Media Evaluation

The task set was to create a short clip which fits the ‘thriller’ genre. Films of the thriller genre tend to be quick paced and have a lot of action normally surrounding a hero and villain(s). A good opening to a thriller would consist of lots of action and quick cuts to create tension in the audience. The opening should make the viewer want to watch on. As a class we read an article written by Sir Alfred Hitchcock called ‘Thrills, suspense, the audience’. Hitchcock’s idea is that movie makers should make the ‘audience play God’, meaning that if the audience know all the secrets, ‘they’ll work like the devil’, as they know the fate of the characters already. Thus, Hitchcock’s idea of making the ‘audience play God’ simply suggests that instead of props, mise – en – scene, lighting and sound being the most important feature, the idea of keeping suspense would be the most effective idea. As a class we watched ‘Arlington Road’ which gave my group many good ideas for our creating a similar thriller opening, possibly using instant arousal. I had previously watched ‘The Shining’ by Stanley Kubrick and watching both of the films and seeing what they did to make their openings thrilling, tried to incorporate ideas from both.

My thriller opening was based around the idea of an arsonist. We decided that this was an effective idea to base our thriller around as it isn’t something that has been regularly done. Also, our main character was female, which challenges the norms of thriller movies, in which the main characters or heroes at least, tend to be masculine ‘hard men’ who seem to ‘attract’ danger. However, our thriller opening does not suggest that our main character is the heroine, in fact, our use of low lighting and camera angles suggest that she is a villain, but, as this is not made clear, the audience are left wondering who this character really is. This ties into Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s idea of keeping suspense and not letting the audience have any answers. Our thriller opening shoes the character walking into an underground room which appears to be her place of study and her actions and surroundings suggest she is obsessed with arson and is a shady character.

Our original idea was set in a park, which meant that if we had not finished filming in one day, there was a chance of the weather causing discontinuation, which in the end it did, meaning we had to start again. Once our idea was changed to our final idea, there were no problems with filming as we were indoors, and had properly planned our idea out. We were extra careful when it came to our planning as my group had realised how important planning was when doing an earlier task. Our second preliminary task was the match cut exercise, where we had to show a person walking into a room and having a conversation with another person in a thrilling way. When we did this task we planned well but during and after filming we felt we could still have planned better to ensure we were completely sure of what we were doing during filming. We felt that if we had planned more specifically then we would have filmed quicker and taken all the shots that we wanted. This exercise taught us to storyboard more effectively so that we wrote out clearly the type of shot, mise – en – scene and the correct sequence of shots.

The target audience of my movie is the average ‘teen – o – holic’. This is a term I use to describe teenagers, young adults and adults, from the ages of 15 – 35, who consume products in masses, whether it is food, clothes or entertainment. This is my target audience as this group of people are the group most likely to watch my film more than once and come back for a sequel. They are the group of people who work on the days they do not have college / school / university and go out to the pub or a club on the weekend. They would be the people who listen to popular music and some of our viewers would listen to indie or rock music (specifically emo rock). Our target viewer would either live at home or have just recently moved out into their own flat and would possibly smoke and drink. They would also be the kind of people who use social networking sites and also websites like youtube. Our film is not gender specific.

In order to advertise my trailer I would use billboards, TV adverts and magazines. I would advertise on TV channels like Film4, Channel 4 and E4 as these are the channels that my target audience are most likely to watch. However, my most important form of advertisement would be viral marketing on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and Hi5. This is because my target market are the group which are most likely to use social networking sites. Also, I would put our trailer on Youtube so many people could access it.

My media thriller shows unconventional forms of the people in my film. The main character is a female arsonist, which stereotypically would not be two ideas that go together. However, she is wearing high heels, and jeans which is a stereotype of typical everyday female clothing. Our character is represented as quite mysterious. However, she isn’t very identifiable as we do not see a full body shot of her. From our opening you can tell that my main character is rebellious, and seems very driven to complete something, however, the audience do not know her exact age, whether or not she is working with or for someone or if she is part of a team / organisation.

