EVALUATION OF MY THRILLER

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

Our thriller uses conventions to add effect to our film. We use:

• We build up the action throughout the whole of the thriller, by adding ways in which the character begins to feel threatened by actions of things around her happening.
  The atmosphere in the house across the road is dark and shadowy to create fear.
• When the character leaves their house, there is an establishing shot of their road. This shows the atmosphere of the surrounding area. It also shows how no one is around and also creates fear for both the character and the audience.
• As the action is building up throughout the film, the creation of fear is also building up, this is good because it makes the audience want to watch the rest of the thriller, because they want to know what is going to happen.
• We don't show the face of the person on the phone, just the mysterious voice. This hides their identity, and maybe if there was the rest of the film, we would choose to show who that mysterious voice is to shock the audience.
• The music we created makes the audience feel suspense and makes them carry on watching it.
• We hold back information from the audience and the character. The audience know just as much as the character does.
• Unexpected turns start to happen when no electrical appliances seem to work around the house, and then suddenly the phone starts to ring.
• The music which we created, also builds up alongside the action. The music is also dark and shadowy music to fit the mood of the atmosphere.
• Some slow, long shots which build up the tension and also the music helps add effect to the long shots.

From these conventions our thriller fits into the category of a horror/thriller because we use, dark scenes and strange events start to occur. It could also be a but of a science fiction/thriller because, it's a film about everyone disappearing apart from one individual. We haven't made it come across as an 'alien abduction' type of film, but it could be, from the way that the first 2 minutes started.

A thriller film which has influenced our thriller a lot is, 'I Am Legend'. It influenced us because our film is based around the same sort of theme, where everyone has disappeared. 'I Am Legend' is a horror/sci-fi/thriller, because it uses dramatic, dark, shadowy scenes and also has alien type of animals in it.


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

We chose our main character of our thriller by considering an older type of audience. We have rated it a 15, so our audience is for people over 15. This isn't particularly an 'old' audience but, we thought if we included an actress who is about 21 years old, then more people around that sort of age group would watch it.
When watching the film, the class of the character doesn't really come into how we chose the actor for the main character. When the audience watch the thriller, the main character comes across as a 'normal' person, with a 'normal' life.
We decided on a gender for a character, by choosing a good name, which is 'Sarah Holt'. 'Holt' is an English/North-West European surname for someone who lived in a small wood. We also based the gender of our character on what people we could find available to be our actor/actress's.

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

I think our thriller should be produced in a smaller independent production company, rather than a major one, because in a smaller independent company there is much more involvement in your thriller. A major production company is more likely to take over your product more and change it themselves to make it better and how they want it, rather than how the producer actually wants it to come across to the audience.
Our film uses lots of dark, shadowy scenes and unexpected turns, I think our film wouldn't suit a TV movie, because I don't think the audience who watch it wouldn't take it seriously enough because they can see if for free. The same is with an internet release. Also with an internet release it is unlikely to be a lot of advertisement for internet releases.

I would prefer our film to be reviewed by a large audience first, and then once we got the questionnaires back that we gave out, we could edit the film to make it better and make it come the the expectations of the target audience. Then I would prefer it to be released in a cinema, because if people pay for it, I think they are more likely to appreciate the film more and take it more seriously.If we had our film in a small independent production company, then maybe an art-house film would be ideal for our film, because it is a serious, non commercial film which is made independently.

An example of a major film industry is, 'Paramount' and '20th Century-Fox'.

An example of an independent film industry is, 'Monogram Pictures'.

This film would be released because it would help promote the independent production company that we would be using. If the film was a big success other bigger production company's (major company's) could sponsor the film.

An example of a TV movie is, 'Babylon 5: The Gathering' which featured in the series 'Babylon 5'.

An example of a Art-house movie is, 'Peppermint Candy' which is South Korean film made in the year 2000.

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

The age for our target audience is mainly teenagers to young adults. This is based on the age certificate that we rated it, which is a 15. Also it based for young adults because our main character is a young adult type of age, around 21 years old.

We chose this target audience, because they are mainly the type of people who watch thriller films. I think this is because they are films which are full of 'adrenaline pumping' action. Our film hides some of the information from the audience and the main character, and because of this it wouldn't be suitable for a younger audience. I think this is because they may not follow along with the story as well as the older audience's.

As I have said before, this film is like 'I Am Legend'. This film appeals to me because it prevents the audience for knowing too much. I also like the fact that throughout the beginning of the film, there are some flashbacks, this gradually lets the audience get to know more information for what has happened previously to the event in which they are at now. The main character, who is played by Will Smith, knows more than the audience at the beginning.
I think also the music has a great effect towards the film, because it is a dark type of music and it goes with the atmosphere of the film, which is also a dark atmosphere.
'I Am Legend' is also rated a 15, this is because it contains horror and violence throughout.


