Jamie's completed evaluation

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

During the planning and execution of our thriller opening, we have aimed to offer something perhaps a bit different to what is considered as the usual conventions of a thriller film, without distorting it so much that it is unrecognisable as a thriller. There are many aspects and traits of a movie production that move a film into the thriller genre.

We took the type of narration we would use in our opening into great consideration. We were unsure of whether to make the narrative restricted or unrestricted at first but eventually we came to the conclusion to use a blend of both. The fact that we allow the audience to see the murders occurring instantly puts them in a more knowing position than the main characters, making it unrestricted narration. However, this is all the audience get to see which doesn’t really put them in a better position than the detective characters. The thinking behind this was making the audience believe they are more in the know and in a more powerful position than the characters, when in-fact they know just as much as the seemingly clueless detectives. I think we have pulled this off well.

We used as many of the elements of mise en scene as we thought necessary to try and impose our own vision of a thriller onto the opening. The settings for the murders I think highlight this. In this case we couldn’t stray to far from the traditional conventions of a thriller with regards to mise en scene.

The shot above, as the final shot in our opening, was designed to leave the audience in doubt about the tone of the film they are watching. The setting we found is very typical of a thriller film as it is in the middle of a very isolated, sinister wood. Our way of making this particular scene unique and adding our own convention to it was including an interesting shot of the attacker approaching the victim using a POV shot.

A way in which we attempted to challenge the usual conventions of a thriller film was through our use of sound in the opening. Through our research prior to production we noticed that most thriller films tend to open with a soundtrack over the top in order to set the mood. We aimed to set the mood through the use of diegetic sound. Despite a small amount of mood music featured at the beginning and the end of the piece, the two minutes comprise of diegetic sounds only. This allows the audience to feel more involved in the film as if they actually part of it.

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

During the planning and production of our thriller opening, we had to take into consideration the types of social groups our characters belong to, who is being represented by our product, how and why.

In terms of representation, we particularly focused on the use of gender and age. Generally, thriller films feature young adults as they best represent the target audience of the genre. With this in mind we decided to use me and Will as the two detectives who are the main characters in the piece. We thought that two young, contemporary adults would appeal to the audience and be easily likeable characters.



As you can see here Will's character is shown as a 'cool' young male and we have tried to emphasise this through the use of mise en scene and camera work. The shirt he is wearing helps with his casual look as does his seemingly laid back body language.

Our choice to make both of our decective characters male was done to help emphasise an element of chemistry between the two. We felt that their relationship and the way we wanted them represented would not filter through to the audience unless they were same sex.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

We came to the conclusion that we would want an independant film company to distribute our product to the public as this would be a cheaper method than trying to go mainstream. We would have to consider how we would go about marketing our product the public. As it is only a small scale film and we would be using an independant company to market it, who would not be able to afford to use TV campaigns and other ridiculously expensive methods, we would aim to use methods such as:

• Local newspaper adverts
• Fliers and posters in the area we are showing the film
• Using methods such as 'word of mouth' (which are explained on this website)http://www.launchingfilms.tv/marketing.php?video=1&autostart=1

The website above also explains many other methods of promoting and distributing a small scale product like ours. The home page is http://www.launchingfilms.tv/

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

We discussed what sort of target audience we would be aiming for with our product in detail and based it on the research we had already done on thrillers. Our product is aimed at people in the age range of around 18 to 30 or just people who have a strong interest in the thriller genre. This is because our research indicates people in this age range go to the cinema more than any other age group. Also we felt our product would not appeal to the elderly as the characters would seem somewhat alien to them and they would find it hard to relate to the film. We decided not to target a specific gender with our product as we felt that it has something to offer for both sexes.



We feel that the people who will enjoy our film would be people who are fans of the Saw series or Se7en as (without ripping of the themes and ideas or these films) our film comes into the same sort of category in which the film follows two dectectives trying to track down and capture an elusive murderer on their first case.

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

I think the audience we have targeted for the film would enjoy the product we have produced for the following reasons:

• The main attraction that the audience will enjoy is how in your face our opening sequence is. Whereas traditional thriller films will build up the general plot of the film over a long period of time, we have made our opening so that is imposes many questions into the mind of the audience from the off. The murders featured right at the beginning of the film sets a template for all these questions to unfold thoughout the rest of the film and this will engage the audience.
• The two decective characters I believe offer a lot of appeal to the viewer as, as I stated previously, we have fashioned them as young, contemporary and likeable characters from which the viewer can relate to and become attatched to.
• Despite not being a major focus of ours. The two soundtracks we have at the beginning and at the end of the sequence would draw in the audience and help them relate to the situation better. The piece at the beginning is fairly light hearted and sets the mood for the detective scene thus making them more likeable characters. The piece at the end of the sequence is very sharp and shocking which we included in order to highlight a feeling of tension and severity within the audience.
• The above point links to how we have done the credits. We gradually enter the cast via credits and finish of with a very vivid black on white shot of the title which add to the mood we have created in the sequence. This helps to engage the audience.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Before we started the product, I had a rather limited understanding of a lot of the technology we used throughout production.

• I have developed a good understanding of how to create and mainpulate a blog format piece of work. I have found that displaying my work in a blog format is far more interesting and rewarding than the essay format i was previously used to and did not enjoy. I found that inserting screenshots and using simple things such as bullet points both improves the quality of my work and makes it more user friendly.
• My knowledge of camera work has been improved throughout production as I have used it to perform shots that i previously never would have been able to do such as POV shots. (Would be a screenshot of our POV of the murderer closing in on victim but unavailable)
• Through the use of the editing suite, I have found that there are many aspects of all films that are produced through the use of editing and not just done at the time. I find that editing enables you to clean up parts of your piece that perhaps you are not 100% happy with. For expample, we felt that one of our shots that were meant to have low key lighting and required a dark tone to it was too light so we toned down the lighting on it using a tool on the mac we were using.
• Finally we used a programme called Garageband for the sound on our product. I found this programme enabled you to create moods and atmospheres that you wouldn't be able to naturally. This is either through the use of soundtracks or sounds put over the top of an action for emphasis.

Back when we did our preliminary task last year, I had no idea of the depth of detail that goes into every little aspect of producing a good quality film. So many things need to be taken into consideration in every single shot and frame. I have progressed greatly since this task.

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

• One of the main points I have picked up since the preliminary task is how important camera frame work is. In the preliminary a lot of our shots had too much excess in that wasn't necessary and made the shot look scruffy. In our thriller piece, we took great care not to repeat this mistake.
• In our preliminary, we took little care over developing the characters featured in the sequence. Since then we have learned how aspects such as camera work and mise en scene can be used to develop a character and manipulate the audiences view on a character. This is evident in our thriller piece.
• After our preliminary task, we had yet to learn how to use sound editing to improve our work. However, we were then trained in how to use garageband which has allowed us to add extra diegetic and non-diegetic sounds to make our productions better.
• My use of the equipment in the editing suite has improved greatly since the preliminary task as we used more advanced software in the thriller task and we had more time to explore everything that it can do and this benfited our work greatly.