Jonny's Evaluation

There are different thriller conventions that we employed in our media product. I have seen few films where the two lead roles have been women. This is different from many thrillers that are dominated, but not exclusively, by the male actors. We ha a female lead. The second part to this convention is when there is a woman they are often portrayed as weak and vulnerable. This we didn't conform to. Other conventions were aimed at creating the right atmosphere. Footage was taken with a dark mise en scene limiting what you could see. This lets the audience’s imagination wondering at what is there. This is another luring affect of suspense. This was a favourite technique of Alfred Hitchcock who favoured suspense
over surprise. The other variation is to show the audience what the characters cannot see and then toy with the audience as to what will happen next. These conventions puts the thriller in the mystery and psychological sub-genre. There were no films that influenced us as a group. We did our own research and brought thoughts from films to the table. One that influenced me was Double Jeopardy. Specifically, that it was as much psychological as mystery really enthralled me. Another series fuelled my inspiration was CSI.
The way they have flashbacks to the crime or a related scenario: The jumping images, grainy images, colour changes and focus changes inspired my contribution to our flashback sequence.

The social group that is represented by our media product is not of a very large spectrum in terms of race and class. All the characters are working and middle working class people of a British white background but there was a reasonable distribution of both sexes. The main character was defined as a quiet individual and through this unique attitude, draws your attention. The age has a much broader potential range. The main and her friends are young, in their late teens. The antagonist at the end is also an unknown quantity as the main character does not know them. However they are also an unknown quantity to the audience as they do not know any more than the girl.
Our representation of women does follow the stereotype but would develop away from it. At first the women are far more responsible and as the scene shifts from the group to the individual girl she is defined to as the quiet, young and naive girl who inevitably gets into trouble. She would become stronger and independent in time.
This would draw the target audience in as the ages are similar to the target audience and because its a twist on what happens. Starting with a stereotypical background puts the audience at ease but by then throwing them it draws them in.

If this film were to be distributed and had been made to cinema quality I think it would be a film that has a period in smaller cinemas and art houses for maybe three weeks. It has all the main conventions included and challenges them enough to attract people. It is though more experimental and doesn’t follow the mainstream take on a thriller. On the grand scale of things it would be a DVD and TV film later. If the script and the copyright were sold to a Hollywood studio/company then that combined with the budgets would make it a big release. Like many ‘pure’ thrillers this would be a single standing film. It would be difficult to make a sequel. There is though the possibility of franchise and also merchandising. Primarily, the soundtrack to the film and also the prestige of big name studios. Also, if the film is publicised enough there is always a opening for merchandise such as small paraphernalia and shirts. A film that is not designed for children is often limited in terms of merchandise. This link has only three items for this adult thriller/horror film. The visual style of the thriller does not lend itself to a variety of merchandise which is down to the darker nature of the film.

The target audience for our media production is broad. It is aimed at those that enjoy the complexities of a psychological thriller which keeps you guessing. The age range of this is large but we limited this with our cast. By using young actors and actresses we brought the age of appeal down to 15 to 35 on a large scale, focusing mainly on the 15 to 25 year olds. This was the only real limit on target audience that we deliberately made, though with little diversity in race and social backgrounds of characters, that may prove to be another audience limiting factor.

To attract our audience we made the characters a similar age to the target audience.

This allows the audience to 'experience’ the emotions and feelings of the characters.

There are sections to the film that would terrify younger age groups: the flashback sequence would be disturbing and upsetting. The same sequence could also be found upsetting by women as the graphic is that of a woman’s murder. Inversely, the mystery and suspense would appeal to the older region of our age bracket. For example in the opening at the very end with the shadow in the window; it could go anywhere and those who appreciate suspense thrillers will enjoy it. To help put the audience in the position of the lead character we used point of view shots. Also the use of tracking shots incorporates a sense of voyeurism. This heightens the suspense of the film because the audience isn't sure if she is being followed. The suspense is in both what you do and don't see.

From filming I have learnt a great deal about the equipment and the filming process. From deciding the best angle of the shot to whether we should use the tripod or handheld techniques. The equipment we had was adequate but had its faults. The battery lasted an hour or so which was suitable for most of our filming. The camera ran on tapes and making sure the tape was in the right place before and after filming was an inconvenience. Also, when uploading we often had to re-synchronize the audio and video signals. (Indicated by red boxes)

One thing which we did have a few issues with was transportation. It came down to using a quad bike, a forklift and walking. During filming though we only seemed to have two issues: lighting levels and how to get the right angle. To solve this we employed some industrial lights that ran off a generator. This presented a problem when we uploaded which was the camera picked up the noise of the generator. So we had to re-shoot those sections with the light and without, overlaying the two takes. The second problem left us using a very short tripod at angles to give the worm-eye-canted shot and me climbing up on tractor to take our establishing shot. The camera and myself were securely fixed to avoid falling which was a hazard. The reason that I climbed the tractor was that I am comfortable with heights and can deal with falling if our precautions were not enough.

Final cut though we were quite successful with. We very quickly picked up the art of cutting sequences and rearranging them in to the correct order. This was particularly interesting when creating the killing sequence; having to cut different angle shots of the same action and piece them together as a coherent sequence. It did work very well though and the time was well spent. However making this sequence was difficult because we had used two different cameras to produce the footage. This in turn produced about 20 minutes of raw footage from the two cameras to watch and select the best parts of.

Once we had the desired footage we had to learn to adjust things about the image like brightness, contrast and colour; particularly for the killing sequence which we made black and white for effect. On the actual editing window you are able to further alter the sound volume to customise it to the sequence. This proved very useful when changing the volume of the background music scary playground and awkward meeting (courtesy of Enetiworld and Incompetech) and the footsteps through the leaves. There were a list of effects but certain ones appealed for

varying reasons. The cross-fade appealed because it enabled us to convey a greater passage of time. We used a blink effect for the killing sequence to produce the start and end of the flashback and although we could not find a flash, we produced our own using a blank white screen with a fade followed by the blink effect.

Since the preliminary task I feel I have learnt a lot about the equipment and about final cut express. I have been able to use both to much greater effect. The hardest part was the storyboarding and deciding what sort of shots we wanted, due mostly to the length of the two pieces comparatively (15 seconds and 2 minutes) . This took us around two weeks to finish. The research was time consuming but was very useful. Knowing what sort of websites to look at and films to analyse helped.

The use of different shots was most definitely better in the actual task. We did however use match cuts effectively in two sequence.

When Amy is running in to the caravan and the killing sequence shortly after:

The only jump cut section which goes between the caravan and the camp was very effective and which I had a large hand in editing in.

As regards the equipment by our first actual filming day I was very happy using and manoeuvring it and I felt we managed to use it all to quite a good effect. Over those filming days my confidence grew and the shots themselves were up to a reasonable standard. All the aspects of suspense we wanted, we had incorperated into the piece and I feel it does keep you on the edge. As with all things it could be improved with a better camera and more time but the overall effect, atmosphere, feeling and mood tallied up to a very good thriller opening sequence.