As much as I would love to say that my film would be released by one of the ‘Big Six’ Conglomerates, my media thriller would be distributed by Working Title Films on their smaller branch ‘Working Title 2’. This is because our film would be classed as a low budget movie or as a passion project because this film has a niche audience. Also, our movie does not star any big actors / actresses so therefore Working Title 2 would be an idea company to produce / distribute our movie, ‘Under Construction’, as WT2 was created with the idea of finding new talent. To make our film we would need in the region of £15,000 hoping to make between 2 – 3 million pounds realistically. We know that this is achievable as ‘The Blair Witch Project’ with a budget of approx. $22,000 (£15,104.70) grossed over $248 million worldwide through merchandising. Following in the footsteps of ‘The Blair Witch Project’, we hope that our film spawns books, magazines, video games, clothing, toys and a sequel which would suit our target audience. I would ideally release my film in mid – December so that my film would be out during Christmas, and would be fresh by the time the BAFTA’s come around in February of the following years.

Throughout our process of recording the technology that we used was vital in constructing our final product. In order to be able to shoot, watch back and

view our work we had to have had good enough equipment to do this. We used Apple Mac’s and we were provided with camera’s that allowed us to do this, and using the Mx1 and 2 camera we were provided with, we were able to use Final Cut Pro to log and capture our film, and then begin to edit it. Also, we used Soundtrack to create the sound to go along with our thrillers. Our thriller consists of mainly mid and long shots, which are not the norm for thriller openings, however, we decided to do this to make the audience feel like they are intruding on or following the main character. We used a lot of effective match cuts, most notably when the main character lights the match, walks into the room, and enters the door. We used match cuts to show the characters footsteps also which worked well. Also, we began our thriller opening with an establishing shot to set the scene and location. We used pan shots to vary the s

hot types and to keep the audience on edge. For example, we decided to have a pan shot showing the main character’s shadow on the wall, a low angle shot showing her legs and shoes going down a staircase then a low angle mid shot showing her lower body going towards the door, then using a match cut showing her opening the door from different angles. We tried to use an unpredictable sequence of shots to not make our thriller opening boring. Also, we used cross dissolves to smoothen our transitions from shot to shot.

From our last exercise we have definitely improved. From our planning to the techniques we have used to film our thrillers we have all noticed improvements in our work. I think the greatest improvement was that this time around we all had the idea in our head of what we wanted to create and we worked towards it, whereas in previous exercises we were working and creating ideas as we went along. In creating a thriller opening I feel that I have been very effective as our thriller fits the original criteria that was set. I do think there are tweaks that we could have adjusted in our video however on the whole I enjoyed the task.

Evaluation

A thriller is a genre of film aiming to generate a feeling from the audience, this feeling being a “thrill”, they create this feeling through using eerie soundtracks, quick cuts, a variety of shots and creating everyday characters that we feel could easily be us.

At the start of the project we watched a documentary called “Watching” which explained the different types of openings you could get and expect from a film classified as a thriller, which proved to be very helpful when it came to creating our own opening. The different openings that you could get included:

· Classic (“instant arousal”)
· Title Sequence (set the tone through titles/credits)
· Flashback (start at the end)

All of the openings aim to initially do the same thing, attract the audience into watching the whole film and set up questions that the audience will expect and wait to be answered later in the film. At first, the flashback opening appealed to my group because we had all watched films which had started like that and thought them to be particularly effective. But this then turned out to be quite difficult to do because we tried to show the present and the past at the same time and it got a bit confusing, so we then thought that it would be best to do a classical opening but not one that gave “instant arousal” but one that gave away little clues so that they will gradually get to the big climax. We done this by starting off with an establishing shot to set the scene and then panning across in the direction of the wall to introduce the main character but because you only see the shadow of the character the audience still won’t know entirely who the character is, getting them wanting to know more.

We later reveal that the character is a woman and take the audience into her “office” where the mise en scene, candles, newspaper cuttings of arson attacks, locations pinned/written on the board and matches, indicates that she is some kind of arsonist. This lets the audience pretty much know everything about that character from the beginning and would give them the information that the other characters, which would come later in the film, wouldn’t have. We thought about doing it like this after reading an extract from Alfred Hitchcock’s book “Thrills, Suspense, the Audience”, suggesting that you let the audience “play God”.

