EVALUATION: Thriller OpeningBY Sophia Musmar

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

Our media product was a two to three minute opening of a thriller movie, which contained anticipation and enigma. We have tried to portray enigma in many ways throughout the

opening by firstly using the blue light with the fast clips of the boy looking into the camera, sound, editing and flashbacks. In our thriller film we have a vulnerable teenage girl whom is the protagonist, who meets a suppose ably teenage boy on the internet. We then find out that he is much older then he claimed and is actually her abusive ex-boyfriend. We wanted our opening to

keep whoever is watching intrigued and constantly wanting to see what happens next, if you look closely in the preview we have the boy wearing a ring, which is a clue we are trying to

giveaway.

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

There were many types of thriller films which inspired us for making our opening. I looked into many thriller dramas which consisted around our age group, for example like ‘Abduction’ which featured

Taylor Launter and Lily Collins. The film is about a teenage boy who lives a normal life, ends up doing a school assignment on missing people and finds a photograph of himself on the website, this then

leads to him finding out he was adopted and loosing people along the away and being followed by the people trying to find him as he is holding important information on the phone he is using. The film

also shows a developing relationship between Launter and Collins which would attract a young audience and they will be living similar lifestyles. ‘Obsessed’ is another movie which i looked at, but it

had a much older age group i guess from around 25-30+. It casts Idris Elba and Beyonce, and Elba hires a girl at his work office whom becomes hugely obsessed with him and is really intense to watch.

Lovely Bones is another film which helped us develop our opening. This is due to its similar story line and use of characters. The film is about a teenage girl whom gets kidnapped and murdered by a man she actually knows. Lastly the Oscar awarded ‘The Room’ is a film which has recently come out and

links to this ‘catfish’ and kidnapping concept; a woman is held captive with her son by her rapist. Obviously it was a rather intense film and an older storyline but it helped with the concepts of its

editing, sound and filming and widening my knowledge of the thriller/horror genre. Like our film, we use social media to create our thriller, as do the other films we mention apart from ‘The Room’ as this

is a common modern day use of technology which is growing and becoming more dangerous. It makes a thriller more interesting and scarier because you don’t know who is on the other side of

phone or computer.

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

Our opening consist of loads of blue light, which was created by using a blue gel (assotate paper with the colour blue printed on to it). Also we have purposely made our film really grainy,

so it creates a sense of unease and uncertainty, which we hope to whoever is watching quite compelling, this is backed up by the sound effects. We used the sound to heighten the

cinconsistency and the emotion created. Mise-en-scne played an important role in our opening and so did the setting. We had to think about the setting and think practically about where to

shoot. We used an Urban City, which is generally quite common in thrillers because you expect nothing to happen because everywhere is so busy. The dark, grey and wet weather contributed well to our film and help create the enigma we wanted, it acted as a catalyst which heightened the effect of certain scenes. We used low-key lighting in the opening scenes to prepare you for

the intensity and mystery of what was to come; also it helped create the character.

Our film represents the working class and people of a mid-low socio economic status. The girl ‘Iris’ is a strong representation of the urban teenage girl. This would attract other teenagers living in an urban area because of the similarities in lifestyles. The themes in our film could also fulfil the role of a teenage girl, with such concepts as sexual assault, kidnapping and cat fishing.It could cause awareness to the consequences of social media and online dating from the teenage age and above.

How does your media product represent particular social

groups?

The boy in our film represents a coal group of men who are likely to commit such offences of abduction, rape and sexual assault. We wanted our male in the opening to have a scary appearance and look frightening to whoever is watching, by not knowing yet what he has done you could automatically look at him and stereotypically guess from his frame that has has done something wrong, or looks like the type of guy that looks violent. He has a large build and in the opening scenes we show him with the cigarettes and alcohol, indicating that he already does not have good preferences and lifestyle choices.It shows an addictive personality, and we can also see this by the girl who he seems to be obsessed with.

How does your media product represent particular social

groups?

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and

why?

