Thriller Evaluation

In what ways does our media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
We didn't want to challenge the Thriller genre, but use its conventions to make our film as close to the conventions as possible, and so we focused mainly on the "use and develop" aspects. As previously mentioned, we decided to take aspects from different thrillers and create a film which expanded on the conventions of the genre. This meant watching various different thrillers and finding themes, styles, ideas and techniques which are used regularly in the films. We then studied these (see my posts on thriller signifiers) and tried to incorporate them into our film (which is discussed in the shot evaluation). When we asked our media class whether "Selecting mise en scene to create particular effects" was successful, we recieved an average score of 9.2 and we told that the "black and white worked". We did decide to have an Asian actor for the lead, which is a rare occurrence in a British thriller, where the lead is most often white (“The Third Man”, “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” and “Phone Booth” all have white protagonists for example). We thought it would help to attract an Asian target audience, as well as the more stereotypical white-male target audience. We also tried to create a visual style with our film, which I have already discussed in previous posts. Our film is black and white, which is how the older thrillers were often filmed (such as “Vertigo”, or more recently, “Sin City”, which is filmed in black and white for the same reasons as us.), as it creates a high contrast between the only two available colours, which are always clashing. We made the film quite dark looking, as to relate to the theme of crime. We also used the contrast between black and white to highlight certain points of the film, such as the staircases we use, which are often black against white, to show the viewer when the character is walking, or how we used silhouettes to highlight the character against the background, to make them stand out. This has also been discussed in previous posts. When we asked members of our media class the question "Shooting material that is appropriate to the opening of a thriller film (was there evidence of thriller signifiers?)", we received possitive feedback and an average score of 9.1 out of 10, showing we managed to recreate the thriller genre.

How does our media product represent social groups and why?
As in most thrillers, the male lead in our film is strong, powerful and dominant, which helps to attract a male target audience and keep them engaged. We only used male characters because that is what the people who watch thrillers are normally expecting, and as mentioned, we want to keep the target audience that watched thrillers, Which our research claims is young to middle aged adult males. Our film makes crime seem very dangerous and unforgiving, portrayed by the death of one of the criminals in the film. The protagonist is also shown to be intelligent, powerful and cool, which are attributes the target audience will likely want to have, and so the film tells them that by mirroring the main character, they can become him. However, because he is so detached from the target audience (being a criminal, and by his quiet, almost inhuman attitude), he is only escapism to the audience, and not a very influential character. However, John Vanik is shown to be the polar opposite of Smith, as he is arrogant, and stupid. In this sense, we represent criminals in a negative way. Because Vanik is the antagonist, and the protagonist kills him, Smith's character becomes more desirable, because in killing Vanik, Smith is doing something the audience would likely want to do, but as the audience still realises that killing is wrong, he is further detached from reality. As the protagonist is the only Asian character in the film, he portrays the race in the same way as himself, with no other character, which can have a very powerful effect on the audience. As previously mentioned, the character is intelligent, powerful and cool, and so he portrays the entire race in that same way. Our film also represents the genders differently. As the entire cast is male, we create a very wide, varied representation of males, in comparison to females, who are completely left out, and are therefore made to seem less important and less likely to be criminals. As the target audience is male, however, we want males to seem more important and dominant than females, so the audience can better relate to the characters on screen.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I would try to get my film distributed by Miramax, as they are a company which have distributed other films similar to/ films which influenced our film, such as "Sin City" and "The Faculty". This means they have experience distributing thrillers, which leads to better advertising and therefore a higher chance of the film being successful. Thriller fans would also be more likely to look at the new films from the company as the company produces many famous thrillers such as "No Country for Old Men", “Essex Boys” and "Reservoir Dogs", meaning that my target audience would be very easy to locate.

Who would be the audience for your media product?
The members of our group compared research into what types of films different demographics were appealed to and discovered that out of our interviewees, males aged around their young twenties to late thirties were watched the most and were most interested in thrillers. This set us a target to appeal to, and we modelled our film around this. We then looked at the questionnaires of those who fell in our target audience, and looked for patterns in their interests. We noted that most people were only interested in the more recent thriller films, such as "Psycho", and prefered films such as "Sin City" and "Se7en". We also noticed that the people we chose in our target audience mostly prefered thrillers about crime syndicates and the underworld, such as "Resevoir Dogs", so we made our film about crime syndicates. Due to this, people who enjoy the more recent thrillers which are about crime syndicates become a part of our audience. The Asian lead in our film would also especially appeal to the Asian community.