When wondering what camera shots and cuts to use in the thriller we looked at films such as “The Shining” and tried to see what different shot types they used to create suspense. We decided that the ones that worked best were the worm’s eye view tracking shot following the little boy round the hotel and the quick cuts and jump cuts so that you were only getting a glimpse of what is happening leaving you wondering what is going on. We tried to use this in our film when we showed the woman entering the basement we done a worm’s eye view shot of her feet to keep the audience from getting a good look at the woman and we were going to try and add in some quick cuts in the thriller but it didn’t work because compared to “The Shining” our opening has quite a slow pace.

A camera shot that I feel has a real thriller feel to it is the extreme close up pan of the woman’s sunglasses where you can see the reflection of the candle flame in the glasses, I feel that this is really effective because it shows the importance that “fire” has in the film and also I always think it is quite creepy to not be able to see someone’s eyes because you just cannot see what they are thinking and suggests that they are trying to hide something.

We wanted the lighting for the opening to be dim to create a feeling of mystery and also with the candle light it makes it look as if the audience are looking into someone’s secret lair which from the bright, light establishing shot at the beginning creates a great contrast and hopefully gives the audience a bit of a shock, because they just wouldn’t expect there to be a place like that in the location that the film is set. The dim lighting was something that a member of the class commented on positively- “The use of dim lighting added suspense.”

The soundtrack was something that was quite difficult to do because we had to match the action to the sound which is not as easy as it sounds, as I found out. I feel that the soundtrack compliments the film because it starts off with a typing sound and a simple beat that gets more complex as the opening progresses.

To get us prepared for the final project we did two tasks before hand, the first one we had to film someone reading a newspaper in a thrilling way and it was through this exercise that we realised how much preparation needs to go into the filming process because we ran out of time and didn’t get all of the required shots through lack of planning. So the next time we had to do a task, the proper preliminary task (match-cut exercise), from the very beginning we planned every single shot and managed to get everything done.

For the match cut exercise my group decided to do something away from the thriller genre so that we would fully understand how different conventions apply to different genres. What really worked well in this piece were the shot/reverse shots because from the previous film we learned that the key is to film the same thing from many different angles so that it gives you more to edit in the editing process. This was some of the knowledge that we took with us when it came to filming our final project; we filmed much of the shots over three times. When we started filming the final thriller we bared in mind some of the difficulties we had with the match cut exercise one of these being remaining continuity throughout the piece, for example when watching back the match cut film we saw that there was items suddenly in places where they were not a moment ago. To make sure that this didn’t happen in the thriller we just had to pay extreme attention to what was in the mise en scene in all of the shots.

We didn’t create a soundtrack for our preliminary task because we felt that the diagetic sound was enough and created the right atmosphere that we felt was appropriate for the tone and setting of our piece, which was a romance set in a school. Although, it would have been useful if we had played around with the sound to give us some experience with the software before we had to do it for the thriller.

The audience for my thriller would generally be young adults, the reason behind this being that they make up a large percentage of the cinema going public. The majority of viewers would be working/middle class people because I feel that the film will appeal more to them because it is set in a location that is familiar to them.

Audience profile:
Monique, 17, from a working class background is a student at a college in East London and is studying media. She likes to spend her spare time going to the cinema watching films based on real life situations but have a twist. She has seen many of the small budget British films such as “Kidulthood” and “Adulthood” and enjoys seeing films that she can relate to. She likes to look fashionable and gets most of her clothes from High Street shops such as Topshop and Oasis. She is very in touch with the technologies of today and is a member of Facebook and Myspace and most of the films that she watches have been advertised on a social networking site. The only TV channel that she watches is channel 4 because she likes watching the teen programmes that come on such as “Skins” and “Shameless”; she also watches films on Film4 sometimes.

To attract the target audience I would put a star like Ashley Walters in not the lead role because that is a woman but have him as a supporting actor so that younger people would give the film a chance. I would advertise the film on the internet because that is very much the place to attract a young audience, it will allow the target audience to know about the film and enable them to share it with friends, so more people are aware of the new film coming out and more people pay to watch it at the cinemas. I would also advertise on the TV, specifically on channels such as channel 4 or music channels such as MTV, where the majority of the audience is comprised of young adults.

