Thriller Evaluation

1. What ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our production was of the thriller genre, and therefore it was important that our opening sequence used codes and conventions of the thriller genre.
Firstly, the characters had to be thought about carefully and what impression they give to the audience, so their personalities had to be reflected through their clothes, the location, lighting, and camera angles. We had one character living in a run down, dirty, empty house which only gave him basic resources and wearing casual clothing including a red t-shirt, which was there to signify that he was in danger (The use of red to signify a mood, theme or feelings).
The location implies that he has a very disrupted, isolated and poor lifestyle. Because of this, we used dark, low saturation, a cold pallet of blue, white, grey and black, and natural lighting on that character and generally had the camera angle facing downwards to him, as if to say this character is low down in the social class demographic and is also the victim.
To create a form of suspense, which is a typical thriller convention, we worked the camera so you could not see the attacking characters face, so the audience would only judge this character on his preset stereotype by the way he is dressed and by the knife he is carrying. We felt that by showing the audience the attackers face, this may change and personalise their views towards his character as he may not look very convincing to the role he is playing, and any unintended facial expressions may change the tone of his character and effectiveness of the introduction. Also, we used camera shots such as over the shoulder shots which are frequently used in thriller media to back up this suspense and intensity, and continued to vary shot types by their frame, and the way they pan, track and move along with the villain and murderer. We chose the music for the way that the music builds up over key shots that we want to attract the audience’s attention towards, and some notes are held over a period of time and add a feel of tension into the clip.
The way we edited the clip together made a big difference. We added fade ins and outs as the action of the clip switched between the two characters to make this switch of action smoother and less disorientating to the audience. When the lighting was brighter, this allowed us to use dissolve techniques to switch the focus, that when the focus was switched to the killer at the door looking through the blurred front door. This creates a bold mood and brings the presence of this character very much to the audience’s attention.
The choice of location was vital to our sequence. It was important that the location was deserted and looked fairly run down to get across the desired connotations to the audience regarding the victim character in the house, and also the availability of a train track beside the house proved to be key as a suspenseful and intimidating approach of the killer to the location, and approaching the victim could be set.

2. How does your media product represent a particular social group?
This is represented through the thriller introduction by its level of potential violence, dark storyline, strength and impact of realism. Social groups can be represented through the characters.
The characters in the sequence are very mysterious and shadowy, not much is shown about them to the audience. However the dark representation that is given to the audience about life in rural areas through our sequence, social groups can be drawn out by the audience to link the characters to in some way.
For instance, the victim character living in a run down house has very poor standard of basic resources to live from (he is living a very lowlife), and is an outsider from society, which could indicate that he belongs to the social group of a squatter who has had to find shelter on his own without any money or contents to place within the shelter.
The killer character is different to this. The characters bold and tough choice of dress shows he is from an urban area, living a poor standard of life himself as he is carrying a weapon and the tough, worn clothing, in contrast to his victim who is at the low point of rural life. Therefore the killer character would fit into a social group of a thug or a gang member doing what he can to earn money to support himself.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
A media institution such as an Art House would distribute our media introduction because of the detailed and atmospheric camera shots, angles and effects that compose it. An example of a shot from our media introduction would be of the train entering the station. I single out this shot because the camera was still on the tripod as it filmed and was positioned at a precise angle to allow the train to enter the shot at a specific point travelling in a specific direction and leaving the shot and cutting at a precise moment. Therefore a cinema such as Cinema City in Norwich would screen our thriller intro rather than Odeon, which screens mostly mainstream media.
The way location and characters are represented in mainstream films is more bold and stereotypical through the use stock characters and stereotypes than in art house productions. Art house productions are less conventional through the way that its characters are presented with more mystery than mainstream films.

