THE EVALUATION

The ways in which my media product uses and challenges forms and conventions of real media products.

The filming process will be an experience that i will remember, with the changes and quick pace decisions needed to be made it was all interesting to figure out in our own way. After evaluating and analysing different thriller films, that would follow a simular media format to our presentation. In our own individual film we used a few conventions including:- A crime at the core of the narrative- We have a small occurance that happens at the centre of our opening in which our babysitter character, gets disturbed by a mysterious door opening. Within the general plot of our thriller there is the crime weaved within the plot concerning the parents absent from the house- in which there is a conspiracy kidnapping. Extrodinary events happening in normal sitations- The door opening whilst the girl is alone in the kitchen...or so she thinks. We used this particular convention, as the extrodinary event happening within a normal sitation is what seperates a thriller from any other calibre of film. We also challenged these cases also, as the character in which you see at the beginning, in our opening, is not a protaganist within the plot of the thriller at all. The important and significant characters are shown later on within the story, as the real plot unravels as you get further and further into the story. Through the conventions you can identify that our opening would be of the Suspense Horror, as there is alot of suspense within the plot, and with the element of horror twisted into it also. After watching the thriller, 'When a stranger calls' we definetley used that film for inspiration for our own project, as we used elements also used within that, as we started with simular tension-building music, with the opening scenes establishing a phone call, in which you hear the voices but cannot see the faces. This is very simular to the opening of 'When a stranger calls', but we used our own twist to make it our own.

Any social groups represented or shown in thriller opening?

The social group we addressed would be a teeange age range, as the first character we are met with is a young teenage girl, she is of White British origin meaning it will be a standard English family.I think it also looks out to young women aswell, because it seems to be every young girls nightmare to be put in a situation where you feel under threat, alone and in a strange house. This could be seen as quite a stereotypical view, but when creating a thriller for a certain type of person you have to think of a group of people in a stereotypical way. This helps link into our target audience of the teenage age group of 15+. In the thriller i evaluated, we used conventions of ' When a stranger calls' as we used phone calls and music to create tension in our opening, making the woman babysitter character feeling stereotypically vulnerable.

What type of distribution might distribute my thriller opening?
A distribution would see our opening as very promising i would think, as there is very little difference between the way our film opens, and other thriller films that are simular. We use the same techniques and conventions that are seen within the thriller genre, including music, screen and camera shots that all show the same/simular styles. It would most likely be a made for TV movie, as i could imagine the style being shown on Hallmark or a simular movie channel. It seems like the type of film that would have been made, as you could include franchises and merchandising, through sneaky systems of clothing worn by main characters, drinks in the kitchen. Infact, Diet Coke is shown and used within the first sections of the opening scene. With the mise en scene, the visual style of our thriller is quite dark, but gradually gets to a low tone artificial light within the house, considering the light it seemed appropriate to have light to establish what was occuring within the scene, but also a sense of darkness to help create the mystery.

The audience for my media project

The audience for my media project, was considered to be 15+, as it has features throughout the film such as parent kidnapping, and babysitting which are sitations that teenagers of that age can visualise and understand. Having a young character within the opening enables the teenagers to sympathise and see the sitation through the characters eyes. Which would make it more scary for our audience as they would have the babysitting scenario, which they themselves could have been in. Having a target audience in mind really helped structure the project, as it was close to the age groups of ourselves so if we found our plot and opening gripping so would our target audience.

Attracting and addressing your audience

Using different camera shots including zoom and match on action helped, it seem to the audience as if they were in the kitchen with her, making the moment when the door springs open, seem even more terrifying to the audience, they are enabled to witness a fly on the wall sitation. As mentioned previously, we looked at 'When a stranger calls' which has a simular feeling to our production. Looking at other influences have been films such as; 'The Fog' and 'Taken' where we took the dark opening from 'The Fog' and our idea of a kidnap from 'Taken'. We may have taken small ideas from these films but we always managed to add a twist to it, to enable it was an original idea for our group.

Showing our peers would be the true test as to whether we had attracted our target audience. We showed our thriller opening to a selection of 16-17 year olds, who tend to be the hardest audience to please. We created questionnaires enabling us to throughly see what people thought of our thriller opening. In response to our questionnaire it seemed majority of the audience were impressed with our filming technqiues, and the plot behind it also as they felt it was realistic to everyone. The feedback was helpful and gave an insight into what we could have improved on.

During the process of constructing the product i have learnt about technology...

From first shooting our preliminary piece, being able to deal with cameras and the different equipment was a task. There was the ability to create different camera shots, through a simple zoom mixed with editing. We filmed our first bit of our first piece, but after watching it on the APPLE MAC computers, the lighting from the camera was too dark and grainy. We had no option but to re-film the scene. After creating more light, we found the issue of the grainy screen disappered after, whilst editing we had the new issue of managing our way around the APPLE software system using the imovie programme, so through trial and error we managed to create our final piece using some effects in the MACS, which helped our mise en scene as it enabled us to have dim lighting without being unviewable. As for our soundtrack, we had to search for music which had no royalties attached to it, which is not an easy task. In the end we found a website of a man who creates royalty-free music, especially for films, in which we searched the thriller genre and found our piece of music to use.

I have progressed since my preliminary piece....

The progression of our preliminary piece was easy and to enable our understanding of how to use the equipment efficiently. With the planning of our preliminary we were unaware of how much time it would take, to film and then edit. We managed to finish filming our preliminary piece in one lesson and were then able to edit in the next lesson, so we tried to keep to a simular planning pattern when shooting our thriller, but keeping in mind that we had more to plan effectively for our thriller piece. In regards to Camera shots we played around slightly in different zooms and shots, such as match of action and shot reverse shot, when in conversation. We could then perfect these skills and adapt them onto our final thriller piece. So when we did use these screen shots we were able to perfect them to make them clearer in our final thriller opening piece. After our prelimiary piece, we had 2 sets of filming to get through as our first attempt did not go as planned. Our first filming session after the preliminary, we were admittedly still not 100% accurate with the equipment and were still trying out different aspects and using trial and error to see what would fit and what needed cut out. However, learning from our mistakes we found the second time much more easier, as we knew how to function the camera straight away and were able to focus more on our new plot- as we had the skills of functioning the cameras properly straight away as to testing out different shots, as this time we knew what would work. I feel extrememly proud of our finished piece, after looking through all the planning, difficulties and changes we faced. We managed to adapt and resolve these issues. When watching our final edited piece i could visualise our opening in the beginning of a genuine thriller film. Looking back on what was asked of us in this task, i feel we have met and exceeded all our targets.