Thriller Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My thriller contains conventions found in a typical thriller for example; My thriller creates suspense at the beginning by having a camera angle taken from an unknown person's point of view with a blurry effect looking up at some woodlands. When there is a climax in action then the sound gets a lot louder to increase the suspense and tension. A lot of good thrillers often take place in woodlands or abandoned buildings. I managed to get mine to set in both woods and abandoned buildings at different points. Many thrillers have a chase scene in the opening to draw in the audience and build suspense. This is also the case with my opening as I have a chase scene between the victim and the attacker. Most thrillers are filmed during the night to build suspense although this was hard as the camera I used couldn't see much in the dark. This means I had to film it in the day and just lower the brightness to make it seem darker outside.



How does your media product represent particular social groups?
My thriller product represents old teenagers and young adults for having a violent view upon life. It then shows a younger teenager feeling vulnerable. It also represents the younger teenager when he wakes up having a blurry and not being able to see properly. This makes him feel vulnerable because he doesn't know where he is and what he is doing there. Also the violent part of the opening represents the young adults showing that they can be very dangerous. It represents the male gender as also being thrill seekers and often having violent lives. This also represents a young adult because he is having some form of fun with his victim and toying with him and scaring him before finally capturing him. This links with other violent films such as Urban Justice (Don E. FauntLeRoy2007)



What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I believe that Metrodome would be a good institution to distribute my thriller as it has distributed many other thrillers in the past such as Fifty dead men walking (Kari Scogland 2009) and The warlords (Peter Chan 2008) These films are both similar to mine in different ways which means that this distribution company has experience with this type of film. Metrodome is an independent all-rights distributor, in business for over 10 years. It acquires films and other product for exploitation in cinemas, on DVD and via broadcast.













Who would be the audience for your media product?
My audience for this thriller would be older teenagers and younger adults. This is because it may be unsuitable for anyone younger and also may be slightly shocking or Unnecessary for the older age group. Also I created a questionnaire, this helped me realise what certain people of certain genders and age groups are interested in. I then based my thriller around this and made a good opening for the target group I have chosen. For example, my target audience believed that the thriller would be best set in woodlands. So I set my opening in some woodlands, also they thought that thrillers are best opened with a quick fast paced action packed chase scene, so I did this in my opening. Also by watching the opening of other thrillers I have understood what draws an audience in and how to build suspense and tension amongst your audience.



How did you attract/address your audience?
To attract and address my audience I used various techniques. To start off there is a blurry handheld shot to show first person. This builds suspense because the audience try and work out where the character is, who the character is and why they are there. This keeps them drawn into the opening as they want to find out the answer to these questions. I constantly kept the suspense up to keep the audience in. This was done by him hearing noises and beginning to run. This keeps the audience stuck into the plot as they want to know who or what is chasing him. Continueing on from this we see his attacker and the builds suspense as he is big and scary. Also many clips follow this which show that the attacker is getting closer and closer to our main character. This gets the audience involved as they want our main character to escape this attacker. Another first person view adds to the tension as it makes the audience feel in his shoes and part of the action.



What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
That technology is never fully reliable and that things can often crash and work can be lost. Also how to edit well in Adobe premiere pro, I wasn't sure how to titles on my thriller as I wasn't sure how to edit them into the piece over the top of the video. I learnt how to place it into there and also change the font size, type and position of the title. I learnt how to do a transition between two different clips as before the characters just jumped onto the screen rather than fade in or blur in. I did some small bits of editing before we started this projects although I learnt great amounts during it.

The picture to the right of this text is the editing page I have used. At first glance it seems quite complicated to use. I quickly became used to using this program. I started by using the razor tool a lot to cut down each clip and make it easier to manipulate. I then used blur and fade in fade out effect and a lot of other effects too.
I had some trouble finding the right kind of sound effects I wanted for my thriller as the one which I originally used was not copyright free so could not use it. I then became aware of new copyright free websites which i then used for many different parts of sound in my thriller.

I learnt how to use different camera angles to show different things and also how to edit and manipulate sound in Adobe audition.



Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I have learnt a great amount about editing and various other things from my preliminary task. For example for the preliminary task I worked in a group. Although this meant I was not able to use any of the ideas that I had thought of. Also other people took over and I was not able to do much. This made me realise that I would rather work on my own as I would be able to use all of my own ideas, film whenever I want to, go into college and edit whenever I want to and also get a higher grade for doing all of the work and not just half of it. From my preliminary task I learnt how to edit well, use certain camera angles for better uses and how to manipulate and import sounds. Firstly I learnt how that different camera angles can make different characters look big or small (strong - weak and vulnerable) I then learnt how to import these clips which I had taken. This then lead onto me being able to cut the clips and place them into the correct places. Finally after placing all the clips in the correct places I imported sound from a non copyright website and cut them down and placed them into the correct place.