Individual Evaluation

Thriller Opening Sequence Evaluation

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

We decided as a group to do a psychological thriller, we then researched what conventions a psychological thriller has and how we could adapt them to our own opening thriller. Our media product has incorporated some generic conventions, for example the soundtrack which is played throughout the sequence was made up of creepy sounds and dramatic effects. This is a characteristic of a thriller movie to help create the anxious atmosphere. This is used in the film Shutter Island with the sound of the lighthouse horn throughout the movie helps create real mystery in the movie. Another representative generic convention of psychological thrillers that is apparent in our opening sequence is a long shot which adds anticipation; this was when the main character was walking along the path in our own thriller movie.

The use of these conventions has helped use to develop the forms of conventions real media products use for our sub-genre. We had to make sure the movie is clear to the viewers; this is because of the slow pace of the long shot and us using a slow motion during editing to add to the tension.

2.      How does your product represent particular social groups?

The main social groups that a thriller movie represents are either youths or working class. The main stereotypes of youths are that they are loud and antisocial when in a group of youths or better known as a gang. After deciding that we were going to have a gang of youths in our opening we wanted to make sure we conformed the stereotype of youths.

Towards the end of opening we had a gang in the scene. Having them with their hoods up, being loud and anti-social. This is the normal description of a gang and how they act when in public. Making sure they were conforming the stereotype of the youths we looked at the psychological thriller Clockwork Orange to see how gangs our represented in thrillers. In our opening sequence we hoped to represent a young female working woman travelling home from work. Personally I think we conformed the stereotype of women because we made the character look fragile and look like a woman returning from a hard day at work. Using high angles and presenting high angled shots of the character helped with the portrayal of a fragile woman. Although our main character is a female murder this challenges the stereotypical female character seen in our opening sequence.

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

Personally, I think that Momentum Pictures would be perfect for distributing our thriller movie because not only is it a British company, it also distributes thriller movies such as ‘The Woman in Black’. Our film is similar to ‘The Woman in Black’ because of the use of creepy sound effects used within our opening sequence and ‘The Woman in Black’. They will also be able to market our film to big cinemas and produce a lot of DVD’s of our thriller film. Also because they have produced ‘The Woman in Black’ that is very similar to our own thriller being in the sub-genre of psychological. Our movie would be a main stream film if it was released this is another reason why Momentum Pictures would be an amazing institution to distribute our media product. Personally, I don’t think our film would offer opportunities for franchises but maybe merchandise for example Momentum Pictures could release things like t-shirts or mugs with the films title on it but not anything else.

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

Before we started making our media product we looked into what audience we wanted to aim our thriller movie to. The specific target audience that we wanted to focus on was our own age group of 16-19 years old. We had to look closely on what our audience looks for in movies and what they enjoy the most. This is why we had to do both primary and secondary research to get the most reliable and non-bias results. We wanted to make sure that our opening sequence was right for our audience. We did some primary and secondary research to establish who we wanted to target our media product to. After going on the pearl and dean website to found out from their own surveys and questionnaires what people said about thriller movies and what the outcome was of the questions were. But from finding this information out that thriller movies were mainly promoted to the 18+ age range because of the disturbing scenes and violence that is seen in thriller movies. We wanted to try and aim our own opening sequence at the age range of 15+ so from finding out the information about other thriller movies this helped us to decide on what questions to ask when we did our own research. We asked a range of different people from age, gender, where they lived, hobbies and interests and also their occupation. This was to help us to find out who our audience was going to be as well as what our media product was going to be about. We also watched a number of psychological thrillers to see what audience the films would be for and how similar they were to our idea for the media product. We looked at ‘The Black Swan’ this was because the whole film is about two young characters which is similar to what our idea was for the media product, after looking closely at the film, we picked up a number of ideas of how to choose who our audience would be.

5.      How did you attract/address your audience?

After doing all the research on who we wanted our audience to be, which was the media product was going to be aimed at 16-19 years old and would be unisex, so had no particular gender aimed at. To attract this sort of audience we needed to use modern day language in the speaking parts of the opening and also try and have the main character wearing the clothes that are in fashion. We also had the main character in the same age group as what we wanted the audience to be this was to help with the realism of the situation that was happening. Also as a group we did an audience profile, this was to show what audience we had chosen and we looked further into the variety of things that age group does. We found out that our target audience likes to party, drink alcohol and socialise with friends. So when thinking about the shots we were going to use to help attract our audience, we thought that having a lot of Point of View (POV) shots would help with the audience being able to see what the character is seeing and how they would feel in those circumstances. We had a lot of long shots of the character so that the audience could see the way in which she was walking and what the surrounding area looked like. This also helped address the audience with how a normal teenager would looks like in that sort of situation. During our editing stage, we had a look at what other films do in there editing stage and tried to adapt it to our own with the technology we have to help attract the audience. We used things like changing the speed of the footage we thought this  would help with the addressing the audience, by that the footage is slow and can be seen easily.

