Thriller Evaluation - Natalie Sergeant

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

In the thriller opening we wanted to stick with conventional methods that are used in traditional thriller movies of today. With research into other thrillers (as seen in this post) we where able to learn and develop forms that are used with real media products. We decided to use Todorov's theory of narrative and in the opening researched used a equilibrium such as Silent of the Lambs with a woods.

         

          

When looking at both our thriller and Silent Of the Lambs we wanted to have a environment that would be used often in their daily lives, Clarice having a job and our protagonist walking the dog. With the scene of a wood it gives the audience a uneasy feeling as woods are often connected to bad events occurring, even though we know with Todorov's theory in the introduction we are only introduced to the problem in the first step.

The forest implies more tension with the fog adding to the atmosphere making it harder to see and connects to the audiences confusion. We wanted to create a similar effect but knew it would be impossible to create a foggy atmosphere so we wanted to recreate the lighting used (as seen in this post). With the lighting and the setting we are using conventional thriller techniques in our own product.

To help achieve our final lighting effect to be more similar and have the atmosphere we deiced to add some post-production editing.

                               

The post-production editing we used was desturated color a similar effect has been used in Sin City. Though in Sin City this has been to esentuate the comic book style it also give a bleached out world with less colors, it makes the piece more serious.
                                       

                    

Another similarity between Sin City and our thriller is the use of restricted narration, that is a frequently used to create enigma to engage audiences within the thriller industry. Sin City used restricted narration as we don't know fully the relationship of the two characters giving hints but never the full story. This interests the audience to know what will happen next and always asking questions due to the characters kissing on moment and then the male shooting the woman next.

                                

We used this technique in our thriller as we never reveal to the audience what it is that the girl has found under the bridge and distraught her so much so creating enigma and forcing the audience to carry on watching to reveal the full story.In our thriller we wanted for our main character to be of a young age to hold the image of innocent. We felt that ever day clothing would be suitable for our actor that would be sensible for the setting they where being placed in. We looked into colors representation and see that white is more signified innocence so deiced that this would be a subtle color, such as Sin City with a red dress to show temptation.

            


             

 From the thriller opening we could see the representation of innocents by the thriller to be surrounded in bright colors of pink and white and having her hair down when compared to her mum with it up. We then experimented with different clothing and hair (as seen here).

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our main character that we selected for our thriller is a 11 year old girl that resides in the south of England in residential area. Her character is to represent innocents of that age as the color of her clothing, being white but also her body language and the use of high angle shots show a representation of young female characters being weak in thrillers. This innocents is used often to attract the sympathies of the audience but also to cause connection due to being of similar age. We researched into the representation of young females in thriller movies by looking at Lovely Bones and saw connections from our own thriller within it (as seen here).

Gender

Our character fits the stereotypical vales of femininity within thriller and seen in general values. This can be from her representation of vulnerability, such as at the end of our open we see the character crying, this is classed as a more emotional state as it is seen that men don't cry and is seen in a negative way but with women it is just assumed because of femininity.

In the beginning we decided to have these strong femininity values for our characters not just to represent the experience that the character has gone through or as they are seen a common characteristics make it easier for all audience to identify with the character due to assumptions but to the tackle these values later in the thriller. Due to seeing our character in such a weak and negative way in the begging it allows to combat these values later on within the thriller.

Age

Not only does our character being a girl help represent her as innocents but also age. We original planed to use an older actor but felt that this made it harder for the audience to feel sympathy and what to become protective. Also didn't want to young of a character so that the audience would be unable to relate to in some way.

Class and Ethnicity

A main factor of what class and ethnicity was due to the actor, we needed someone who could work well with in our own scheduled. With ethnicity a majority of people within the UK are of white British ethnicity so this might allow a better connection to the audience but over all the ethnicity was not a huge factor as any other ethnicity could of been used and not had a effect of the thrillers over story line.

This is the same as for class, our character is from a middle class homing as can be seen from the setting shoots and her clothing. Middle class is also the target audience that we are aiming our thriller at so by having a middle class character could make her more relatable and more sympathetic than other classes such as upper class.

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

Who would be the audience for your media product?

We decided on our target audience for out thriller to be in social classes B, C1, C2 and D. This range of groups is to attract more people to use their pleasure pond as cinemas is not too expensive. This chose is also because of the actor being within these class causing a relation between both.

Our targeted age group is from 14 to 24, as not only will be appealing due to the actor being of similar age but also because this age group is more interested in going to movies and has more free time to enjoy pleasure/social activities. Due to the age that we have decided the thriller will be a 15.

We will have a 50/50 split on targeting at male and female viewers, this is as traditionally thrillers are seen to be viewed more by male viewers, we notice from our research of Magic Magic that by having a young female protagonist is attracts more of a female audience (as seen here). 

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

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


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

I felt that from the preliminary task we learnt a lot about not only filming but also being prepared more for filming. With the preliminary task we learnt to maintain continuity by using the 180 degree rule, shot revers shot and match on action.

I think that a technique that has strongly influenced us is the match on action that we learnt while doing the preliminary task. We shot a scene where it goes the the characters hand when opening the door. We then decided to recreate this same scene in our thriller. By trying this out first in out preliminary task we where able to understand how to keep that continuity by filming more of the scene that you are expected to use. Also not only concentrating on match on action from a viewing point but also sound, with the use of sound-bridges we where able to do another scene where jeweler is place on the table and the sound carried of through the clip.

Due to doing experimenting with these techniques in our preliminary task we where able to preform the with ease in our thriller opening from being able to practice it before doing it properly and finding the best method in creating the scene we wanted.

A faulty that we made when we where filming our preliminary task was to leave objects in the frame, these objects were our story board notes what we had left on the table and where only in one shot so it lost continuity. When editing we noticed this mistake so deiced to re-film the piece (as seen here).  By re-filming we had some difficulty in making the scene almost identical to keep continuity. I made sure not to make this mistake again in our thriller as we would have difficulty re-filming shots due to time. So by making this mistake in our preliminary exercise it made us more careful in making sure that unneeded objects where out of the frame.

Another mistake that we made with our preliminary task is that due editing changes to keep continuity our footage didn't reach the needed time of 1 minute as being only 33 seconds (as seen here). From this mistake we deiced that when doing our story board we will make sure that we go over the 2 minute time limit as some of the shoots may be shorter than we think. Also on filming to create more extra footage just in case it was need to make the whole 2 minutes that was needed.

Another skill that I have learned from the preliminary task is in using editing software of Final Cut Pro, as I had no experience in it before hand. By doing the preliminary it aloud for me to make mistakes and learn how to use and experiment with the software without to much worry such as being to cut shoots to also learning how to export the video onto the blog.