Jodie Cruttenden- Evaluation

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

What makes a good thriller?

• A good thriller should showcase intense excitement, it also should gradually build up suspense. A thriller is supposed to provide thrills for the audience, it's also involves a protagonist and a antagonist. The audience has also got to understand the characters so they don't get confused or lost in the plot, but the plot can't be too easy to understand otherwise the audience will simply loose interest.

Conventions of a thriller

In order to make a successful thriller it should contain...

• Suspense
• Enigma
• Antagonist 
• Protagonist
• Disruption
• Threat

(Click on the links for definitions)

• We made sure our thriller contained all of the above. There was suspense, and we showed this by cross cutting between the male and female. The female was blissfully unaware of what was going on in her own house. A house represents safety and a place to go, but the fact she was unaware that an intruder was in her house puts her in threatening danger. The disruption in the thriller was when she was kidnapped and woke up in the cellar, this again would increase the suspense. This is where enigma comes into the thriller, its where the audience are given a situation but with no answers, so they have to solve what is going to happen.This is another strategy to keep the audience hooked. Obviously in a thriller there has to be an antagonist and a protagonist. Which we made sure we included.

• Before we filmed our thriller we had to research thriller openings. It was interesting to see what directors had decided to to, for example- the plot, camera shots and the editing.The thriller openings I researched were; Arlington road, The Machinist, panic room and P2. None of these thrillers really influenced our thriller but it was helpful to just watch the openings and see how they were all constructed.

To ensure our thriller opening would hook the audience we needed to ensure we covered all of these areas; Editing, Mise en Scene, Camerawork.



Todorov's theory

• We applied this theory to our thriller opening. 
• The beginning of our thriller starts with a 'sense of normality'
• The girl is shown leaving college, this scene was a quick scene to ensure the audience didn't become bored.
• The climax would be when the two characters are shown. When the man is sharpening the knives, whilst meanwhile the girl is travelling back from college, completely unaware of what is to come.
• The event is when the two characters meet.
• This would be when the female character discovers the body in her home, and then is kidnapped and finds herself in the cellar.
• Because we filmed a thriller opening we didn't show the problem being solved/restoration.
• By doing this it hooks the audience and will make them want to continue watching the thriller.

Editing

• The editing has got to be quick to keep the audience interested. In our thriller opening one of the main techniques we used was Cross Cutting. The use of cross cutting enables you to switch between scenes which  then creates suspense and will keep the audience watching and wanting to find out what will happen next. We used cross cutting a lot at the beginning of our thriller, it cut between two different locations, where eventually the two characters met. Cross cutting shows the audience that the two characters are linked.

                                                     
Here is an example of cross cutting used in a thriller.

• The male character is the Antagonist- An antagonist is a person who is opposed to, struggles against, or competes with another; opponent; adversary.

• The female is the Protagonist - The protagonist is a character in a story, usually the main character. It is very often that the Protagonist is facing an antagonist, which is against the protagonist. the antagonist is usually portrayed as an evil person or creature, and the protagonist often wins and defeats the antagonist at the end.

Mise En Scene

Costume/hair/make-up-  

• The male character was wearing dark clothing, his identity was also hidden.
• Whereas the female character was portraying a stereotypical teenage girl and wearing a hoodie and jeans. This emphasises the fact that the female is vulnerable, innocent and unaware of what is to come.
• Both characters are represented through the use of costumer, hair and make up.

Settings/props-

• One of the best props we used in our thriller opening were the use of the knives. The noise that they made when the kidnapper sharpened them really set the mood of the opening. We had three settings used in our opening, the college at the beginning where the female left, heading home, completely un-aware of what was to happen. The second setting was inside the house, where the female character stumbled across a body, and then was kidnapped. This is where the final scenes of the opening were filmed- in the cellar.

Lighting-

• The lighting was quite dark. It created a sense of mystery and set the mood for the opening. Low key lighting represents mysterious and is another technique for creating suspense.

Sound-

• If we could go back and improve anything about our thriller I would definatley improve the sound we used for our opening  It was the same music throughout the opening which we shouldn't have done because it got dull and repetitive and the suspense of the thriller started to wear off.

Camerawork

• There were a range of shot distances and camera angles used. We did this because it increases suspense and creates questions for the audience. In order for the audiences questions to be answered they would have to carry on watching the thriller opening, this is another strategy in which hooks the audience.

Some of the techniques we used were:

• Panning

• Low angles

• Extreme long shot

• Close ups

A thriller has got to have a range of camera shots and angles otherwise it would become boring. The videos that I have embedded are examples of what we included in our thriller.

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

In our thriller there are two characters; male and female. Both of these characters represent different social groups. 
The social groups that are included in our thriller are; 

• Age
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Social class

(Click the links for definitions)

Male character- antagonist:

• Young adult, 
• British white male, 
• Lower class/middle class

Female character- protagonist:

• Young teenager/adult
• British white female
• Middle class

• Age

There are two characters involved in this thriller, a male and female. The age of the male is unknown, but you can interpret that because the female is shown leaving college that her age ranges from 16-18. The females body language appears to tell the audience that she is young, she appears as if she is innocent. The clothes that the female is wearing and the way that she acts suggests that she is of a young age.

• Gender

There are two genders represented in our thriller; male and female. The female portrays a typical stereotyped young girl. Notice that the male is presented in a negative way. This is a contrast between two characters. Maybe it is slightly bias as the thriller was created by three females... But then again teenagers/young adults are presented negatively in social media so some may say that our male was a reflection of stereotypes. 

