Our Thriller Evaluation

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

Our thriller incorporates generic conventions as the first scene show the actress walking out of a school and going home which is a normal scenario that most people do in their daily life. Our thriller challenges normal conventions because the way the actress dies at the end is quite shocking and unexpected and will leave most people with some suspense. The use of normal conventions does not really indicate what genre it is as from the start of the sequence it just looks like a normal person doing their daily routine and going home. Conventions of a thriller include action, suspense, mystery, vi

olence, conflict, danger, hero/villain, victim. This applies to our thriller as we have our victim, the teenage girl who is followed from college and then murdered in her own home. The suspense and mystery buil

ds throughout and is emphasized through shadowy characters, spying through the door, shadows in the mirror, banging from the loft, etc. We don’t see violence directly but the girl is murdered which implies

 that there will be violence within the film. Danger is shown through her being followed, watched and her house being broken into. Also the shadows and darkness suggest danger.

The conventions of a thriller used indicates that it could be a crime thriller as there is mystery, a murder, a victim and a criminal. Also, the murderer breaks into the girls house.

2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The only character shown in the opening is a teenage girl who attends college, dre

ssed how you might see as 'normal' in black leggings, leather boots, plain top and cardigan. She is walking along with a phone and listening to her iPod. All stereotypical of a teenage girl. We rated our thriller as a 15, so the target audience for it is above that age, but mainly older like old teens/young

 adults. Having a stereotypical 17/18 year old in our film should appeal to this age group. It is aime

d at either a male or female audience.

Conventions of a thriller include action, suspense, mystery, violence, conflict, danger, hero/villain, victim. This applies to our thriller as we have our victim, the teenage girl who is followed from college and then murdered in her own home. The suspense and mystery builds throughout and is emphasized through shadowy characters, spying through the door, shadows in the mirror, banging from the loft, etc. We don’t see violence directly but the girl is murdered which implies that there will be violence within the film. Danger is shown through her being followed, watched and her house being broken into. Also the shadows and darkness suggest danger.

The conventions of a thriller used indicates that it could be a crime thriller as there is mystery, a murder, a victim and a criminal. Also, the murderer breaks into the girls house.

3) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our thriller doesn't really explore social groups, as there is only one character introduc

ed and she just appears to be a normal teenage girl on her way home from college. We do give a stereotypical view as to what is perceived as normal, but there isn't much more of an insight to who this girl is. 

Gender is also represented in a stereotypical way as the victim is a girl, so she is the helpless, weak character. The murderer isn't shown to the audience so it could be male or female. The characters at the bus stop appear to be male and although they may or may not play a big part in the film, they appear to be a threat and possibly dangerous. 

This could make the film appeal to men more as they would prefer to be seen as the dominant sex, and our thriller suggests this. 

4) What type of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

We think that the opening sequence of our thriller might attract

 distributers that are interested in distributing low budget films that have an interesting story line and that also have the potential to appeal to a large audience as it brings something different to the mainstream market. Also it doesn't use many special effects, an expensive location or highly-payed actors, which ensures a low budget.

A company such as vertigo or working title films might be interested and their history of films have quite similar genres.

We think our thriller could also have the potential to become a tv series as it has got a story line line that can be customized. It is quite similar to daily life for a regular person, until you see behind closed doors.

5)Who would be the audience for your media product?

We think that the thriller would attract a wide range of audiences as the story is 

quite intense and just the opening sequence leaves you wanting to know more about what is going to happen next.

The majority of the audience might be males as there a is a attractive female actress starring in the film and we think that would appeal to a male audience rather than a female one. Also you see dominance from male characters over female ones, as the mysterious men at the bus stop appear to be a threat and the girl is a victim.

Another film that we can compare our film to is the hills have eyes but will less gory 

scenes and more story line. This film appeals to a smaller audience as it is more gory and specific, probably only for people who are attracted to thrillers or horrors in particular. Whereas, our film contains more every day occurrences and could appeal to those with a weaker stomach as it isn't very graphic. It is more mysterious, as the murders aren't properly shown. 

6)How did you attract/address your audience?

We addressed our audience by giving them as little information as possible so the only way to get the full story is to keep watching the thriller. This is why, in the opening, there was no dialogue and therefore very little insight into the film. It did include the first crime and mystery, this would attract a wide range of people as all they would need to be is curious and automatically we have an audience. Also, the idea of male dominance being shown in an already patriarchal society, will attract men to see the film. If not for that reason, then for the attractive female actress.  

7) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

The strengths of using the camera equipment is that it was all quiet simple to use at times as the tripod could conveniently fold up into a compact portable shape that can fit into a case.

The camera was also quiet basic to use as there was a option on the camera to watch a tutorial that showed you how to operate the camera as well as all the buttons and it's various features.

The weakness of using the camera equipment is that sometimes the tripod was stiff and we had to mess around with the screws to get it to respond.

The camera also had some weaknesses as there were some difficulty with the tape as another group had previously used it and didn't clear the tape so it interfered with our footage.

We delt with this by clearing the tape myself before we shot anything new so there wouldn't be no feather issues with the camera or tape.

The equipment enhanced the thriller as the tripod gave us the ability to operate the camera in a 360 motion while in one steady shot.

Final cut pro gave us various options in the ways that we could edit the thriller e.g all the tools for cutting and rendering the footage and the effects such as fade in and fade out.

Garageband was very good at putting the music together but then it was quite difficult importing it to final cut pro and it took us a while until we found a way to convert the music into a mp3 format.

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

Our preliminary task helped us by giving an insight into the way we would construct our thriller. Looking back on our preliminary task we think that it has helped us with editing technique. The preliminary task was practice for the full product, and we learnt how to dissolve into another shot, fade-in and fade-out, and other transition effects. Also, it gave us good practice with camera techniques and shots such as the point-of-view shot. We also learnt to ensure we get a good shot of the things we plan to include, even if it has to be shot repeatedly. As when we come to edit and don't have a good shot of what we need, it could either effect our grade or waste or time as we would have to then film more. We have experimented with lots of new programs along the way and used them to attract an audience and create conventions the can be recognized. The preliminary task taught us how important the steps of production before and after are as well. For example the plan and an analysis, without these we would have struggled in the beginning and then failed to improve.