In the opening of the film the audience only sees one character; this character is female, you would assume that she was in her late teens/early twenties because she is looking casual/smart in jeans, a jacket and sunglasses. We made the character working class because the majority of the people that watch the film are going to be a part of that particular group and we wanted them to feel a connection with the character. We have set it in Hackney, East London because again we felt that the audience that we want to attract would be familiar with the area and feel a connection because it shows how most of London is today, the side that they don’t show in the majority of films set in London. The mise en scene focuses more on the arsonist aspect rather than trying to represent social groups.

My film would be distributed by Working Title Film production company which is a British film company. Working Title is however owned by an American company, Universal studios, but because my film would be a low budget film they would have little involvement in it. Studio Canal are Working Title’s distributers over Europe so they would play a big part in the distribution of my film because I think it would only be released in Europe, possibly America but only on a small scale because Americans tend to want to see old Britain where everyone speaks really posh and stay in mansions seen in films such as “Four Weddings and a Funeral” not the Britain, specifically London, that my film is depicting.

I think that I would want “Under Construction” to be released over the internet for download also so as to make sure that the target audience are definitely able to see it. I don’t think that it would be good for the film to be released as a TV film because the majority of the target audience do not watch TV that much.

I was a bit worried at the start of the project because I had never filmed or used any editing software before and thought that it was going to be awful but once I had the workshop with Micky I found it quite easy. The most annoying and difficult part of using the filming equipment was the tripod, it never seemed to allow us to get the shots that we needed, for example, when I tried to get the shot looking down on the stairs it was next to impossible to get the tripod in the right position, this was however soon overcome by just holding the camera.

Final Cut pro was a bit more complicated than the filming; again the workshop with Micky really helped because I had never used it before so was totally confused about the whole thing. I eventually got the hang of it but was never quite as good as some of the other members of my group but stuck with it never the less.

The internet has come in very useful in the production of the thriller because it has been a valuable research tool, for example I have been able to look up thrillers and see what kind of camera shots they used so that I could see what worked and created a feeling of suspense and suggest adding it into my thriller. The internet also allowed me to record every step of the filming process in the form of a blog and every so often look at the blog to see what has been done and what still needs to be done. When it came to the finished product we also embedded it in our blogs and put it on vimeo.com meaning that a lot more people will have the opportunity to watch it, which is generally the whole point of making a film. Most if not all of what we have done would definitely not have been possible without any of the technology that has been involved.

Overall, I think that my group have been quite successful in creating an opening to a thriller for younger people. I think that we have been successful because looking at real thrillers that I have watched there are a few camera shots that also feature in my group’s thriller that I think create suspense. There were many changes to the storyboard and at one point we changed our whole idea because our first idea was far too complicated and we thought that if we were to try and continue with it we would end up with something which looked mediocre. We also felt that the change in location would also make it much more everyday and make it more thriller-ish.
I also think that we were successful because the feedback from my class was very positive for example; one fellow classmate said it “...was an interesting opening, with a good use of shadows...and the all black costume and dark lighting was classic thriller mise en scene.”

Evaluation..

Evaluation

We have been working on a project that involved us creating a thriller film opening with the duration of two minutes. We started by settling on an idea of a thrill being the emotional build up of tension, mystery, anxiety and suspense which is the expectation of something going to happen without knowing what or when. Next, we learnt about the sub-genres of thriller films for example psychological thrillers and espionage thrillers. We also looked at conventions of thriller films such as low key lighting and different types of film openings such as flash backs, instant arousal, classic slow approach and title sequence approach. We analysed the lighting, the use of camera (movement, angle and distance), music, editing, setting and characters, from films such as collateral, 28 days later and Arlington Road. Further into our projects we were pitching, filming and editing our work which seemed to fly by rapidly. The deadline came which meant it was time to review our work on the big screen at the Vue cinema in angel, on our AS cinema visit which would allow us to have an audiences point of view when evaluating our final outcomes. In this evaluation I am going to analyse the way in which our thriller opening challenged conventions of real media products, the representation of social groups, possible distribution and much more.