5. How did you attract/address your audience?

This is a silent type of thriller film, because the main character says hardly anything throughout the 2 minutes or so of what is shown. So this bit of the film isn't particularly terrifying for the audience, but when the scream comes up at the end of the 2 minutes or so, it could make the audience jump a little. The main reason for us rating this film a 15, is because it could be a confusing film for people who are aged under 15.
There are aspects in the music, which could be slightly scary, for a younger audience, but that is really about it for all the 'scary bits' of our thriller.

We have tried to involve the audience in our film by having a first person camera shot, of the main character eating the cereal. This makes it more interesting for the audience and adds variety to the types of camera shots used. We also use another first person shot when the main character was walking towards the front door to go outside, to investigate the other house. This shot is quite dark and shadowy and with the music it actually looks a bit scary which is good and adds effect to the film. I think that this was a really good idea because it put the audience into the position of the main character so they can see what it's like to be them in a way.
We used a low shot, when the main character is walking towards the door, it is before the first person camera shot. This was a great idea for a shot, because it only shows the feet and a bit of the legs of the character. It is also good because it could show that the main character feels like they are more superior to the situation she is in.

After our audience have given back our questionnaires, we reviewed the questions we asked them to answer.
These are the questions that were on our questionnaire: http://deblackthriller.blogspot.com/2010/02/audience-survey.html

For the 1st question all of the audience that answered our questionnaire said 'Yes'. This is good because it means that we shouldn't be disappointed with our lighting. Also it means that the lighting goes well with the mood and genre of our film, this is a relief because we didn't always have the correct lighting equipment to use.

For the 2nd question all of the audience that answered our questionnaire said 'Good' and gave a reason, for example, 'Many used, very effective.' I am very pleased with this, because we did have to change some of the camera angles we were going to originally use in our storyboard, because there weren't many that varied, they were all similar.

For the 3rd question all of the audience that answered our questionnaire said 'Yes'. Even though there wasn't another part of the film (the rest of the film), it was a good to know that they would have continued to watch it. This must mean that is it a well made film.

For the 4th question all of the audience that answered our questionnaire said a mixture of answers. Some of the more detailed answers were, 'Make you believe the story line., 'The location made it realistic.', 'The normality of the location made the film more believable.', 'It was plausible so effective.', 'It was plausible.' and 'Something everyone can relate to.' This is all positive feedback.

For the 5th question all the audience that answered our questionnaire said a mixture of results. Five of our audience said 'Yes' and five of our audience said 'No', this means it was half and half. We left some space for them to tell us how we could improve it, but no one seemed to fill that in so we have no audience views on how to make our film more involving.

For the 6th question all the audience that answered our questionnaire said the same answer, which was 'No'. This was good to know, because it means we did not progress too fast through our film. We could have also asked if it could have progressed fats and seen what the answer would have been.

For the 7th question all the audience that answered our questionnaire said that it fitted really well with the film. This was very pleasing because I had made the music at on another piece of software without the actual film in front of me to work from.

For the 8th question all the audience that answered our questionnaire gave a variety of answers, here are some of them, 'It's different. It would stand out - can relate to it.', 'The beginning of the film was intriguing and continued to be interesting. It made you watch on to know the outcome.', 'Hard to say, but was intriguing enough to want to watch more.', 'It was different as the location was only in two places.' and 'It was very good.' Some of the answers were a bit vague but by some of them we knew that the audience wanted to watch on. We perhaps could have worded the question a little differently.

For the 9th question all the audience that answered our questionnaire said 'No', this was very good to know because we weren't sure if all the little props and times of day looked realistic to the atmosphere of our film. I think there was one, which was at the start of the film when there was a shot of the curtains. It was supposed to be 8:30am, but I didn't think it looked that early. I suppose it depends on the season and whether.

For the 10th question (final question) all the audience that answered our questionnaire gave some different answers. Here some of them are, 'It was very effective.', 'It is clear what is happening to the character in the film.', 'It is portrayed well. Able to relate to it and believe in it.', 'The film comes across well.', 'The brief introduction impacted a good sense of conclusion and fear.', 'The theme was obvious so it was easy to catch on to.' and 'Yes, the central theme was good it left us wanting to see more.' We put this question at the end of the questionnaire, because it kind of sums up the audiences thoughts about the film. All the feedback that we got back from this question was great.

