Thriller Evaluation

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

As a thriller opening sequence our media product follows the typical thriller conventions in a number of ways. Throughout our sequence we have a very fast camera movement rapidly changing through transition of several different objects and places. The speed movement gives a genre representation - Fast pace is associated with thriller films. In our research we found that the typical thriller opening sequence would have a highly packed action scene where for instance someone might get killed e.g. Face off, slow motion shot when the young child dies. Or, there could be a fast sequence of meaningful shots (objects, people etc.) in a rapid succession. e.g. Se7en, where shots of books and photos where shown. Our opening sequences consists of objects and places in which gives the consumer an ominous feel. For example, we have a fountain in our sequence which has been dyed red. The colour red connotes blood and death and many other negative connotations. Other shots consist of chains connoting and representing torture or prison, guns (death), smokers and drugs (typical to gangsters). These shots are typical of those that one would see in a thriller film, thus allowing easy genre recognition from the audience. Throughout the trailer there is a mysterious feel through use of enigmatic shots; the consumer may not understand what some of our shots mean which grips them and allows us throughout the film to partly reveal certain answers they may be asking. We felt that our music was an important part of making the opening sequence fast paced and dramatic to represent the action. To give a professional feel our music moves in synchrony with the action; this makes the sequence flow and emphasises dramatic effect in each frame. This aids in drawing our consumers in to the film immediately.

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

Our thriller storyline represents niche social groups that fit and compliment the thriller genre. Our basic storyline is about a man who is in imprisonment and has become exceedingly mentally unstable. The character is involved in aspects such as guns and violence, drugs and smoking, and Gothic graffiti that artistically portrays the character's mental instability. This represents the minority of people that are in some way a threat to society, which also allows the audience to make parallels to such social groups and therefore gives a more realistic feel to the thriller.

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

Media institutions that are commonly known for distributing films of a thriller genre are most likely to distribute our media product. For example New Line Cinema is quite common with thriller films. Popular media institutions that represent popular thriller movies will attract the audience and gain more viewers therefore making more money. If unfamiliar institutions distribute the film who are known for genre such as Comedy then the film wouldn't attract as many viewers and the institution would be highly unlikely to distribute the film.

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

Our target audience would be headed towards 15+ viewers, and there are several reasons for this choice.

Firstly we want maximum viewers. In order to gain maximum views we have to make it appeal to a wide audience, so as many young adults can go see the film but also older adults won't think it is too childish. 15+ is a very good rating as it allows violent scenes to be as flexible as we want, but not overly violent so that it becomes a horror film, e.g. Saw, which protrays a high number of extremely graphic murder scenes. If we had opted for a 12a for example the film would clash with several limitations in terms of action,dialogue and drug use. For example, drug use (such as cocaine abuse that is featured in our film), would have to be cut in order to lower the certification to a 12a and certain action scenes featuring guns and fights would also have to be shot in certain ways. Secondly, in order to make maximum profit we have to think about the certificate rating in a certain manner. Adults and young adults who are most likely to watch our kind of film don't want to be patronised with a young certificate rating or get the impression that the action will be mild, thus having lttle effect on the viewer or not challenging their ethical views in any way. The most prominent reason we decided against an 18 rating was that it would limit the audience significantly. Very common viewers are 15+ year old's and most thriller and the most successful thriller films (face off, memento) have a 15+ rating due to this reason. Due to these reasons, even though there would be younger teenagers that would want to watch the film , a 15+ rating is perfectly placed and much more suitable.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

There are a number of ways in which we attempted to attract our audience with our opening sequence. Firstly, we needed to enable easy audience identification and as mentioned before, genre recognition. These two factors are important to capture the attention of the audience quickly and effectively. This is important because fans of a particular genre (in our case Thriller) can take an immediate liking and attraction to the film. We also wanted an effective audience identification so we have our target audience (15+) instantly attracted. We felt this was an important issue as in order to make maximise profit and maximise views, we need our audience to have an instant attraction.

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

We used many different electronic products to maximise the professionalism of our product. When it came to shooting our footage, we were given a Camcorder and a tripod. Through experience and experimentation we found ways of using the camera in a less of an amateur way and in a more professional manner. We also found the tripod to be a very useful tool. Tripod set-up was very quick and efficient and allowed us to have great control over shots. As well as being great for steady shots, the lever was highly useful as we could do tracking shots, pan shots, high and low angle shots with ease, but more importantly improved the overall quality of the shots.

We also used a range of software using an Apple Mac. These softwares mainly consist of Garage Band and Final Cut. I thoroughly enjoyed using these softwares as it allowed great flexibility for us, and it allowed us to create our own personal soundtrack and edit our footage in any way we wanted it to be perceived. I learnt a lot using garage band such as using mixes and transitions, adjusting volume for any sound you want and sound overlay. I managed to utilise all of these effects throughout the making of our soundtrack to help create an expressive sound. Final Cut was slightly more complex, but it was very enjoyable learning how to edit our footage in a more advanced way. I learnt how to make filters (fade, colour and correction for instance), manipulating speed to create many effects, motion manipulation such as blur and cutting shots to fit with the music. We also used Adobe Photoshop to create our title sequences and import them to Final Cut and to do image overlaying .