WALK IN THE PARK THRILLER EVALUATION
Augustine, Dako'ann, Emmanuel and Theresa.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of a real media products?
The opening thriller sequence our group made is heavily based on the conventions normally found in today’s thrillers. The opening sequence includes effective camera shots and editing including with a soundtrack to match the mood. I feel the opening sequence of this thriller was influenced by the opening sequence of the thriller ‘State Of Play’. As SOTL included an establishing shot of a forest, we felt we could include similar establishing shot in our thriller to familiarise the audience with our thrillers title ‘walk in the park.’
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our media project was targeted towards a 15 to mid 20 demographic. As a group we went through different factors we thought was appealing to our audience. In order to do that we carried out a questionnaire, where we found out that the target audience liked films which had something they could relate to such as age, gender etc. We felt our thriller could appeal our audience, through the use of actors in the same age group as the target audience. The way in which we represent teenager in this film is to make them look innocent and inferior, in order to do these we used a range of camera shots, such as low angle (e.g. early in the scene, were the victim is walking down the stairs by herself).
Victim walking down the stairs The use of slow motion was also used to highlight the most important and realistic shots of the sequence. However, the use of the young male killer in this thriller was chosen in order to show that teenager can also be dangerous. The use of the male was done to make the audience understand it easier, though it is a stereotype. We wanted to represent the killer as someone superior and dangerous; yet again this was shown through camera angles, sound such as music, and lighting. To show that the antagonist was not vulnerable like the victim, we used upbeat music, to show that he was in power, the ideology of the darkness, in the scenes related to the killer
represented the danger and superiority in him.
Realistic matching diegetic and non diegetic sound(s) when needed.
Good Camera work as well as smooth transitions
30%
REALISTIC ACTIONS & PLOT
MICROFEATURES
MAIN BITS
Highlight of most important parts/ easy to understand
15%
CHALENGE
Enigma
15%
Representation e.g. age, ender, ability etc. A story line where the audience can find something similar to their day to day life
30%
Conventions
10%
What type(s) of film genre(s) do you enjoy?
Horror
Romance
Thriller
Sci-fi
Other (Please state)
What make a good thriller film?
Action
Challenge
Actors
Setting
Sound
Should thriller films be realistic?
Yes
REASON:
No
REASON
Should a thriller film be easy to understand?
Yes
REASON
No
REASON
What is your favorite thriller film and why?
The questionnaire and circled table above shows the questionnaire we carried out in order to find out how to appeal to our target audience. The circled table shows the results we got; we used these results in order to make our thriller.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The media institution that might distribute our media product would be more suited as a picture house film. This is because with mainstream films, it’s a big risk to introduce an unknown film to such a big audience who might be skeptical about it. So with Picture House films, our media product could be used as a ‘prototype’ to see if it could appeal to the small audience Picture House films are known to have. Then hopefully, if it’s successful enough, it could be distributed to mainstream cinemas such as the ‘VUE’ in the 02 arena as examples.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
We feel the audience that would be best suited for our media product would be regular film attendees who enjoy the thriller genre. We chose not to show any violence in our opening as we felt that you do not need violence in a thriller but rather the focus should be on mystery and suspense. We see violence not to be effective and rather show thrills to gain the largest potential audience to watch our opening.
Based on research on the ‘pearl & dean’ business website, I have seen that the average thriller today has a large profit in the box office to be made. An example the thriller ‘knowing’ has made a £5.60m revenue to date from April the 10th to the 12th according to pearl & dean. As we researched the Knowing, the largest age group which viewed the film is 15-24 year olds. However, the gender which watched the film was fairly even with women being the highest gender to view with 51%. What it shows how distributors distribute their films to gain the interest of both genders and this could be through how they advertise their film or the type of cast they recruit. So, the group felt choosing teenagers would be an ideal choice.
How did you attract/address your audience?
We felt the best way to catch our audience in this thriller was to stick to the conventions of thrillers seen in cinemas today. Many examples of conventions that you can see in thrillers today are mystery and suspense. We made sure this is a convention that would be included in our thriller as mystery and suspense are key factors into making a successful thriller. Another way to attract our audience was to implement the right music to fit into the thriller genre. This is where we researched into the ‘Lakeview Terrace’ 2008 thriller on Pearl and Dean. The research we found in Lakeview terrace is that 15-24 year olds are the highest age group which viewed this film. This also included that 63% of the gender that watched the film were males. So from this information, we concluded that the best way to attract to our audience was to appeal to men and use music which will appeal to men.
Other ways in which we could have attracted our audience is to choose certain social issues that teenagers can relate to. This helped much as we were able to categorize many issues that affect teenagers today and choose the issues which we felt many teenagers relate to.
The feedback we received from our target audience was positive. One of the target audience said
"i really liked the way the conventions in thrillers were noticeable in your thriller opening. I really liked how the camera angles created a tense atmosphere throughout the whole thriller opening."
This feedback was very useful because the thriller opening was a success due to the feedback we gained from the questionnaire.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
We learnt many valuable techniques in using the technology we used producing the opening to a thriller. First of all, we all had turns to use ‘Final Cut Pro’. Through the practice on the Final Cut Pro, we could all find out who was more comfortable and who less comfutable in using this software was. Through this it also made it easy to decide who was going to do what. Final Cut Pro also allowed us to add certain effects to editing, which is not made possible through normal camera works i.e. jump cuts.
Other technology used was the camera and the tripod. This was very simple to use as it allowed us to keep the picture still to reduce disorientation made by hand held recording. For many of us, it was a big learning curve, as some of us struggled to use Final Cut Pro. However, we had help from a member of our group who was good at using the programme.However, we did also use a hand held camera, to deliberately create disorientation in some of the scenes, such as the establishing shot. Overall, as many in our group had used all these types of technology before.
Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
From the preliminary task, we felt as a group the transition from the preliminary task to the final thriller opener progressed very well. The preliminary task allowed us to improve our techniques from many of the camera shots and editing used in the thriller opener, as well as to find out the strength and weaknesses of each individual in the group. The editing, camera shots we improved from the preliminary are the match on action shot, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule. For example, the use of the match on action shot which was used in the preliminary task was also used in our opening thriller. This is used in the scene where the male antagonist walked into the male toilet looking certain and later came out looking different. We used this effect to cut out the unimportant bits of the recording. We also used the 180-degree rule, which was also used in the preliminary task. This was used in the scene where the male antagonist attacks the female from behind. This effect was used to create disorientation to the scene as well as to build tension.
Also we all felt teamwork was greatly improved between all of us, especially in certain areas such as communication. This skill helped us in making quick decisions such as roles in the thriller opening, director, and camera
Emmanuel