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

Before I had started this project, I had hardly ever used a proper video camera to record any type of film. So because I was the camera man for this film, I have learnt a lot about how to use the cameras. I really enjoyed learning how to use them as well. I found out lots of things buy just messing around with it for a bit and worked out all the different settings and modes. This was very interesting and I can now use this in later life if I need to.I also found that using a tripod is a lot more reliable than using hand-held to make steady shots, it is also a lot easier because it will be set up and the same height and angle every time we wanted to retake.

During the time which we were filming, we came across quite a few issues which we had resolved by the end. A couple were that on our storyboard we had drawn up what it was going to be like, but once we actually came round to filming it, it was a lot harder to film. This may have been because of many reasons such as, the filming space was very limited or we just couldn't the right shots. Once we had resolved these issues, everything was worked out.
Some thing that I, the camera man had a bit of an issue with was one of the shots which was where the camera spins round the main character to create a sense of uncertainty and fear. I couldn't get a smooth spin around the main character every time I tried. It was mainly because I had to do this effect hand-held and it was hard to keep the camera steady and move in a perfect circle each time round the main character. We didn't really get to resolve this issue properly, but we kept retaking it as much as we could until we got the best one which we finally used in our film when we were editing.

Editing on iMovie on the Apple Macs was also new to me. I had never used a Mac before so had to adjust to it. Once we had uploaded our film to the iMovie, which took quite a long time because we had taken so many retakes to make our film perfect, we assembled our film. I found the Macs quite hard to use at the beginning, but once I had been on them a couple of times, I got used to it and knew what to do most of the time.We used a lot of the transition effects and they were very handy to make our thriller play smoothly. To make our camera shots better we edited some of the contrast settings, for the parts in the film that we wanted to stand out a bit more.
In some parts of our film, where we had our own effects in the film but they couldn't be heard very well, the sound effects were quite handy and help us achieve sounds we really wanted.

We could have used Garageband to create our soundtrack for our thriller, but since I didn't know how to use it, I made some of my own music as a soundtrack at home on some music creating software called, Cakewalk Music Creator 5. I haven't had this program for very long so it was also a bit of a challenge to work out how to get all the write instruments in it and how I wanted it to go. Once I had made it, we uploaded it up onto the Macs and put it where we wanted it to come in in iMovie.

We did have the option of using copyright free music from the internet but then you do not have the option to make it sound how you want it to sound and it can be original.


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

Once we had done our preliminary task everything seemed to be a lot easier to do, because we new what we had to expect. During the planning stage of our film, we discussed so many different ideas for our thriller and changed what we were going to do so many times, they were for the right reasons though. Some of the effects we couldn't pull off with the time that we had and the equipment that we were using.

Researching into the genre that we were doing, a thriller, this was very interesting because we I found out lots of information which I wouldn't have known if I hadn't researched. For example, there was popular camera angles used in thrillers, common atmosphere used, etc. By doing this research, I looked up producers of films, to see what they have done to make their films more successful and catch the audience's eye better. This was very inspiring because we used some of the ways that they did this in our thriller.

We chose to shoot a silent film, with not a lot of speech in it. Well originally it wasn't going to be a silent film, but once we had planned it out it was obvious that it was going to be as their was hardly any dialogue in it. When we wrote our script it was only for the very brief phone call at the end of the film, but we had to make it specific and fit into the film. When we filmed it we got the actress to say her part, and then we got a professional voice over guy to record the other 'mysterious voice' for the other end of the phone. Then we made the voice sound like it was on the other end of the phone, by using a piece of audio editing software.

We had to plan our shooting schedule, this was so that we got everything done on time and weren't behind with anything. It was a very good idea and helped us a lot. It helped us produce out thriller with ease because it kept us to target and with our shooting schedule it made it easier for us to hire the camera's and remember when we were recording. It also helped us know what shots we were recording on which day.

I think our types of shots have improved once we had retaken the shots over and over to get the perfect. We also did use some specific shots, for example, point of view. This was a really good shot to use because it expressed the main character more, and the audience could see what was happening from the characters point of view.

Now that I have used the camera equipment and the Macs, I feel a lot more confident with them and would feel much more confident if I was to use them again. I would know how to use all the setting a lot better and be able to do it all a lot faster as well. This would help me get more done in the time I was given.

I think that once we had finally finished our thriller film, we had successfully fulfilled our brief and created a 2 minute opening sequence to a thriller film. Even though when we were editing, I wasn't too sure if it was going to look that great once we had finished but I really think we had pulled it off, the best to our ability.

If there was one thing that I would have the option to change, it would be the title of our thriller even though it was the audience's choice. It doesn't seem to fit in the film that well, but in a way it does because the film is dark and shadowy like the colour black. Also not much is given away and this could be because it is being covered up the the blackness, or hidden away in a dark place.