Evaluation

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

Our thriller incorporates generic conventions of the thriller genre – this can especially be seen in the flashback scenes, when the female character is running away in the woods from a male character. The setting of this scene, the woods, link in with common conventions of this genre as does the victim being female. What’s more, we tried to develop these conventions – for example, in the scenes within the wood, we chose to create them as flash back scenes and used techniques, such as darkening the shots and using a variety of P.O.V shots. Moreover, not many of the conventions we used indicated our thriller sub-genre; the music could be viewed as a horror sub-genre as could the close-up seen of the female characters eye. Nevertheless, the music is quite ambiguous, in that it is similar to that of a horror sub-genre, but also a psychological sub-genre. In addition to this, our opening contains no dialogue, which was done to ensure that the audience stay engaged with the narrative and protagonist, and makes the background music and sound of the tap running pivotal in creating tension. This is similar to the psychological thriller, which was released in 2001 and directed by Richard Kelly, Donnie Darko ; the opening of this film uses little dialogue, and as a result the audience stay focused on the main character and engage with the character through his expression and surroundings. Also, the way in which the titles have been designed in the opening - white font over a plain black background - is very common in the thriller genre, and can been seen in the thriller, The Village (M. Night Shyamalan and released in 2004).






This is an image of the woods used in The Blair Witch Project - like our thriller, many of the events take place in a wooded area.


How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product represents particular social groups through gender, age, class and in some ways, race. In our piece, we have a male and female as the main focus in our opening – with the male character playing the protagonist role. The fact that the male is the protagonist creates a stereotypical portrayal of the characters; the man plays the dominant, powerful and aggressive role, while the woman plays the victim – the weaker role. What’s more, the age of the two characters is key in our opening; not only do they help show the target audience, but they show the characteristics and nature of the younger generation. Additionally, the fact that the male protagonist is white gives a stereotypical view of the ‘male stalker’; in most thriller films, the male playing the ‘stalker’ is white. Therefore, in our piece, we have represented gender in a stereotypical role and have used race, age, class and gender to underline our characters. As a result of our stereotypical depiction, the audience can relate to the characters, and in many ways the verisimilitude is kept high – through the use of stereotypes. For example, the film Fatal Attraction holds a similar to narrative to our opening; however instead of a male character taking the stalker role, a female takes the role – thus showing that our film possesses qualities similar to that of similar films, but in a different depiction. Furthermore, the stalker based films: Taxi Driver, Cape Fear and Sleeping with the Enemy all use white male characters to play the stalker role. Similarly, Sleeping with the Enemy accentuates the obsessive, abusive and mentality that love can create – similar to the characteristics of the male character in our opening.







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

It is highly unlikely that our piece would be produced by a major Hollywood studio; it doesn’t hold the level of quality to be produced by a studio of that standard, and this wouldn’t appeal to a major Hollywood studio and our piece wouldn’t fit in with the quality. Additionally, while the narrative of our opening does follow the codes and conventions of the thriller genre and would appeal to certain audiences, it is quite cliché and holds a similar plot to many films already released. Thus, it wouldn’t seem appropriate or beneficial to be released in cinema. Nevertheless, it could be released as a TV movie or an internet only release; it would be easier for people to watch and could be used to fortify events going on in the ‘real’ world. For instance, how men are portrayed as the dominant gender and women are portrayed as the weaker gender – so our film could be used as an example. The corporation, Channel 4 would be an effective corporation to release our film; Channel 4 releases many documentaries and short films focusing upon real and current events – e.g. the documentary, Killer in a Small Town. This can be related to the shots of the female character running in the woods, and the P.O.V shots; these shots underline a fearful tone. Therefore, our opening could be used in reference to documentaries, like Killer in a Small Town; the narrative of our opening underlines a calm atmosphere when the protagonist is in his own environment but contrasting the setting and atmosphere of the woods.



Who would be the audience for your media product?

From watching our piece and from research with the BBFC, our thriller is aimed at a 15+ audience. Our narrative centres upon teenage characters, of 16/ 17 years old and we chose not to focus on lots of gore and explicitness, instead making it a psychological thriller - with a 15 certificate. Moreover, as the protagonist is male and the female is the victim, our opening may be more appealing to a male audience. This is reinforced by the style and narrative, which is quite sinister and emotional. Other films that are similar to our thriller opening are Signs and The Blair Witch Project. Both of these films have an age certificate of 15 and have similar reasons for doing so with our thriller. While The Blair Witch Project - directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez and released in 1999 - is intent on frightening the audience, the explicit contents within it aren’t very graphic; this is reinforced through the lack of gore. Thus, while The Blair Witch Project does evoke a fearful response from the audience, it does so in a psychological manner – focusing on the emotions of the characters and the setting, rather than through violence and aggression.

How did you attract/address your audience?

Before we began our opening, it was quintessential that we addressed our audience to establish ways in which could attract the target audience. This was done so by creating a questionnaire, the questionnaire enables us to recognise what the audience wanted to see in a thriller film and how we could produce an effective opening. Also, when the final animatic was created, this was used to help us see what the audience wanted and how we could improve this.