My thriller opening an instant arousal and it was very successful in the way it uses thriller film conventions. Some obvious conventions of thriller films are the vulnerable child, demonstrated in the Shining, the low key rooms demonstrated in Arlington Road and out of focus shots demonstrated in 28 days later, which my thriller film uses to strengthen the audiences knowledge of the intensions of the character. A classic film opening that my film was originally going to have was a flash back which is the film starting with the ending. It would have worked really well with our idea of two teenagers within the flashback which we would have shown with the characters in school uniform, revealing vital information for the storyline which results in the climatic death of one character. During this time we experienced horrific weather conditions of heavy snow which interrupted our filming this meant we could no longer waste our crucial time and decided to change our idea. Since the second pitch of our idea our opening consisted of the introduction of an arsonist which was an instant arousal approach, this is a way in which our film used conventions of real films that are either worldwide or UK releases. I believe that the real film conventions used within my thriller made it realistic. One aspect of conventions that my film did challenge was gender by having a female main character. I think this because psychological thrillers usually have male characters as the lead role demonstrated in Arlington Road whereas in our thriller we had a female character acting highly suspicious which we thought worked well when trying to create fresh suspense and the feeling of uncertainty.


I think our film represents the social group of working class woman as pressured, stressed people. I think this because her presence revealed her attitude and showed her frustrations that many middle and upper class people wouldn’t feel because of their stereotypical happy lives. The character within our film opening was a rebellious woman driven towards fire and committing arson attacks, much like other villains she has a secretive dark basement in which she can retreat to and scheme on her planned attacks. What didn’t get revealed is if the woman had a accomplice or if she was working for someone else which I think left the audience asking questions and in suspense whilst waiting for the answers to be revealed, this is what we intended with the type of opening we had chosen. The woman was roughly 24 years of age which is what we thought would be appropriate for her to be unsuspicious to the public but highly suspicious to the audience since she is expected to be in higher education at her age.


There are many distribution companies such as Buena Vista and Disney but I would like my film to be produced by one of the well known, big six conglomerates, these are MGM and United artists, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. They are responsible for 90% of box office takings in the US, Canada and UK. Differences between small UK released films and worldwide released films, are UK releases having smaller budgets, local locations and more than one film Company’s financial support. I would also release my film on DVD some time after the cinema release, I would put it in time with a holiday or gift giving period such as Christmas, and this is yet another factor that would increase overall revenue made from film.

Our chosen audience was 15+ for cinemas instead of 18+ to maximise the amount of views received at the cinema which I think is a smart move because it would result in more revenue for the production companies and actors. The main target audience is 18+ because they can understand the concept of fires started deliberately and maliciously being a serious crime and wouldn’t need an instant arousal opening to catch their attention instantly to keep them interested in the remainder of the film. A typical person from this audience would be someone in higher education, aged 23, likes to drink alcohol when having a laugh, and goes to the cinema as a cheap alternative for a date. I think this type of person definitely fits into the mainstream which is good for the number of views and total revenue.

Attracting an audience strongly involves advertising which can be costly depending on how well you want to reach your target audience. Generally, advertising for films is done through media such as TV advertisements, billboards, and posters at bus stops, phone boxes and on the side of buses. Therefore, I would advertise my film in the same way and also on websites and before other thriller films at the cinema. I would do this because it would ensure that the correct audience is being targeted, we know this would be successful these are the type of films that they are interested in. My target audience was the age group of people aged 18+ therefore sponsoring an alcoholic beverage would be specific to that target audience. It would be a good way to market the film and also make the alcohol more popular.

