Thriller Project - Evaluation

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

In our media project, we aimed to use particular aspects that are known to the thriller genre in order to make an accurate representation of the genre. Creating our intro in a way that portrayed this correctly was a challenge. We first planned our intro with a fair amount of dialogue and found that it didn’t fit too well; it removed the sense of mystery from both the characters and the situation. This became such a difficulty that we scrapped the storyboard, shot list and script entirely and started again. We found that without trying to force dialogue into our project, everything seemed far easy and was more cohesive.

We used traditional aspects of thrillers such as not showing the entire character until a certain point, to build suspense. Such as the second shot, we only see the shoes of the antagonist as he walks slowly into the school. We keep the trend and most of the upcoming shots show him from different views yet not fully revealing who he is. We see him walk past the side quickly and see him walk from the back.

POV (point of view) shots are used to give a more personal feel. Using POV also limits the audiences view, putting you in their view to make you seem unsuspecting. Our first POV shot was from the inspector’s view, we see him turn back and look at two pupils for a small mistake they make and this gives the audience the personal feel that another shot could not create.

Another convention of a thriller is beginning the film with a death or murder to start off the story right away. At the end of our intro, we end it with an unclear murder, creating a sense of uneasiness. However we show it in a fairly normal situation, just an inspector coming to visit the school.

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

We have very few social groups shown in our media production; two students (who are classed as one group) and the inspector. We portray the inspector as a well dressed (and due to this fact he seems respectable) and calm man. The two students are shown as a stereotype, seemingly impolite and bad-mannered. Laughing at the inspector as he walks by and littering without caring whatsoever. Our intentions were to display these two characters as rough in order to show this side of the school’s social groups.

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

Our media project was developed with a small budget and limited experience. Due to this fact, this removes the possibility of any big institutions distributing our product or showing interest. A fairly small and growing media institution would take the opportunity to distribute our product but somehow managing to do this with a fairly small budget, so they would need to take appropriate action in order to advertise this successfully. Advertising by TV and magazines would be far too expensive to even consider. In order to advertise successfully and reach the target audience (which would be late teens to young adults) the industry should take a cheaper yet equally as effective approach – the internet.

Not only does this reach the target audience with relative ease, it also has a high chance of reaching out to all types of audiences and potential viewers. The internet is also a very good method for spreading news and hype, if word gets to the right person, they would upload it to multiple websites and various forums. Eventually, more and more people will learn about upcoming films and current movies. This is all done with relative ease in comparison to other advertising methods.

Researching would be a far simpler task as specific advertising campaigns are not necessary and do not need to have large amounts of money put into them to create the perfect, attention grabbing advertisements in the right magazines at the right time.

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

The targeted audience for our product would be people much like ourselves and around are age level. Teenagers would be able to relate to the characters far easier than adults would, and would be more willing to spend their time watching people their own age act. Because of this, teenagers would go together to watch the film together in groups or it would have high potential for teenagers on dates as Susan Burggraf suggested.

Due to the fact that this film was made in a British environment, the primary targets are British teenagers. Certain acts carried out in other countries may have different outcomes and this is displayed in our intro as shown by the two students littering. It is a natural reaction for us to see this is a mistake or a ‘crime’.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

We intended to attract our audience from early on, the intro shows three different characters; one in particular (the inspector) with an unknown back-story walking into the school. To viewers, they would not who he is, why he is there or what he is doing but they see that he is some form of respectable figure because of the way he is dressed. During the POV scene we see from his eyes and the way he turns his head that he is unimpressed with the students, this makes the audience wonder and question the motives of the inspector.

During the first establishing shot of the intro, the audience will be aware that it is set in a school and they will begin to create possible scenarios within their minds. From early on we have created a sense of mystery, capturing the audience’s attention and pulling them into the fictional world almost instantly.


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

I have learnt to not waste space on the cameras, though this may not seem like much; it could have been a huge potential problem. However, the concern was not so much about how much space was left on the camera, it more about how much unnecessary footage we had. We had to spend hours just sifting through various scenes, shots and takes until we found something we were satisfied with.

3/4 of our way through our project, we encountered various problems with the scripts and the external actors being used. We had been focusing and relying far too much on dialogue and students who may not have been able to act for us as they would be in lessons.

Because of this, we could not have gone any further and started our entire project again but managed to film it in a much shorter amount of time, we focused on more camera work and less dialogue and thanks to this we were able to film within two hours. This was a huge improvement and a massive achievement. Our shots were far more impressive, utilising what we had learnt to set up various different shots and angles, making very good use of the POV shots.

This was uploaded onto the computer in a very short amount of time and we were ready to edit and finish off our final product. This was where we encountered what could be the biggest technological problem during our entire project; we had come back during the next lesson to begin editing to find that our work was no longer on the computers. We wasted valuable time trying to figure out what had happened to the work, unable to deduce the problem; we had to recapture on another computer and prepare for editing once again.

This had taught us a valuable lesson: save work on an external device so that any missing or deleted work can be easily replaced.

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

I’ve learnt that time is one of the most, if not the most crucial element of the entire project. Preparing all documents in order before preparing to film may have aided us greatly as opposed to doing just two documents and rushing into filming. Our storyboard was not finished in time with us wanting to film; if we had made the storyboard before-hand, it would have saved us valuable seconds when filming. Less time could have been spent over if we had been separating tasks and dividing into pairs to complete them quickly as opposed to all four of us focusing on one job when it was not necessary.

Our preliminary task was a very simple series of shots with an equally simple script. This should of showed us that simplicity is often far easier and works even better. But instead we had made our script, shots and ideas far too complex for us to carry out efficiently. Because of these many problems, we found ourselves completely starting again and trying a much simpler idea. This had worked to our favour, as we filmed again we were able to tweak ideas slightly as they were not too complicated, and give input throughout the filming process. In the end we had filmed far less scenes and shots, but more intelligently overall with a more diverse range of shot types. Both keeping in time with a schedule and managing to maintain simplicity is the solution.