Evaluation

Our media thriller challenges and develops media film conventions as it uses a broad range of shots to create a tense yet fast paced atmosphere. Starting with an establishing shot, you can automatically tell it is set in England due to the gloomy dark weather and the iconography such as bus stops and road signs. The quick cuts from extreme long shots to long shots make the film snappy and sharp which instantly shows it’s a thriller as it is snappy. The girl is walking at a mid pace which helps add to the momentum and build up.
As research we the film ‘The Shining’. This is a very famous thriller which uses shots to portray its genre. I learnt that to have a successful thriller you have to have a lot of long shots. This is to not only show the mise-en-scene but so you can capture what is going on behind the character on screen. This definitely creates a tense, Nail biting feeling.
Also as another source of research for our thriller film we looked at clips from Crime watch because we wanted to understand the shots they used to capture someone being followed. This was helpful as it showed thriller conventions such as short snappy shot lengths to build suspense. I learnt that to build suspense you needed to have the right music for the piece as this changes the mood of the scene; we applied this to our film as we had a fast paced soundtrack to help set the overall pace of the film.

Our thriller opening represents women as passive and vulnerable, as the young girl is being followed by a hooded boy. It also shows that women are more prone to being followed or attacked. The hooded person represents the youth of today, it shows that stereotypes of young men are not safe. It also connotes that men are more dangerous and powerful as they have more intimidation. The media social groups contrast dramatically as women and young girls are often in situations such as being followed so this represents them as the victim’s, whereas the males are represented as untrustworthy and dangerous.

Our product would be distributed to a small independent UK institution as it is very simple. The lack of different sets and mise-en-scene’s and simple story line wouldn’t attract to a worldwide audience as only English people would be able to relate to it. Also because the story line is a very common factor in today’s social society, so many English women would be able to relate to the lack of safety and trust between strange men on London’s streets today. It would not be a Hollywood hit as people from different countries might not be able to relate to it so it would be seen as unrealistic to them and perhaps boring. To create a worldwide realise you need a storyline that is more exciting and capturing.

The audience for our media product would be of a wide variety of ages. As although it does represent young women more it is does not have strong elements of youth in it. The language is understandable for all and the storyline can target men and women of different ages. Although it could appeal to both sex’s I think women would appeal to it more as they are being targeted and victimised so they would be able to relate more to it then men. They would also be working class people that tend to walk and use public transport more. In my opinion any normal working class or middle class person would watch this, for example ‘Rachel, 25, works in an office in central London’.

I would attract my audience by having as much advertising as I could afford. I would put my advertisements on buses and tube stations as the product has high elements of public transport. So people using public transport would be attracted and intrigued to see it. I would also advertise on billboards and TV adverts to get a more diverse and bigger audience. Myspace/facebook advertisements would be used as well as a lot of people use these sites and it would definitely attract a wider variety of ages and races. I would market the film using the storyline itself as I feel it would intrigue people to watch it and find out what happens.

During the process of filming I learnt to use many technical products such as camera work and working with sound and final cut pro. I found filming hard as I could not get a steady hand or good shots, but I enjoyed editing. This was because I found it easy and also fun to piece the product together. The end result was a team effort but I feel that my editing skills progressed highly in the making of this thriller. We used the internet and blogger to capture a daily diary of what we were doing, weather it was filming or editing. This increased my skills of evaluating as it helped me go over the process of each thing one by one.

From our preliminary film I learnt that the story line makes a big difference in creating a tense atmosphere. Our preliminary film was very intriguing and exciting where as I felt our final product lacked the certain element of suspense. I have also learnt that planning properly makes a big difference to your final piece and also to your group performance. The preliminary film was very well planned using a story board to mark each shot and what was supposed to be happening, this gave a clear outline of what we had to film. Whereas the thriller filming was not planned neatly meaning that we did not create a clear enough story board let alone a storyline that everyone agreed on. This meant that most of our shots when filming were decided on the day, which made everyone feel unorganised. It also affected us as a group as we did not all agree on the same things due to it not being planned properly.