The type of media institution we want to distribute our media product could be an independent and British Film Institution and other distribution companies. Possibly an independent label such as ’Dogwoof productions’ would be a good idea because they distribute independent films. Our film connects with a typical British independent film, as it consists of a British culture and setting, also a British cast and crew. We would also want to use a suitable distributor that associates them with a worldwide market so we could get good global distribution for our film.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and

why?I feel a film like ours would receive critical acclaim from screenings at festivals, such as Sundance or BFI. Festivals such as these, screen independent films often and therefore would be suiting a fit for ours. They also have a large support system with young and new British Film makers as they have Young Film Makers Association and awards. This will help promote and distribute new films with large amounts of support. Pop up cinemas like Nomad Cinemas and Secret Cinemas are helpful in distributing films. As we are a small self-determine film company it will be difficult to promote our tim and gain audiences. ‘A Field in England’ had a small film release, but the use of a good distribution technique allowed it to gain large amounts of publicity and attention. So by it having a multi-platform release will allow the film raise its chances in gaining a broader audience.

How did you attract/address your audience and who would be the media

audience for our media product?

The audience we would like to have would be a younger generation within the age group of 15-14 and with a territory audience of 40+. Our target audience would be young women and teenage girls, as they can relate to the story line. The themes will help us attract the audience as they fit with possibly the age group. It would be a post water shed rating, so it would be on after 10/11 pm as it is a thriller it may not be appropriate for the younger generation. Someone from the word of mouth could also view this and it is a classic modern day thriller, and being a parent it is focused on the younger generation, they would maybe like to take a look into what it is like nowadays having children in an urban city. Similarly like the room ‘The Room’ we would like it to have a huge demographic release.

How did you attract/address your audience and who would be the media

audience for our media product?We tried to get our film out there by advertising it as well as we could. Social media is definitely at its highest so making sure we had advertisements on Facebook and other social media websites. For me personally, most trailers capture my eyes whilst i am on Youtube so I definitely think that would be a good idea. As the story is based in a city, it will appeal other urban teenagers as it is relatable. For example like the movie ‘Attack the Block, it is attractive to a younger audience because it is applicable to their lives. We would like our film to have a secondary audience; teenagers and adults around the world. This could be done by viral marketing and making sure people on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube etc..Like, Share and comment on the posts which would be shared, so we want a below the line marketing campaign to spread the word of our film. I think having good music and a good colour tone on our opening will make the movie look more inviting and it will stand out.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?

I have learnt many things about technologies in this process, from production elects to post production. This is backed up by filming our preliminary task and the making the replica trailer for ‘Napoleon Dynamite.

To start with, we have got to learn about the use of camera equipment, our group used a Canon XF 100 camcorder to film our opening. The camera has many different focal lengths which helped us with extreme close-ups and establishing shots. We used the Manfrotto Video tripod which helped make the filming much more accessible; we could use the tilt, pan and have steady shots.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?To film the sound we used a Rode condenser microphone. This helped pick up the sound in certain scenes, rather then using the ambient sound. To create the sound in the background, we used Follie and form background sound, which we gained when collecting shots on our shooting day. The music we used was from Kevin Mcclouds website. This was also contributed by the use of websites and the database on our school computers. For lighting in our film we used a mixture of ambient lighting and a light set. For the lighting we used Dido lighting along with the blue gels, this helped create enigma in the opening scenes. In the second of the scenes we used ambient lighting as well as fairy lights to create a deep hue and also a sense of relaxation from the rest of the opening. To Edit our film we used Screen Flow and Final Cut Extra.

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

There are definitely may things I have picked up on from this time round of filming,and the main thing for me was definitely preparation and making sure we pre planned everything so when we went to film all the shots, everything we needed was there and we didn't waste time. Last time my group participated in making the remake of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ and for this we needed to make sure we had all the food ready so we consistently shoot one shot after another. Unfortunately last time that was not the case and filming took much longer then expected

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?When we were shooting our preliminary task we had to film one over the shoulder shot, 190 degree rule, and an eyeliner match. it was fairly limited compared to the trailer opening we made previous. When we were planning our prelim-airy task, we didn't make a story board or produce a production call sheet, there was shot reverse shot, parallel cross cutting.. It was a definitely a good experience, as we didn't know hoe to use the camera before so it was helpful.