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

After learning how to use all the technology that we needed to construct the media product we could then use our knowledge to make the media product over the period of two weeks. Firstly we had to make sure we knew what we were doing with the Canon camera like how to record and how to stop the recording. We also had to make sure we had the focus right. When using the canon camera we had to learn how to use the camera and all the extras onto of the camera to ensure we got the right effect and made sure we were recording the right parts that we needed to construct our product. We had a few compliances with the focus and the camera lens because when filming one part there was a slight mark on the lens which caused problems with the filming. I, personally have learnt how to make sure the camera is positioned correctly and that I used the camera in the right way to get the shot that I needed. After filming we had to upload the footage onto the Apple Mac computers, I have now learnt how to use the programme Final Cut Express and how all the side options that contribute to the making of the opening sequence. Final Cut helped us to add different effects to what we had recorded; we took advantage of this by using the black and white tool to add effect to opening sequence. We also got to use Garage Band this was at first quite hard to get the hang of because personally I had never used it before but after having a couple of trial runs the programme helped with knowing what all the sound effects sounded like and what ones would help with the making of our soundtrack. After making the soundtrack we then had to make sure we converted the soundtrack properly so that we could get it to work on the Final Cut programme. This was quite hard to do because we had to try and remember all the steps of how to convert the soundtrack but after doing it a couple of times, we managed to do it without even thinking. We also had to produce a production logo, we did this on Photoshop. We decided that individually we would produce a logo each and then get feedback on what people thought of the different logos and then ask them to choose the best logo. After receiving the feedback, we found out that our target audience preferred Alice’s logo so we went ahead with that one as our production logo. We also made a poster on Photoshop that would be used in cinemas and on billboards around the country if our film was ever released. This was really good to produce because we could put the main character on the poster and all the names of the other people that would have contributed to the making of our film like the distribution team, music and soundtrack assistants, the producer, the camera assistants and so on.

7.      Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full production?

Before we started filming the actual opening, we did a preliminary task we had a selection of different shots that we might use to make our thriller. It was really helpful because we got to grips with the camera and how we can make the certain shots look effective. After doing the preliminary task, we did some test shots of what were going to use this was also helpful because we could look at the shots back on the camera and see whether the shot worked with what we wanted it to portray. After looking at them we could see whether the shot was useful to us or whether we needed to change it something else. Those tasks also helped us to practice some shots that we thought were going to be hard for example the 180° rule and the Point of View shot. It also helped us to see that maybe we would have to change the shots because they were not effective enough for our opening sequence or wouldn’t work when at our location.

We had many weeks to complete the whole production from the research and planning to the end of the editing. As a group we sat down together to come up with different ideas of what to do for our opening sequence. We researched into what different sub-genres there were within the main Thriller genre. After doing this we had to decide what sub-genre our film was going to be. We watched a number of films within the psychological genre to get a feel for what these films consisted of. We looked at the conventions were in a psychological thriller so that when we made our own thriller it had the same conventions, we had to do this so that our thriller came across as a psychological thriller. After deciding what story line we were going to go with, as a group we sat down and draw up a storyboard of all the shots and the narrative we were going to use so that when it came to filming we had a rough idea of what shots and props we needed in that frame. This was good because when it actually came to filming, the person who was filming was able to look at the storyboard to see if they had the right angle and it portray what we wanted it to. We also produced a risk assessment, this was everything we thought would either effect or contribute to the filming of the opening. This was really useful because when we got to the location of where we were going to film we were able to move or try and dodge around the risks. A film schedule was also produced this was really helpful because we knew when were having the camera and then we could plan when we would have time edit. This was also brilliant because it aloud us to see if we had enough time to re-shoot any shots if we needed to.

I definitely feel more confident with all the equipment, doing all the tasks leading up to and after the filming was very helpful, especially the test shots. I think having them to have a go at before doing the actual filming was brilliant because we could see whether we were using the camera correctly or whether it was picking up unwanted sound in the sequence but more importantly the wanted sound.

As a group, I think we definitely fulfilled the task to the best of our ability even though we did have a few challenging problems to deal within the group but overcame them to get the production finished to the best of our ability. Individually we all did the tasks that were set and more to help contribute to our final product.