In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge froms and conventions of real media products?
It is difficult to clearly define a thriller as they cross over with many other genres, however the single most characteristic of a thriller is the obvious one, it "thrills" the audience. It has the ability to keep the audience in suspense and in most cases gets the spectators asking questions. The plots are commonly chilling, the characters are often in a position that puts them at great risk and makes the watcher really want to know what happens next.
It is arguable that there is no set method in producing a thriller. But most thrillers follow one of a few common narrative structures. This is where the narrative structure is made up of three main parts: order and normality, then something happens where disorder and confusion occurs and finally equilibrium is restored, usually by a hero.
Thrillers can be divided into countless categories, i.e., action thrillers, psychological thrillers, military thrillers, spy thrillers, domestic thrillers and the list goes on. In our case, the thriller falls into the psychological thriller category. Although our thriller opening is subtle and doesn’t reveal a lot of information about the film, we still believe that our opening has enigma and suspense. I also believe that the fact our film doesn’t reveal much works to our advantage creating question for the audience and dramatic tension.
Thrillers can be divided into countless categories, i.e., action thrillers, psychological thrillers, military thrillers, spy thrillers, domestic thrillers and the list goes on. In our case, the thriller falls into the psychological thriller category. Although our thriller opening is subtle and doesn’t reveal a lot of information about the film, we still believe that our opening has enigma and suspense. I also believe that the fact our film doesn’t reveal much works to our advantage creating question for the audience and dramatic tension.
Above is a nine segment screen shot of our film sequence. It shows the different settings we have used throughout the film. It also shows our range of different shot distances and shot angles. I am going to discuss some of these shots and explain why they work well and what we could have done better.
This screen grab is a photo of the first shot of our thriller. This shot gives our audience an idea of the setting and allows them to see both characters at once. Giving the audience all the information they need to know at this point. We chose this kind of shot to in order to give the audience some context as well as showing it in an interesting way. This is accompanied by our chilling yet racing diegetic soundtrack which starts right from the start, making our audience sit on the edge of their seats. The exciting music which builds up as the scene goes on, and is parallel to the picture and storyline.
This shot is interesting because it is an interesting angle; a birds eye angle. It also looks like a point of view shot, showing what the character is looking at/for. It also shows the audience the character's desk. We Had to make sure the desk included all the props you should think should be on a desk and in an office to keep with the theme of the office setting.
This shot is the very last shot before our title sequence begins. We decided this shot would be effective because we wanted the draw to close dramatically - blacking out the screen as soon as the draw slams shut. We also accompanied this with a dramatic diegectic "booming" sound to give it a more striking effect.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
The protagonist in our film is male business man. This is stereotypical as most people would presume that someone who is an office worker or a business person is a man. This is one of the reasons we chose a male to play the part of the protagonist as a male fits the role best as opposed to a female. As the character is a businessman, with his own office, this can give the audience a good idea of what he earns. This also displays what kind of social class he may be in, middle-class. This can convey to the audience that this is a type of character they can relate to and will be able to empathise with later in the film.
In some respects we went against stereotypes when we chose someone young to perform the part of our male lead, as opposed to someone middle aged. This may break the stereotype of the 'common businessman' but we thought his age would best fit for our 'save the day' type character.
We also broke quite a strong stereotype when choosing our antagonist. We decided to go with a female character. Women are usually and very commonly the victims in thriller films and male characters tend to take the role of the villain. We decided to have a woman for the purpose that it does go against the stereotype and gives our film some edge and uniqueness. We also thought it would fit well with the sub-genre of our film. Where a male character might fit perfectly in an action thriller, we thought a female antagonist would fit with our psychological thriller. 
When deciding our female character, we thought our character should be young and roughly the same age as our male character; this is to fit into our storyline. We also decided she should be attractive and smartly dressed and not give away too much emotion in the first part of our film. When decided her costume we thought she should wear a typical young working woman's outfit. This is to not distract away from the character as well as keeping in with the theme of the setting.What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
When thinking about what kind of media institution would distribute our product I am going to consider a number of important points.
- What types of distributors are there? What type of company would best suit our film; a large 'world cinema' type company or a smaller individual organisation?
- What type of thriller have we produced and what type of distributor has worker with similar films?
- We need to identify the audience. We would need to think about how and where they distribute and weather it would be directed to the right audience.
- What kind of cinema would we want our film to be shown it?
- When our film would be released.
I think the best type of distributor would be a fairly small, more independent company. However it can't be so independent that no one hears about it, it must do well on the films that it does distribute.
I think our film would start off well in the UK. Perhaps even in one part of England then expanding across Britain? Possibly the south; in London. I think the further expansion out of the UK would be based on how well it does in the UK.
