Evaluation - Vicky

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

We were set a task to produce the opening to a thriller film that lasted about two minutes. Our thriller incorporates generic conventions by not giving away the main story line at the beginning of the thriller, but dropping hints throughout so the audience has to try and guess. At the beginning of our thriller, its shows a man writing on a piece of paper, but you never see his face, only his hand writing which creates more suspense and makes it mysterious to the audience so it keeps going in their mind who it is. Also, the mise en scene helped to create more of a thrilling atmosphere. We used a gun in the first scene to show that this mysterious character was planning something and that something bad was going to happen, but the audience wouldn't know what. Also, to make the scene more dark, we put dark sheets over the windows and doors and used only the light from a small lamp. We were influenced by the film 'Silence of the Lambs' for our thriller. This is because at the beginning of the film, there was a woman running in a forest, and we thought it looked effective. As the main genre is thriller for our movie, we decided that the sub-genre could be action, as there is a lot of running around and movement.

 

How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

In our opening, the gender is mainly female. This is because in quite a lot of thriller movies, it is usually the female sex that has bad things happen to them, and usually the male sex that is involved and inflicts the bad things. Also, this is because males usually represent power and control over women. In our opening, there is a mysterious man who is obsessed with Kate, the girl in the opening, and will do anything to get closer to her, even if it mean hurting her or the people around her. This is kind of stereotypical, as if a woman liked a man that much, she would not be so dominant and controlling, she may just confess to him. To emphasize the mysterious man's obsessiveness, we use close up shots of him writing Kate's name all over paper, planning how he can get her, and putting pictures of her around it, one of which includes her boyfriend who he has cut out and wrote kill in the gap.

What Kind of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Media Product and Why?

I think that the media institution that might distribute our opening to a thriller could be a Hollywood studio, as it is quite similar to existing products. It is quite original having a woman running through a forest, but i think that a Hollywood studio could take ours and add to it. I think that it would be a cinema movie, as it is would only be the one film, with no sequel to it or book or television series. However, i think that it could follow on to having a dvd, which would include deleted scenes and unseen footage.

Who Would be the Audience for Your Media Product?

Our opening to a thriller would appeal to both male and female audiences, but of a certain age of 15 or above. This is because it can be quite disturbing to people under the required age as a lethal weapon is displayed at the beginning, and on the sheet of paper, there are plans to kill the young woman's boyfriend and to 'get' the woman. This could influence young people things they should not be seeing at that age, so we think the audience we agreed on is a good choice as they are old enough to understand the thriller and to try and guess what us going on and what is going to happen because it is quite mysterious and someone of a younger age may not understand as easily.


Another film that is similar ours is Silence of the Lambs because the opening is very similar to ours. Another film that is similar to ours is Orphan. This thriller film also has a 15 certificate and towards the end of the film, it has a forest scene similar to ours. These films appeal to the same sort of audience as our thriller opening.

How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

We attracted our audience by targeting it at the right audience (male and female over the age of 15). I think that the first scene, where the man is writing Kate's name all over a piece of paper and planning to kill her boyfriend to get to her would be very confusing and disturbing to the audience and would want to make them watch more to see who it is and what is going to happen. We used a lot of close up shots, particularly on this scene, to show the audience what the mysterious man is planning and close up on his gun and burning cigarette. In our thriller, we convince the audience to put themselves in Kate's position so they can witness what she is going through and how scared she is, alone in a forest looking for her lost boyfriend, and suddenly gets grabbed. The impact of this, is that both the audience and Kate do not know who this mysterious man is, putting them both in the same position, making the audience feel sorry for Kate. 

What Have You Learnt About Technologies From the Process of Constructing This Product? 

During the filming process, we had some problems with the lighting and we had to find ways of getting it to the exact light that we needed. We overcome this by putting dark sheets over the windows and closing the curtains so it seemed a lot darker than it was.


Also, another problem we faced whilst filming was that the tri-pod we were using was broken, so we had to try and secure the camera onto it without it being loose and falling off. We did this by putting the camera on the tri-pod and securing it with selotape. Also, when we were filming in the forest, the floor was very uneven so we had to try and find a spot that was flat and move all the sticks and twigs out of the way, and then we had to make sure that in the place the camera was, there was a large tree quite far away on the left hand side of the camera for the mysterious man to hide behind. We got used to the camera equipment quite quickly, but had to make sure we had enough battery for the forest scene, as when we got there we noticed that there was only half percent battery left so we had to try and do it in as less shots as possible. When we were editing on Final Cut Express, one of the effects we found was slow motion. We used this when Kate was running through the forest and cut out her legs running and used them for slow motion which I think looked very effective. Also, we got used to the editing software quite quickly considering that we had never used it before and it was fun looking through all the effects we could have.

Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel That You Have Learnt in The Progression From it To the Full Product?

I think that our planning stage was quite useful, but we altered quite a few things when we were filming. We also cut out some of the storyboarding too, as it would have been too long. One of the other things we edited was the end scene, where Kate was in the forest. On our storyboard, the camera was supposed to circle Kate round quickly while she stood still, but we couldn't do this as the camera would not stay steady. Instead, we had Kate spin round in circles. I think the plan would have been more effective, but this worked well as the camera stayed still and still gave the effect that something big is happening.

Otherwise, the plan worked well as we knew what shots we needed and what order they all went in. I think that the use of specific shots we did improved as we were filming because we got used to the camera more and thought of more ways to make one shot look more effective, such as the close up shots and zooming. I feel a lot more confident with the equipment now as we have had a lot of practice with it, and we worked well as a group, taking it in turns to do different parts of the process of filming. I feel that our end product is quite successful, and we all put in the effort that we needed to to make it better.