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

Our task was to produce a two minute opening for a thriller film aimed at an audience of 15+. We chose this age range as it is the most common age range for thrillers. To make a media product fit into the genre of Thriller it needs to have suspense, excitement and tension. In the first two minutes of a thriller it is important to set the scene and give an idea of the story line and some idea of what is going to happen, this can be achieved by using a variety of different shots, especially close-ups, extreme close-ups, low angle and high angle shots. Music is an important factor as it plays a key part in setting and enhancing the mood of a scene for example if the scene in the background was an intense fight/ chase scene you couldn’t use for example a Britney Spears song. Mise-en-scene is also important as what is in the scene can have a great effect on the mood and set-up of a thriller film, e.g. things like blood and places that are dark play a great part in make a thriller seem more intense. Thriller openings should leave you wondering what is going on and should create suspense effectively, and example of an opening to a film that does this well would be ‘Memento’ which starts the movie with the protagonist Leonard is has killed the antagonist ‘Teddy’. The film then starts to rewind through the events that led to Teddy’s death, ending with a voice over from Leonard. This film plays to conventions such as close up shots and move quickly between them. The opening is effective because it leaves you questioning if what has happened is good or bad and also easily creates tension and makes people want to keep watching with it’s non-linear style.
‘Memento’, in particular, influenced our production as we took some of the non-linear idea that they portrayed and used it in our own, creating an unsure idea of what order things should be happening in whilst also setting up for what may happen if we were to continue the piece into a whole film. We achieved this by using clips more than once in different places and speeds and using flashbacks.

How does your media product represent particular social groups ?

In our media product we have three characters, two male and one female. We have done this as our opening includes scenes of violence which are stereotypically acted out by men. Also conventionally antagonists and protagonists in thriller films tend to be male, or a male fighting some form of other being. Again in ‘Memento’ both the antagonist and protagonist are male with only one female character who could be considered one a main character but we are left unsure if she is good or bad. Both men in our thriller opening are wearing hoods, this could be seen as an attempt to conceal their identity, and could be seen as furthering the “Hoodie/ Yob” stereotype, this is shown in the image above, because of the hooded jacket that the man is wearing he is depersonalised and most people will immediately see people like him as violent or more likely to commit a crime because of the stereotype placed on people, particularly men in hoodies. All our cast is white, though this was not a conscious decision, it was who was in our group and thus who was available to play a role in the opening.

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

Most of the major media institutions that distribute films globally are based in America, the institutions are famous companies such as Universal, DreamWorks, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros. Though these institutions distribute many films, most of the films are big budget films with well know actors/actresses. I think realistically for our production we would be better going for an independent distributor as they would be more likely to distribute a low budget media product and would have possibly distributed productions similar to our own.

Who would be the audience for your media product and why ?

At the start of our project we handed out a questionnaire to 20 people in order to get their opinions, expectations and preferences of a thriller. We ask the people who completed our questionnaire for us demographical questions such as age and gender. We chose an audience group of 15 and above. The reason why we chose this group was that firstly, the majority of the people we questioned were over the age of 15 as is the majority of the population creating a broad audience for our film.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted our audience by using some the conventions of a thriller opening such as; sombre music, blood and tension. I feel we created the mystery successfully when Duncan’s character is walking along the bridge and you can see Joe’s character in the bushes, then when Duncan’s character passes the camera Joe’s is gone. We used the conventions to illustrate to the viewer that our opening was for a thriller. We also used some wide angle and panning shots which are less conventional for a thriller but help to set the scene. We also tried to create a multi-layered storyline in a non-linear fashion in order to attract the view to guess and formulate an opinion on how they felt the story would progress if it went on for longer than the opening that we created. As we used violence that also included a weapon in our opening we decided to put our film at the BBFC classification of 15 because of the BBFC’s standards stating, “Easily accessible weapons should not be glamorised” (our antagonist uses a crowbar which is very easy to get) and that Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable”.

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

The technologies that I have used to construct the product are the cameras, the Apple Macs, iMovie and iDVD. Even though my group and I had previously done the preliminary task this was the first time I used the cameras as part of our work, as the filming had been done by other members of our group previously because of this it meant I had to get accustomed to using the camera and meant I had to learn how to do different things with the camera such as panning and close-ups. For the editing of our opening we used the iMovie program on the Apple Macs, from this I learnt how to properly cut and time clips, how to add titles, how to zoom in or crop a clip and how to add music to a media product. One problem we had with our footage was that we didn’t have many close-ups, we over came this problem slightly by zooming in on some of the clips making them seem like close-ups. Then after our group had finished our opening we then put it onto a DVD using iDVD, for this I learnt how to add a menu before the start of a production and how to burn a movie created in iMovie onto a DVD in iDVD.

