Evaluation...Question 1.

In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products.

For the main task as a group we decided that the thriller opening we would create should involve most of the conventions of a Thriller film as a whole. We also decided that the age of the thriller should be set as a 15 because of the requirements.

• The piece of work must not involve and discriminative behaviour or language.
• Drugs are allowed to be viewed but it must not be endorsing or promoting the usage of drugs.
• Strong threats and menace are allowed as long as it isn’t sadistic and sexualised.
• Dangerous behaviour should not dwell on detail which could be copied. Easily accessible weaponry should not be glamorised.
• Frequent use of strong language is allowed. The stronger terms are acceptable if used in the correct and justified context.
• Violence is allowed as long as it does not dwell on the infliction of pain and injury. The stronger gory images are not likely to be acceptable.

These are the requirements for a film to be rated under the 15 age range. We found that our thriller film does not breach any of these requirements to the best of our observational abilities.

A thriller film must involve the conventions required in order to be cast under the category of a thriller. A thriller is a film, book or a play in which it depicts the images of crime, mystery and/or espionage along with suspense, action and excitement. There are certain conventions that the thriller should include in order to be seen as a thriller. Examples include the characters and what they are wearing. The music that is used must be of an eerie or a lingering style to increase tension, The sound must also sound Eerie and confusing to install doubt and make the audience think twice about the films current events. The linear order of films can also affect the thrillers effectiveness.  The narrative should be able to set up questions, also being known as an ‘enigma code’. With Non-linear films this can be created by the use of flashbacks such as seen in ‘Memento’.

Linear film- these are films which work in order, from a beginning to an end. As an example ‘The Happening’. Linear films can enable the producer to create a complex storyline through acting and can also allow tension to be created through items such as Mise-en-scene instead.

Non linear film- these are films which do not work in any particular order so they do not have any beginning and an end but still remain intact with the storyline.

Non linear films are often used when the main character is retelling the story or fragments of his memory. This has been used in films such as ‘Memento’ where the main character actually retells his own life because of an ‘incident’ which ruined his life. Non-linear films can use simple stories but can make it complex through the editing and non-linear style of the film.

In most thriller films there are conventions, these can range from characters to lighting. A convention of a thriller is the Villain. Often the villain is seen as a male who is a lot more powerful than most of the other people around him. The victim is also conveyed as being a weak female role, the Damsel in Distress.

The camera shots can also be a convention of a thriller film. Shots can say more than words and can also imply what I happening. A shot which is showing the view of a person down onto another can imply that the person whose view we are looking through is in a more powerful position than the person below and vice versa. In this shot from the James Bond movies we see that the person in the scene is lower than another person showing he is in less of a powerful position that the other person. The weapon is being risen up between the two showing this is the turning point of this all.

In my media we used heights of our characters to talk about the characters but we did not focus on having it the opposite way around. The person who is at the lower level is actually the person in power and control. This would make the audience confused in ways in which they do not understand why. In this scene we used levels to show that the person walking away is definitely the more powerful person out of the two as one of them is laying down on the floor and using levels he is shown as being weaker than the other.

Justifying our ideas for our thriller via. audience research.

From our audience research we were able to see that most of the people within our target audience preferred to have:

Interesting opening credits

Nice establishing shots

Something that introduces the story

Nothing should be too simple

Cool opening effects

Story should be not too simple

Opening music should be good

Music should be suspenseful

It shouldn’t be too inactive

Something should happen

There should be lots of confusion

It should be really smooth

The plot should be clever

The music should have something to do with the rest of the film

There should be something impressive right from the start

It should grab your attention

From this we were able to see that with our thriller introduction it would be important to include things like this in it. For the titles we decided on two ideas. One of them was where we would cut out letters from the newspaper headlines and place them onto plain paper in order to make them look like some ransom notes connoting the style of this thriller and what pending threat lurks around for the main role. The other idea was for images of everyone who starred in this thriller to be stuck into a black note book and for information about this person along with large versions of their names to be placed in it. I feel that idea one for opening credits would be the most effective. We do not want it to seem too simple either which is why we are using the use of flashbacks and having no narrative should make the audience think about the film and what is happening in it. We decided on using a tense style of music for this film which we will create using GarageBand on the mac's. This should be able to convey the ideas and soon-to-be-seen effects of the thriller. One of the first shots that we have in our thriller opening is the waterfalls, this should be an impressive and attention seeking shot as people will see this and revieve the idea of calm feelings from the beginning, being a thriller film all is not calm for too long so this would hopefully make the audience want to continue watching unti they figure out what is happening.

We had three ideas for our main task in media which we placed on a powerpoint.

Our first idea focused on a dr jackal and Hyde style multiple characterised persona. This idea required a lot of variety of shots. We felt that this was a thriller style idea as it could be made into a psychological thriller with dark areas and movements which could contextualise the characters. For this we would require a street at night time with fog to get the feeling of being alone and helpless across to the audience. We would also need a room with bright light if we were to show the contrast between the two people.

Our second idea was where there were two security guards standing talking to each other when something happens, with this we included a shot following a mans foot as his walked towards that building. This would also be seen as a psychological thriller as the audience would be left thinking about this man who is walking towards the building.

Our third and final idea is a thriller which revolves around one singular person. This person would be having flash backs which included many people who are linked to this persons history. This would be the most simplistic of our ideas but because of that we could focus more on the types and variety of shot types taken. We would only need a small amount of props for this as most of the story should be told on characters faces and movements.

