Media Thriller Evaluation

Media Thriller Evaluation

When looking at Thriller openings we usually see establishing shots of locations e.g. a house or a hotel. In my Thriller, we started it off with an establishing shot of the character house and this is commonly used in openings of Thrillers. The audience are normally left asking questions or wondering what is going to happen next and this is a good way to start. In my Thriller the audience never see the perpetrator and in Thrillers the perpetrator is hardly ever seen straight away. To build up suspense within our Thriller we used sounds that came in one after another and gradually increased in volume e.g. the heart beat increased in volume when the stalker was watching the girl.

After the radio announcement we start hearing a continuous sound. This makes the audience suspect that something is going to happen. The audience then start to feel comfortable because the sound continues for a long time and nothing happens. The audience are then again alerted when the sound of strings comes in and the suspense is then built up until we see the flash of the girl.

The flash we used of the little girl was heavily influenced by the scene in “The Shinning” of the two little girls flashing up when the little goes to the door. 

When we watched this, the sound played a massive part in the shock of it. The fact that we saw an ordinary little boy riding a tricycle made us feel at ease and was completely unaware that any such thing could occur. This is very similar to what we did as it was an ordinary day in the city.

In my Thriller we used a typical teenage black girl. The fact that this girl is teenager already determines the age group that my Thriller appeals to. Although the main character is a female the Thriller still appeals to both genders of the teenage group. Females are usually the main victims in Thriller films where they are assaulted or kidnapped and this is what happens

 in our Thriller. This also shows that women are vulnerable. The costume that the girl is wearing is typical of a working class girl. She is wearing dark colour jeans, a black jacket, plimsolls and a black and white woolly hat. The audience can easily relate and step into the shoes of this character as it is what they see or even wear on a daily basis. The little girl that we see in the Thriller is wearing a blue coat and a colourful scarf like a typical little girl. 

This shows the innocence and realism of the girl. This is also done in the shinning where the girls have their hair down and wearing blue dresses with bows on them. The innocent look is also created with the ‘innocent’ smile.

Shooting the Thriller in the day time was much easier and allowed us more filming time that we definitely needed. Although we shot it in the day time, using final cut pro we were able to make it black and white that gave it a better feel.

We developed our understanding on how to shoot footage, and how we had to film one piece of action several times in different angles in order to get very effective match cuts. We realised that charging the camera was important as there was many times where the battery died out.

We explored different camera angles and camera techniques; however the majority were normal straight ones. We had the problem of breaking the 180 degrees rule and due to that had to film several times again. We used low angle shots of the girl closing the door and the pan to the radio and also close ups like when we were focusing on the keys.

Using final cut pro I was also able to blend in the sound track and have everything flow properly and smoothly.

The editing process became easier as I became more used to the program. Logging and capturing was easy and I particularly enjoyed doing Match cuts. As I became more familiar with the program editing became quicker. The only difficult thing we found with Final cut Pro was making our Thriller shorter as we had exceeded the 2 minutes by like 1 minute. Cutting out some footage was the hardest part.

Although Filming and editing was important we also had to record everything that we had done throughout the process and we did this on Blogger. At the end of every lesson or sometimes every week I would blog what ever I had done in the lesson. This was a good way of keep a track of whatever I had done within that week of lesson.

I think that my Thriller will be distributed as a small independent UK release. I don’t thin that it would be a big Hollywood blockbuster because of where it is set. It will not relate to people unless they live around this area. It will be distributed around a small number of UK ‘arthouse’ cinemas and will only mainly get watched by working class people roughly aged from 15-24.

Films like ‘The Shinning” I think would be enjoyed mainly by people aged fifth teen upwards and so that’s the target for my Thriller. “The Shinning” was mostly enjoyed by males than females and so that’s what my Thriller is aiming at. I however think that females would enjoy it as well as they would be able to relate to it as it is a typical girl that is the main character and that is getting kidnapped. The audience that my Thriller would appeal are niche, those within the east end of London. I would expect that sort of audience as they can easily relate the film. Kate is a 19 year old female who works in a call centre in East London. She loves going out with her friends on the weekends and is a big fan of the cinema. She loves to shop in West End.

For my Film to be successful and that I would get a good audience, I would have to look for the best way to advertise my Thriller. Knowing that my audience are young and both male and female, advertising my Thriller would be good on social networking sites like Facebook. As my Thriller is for working class people aged 15-24 having the film advertised on billboards would be a good idea. There will be no famous actors in my film so that won’t help to attract the audience. The mise-en-scene is urban, as it is set in city streets, it has an urban setting and the people may live near a place like this and so will find it is easy to relate to such things. The storyline is also very real and happens on a daily basis and so people will understand and feel for the character even more, this will also help to attract the audience. When making our Thriller we wanted the audience to be hooked and be very interested in what will happen next and hopefully we did this very successfully.

My group learnt a lot when doing this Thriller. There were many major set backs but we were able to finish it successfully. Our idea was changed mid way in making the Thriller which was a set back. We had to change the time of our Thriller. When we first filmed our Thriller we had trouble using the lightening kit as our Thriller was in the night. The footage came out very dark, so we had to change it to day time. We also faced the problem with the fact that when we first filmed the floor was icy from snow and on other days the floor was dry.

When I look back at the preliminary match cut task that I did. I have realised how important it is to plan and story board the ideas that you have for your Thriller before we go and film it. For the actual Thriller we decided to film many different angles of the same piece of action and this was something that we didn’t do in the preliminary task. The match cut task really helped me when I came to do my actual Thriller as it allowed me to have knowledge of how to do really good match cuts.

When it came to editing the Thriller it made it slightly easier as we had practiced on the preliminary but there were still things that need to be learnt.

Having done the preliminary task, it allowed us to also get to gripes with our organisation and also sharing out the task. We knew that it wouldn’t be easy to do anything without the whole group pulling their weight. As the process continued I found myself being more confident in using the software’s like Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro and Live Type.

We had very positive audience feedback which made me proud of my work. We were told that the black and white effect was effective and the use of sound effects worked. I was really pleased that people enjoyed watching the Thriller and that they were supportive of the work. If I had to do this again I would plan more in depth and know exactly what I was going to go and film before I started as this wasted a lot of time.

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