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

I feel that since the preliminary task I have learnt more media techniques used in productions, e.g conventions and camera shots typical of a thriller. I also feel that I am more confident in using the Apple Macs, especially on iMovie which lead me to now feel that I can successfully create a media product that is well edited with good usage of transitions, zooms and fading. I think this is important as I was still unsure on editing when I started working on my thriller opening as I hadn’t done much on iMovie previously. I have also learnt that media products do not always work out as originally intended due to changes in circumstance, for example my group and I had to change some of our ideas on the day of filming due to that fact we couldn’t get to the place we had originally planned to do our filming, the ideas we changed were the protagonist finding the girls coat and having a flashback trigger by that we decided to change that to his flashback being brought on by being knocked unconscious, also we had planned to have our antagonist and protagonist walking along a dark path way near a stream but we changed this to a field as that is what we had available on our shooting day, as well as this we also changed who we had planned to play the female in the production, originally it was supposed to be me but as the filming of the flashback scenes was completed on a different day we replaced me with Amy. I feel that I have learnt how to communicate my ideas for the opening to the group better than I had on the preliminary task and that the group as a whole were better and exchanging ideas about what did and didn’t want included in out opening.

Our Idea

For our idea we decided to go for a mixture of ideas two and three, in that we wanted a post apocoliptic story with flashbacks. Our idea was inspired by the films 'Memento' and 'The Roads''. Our story will follow a man who walks through a post-apocoliptic wasteland and as he goes along he is confronted with another man, who attacks him and triggers flashbacks to a girl he knew before the nuclear war.
As our production is the film opening our titles will be played throughout over our film, we will use different effects to make the scences involving the protagonist in the post-apocoliptic area (darker, almost but not completley grey scale) and him in the past with the girl (brighter with a slight blur for the flashbacks).
We plan to do this in Horbling where there aren’t many houses and the buildings that are there are quite run down. This will be a good setting as there would still be traces of things from before the war but they would be old and likely abandoned and damaged.

Our Storyboard.

Our Thriller Ideas.

Idea 1:

Idea 2:

Idea 3:

Conventions of Film Openings

In most films we are introduced to our central protoganist, or sometimes antagonist, in the opening scene. Generally we are introduced to all central figures one at a time, in order to both build the plot but also simply not overwhelm the audience. In a higher budget films with A-list stars in central roles, that actor/actress is likely to be shown on screen very early on, as they act as huge selling points.
Quite often in opening scenes some kind of substantial event will occur. For example, often an act of violence is shown in horror movies, or it could be simply some action that helps develop characterisation.
Non diagetic sound is often used in similar manner, be it either music or voiceover. They both help to create exposotion to the setting and events, as well as again characterisation.Film directors must attempt to convey many key points in a short length of time in order to draw it's audience in. More sophisticated films do this subtly, and the audience take in key information without realising it. This is what we must attempt to do in our film opening.

What is a Thiller ?

A thriller is a film that provide thrills and keeps the audience at the "edge of their seats" as the plot builds towards a climax. The tension usually arises when the character(s) is placed in a menacing situation, a mystery, or a trap from which escaping seems impossible. Life is threatened, usually because the principal character is unsuspectingly or unknowingly involved in a dangerous or potentially deadly situation.

Thrillers mostly take place in ordinary suburbs/cities. Though sometimes, they may take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or the high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently ordinary citizens unaccustomed to danger. However, more common in crime thrillers, they may also be "hard men" accustomed to danger, like police officers, detectives and criminals. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women lead characters have become increasingly common.

Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. In a thriller, the hero must thwart the plans of an enemy rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. While a murder mystery would be spoiled by a premature disclosure of the murderer's identity, in a thriller the identity of a murderer or other villain is typically known all along. Thrillers also occur on a much grander scale: the crimes that must be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of governments. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements. While a mystery climaxes when the mystery is solved, a thriller climaxes when the hero finally defeats the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others. In thrillers influenced by film noir and tragedy, the compromised hero is often killed in the process.