4. Who would be your audience for your media product?
The audience for our thriller film introduction would be aged between 16-25, which is the typical cinema demographic, who particularly are interested in thriller films, or films that follow our sub-genre of crime thriller. If our audience would be interested in such crime thrillers such as ‘Criminal Intent’, then our audience will enjoy our crime thriller introduction.
Because our thriller introduction consists of two main characters that are male, then primarily our production could hold interest of a male audience because of cold colour and situation through the killing and use of a cold pallet of colours, will also primarily attract a male audience. I understand this should be the case because my audience research of the crime thriller film ‘Speed’ showed that primarily a male audience would be attracted to a film with use of cold colours. However, female audiences would also be attracted to the production, because of the detailed and atmospheric shots that an art house production such as ours possesses, such as the shot of the train entering the station.

5. How did you attract and address your audience?
We intended to attract the attention of the audience through such techniques such as symbolic representation, thus addressing our audience towards the characters’ personalities. Also we intend that these techniques will challenge codes and conventions of the genre of thriller and sub-genre of crime thriller.
The reality of the situation of the run down character at the house was that he has been removed from the group of individuals that the killing character belongs to, and therefore is writing a letter about why he will not abide and is intending to escape. The killing character’s role is to intervene and prevent the run down character’s word getting out about the group of individuals’ intentions. Throughout this sequence, we inserted subtle hints about what may happen to this run down character. Such indicators were of the red t-shirt to signify danger, the possession of a knife in favour of the killing character to show his intent to use the knife and the tracking shots of the killing character as he gets ever closer to the run down character to indicate the run down characters impending attack. We challenged the codes and conventions in this sequence by using ECU shots of the key aspects such as the knife, the build up of music to increase the intensity and suspense at important points of the clip, and fading in and out shots of which transitions gradually get quicker for intensity as the impending clash between the characters draws nearer. The dark and cold lighting that we kept as natural as possible we hope helped to darken the mood of our thriller introduction to a more pessimistic mood of gloom surrounding the run down characters lifestyle and situation, that was hopefully emphasised by this noir lighting.


6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
I have learnt about the technologies involved in creating a media product through filming and through editing. For filming I have learnt that to create the right mise-en-scene, aspects such as lighting, camera angle, camera zoom, and camera movement all play a big part in creating the right theme to match the connotations you want to draw to the attention of the audience and for them to react to. I found that this understanding was essential for the part in the production where the victim is writing a letter on the floor. The camera had to be angled to a position where it is looking down of the character to make him seem inferior to whom he is writing the letter to, and that the lighting was dark to highlight his situation but enough light through natural light to see what the victim was doing, and also the zoom was another factor for how much of the character or letter should be included in the shot and what should be the focus of the shot; either the victim or the letter.
For editing, I realise that it is important to involve a wide range of shot types, shot effects, transitions and time variations of each individual sequence that composes the final product. Like for filming, the editing can determine what connotations can be drawn out of the mise-en-scene of the shot and it is the aspects of lighting, colour, camera angles, camera movement, editing effects, transition effects and shot lengths that can bring out micro aspects that contribute to macro areas of the media products that will be intended to be highlighted to be notice by the audience over less important areas of the clip. A part in particular of the production where editing was significant was the sequence beginning at the killer stepping off the train and slowly making his way towards his victim. Transitions between these shots had to set the right atmosphere of danger and suspense, and the movement between each shot had to be smooth and flowing.



7. Looking back to the preliminary filming task, what have you learnt in progression from that to the full product?
I have learnt that there are many aspects that contribute to a shot and a filming sequence to think about when planning and shooting a media product. The preliminary task was a much more condensed and basic task compared to the thriller introduction because we had artificial light that we did not have to change, clothing and props were straight forward to give the look of a student (which we are), and the range of shot types that we needed to carry out was not very varied. For the thriller introduction, a wider picture was set in front of us to think through thoroughly about each individual shot and which micro elements of a shot that will affect the bigger macro elements of the shot and to the overall project. Lighting, saturation, contrast, colour and location were all important to set the tone and mood of the film, which creates the mise-en-scene to which the characters clothing and personalities can be drawn out from. These features were much more important in the thriller film to give a sense of history and chemistry between the characters that the audience can grasp to, and relate to any stereotypes that the characters appearance will indicate. Whereas in the preliminary filming task, the history between the two characters was not needed as the dialogue took centre stage, and because our thriller project subsequently had no dialogue, first impressions were very important to our audience.