Some technology that we used for our film process was the video camera when filming and logging and capturing the footage, Apple Mac computers with different software such as final cut pro and sound track and a specific website on the internet called ‘Blogger’. Without final cut pro our work would have been almost impossible to transform into a thrilling, suspenseful film opening, with fades and dissolves that we used to show the passing of time and to allow the titles to fade in and out especially since we were making a thriller in the style of psychological which I think is more based on reality whereas in a horror thriller most people don’t experience abandonment like in 28 days later. The beginning of our sequence consisted of a definition which gives you a taste of the plot whilst the non diagetic sound of a type writer occurs, it then fades into an establishing shot and pan of a house filled with diagetic sounds of footsteps, birds and cars, it then cuts to the shadow on the wall of the main character we did this to add suspense which we hoped would make people want to know who the person is, where they are going and why they are going there this is instant arousal because it makes the audience want to know more, at the same time our non diagetic sound track begins and enhances the feeling of uncertainty. The sequence changes to a low angle of the characters feet, there is now a clear indication that character is female because she is wearing high heels this where we start to give away some of the answers that keep the audience interested. Using technology is an advantage to the process of constructing a film because it is time and money efficient; it also allows you to work with great accuracy with fewer mistakes from human error. I found the software really easy to use once we had gone through the tutorials but when using the internet I have had experienced problems with trying to upload clips onto my blog but I did still manage to upload pictures. I would document what I accomplished and learnt such as how to build up sounds in sound track when creating a sound track. At first I didn’t enjoy blogging because it was something extra that I had to do after each lesson but it is a process that I have grown used to. When using the internet to post our film opening it was quite exciting because it automatically gives us a broader audience and could allows us to have many views worldwide. This means that the target audience can also be the type of people that maintain a blog.

I think the preliminary task was highly important to our projects because it allowed us to practice and gain experience with the equipment, also when storyboarding it gave us a chance to see exactly how different shots can make different impressions to the audience. We thought carefully about how to portray the characters, especially when allowing the audience to have an inside view that other characters wouldn’t have, this is used in TV drama soaps such as Eastenders, we used it to show the male characters feelings for the female character by using shot reverse shot, I think it worked well and was very effective. One thing that I learnt from the preliminary task that we used in our final film opening is that when filming footage from different angles you should always repeat the whole sequence again to have a better chance at gaining quality footage for match cutting. Through the process of making a film opening, I have learnt that it takes a lot of time to perfect each shot and edit it according to the impressions of characters that you are trying to portray, I think this is why real films take so long to complete.

Overall, I have really enjoyed working on this project whilst learning about the film making process. My favourite part of the process is filming and editing because you have the freedom to be creative with shot types, angles and you are able to manipulate the footage to create different meanings. My most memorable moment of the project would be the cinema visit because I got to see my friends and my accomplishments on a cinema screen. An improvement that I would make if I had the chance to do this project again is planning in much more detail to reduce the amount of mistakes and problems that we came across as a group. One thing I would keep the same is the amount of effort and determination that my group put into getting our work finish on time at what we thought was a good standard.

Thriller Evaluation

Before the major parts of the task started, we had already studied films that already exist. This was so we could have a rough idea and understand what is needed (codes and conventions) in order to create a successful thriller opening. There are many thriller openings from which I can choose, some of which are Collateral which is a supernatural thriller, and Arlington Road (1) which is a crime thriller. I thought these were two fairly effective films to start with as most of the camera angles and locations are typical of a thriller movie. The thriller that most gave me ideas was Arlington Road (1). I very much liked the white bright light in the beginning as it looked artificial almost a surreal lighting around the character to suggest there’s something wrong with him.

















We had some problems whilst filming our first idea as there was very poor weather conditions. Out first idea was to film near to Hackney in a park called Downs Park. The setting was going to be in the park where we would have 2 characters dressed up in school uniform. The thriller was going to have flash backs and a mixture of black and white clips. Swings and see saws were going to be used. But due to the weather conditions we had to stop filming half way and prepare a new pitch. We prepared our new pitch and we also had a name for it. Under Construction, this idea was much simpler to our first idea. As we knew we had no more time we had to choose something very simple.

