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.