• Social class

Our thriller shows our male as a lower/middle class character. This is shown by the clothes he is wearing, all black and simple, his identity is also hidden and he is involved in a kidnap so he is more likely to be lower class. Whereas on the other hand the female is obviously a middle class/upper class character. Clues are given away which tell you that she is a higher social class then the male because the female enters an open kitchen and arrives home by a car and attends college. She is also dressed like a stereotypical female, all of this suggests that the female has money. Whereas the males identity is never revealed so we can't interpret what actual social class he belongs to but I'd say he was a lower one than the female. The male must have some sort of income as he can afford clothing and props for the kidnap.

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


There are many ways on how we could distribute our product, for example:

• Youtube
• Love film
• Netflix
• Metrodome
• Itunes

Why these distribution companies?

• I thought Youtube because Youtube is used by millions of people and it would be a good way for people to watch your thriller, it's also easy access you don't have to have an account to watch videos and you don't have to pay. The other reason I thought Youtube would be a good distribution choice, is because it's online and because our target audience is aimed at mostly teenagers, our generation spend the majority of our time on the internet so it would make sense to distribute it online.

• Lovefilm would also be a good company to distribute our film, as would netflix because you can now download your film instantly onto your home media platform, such as- computer, xbox, wii. Game consoles are now playing a bigger part in the way films are watched as Microsoft realeased a statement saying that their xbox live members are now spending more of their time watching tv, and films and listening to music on their platform rather than playing games.

• Itunes and Metrodome are the final choices for possible distribution companies. Itunes is extremely well known, although the prices aren't exactly 'cheap' they aren't too expensive. It would obviously be a lot cheaper then going to the cinema, or buying the dvd from a dvd store, as they are all going into administration anyway because the internet has taken over.

How?

• You can advertise your film anywhere. Could have adverts on Youtube playing before a video, on apps, you could have pop up adverts. Social networking sites- Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram.

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

• The target audience for our thriller would be 16-20 year olds. Maybe even older then 20. The thriller would hopefully appeal to both female and males as there is a male and female character. So both sexes could 'relate' to the characters. It would be available for people in the United Kingdom, America and Europe because they could all easily relate to the characters.

• This audience would be the best audience as they are mostly teenagers, as are the characters in the thriller, and the first scene is at college so they could all have a sense of familiarity.

This pie chart shows the most popular movie genre for 2009.

• BBFC stands for british board of film classification. It is extrmeley important that your film has been watched and rated. After researching on the BBFC website .  I would say our film should be a 15. As the thriller opening shows knives being sharpened, which could be used for violence. It also would cause some distress to younger children with the kidnapping and when the female comes across the body in her home. 

5) How would you attract/address your audience?

• Our target audience is 16-20 year olds, both male and female , but probably mostly males. I said 16 because that's roughly the age of the characters that are in thriller , so they hopefully would feel they could relate to them. This hopefully would also make the film more enjoyable for the audience. It also would hope to keep them entertained because it's not an everyday occurrence that a college student is kidnapped and locked in a cellar.

• The pace of the film is relatively quick, with the cross cutting. The cross cutting produces enigma and also suspense and tension.

When I asked friends for their opinions on our thriller opening this was some of the feedback:

• "The one thing I can think of that I didn't like was the soundtrack choice, was very repetitive. I liked how you switched between the male and female character"

• "I was a bit confused at the start because it started at college and I thought it was a thriller film. It was good, just the start and the music was a bit dull"

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

We used a range of technologies to create our thriller opening. These were:

• Final cut pro, garage band- I have learnt to use final cut pro. Never used it before until I started doing Media, it's very simple to use once you have got the hang of it. I know how to cut footage down, remove the sound, put filters and make a title sequence. 

• Camera movement- When we first filmed our college scenes we completely forgot about all the rules that apply to camera movement and framing. Such as we broke the 180 degree rule. So we had to re-film this, which was annoying as it was quite a lot of footage.

• Knowing how to work a camera is basic knowledge, but I didn't know how to set white balance on the camera at first, now I know how to do that. It's very simple and you should always remember to do it as it saves your characters from being a strange colour. White balance is very important. I also learnt that when you film something, to leave a gap at the beginning and end so you can always cut it, we were also taught to have lots of footage, so if anything was wrong with them we wouldn't have to go back and re-film them.

• Camera editing- we learnt what continuity editing was. We did learn about the important of the 180 degree rule even though we broke it, but we went back and corrected where we made an error. Another shot we learned that is useful is shot reverse shot which is mostly used when characters are having a conversation. Finally I also learnt about match on action, we used this in our thriller when the male was sharpening the knives and lifting up the chloroform.

• We had lighting for our thriller. This is another mistake we made, some shots were too dark, or there were some shots where you could see the light stand, we corrected all of this on final cut pro. There was an issue where when we were filming someone took a photo to put on our blog and the flash showed up in the footage but we managed to get rid of it. There was also another issue where the camera showed that the lighting was fine  after we had done the white balance but when we played it back on the macs it was way too dark.

The final thing I learn about was sound. I didn't know about all the different types of sound. Such as:

• Diegetic sound
• Non diegetic sound
• Foleys
• Sound added during filming (synchronous) 

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

• I feel that since the preliminary task we all have come along way. I had no knowledge on what to do at the beginning and now I can do it. I would say I've greatly improved on how to use final cut pro, as before I was not very good at all.

• The prelim was set to film at college, whereas the thriller we were allowed to film it anywhere we wanted as long as we had some sort of permission.

• I am also a lot better at using final cut pro, garage band and blogger. They all played an important role in completing our thriller.