The thriller’s main character is a woman who is obsessed with fire and arson attacks. We have challenged other films as most thriller characters are men. We were going to film in a dark basement which as a group we thought worked well as we had little time left. My thriller has a range of codes and conventions, some are: technical codes- used a range of shots like low angle shots, close ups, extreme close ups, over the shoulder and high angle shots. With the costume, we created our character to wear casual clothing as it would create more realism and suspense. We had a range of shots that worked really well in our thriller; some were the low angle shot of the shoe walking in front of the camera. We also had a range of camera movements, we used pans, tilts and match cuts. We used a pan down at the beginning of the thriller to make our viewers familiar of the setting.
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We created suspense through the match cuts we used, a few that created a lot of suspense was when the arson picked up the matches and struck a match as the viewers would be thinking what she is going to do with the match.
Some very effective shots were the extreme close up of the matches as the shot distance highlights the importance of the matches and maybe highlights a thought in what’s going to happen later on in the thriller. Another shot type that worked very well was the point of view shot of the character walking in from the door. This shot shows us the place she does her secrete work in and it also involves us the audience. One of our very best shots is the close up of the characters face with the candle. The candle and face creates suspense as questions arise, “what is she going to do with the candle?” We included an over the shoulder shot of topaz holding the candle. The camera position also involves the audience in the scene as if someone is there watching her. We used a pan at the beginning of our thriller to familiarise you with the location.










For our sound track we used a range of non-diagetic and diagetic sounds. We used a soundtrack that is non-diagetic sounds which started off with some bird sounds. Bird sounds create a natural atmosphere whereas the sound track creates anxiety. Diagetic sounds we used were footsteps as this give the thriller a natural effect as well as making the audience watch clearly to predict what’s going to happen next. Mise en scene- our character was an obsessive arson that loves fire. Our location was in Hackney, we used an ordinary house to create a superior effect as we don’t know what she does and were she hides. The costume used was grey jeans, black top, high heels and dark sun glasses. Everyday clothing suggesting a normal person, no disguise and we don’t know what she deals with. A few props we used were candles and matches. Matches show hove obsessive she is with fire.


Looking back to our preliminary task, I believe I have learnt a lot of things. I have learnt how to create a match cut and how and why it works well in films. I have learnt to be organized and well prepared as we had to story board our shots. When we had all of our shots storyboarded we then felt ready to film. My group have learned between our first and second practice films that when filming we need to film the same thing from many different angles because then it is possible to include match cuts into the film. It also makes it more interesting for the audience if a variety of angles used. I have also learned that when editing you have to pay such close attention to detail so as to ensure continuity throughout the sequence. Due to not planning very much for the last filming exercise we decided to plan this one carefully, even though the last clip turned out really good we were hesitating and it stressful so we wanted to be more planned and organised. Through planning we came up with a lot of good ideas like setting it in the media storage cupboard and positioning the camera so that it sits in between the shelves so that it looks like the audience are watching something that is secret.

The audience for my thriller would be generally young adults. This is because young adults/ teenagers are the majority to attend to a cinema to watch a film or a thriller. They would be middle class/working class people which are aged around 16-30. They would be unisex, dressed as normal young adults. Clothing would be jeans and a top may be designer. They would shop from New Look for girls and boys JD or Footlocker.

Amy, 20 comes from a family with a good background and works in a part time job in River Island as a supervisor for living standards. She loves going to the cinema with her boyfriend and loves shopping. She shops in Jane Norman and loves the Adidas shop in the west end. She enjoys watching Hollyoaks and listening to pop music.

I would market my film through trailers, cinemas and the internet. The release to the internet would create a viral advertising which then people could show others and they might send to other people which then everyone would know about and want to watch. I would attract my audience with the main star character, she is young and attractive and I am sure young boys would love her. They might also be interested in the thriller because usually the main character is a male and they might think this female character is very successful at acting. They also might be attracted by her costume and props as they might feel the sunglasses are very creepy and suspenseful.








The character in my thriller is aged around 18-24. This is shown by the way she dresses. My thriller represents a particular social group as we see from the props. The sunglasses the character has on creates a particular social group as the sun glasses may look cool and also scary. The character’s clothing also creates the same social group as she is dressed in everyday clothing. Skinny jeans, black leather jacket which is in fashion. The viewers might believe she is cool and fashionable and might enjoy the thriller but be frightened with all the fire and matches. The character in the thriller is a Christian and we can see this from the big red books on the table. She is mixed race which people could believe she deals with terror and fire.












As my thriller has a target audience of 16-30 my movie would be released over the internet, via youtube, myspace face book etc. This would be the best option. If it was to be released in Hollywood Blockbuster as the movie is targeted for young middle/ working class people not much people would attend also because of the age audience. However on the internet and youtube, young watchers would recommend their friends and family to watch it if the film is enjoyed so then they could send the link or advertise even send the sites or make a profile about the film and allow people to write how they find the thriller.