Our thriller is a psychological thriller. It would be a great advantage for our film to be distributed by an institution that produces many our thriller type films. This would be a company such as http://www.newmarketfilms.com/. However this company is an American based company and wouldn’t work for film as we plan for it to be initially shown in Britain.
Establishing the audience is an important factor as it will help identity who would be good for distribution and who will be best for advertising. I will go into more depth for this point in question 4, however i believe that, overall, our target audience would be aged teens and upwards and would be mixed gender. This would mean that advertising and sponsorship would need to be directed towards the younger generation. So the distributor would need to distribute other similar films to ours, so that they would know where to advertise so that our target audience if informed about our film.
The kind of cinema we would want our film to be screened in is a small more independent type cinema. This would be a cinema such as The Duke of York Theatre in Brighton. They screen a range of independent films and I think our film would fit in well there.
According to research, the best time of the week for a film to be released is on a Wednesday or a Friday. It also appears that the best time of the year is in the summer time, around July. This is what I would recommend we do when we would release our film.
Having considered all these points I have decided on what media institution would be best to distribute our film; Momentum pictures. Momentum Pictures which is also known as Alliance Films UK, is one of the leading independent motion picture distributors in the UK and Ireland. It releases approximately 20 films a year. The company is also owned by Paramount Pictures.
Having considered all these points I have decided on what media institution would be best to distribute our film; Momentum pictures. Momentum Pictures which is also known as Alliance Films UK, is one of the leading independent motion picture distributors in the UK and Ireland. It releases approximately 20 films a year. The company is also owned by Paramount Pictures.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Firstly I have thought about age. I looked on the bbfc website to compare our film with other films and see the criteria for classification in modern films. I also considered legal issues that need to faced when choosing the certification. 
After research and consideration on the website, I think that the best suited rating for our film would be a 12. This means that people from the age 12 and upwards are suited to watch the film. However i believe the age of our audience would stop at around the age of 50. At first I thought that maybe our film could be rated a 15 certificate but after more consideration we thought it should be rated a 12, due to no racist comments and infrequent bad language. There may be some sexual references but nothing 'off the scale'. And there would be limited gory/horror scenes in our film nor would there be any display of drug abuse. I also considered that our film would appeal to a wider audience if the classification age was lower. I would say the gender of the audience of our film would be mixed gender. This is because the sub-genre for our film is generally watched by both genders equally. Also the characters in the film are a balance of genders.
How did you attract/address your audience?
The attraction element in our film opening is the anticipation and suspension. It allows our audience to keep asking questions. The suspension comes from being all the information with keep when drawn from the audience. This is known as dramatic tension. We mad our character a believable one. Creating a familiar and realistic setting to our target audience, this allows a connection to be made between the audience and the main character. This creates more of an effect on the audience and creates a relationship and a connection. We did this by making our characters young adults, the age we expect our audience to be. We also used a familiar setting so our audience can relate further.
I also believe that our film has a unique narrative and that it's different to many other thrillers that have been made. I think that gives it its edge.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Firstly I am going to establish what technologies we used in the processes of making our film opening. And then I am going to look at what I have learnt when using these items. And I'm going to look at what I learnt when using the editing software in our film.
What items of technology did we use in the making of film?
- HD Camera
HD Camera- In using this I learnt a number of things. I learnt that you have to consider the framing of your shot.You also must consider white balance. This is so the colouring of the shot is correct and doesn't look odd. This must be done before every shot. Another thing to look out for is making sure the shots line up with continuity.
- Tripod
A Tripod is a fairly straight forward piece of equipment and is pretty easy to use.- Tripod Dolly
- Portable Lights
What Software did we use in the making of the film?
- Final Cut Pro
This is a screen grab from the programme Final Cut Pro. It was very tricky to use at first but once we got used to it, we found it to be very good and effective for our film.
- Garage Band
This is another screen grab, but this is from the programme Garageband. It's similar in the sense that it's fairly tricky to use but once grasped, fairly easy.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I feel that I have learnt a lot more since the production of our preliminary task. However I also think that we used what we learnt what we did well in our preliminary, and used them again in our Thriller opening. For example in the preliminary our continuity editing and match on action skills worked really well, so used what we knew we could do well.
We also learnt how to use garage to create extra sound effects and Foley sounds in our preliminary. This helped us with this task in many ways. It meant we could add interesting and effective sound effects. for example when the draw slams shut at the end is accompanied by a loud and effective "booming" sound.
Overall, i believe that I have learnt alot since our preliminary, and have created a piece of work that shows how we have improved with our camera and editing skills.