How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted our audience by creating a main character that the audience could relate to, as people enjoy watching a film with a character they can relate to, so that they can imagine themselves in the film. Therefore, our protagonist is male and in his mid twenties to late thirties. (The younger side of this spectrum so that the audience can imagine themselves as slightly younger). Our choice of distributor would also attract our audience asthriller fans are likely to go to Miramax as they often distribute popular thrillers. We also used editing and filming techniques from the most popular thrillers, so to make our film feel similar to the films the target audience enjoyed.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
By the end of the project, we had learnt how to use all of the equipment we were provided with to a reasonable standard, and there are few things that we would have done if we had possessed the skill. The video camera, tripod and Adobe Premier Elements 1.0 were the three most important things that we had to learn how to use. We have learned the limitations and advantages of using each of these things, which I will now list. We used a relatively cheap handheld camera for filming, and during the continuity task and the thriller task we learnt some of the negative and positive points about it. Many of these were obvious, especially the advantages, such as its ease of use, its small size, which allowed us to carry and film by hand; and the speed at which it turns on, ready for use. However, we later discovered that the camera had many limitations which we had to work around while planning or filming, depending on whether the issue was anticipated or not. The camera creates a very low quality image in comparison to the stunning HD images we are often used to seeing in a professional film, but we realised this and there was nothing we could do to change it. We also knew that we there were issues when moving the camera, because the camera uses an auto-focus mechanism which means that the camera will blur the desired part of the scene for a few seconds before focusing. This meant that we were forced to use still shots for a lot of the film. This also affected zooming in, as the camera would keep re-focusing, often at the wrong part of the scene. The zoom function was hard to use as the button for it was very small and delicate, and so maintaining a zoom, or using a slow zoom were very hard to do, especially together, which is what we wanted to do. The battery of the camera was another anticipated problem, as we were forced to stop filming when the batteries died, although we had filmed everything we needed by this point anyway. The sound quality was also low, much worse than the quality of the video. To get the best out of the built-in microphone, the camera had to be close to the source of the sound, and background noise had to be kept to a minimum. The dark was an unanticipated problem we had, as we had never filmed in the dark, and did not realise that it would compromise the quality of the film. When in the dark, the camera lost a lot of visual quality and refused to focus. However, the places we filmed were well lit, even for the night time, so this was less of a problem than it could have been.The tripod was another vital part of equipment we had never used before this course, and so we had to learn how to use it. It was useful for holding the camera still, and used it for nearly all of our shots, even the moving ones, as we could move the camera on a pivot. We also used it for getting the camera into places previously unacceptable to us, such as holding the camera over the staircase in our film. However, the tripod could only extend to a certain height, which limited us to an extent. The shot which looks like it is from a security camera was shot with the tripod fully extended, and if it had been longer we might have tried to get the camera higher.The software we used was what limited us the most. Like the camera, it was created for ease of use and simplicity, and so it was easy to learn how to use the program and perform simple, essential tasks such as editing film together, uploading content, adding other types of media to the film and adding special effects to use on the media. However, there were very few useful effects, and changing how much we wanted to use the effects was very hard to do. There were also very few fonts useful for the style of our thriller, and so we had to find a free font online to install, using http://www.cooltext.com/. We then learnt how to install new fonts to the computer so they could be used by the program. However, editing was for us the hardest process, and all the questions we asked our media class regarding editing had the lowest scores. We have learnt, however, as we asked for feedback mid-editing, and recieived an even lower score then. This shows that we have developed our understanding and have since improved our editing even further.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?What would you do to the project with more time? Although we tried to learn everything we would need for the full product in the preliminary before we started the thriller, there are some things that we had not prepared for, and had to learn during the process. This includes several of the shots we used, such as the birds eye view shot of the staircase, which we originally planned to perform by holding the camera over the balcony with our hands. However, we could not get far enough, and had to use the tripod as an extension. We also learnt about the importance of proper lighting. We didn't use any lighting effects in our thriller or continuity, relying on natural lighting. We were very lucky that all of our shots worked, although there are still some parts which we thought would have profited from better lighting. I feel we have also learnt about the basics of the film making process. Starting with nothing, we still managed to create an interesting, successful film. Because we finished early, we had ample time to make changes, go back to the audience, ask for feedback and continue to make changes until there were no improvements that could be made (decided by viewers and the group). However, we would have profited with more skill and better equipment. This is mainly in the special effects part of editing, as better equipment while filming would likely only have resulted in a higher quality image, which does not particularly matter in this project. The main thing I would have liked to change was the effects we used on the text. I would have liked to make the text we used flicker, as mentioned previously on my blog, but we lacked the knowledge and equipment to do this successfully. I also would have liked to redo the shot where the ceiling partly obstructs our view, but even if I redid the shot perfectly, the mise-en-scene of the car park would have changed, the characters would look different (different hair for example) and the weather could be different which would mean that the shot would not fit into the rest of the film.

Personally, I am very pleased with our finished video. We did everything we set out to do when we planned to do it, learned new things and created a final piece which was far more successful than I ever could have anticipated.