Our target audiences response to our pitches.

We had a powerpoint of which we included three ideas for our main task on it. We did a presentation to our media group which woulde be classed as our target audience as they are aged from 16 to 17 years of age. From the target audience we decided on one of the ideas. For the Hyde rip off version we were informed that people felt that the idea was not one which was thought of ourselfs, and that the setting would be a hard idea for us to achieve, so idea number one was out of question. The second idea we had was one where two security guards are seen talking to each other when an assasin attacks a target. From the audiences response we saw that this was too much of a far fetched idea for that of a thriller opening. Therefore we decided that this idea was out also. Our final idea was where we followed one character as flashbacks flowed back into his memory. there were some concerns from this as it did not seem fully developed correctly, one of the main concerns were that we seemed to be trying to fit too much into a small introduction. We decided on idea three as this seemed to have the best response from the audience.

How audience research may affect my final task.

With my audience research i feel that this can affect how we develop our ideas for our main task. Say if the majority of the audience prefer to be kept in suspense rather than horror for a thriller then we would develop our ideas to ensure that the audience would be kept in suspence.

Evaluation of our preliminary task

With my preliminary task I felt that it was fairly successful, the main idea for our thriller was to be able to show a scene of a shot reverse shot, a close up shot and to get a shot of someone walking through a corridor and opening a door. For our media we began with the shot reverse shot where Morris had a small conversation with James. After this we viewed Morris as he walked up the stars and opened a door. As Morris opened the door we got a close up shot of Morris' hand opening the door. We included a shot of Morris walking down a corridoor. As Morris reached a certain point of the corridoor we included a shot with two people in it, these were Jake and I. As we appeared around the corner Morris ran and we followed with a dolly. The clips where the people were running (Morris and I) had to have their sound removed as the wheels of the dolly were squeaking. Eventually we had a shot where Morris ran past Jake and down the stairs, with a variety of shot types we managed to shot speed and haste. Over all we managed to include the most of the breif for our preliminary but could do with using the whole brief and research for the main task.

Results from the Questionnaire collected by Morris

 1. What is your favourite movie genre?
·         Thriller-1 people
·         B. Horror-4 people
·         C. Drama-0 people
·         D. Comedy-2 people
·         E. Action-9 people

2. What do you see in the opening of a movie that you enjoy? Two lines max

• Interesting opening credits
• Nice establishing shots
• Something that introduces the story
• Nothing should be too simple
• Cool opening effects
• Story should be not too simple
• Opening music should be good
• Music should be suspenseful
• It shouldn’t be too inactive
• Something should happen
• There should be lots of confusion
• It should be really smooth
• The plot should be clever
• The music should have something to do with the rest of the film
• There should be something impressive right from the start
• It should grab your attention

3.  If you had to choose a Thriller sub-genre what would it be?

• Crime-Thriller-13 people
• Psychological Thriller-3 people

4. If you had to choose, what would be your favourite Thriller movie?

·         Saw films- 7 people

·         Donnie darko

·         Inception

·         Kill bill

·         Van helsing

·         The matrix

·         BBC’s production of the 39 steps

·         The great escape

·         The godfather

·         Memento

5. What do you like about that movie? I.e. the tension it creates. Two lines max

• the plot
• the music
• the action
• the horror
• the use of plot
• the storyline
• the story
• the story
• the way it all fit together
• how clever it was
• the action
• the action
• how clever the story and plot was
• how scary the villain was
• how terrifying the villain was
• how strange it was

6. What setting do you think is best for a high tension thriller? One line max

• in a dark warehouse
• in a small village
• inside a characters head
• it should turn out to all be a dream
• in a creepy alley
• spread out across the country
• in a big city
• it should move from place to place
• a abandoned theme park
• graveyard
• wide open space like a field
• abandoned school
• forest
• abandoned factory
• old museum
• spooky wood

7. What in the opening to a Thriller would keep you asking questions? Two lines max

• I’m not sure-6 people
• Not much of the plot should be given away-4 people
• You should be confused by it-4 people
• A complex plot-2 people

8. Give your age?

• 11-3 people
• 12-1 people
• 13-1 people
• 14-1 people
• 15-5 people
• 16-3 people
• 17-2 people

9. Your status (working class/middle class/upper class)?

• Working-5 people
• Middle-11 people
• Upper-0

10. Do you like intelligent well thought out films?

·         Yes-12 people

·         No-4 people

11. Do you like foreign films?

·         Yes-4 people

·         No-12 people

12. What is your favourite type of music?

·         Rock-4 people

·         Pop-4 people

·         Rap-6 people

·         Classic-2 people

·         Country-0

13. What was the last film you watched?

·         Don’t remember-6 people

·         Harry potter and the deathly hallows part 2- 3 people

·         The smurf movie

·         Cars 2

·         The hangover part 2

·         The green hornet

·         The inbetweeners movie

·         Keeping mum

·         Kill bill

14. What was the last thriller film you watched?

·         Don’t remember- 11 people

·         The matrix

·         The godfather

·         Saw 4

·         V for vendetta

·         Donnie Darko

15. What did you like about it? Two lines max

·         The characters

·         The storyline

·         The scares

·         The storyline

·         The storyline

16. What did you not like about it? Two lines max

·         How complicated it was

·         The characters weren’t likeable

·         The complicated story

·         nothing

·         nothing