Thriller Opening Evaluation.

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

As our opening is a thriller, we did follow certain conventions in order to provoke a certain reaction from the audience.

We followed a common convention that is seen in thrillers, by starting off with a calm, close to reality environment (A cyclist on a calm, sunny day), and then throwing our protagonist into an abnormal situation where he is attacked, this is commonly seen in thrillers, for example in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" the character "Marion Crane" starts in a normal environment meaning the audience can relate as it is close to every day society, however, this character is then thrown into an extreme situation when she is attacked in the famous shower scene; by doing this the audience can empathize and relate with the character and therefore makes the narrative more exciting and keeps the viewers hooked to the character's story.

Another convention we followed was the use of suspense and tension, we did this in many ways, especially through sound. Throughout the opening we use a non-diegetic track which has a very ominous feel; at the start of the opening, the music unsettles the audience, and contrasts with the seemingly calm environment, therefore the music almost let's the audience know that something bad is going to happen  and keeps them on the edge of their seat. Similarly, the diegetic sounds throughout our piece were used in the hope of unsettling the audience; for example, the muffled dialogue of our protagonist screaming for help is quite disturbing as it is usaually associated with imprisonment or torture. Also the sound of the tool as it's being used to taunt the character has a disturbing mechanical noise which the audience can associate with the pain and torture that might follow.


How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For our thriller opening we believe our protagonist represented a common middle class citizen as he is wearing nothing fancy, just shorts and t-shirt and is on a casual bike ride. Basically this was done to show that there is nothing special about the character and as the majority of the audience is likely to be middle class, they can relate to the character. As for our antagonist, you can't associate him with any social group, as he is completely mysterious and gives off no indication about his personality, he even wears a mask to hide any emotion; this was intential to make the character more menacing and also to contrast the protagonist' character.

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

As the thriller genre is very popular amongst film fans, big distributors such as Warner Bros and Universal would likely distribute a film such as ours as there could be less risk distributing a thriller as something like a horror which has a much smaller audience and may not achieve a profit as big as a thriller would. As our film would have a mature audience, distributors may market our film on late night television in order to attract the older audience to watch the film.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

As most thrillers are certificated at a 12 age rating or higher due to the maturity required to fully appreciate the film, we consider ours to be no different and believe it would have a 15 age certifiation due to it's dark themes of torture and strong violence, meaning it would fit straight into the BBFC's 15 catergory; therefore we believe that our audience can range from any where from old teenagers to young adults, especially males as our protagonist is a young male therefore the audience can relate to him more; most thrillers tend to be orientated around males, as they tend to take up the largest percentage of the audience, I believe our thriller is the same as it contains violence and has a dark element to it which men usually prefer more than females.

How did you attract/address your audience?

As i said in the previous answer, we tried to attract the young male audience by making our protagonist a young male himself, making it easier for the audience to empathize for. To attract the audience we put the video on You Tube, which can be accessed by anyone freely, therefore it's a good way to attract young males as they are commonly on You Tube and don't have to pay a thing to watch it. Also by making a theatrical poster it could be seen by our target audience, if the film was to be distributed properly then it could be used on Bus stops and billboards in order to attract the audience. The poster is a good way of teasing the audience to watch the film as it doesn't give away too much, however it can give enough to make someone interested.

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

I have learnt much about the ways in which we could use our camera in order to create certain affects in our opening, for example we used the camera to create a blinking affect in our thriller by opening and closing the shutters, this was just something we thought we could utilise to make a realistic affect that we probably would never of thought of before the process. Also I learnt how to use different editing software, from Windows movie maker to Sony Vegas; by watching tutorials we learnt how to edit our thriller by incorporating our titles and adding different affects such as the "Fade out"

Another technology which I have used throughout this process is the blog itself, and learning how to upload certain videos and pictures so that any member of the public can access them; this is something I had never done before and now it seems quite easy and simple to me.

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

This task has made me learn what it's like to carry out certain roles within film, from directing to acting, and the importance of each of these roles when it comes to the finished product. The continuity piece aloud us to gain the basic experience of making a short sequence and allowed us to experience different ways in  which to operate the camera and decide what looks good and what does not.

I also learnt the importance of planning our final product, originally for our continuity piece there was next to no planning, just the idea itself and a couple of basic story boards; this made it hard when it came to filming as we were having to come up with certain shots and angles without thinking it through properly. however when it came to our thriller opening we made sure we knew exactly what shots were were going to use and what affect they would have on the audience; we each concentrated on our role in the group and prepared for it the best we could. This meant when it came to filming the thriller, everything seamed simpler and made it a fun experience.

We also leant how important a half decent editing software was; in our continuity piece we used a free on-line download editing software which made random technical errors and even left a watermark on the video. From this we decided that we were going to use something better, we first used windows movie maker which seemed to do a professional job however we then edited the final product with Sony Vegas which seemed to flow smoother and was much easier to use. editing was something I believe our group neglected with our continuity piece however we learnt from this and spent much more time on it for our thriller opening.

Overall, I have learnt much from the process and now gain much more knowledge on how films are made and more importantly how they are made well. The continuity piece showed me how we could exploit certain aspects in our final product so it create the meaning and entertain an audience.