When the opening was finished, feedback was essential in allowing us to determine how effective our finished piece was — thus, a Facebook group was made to address the audience. (Facebook group)

As our opening uses teenage characters as the main focus, the audience is mainly a teenage audience. The female character seen in the flashbacks as the victim would appeal to a male audience; it symbolises men as the stronger gender and connotes women as being weak. In addition to this, the male character has more time on screen and is the character in which the audience engage with — through the camera tracking him in his environment, thus this would again mainly appeal to a male audience. The female character has little time on screen; she has quick shots to signify her fear and link in with the narrative, while the protagonist has a variety of shots, such as mid shots, tilt shots and close ups.

The tilt shot was especially effective in allowing the audience to engage with the audience, which can be seen at 59 seconds in the final opening. This shot allows the audience to get a full image of the male character. Similar to this, the mid shot of Jonny at 1.11 of the opening, is used to show the back of him and also his face in the mirror. Furthermore, the audience don’t actually witness the event of which is being implied, however it can be established what has occurred and what the protagonist has done. Thus, the audience see what the protagonist is doing after he has committed his crime, and allow the audience to determine the persona of the male character. This has a significant impact on the audience, as they witness the actions of the protagonist rather than the victim — so there is a sense of guilt and anxiety when watching the male character. What’s more, we used codes and conventions of the thriller genre to attract and address our audience. For instance, our use of setting and location was quite typical of the thriller genre — such as, the woods juxtaposing the setting within the house. This would appeal to thriller fans, as the codes and conventions would fit in with what they want to see in a film.



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

Before creating the opening of our thriller, we had to make an animatic based upon our shot list. This was done so effectively - using Adobe Premier Pro to generate the final animatic. We also used a a variety of sound effects to give more of an impact and create tension to the audience. Such as, the footsteps, the sound of the tap running and the non-diegetic background music. In contrast to our final piece, more diegetic sound was used in the animatic and this was felt to make the piece too loud and draw the audience away from the narrative. What's more, the animatic could have been improved, as we chose to draw the images rather than taking photographs. As people said the narrative became confusing in the animatic, using photographs could have helped the audience establish what was going on and we would have been able to visualize our ideas better. Furthermore, using Adobe Premier Pro for the animatic was good; it allowed us to get to grips with using the software for our final piece.

For our opening, we used a HD camera – this was effective and it didn’t take long to work out how to use the camera. However, while the camera was simple to use, it did manage to hinder the quality of our shots as the camera kept going in and out of focus to create the high definition quality. Also, a HD camera was not used in our continuity task, so there was a lack of experience and we weren’t used to the quality of the camera. This made some of our shots look as if the camera wasn’t being held steady. We didn’t face many problems with the equipment during the filming process, but to produce the best quality of sound for our diegetic sound, instead of using the camera to, we chose to use a sound recorder. This was better, as the sound couldn’t be heard as well and didn’t create the best effect when recorded by the camera. Thus, other than a few minor issues, we didn’t face many problems with the equipment. Moreover, editing software was used to produce our opening – Adobe Premier Pro and Adobe After Effects. At first, it was quite difficult getting to understand how to use the software, but as the software was being used much more, it became easier to use. After Effects was especially effective in the flashback scenes, in which we used this software to generate a ‘shaky’ feel and we also used it to adjust the colour levels and contrast – increasing the colour of red in the setting. This was mainly down to issues we faced with the lighting outside – some parts lighting was too dark, others too light. But, the red colour signified danger and to the audience and linked in to the blood of the victim - accentuating the violent aspects of the narrative.


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

I have learnt many things in the progression to the full product. This is down to the planning stage: research into the genre and finally, creating the animatic. As a group, we chose to focus upon the psychological sub-genre; therefore we researched on the thriller genre and the psychological sub-genre. This enabled us to see the common codes and conventions of these genres and helped us establish the type of shots, mise-en-scene we should use in our opening. Furthermore, creating the animatic enabled us and others to see how our opening would look based upon our initial ideas within the storyboard and whether we needed to improve certain things. Examples of improvements are, particularly of shot types – the close up of the eye of the female character has improved a lot from our animatic, along with the variety of shots of the male character in the bathroom washing his hands. The point of view shots of the flashbacks have also improved a great deal. Additionally, my confidence with the equipment has increased significantly from the preliminary task; I feel a lot more confident with using the camera equipment and the Adobe software. I feel that our end product is quite successful at fulfilling the task; the varieties of shots used were very effective and I especially think our use of sound – non-diegetic and diegetic – created a good impact on the audience. However, by comparing our opening to real thriller openings, such as Signs – directed by M. Night Shyamalan and released in 2002 – it is quite evident that our opening does lack in quality and doesn’t create as much tension. For example, the opening of Signs has little footage – instead focusing on one character in particular and allowing the audience to engage with the character and establish his surroundings. Whereas, our opening has quite a lot of footage, which gives quite a lot away to the audience, such as the overall narrative. Additionally, the non-diegetic sound over the titles in Signs is very effective, as it creates a lot of suspense and tension, before any footage is even seen.