As for the filming, it was quite straight forward, but seeing a program like Final Cut pro being so professional and created for it to be easy to use made me feel very delighted as technology is improving by the day. With final cut pro you could do so many things e.g. log and capture your clips, arrange them onto a sequence, crop clips and insert dissolves. Insert CCTV camera effects and lots more. After every lesson we had to blog on the internet in what we done in lessons and what we learnt. This was the first time I saw a site like Blogger. The site is very useful whilst the filming process as I could record all the processing of the filming on Blogger and edit it, add to it or even delete the blog when I wanted to. Seeing my video on the site Vimeo and Blogger made me feel like a real producer. The internet has widened extremely allowing you to put any video or song even pictures on any site like youtube. And as my thriller has a young target audience I am sure most young adults are going to see even watch it as lots of young adults are constantly on the internet. They may not be on Blogger but I am certain that everyone goes onto Youtube to watches videos and music. Definitely my thriller cannot be missed as it is full of suspense and there are questions arising while you watch it.

Looking back to my preliminary task with the newspaper, us as a group saw we got better and better at filming and producing suspense and anxiety. With the newspaper task we had some problems however we knew that they should not appear in our final thriller. With creating the final thriller opening we have been very strict about the specific target audience as we believe young adults would prefer the thriller rather than middle aged adults. Even with other thrillers it shows me that each film has a different target audience, the change in the target audience is because of how old the character looks and what they wear. Their class and ethnicity is a possibility for the change of the target audience as well. I believe my thriller is a very good thriller with all the camera work and mise en scene. The typewriting effect at the beginning catches your eyes. You might feel quite lost whilst reading the words but then when the thriller begins, everything is revealed and arson is defined fully.

Overall it was hard work, there were times when we as a group got stressed because we felt like we were behind as we had to start again and prepare another pitch, but thankfully everything was completed on time and was finished successfully. We watched our clip in the Vue cinema in Angel Islington with all the other media students. There were some really creative successful thrillers and when they were watching my group’s thriller, everyone was quiet which meant they were trying to figure out what the arson was going to do. Everyone cheered and clapped at our thriller and I also heard some one behind me say “that was really good”. That made me pleased and I can say my thriller would go in to the best top 10 thrillers.

Cinema Visit..

We went cinema and watched the whole AS Units thriller film openings. So many were really good and really made me feel tense, uneasy and suspenseful. The audience’s reaction after my groups opening was really good because they gave us a round of applause at the end. Also during the film the room was really quiet meaning that people were watching in suspence which is a main convention of a thriller. This is a photo of the vue cinema that we attended at the angel. It is at a very high standard compared to other vue cinemas such as the one in woodgreen, which makes me all the more greatful that we got to attend the cinema to watch out film openings. The cinema is an example of exhibition which is apart of what production companies job roles include.

Sevda, Pebbles, Topaz and Miles - Under Construction FINAL THRILLER VIDEO

Final editing lesson

26th febuary 2009:

Today was our last editing session before the deadline tomorrow. We started adding credits to our sequence. Then we realised that all 4 of us making credits is wasting time. So we decided that I (Sevda) and Topaz carry on with credits and Miles and Pebbles go over to the free computers in the other room to make the music. Miles came up with a really good Idea which was having a black screen with the definition of “arson” by the sound of a typewriter which turned out to be very effective.
It was very frustrating for me while doing the credits as every time we inserted a dissolve the shot would go all funny and shaky, but in the end we fixed that problem we came across. After completing all the credits Miles and Pebbles had completed the soundtrack, they had used some bird and truck sounds to make it more real and they had decided to use some original sounds as they thought worked well.
We imported the thriller into sound track pro and started to see if all the sounds worked well and matched. As we were running out of time and our thriller wasn’t complete yet Miles and Topaz agreed to come in after lunch to finish it off because Pebbles and I had lessons to go to. Miles and Topaz told me they had finished the thriller at the end of the day and I was very pleased with them. Our thriller was perfectly completed.