and not reveal the face of a particular character (part of suspense build up). In the process of filming we encountered a problem with the camera as it was very power consuming, meaning the battery had a maximum life of one hour, so it meant the camera was not in use as we had to switch it off which got annoying over time, this was soon sorted out with an extra battery pack which allowed us more recording time.

Once the filming was all done we had to use software called, ‘final cut pro’ which allowed us to upload our footage. This particular editing software allowed us to convert tape footage in to digital format which allowed us to render the footage on the Mac.

At first this software was very hard to use because it had so many different features which I thought only professionals can use. But after a short preliminary exercise I soon felt more comfortable using the software. I learnt how cut and join two clips together, shorten the length of a clip, change the positions of clips, join match cuts and finally using different types of effects. All these features were incorporated in to my thriller.

During the construction of my thriller I have been using the internet to keep an electronic diary. I used a site called blogger which allowed me to blog the different types of tasks I did during the thriller construction. The blogger was basically to keep a track record of my progress. Once the thriller was completed we uploaded it on to ‘Vimeo’ and from that our audience can post comments and suggestion about the clip.

http://thriller08group27.blogspot.com/search/label/ADDIL%20BAKKALI (my blog)

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

Looking back at the match cut exercise I felt this played a crucial role in the development of the thriller. In order for the thriller to be a success there had to be good match cuts and it had to have a continuous feel of smoothness. When doing our thriller we did find that some of our match cuts were slightly odd and did not feel natural enough, this could have been caused by a variety of factors for example incorrect planning or the camera was not angled correctly. This problem was soon put right on the second attempt as we carefully reviewed and altered our plans. This shows that some match cuts can be very effective if positioned in the correct order or can be the complete opposite, it is a matter of trial and error. Even professional film crews come across problems like the ones I have encountered.

I have learnt that planning plays a major role of film making and you cannot just take a big leap and just start filming without any detailed plans. We have learnt that films that are not planned tend to look rushed. To make sure our thriller does not encounter these problems, we were given a story board. We had to draw our images describe the mise-en-scene, dialogue, effects, and music these are important stages because the plans we put on paper will come to real life. To enhance our understanding of match cuts we did a synopsis, this is basically like a story board but in much more detail. We also had to fill in the type of camera shots used, the duration and fill in whether the camera shot was either external or internal.

To make our thriller completely original we decided not to use digitally designed credits because we felt that it did not go well with our thriller, so we decided to take a risk and design our own credits on plain paper this way it will go very well with our true story feel of the thriller. This idea was thought of by Wing who is very artistic; he managed to draw and design the credits.

Once the thriller opening was completely finished, we then had the opportunity to view it to the class. From that we received the audience’s feedback; we felt that this was important for the success of our thriller. Happily the audiences enjoyed and understood the narrative of our opening film. These are some of the comments we received from our audiences:
“Really good music the solarize effect worked really well in creating suspense”

“I love the credits, the sound worked really well in the film I also like the close up shots on the boots”

“Amazing match cuts and credits, and the thriller looks very professional”

Overall my group are very pleased about the audience’s feedback, as we really worked hard in developing this media product.
In this overall evaluation of my work I can clearly say that this thriller has followed the conventions of real life thrillers and it has created suspense in a very effective way, I am very pleased of what we have achieved, and for a first attempt I think we have produced a smashing suspenseful thriller.