Evaluation

My thriller is called 'Tied' and the main storyline shows a girl leaving her friend to walk down the canal on her way home. Little does she know that she is not alone on this pathway. She is followed by an masked man and later grabbed and drugged. We see this as a flashback in our movie. This will seem as if these parts of the film are the victims memories and we see it from her perspective, hopefully making the audience sympathise with her more. What is happening in the present is shown in normal colour and the flashbacks are in black and white to show the time difference. This was possible by editing the colour of the clips that we wanted to be viewed as in the past. What is happening “now” is the victim is alone, in a dark room tied up to the ceiling by her hands, being held hostage for still an unknown reason. This gives reason for the name of our thriller “tied”. This has the connotations that she is not only tied up literally in this room, yet she is tied in the form of entrapment. She is in a situation that seems hard to escape from. After the victim’s flashbacks, we see her gaining consciousness and this is when the end of the thriller comes in. We used the lighting in the studio room to make it obvious to the audience what is happening as we can see the shadow of her being brutally murdered. By doing this, it allowed us to show the actions of the killer, without it looking unprofessional or unrealistic. This part of the thriller causes the mood to change and make it much more dramatic at this point. It is the climax and everything else that we have seen before leads up to this specific point. I think that the structure of our thriller made it look believable and cleverly done. Also, the reoccurance of the mask that the killer wears is a continuous theme throughout the whole thriller. This is an image that we wanted the audience to remember along with the rope which ties the hands.

I did alot of research before starting our project because thriller films are not my personal favourite genre of film. I wanted to get the main idea of what makes a certain film a thriller. The definition of a thriller is: Noun. a book, film, or play depicting crime, mystery, or espionage in an atmosphere of excitement and suspense. This helped me get the idea that we should convey some mystery and suspence, in a form of entertainment for the audiencce.

The conventions of thriller films that we tried to use in our media product are a storyline that is scary and the scenario that one of the characters is in a bad situation, or at risk because of someone. We did not want to move too far away from this convention because looking at other thrillers; I found that this idea never failed to get the audience engaged. My thriller film is set in two locations, a canal side, surrounded by daunting trees in a quiet, possibly deserted area. The second is a dark room, which leaves the audience guessing about its specific location. I hoped that it would look dangerous enough to make the audience think that the character would be unsafe there. Thrillers are often more in depth than what our plot gives off, so this may seem like it is challenging the typical thriller idea. As it is only a short film, I did not think that the storyline should have been too overpowering so hopefully this idea paid off.

My media product is focusing on the younger generation, teenagers at around 16-18 years old, so I think that a 15 certificate would fit it perfectly. This is because the character that is at risk is a young girl and I think that possibly anyone under this age would find thriller films abit too disturbing. This is suggesting that this particular age group of people need to be more careful in dangerous areas, and that as the “killer” is a boy, there is also a -divide between males and females too. This is suggesting young girls are more likely to be in danger. Although these connotations may not necessarily be the opinions of everyone, it is just one representation of a social group, sending the audience unpleasant ideas, allowing them to find the film thrilling.

The media institution that might distribute my media product would probably be a small independent UK release, because I think this is the audience that it would appeal to, British people of all ages. This is because thrillers are more attractive when you are watching them in the cinema because the darkness and silence dramatises what you are going to see on the screen. We got the chance to watch the film in the cinema, and the audience that were watching were the sort of audience that my film is targeted at.
This was very helpful in making the decisions about media institutions because we got first hand feedback on the film. It was perceived in a good way and the audience seemed to react to it well so I was pleased with this. I also learnt that my film definitely works best in the cinema environment and this is the decision I would make for it. I do not think that it would work well going straight to DVD or even on the internet, the cinema surroundings would definitely show off our film as we hope for it to look. I think that it would be successful as an independent UK release, because thriller films are not shown too often, so there would not be competition that is hard to handle. In addition, I think that there may be a niche in the market for this kind of film, because there are not many thrillers that are featuring younger people. So I definitely think that it would attract the right audience and be successful in the cinema.

Concerning the marketing side of it, I think that using the genre would definitely attract people to it because the target audience would already have made their minds up about what sort of films they would be interested in seeing, so thriller fans would be drawn to ours if the specific genre was made clear. I think that it would be most successful if we were to advertise in cinemas with a trailer of the film, highlighting the main points to convince the public to come see it. This would be important because I think it is necessary to advertise somewhere that you want your media product to be viewed. I would preferably want the film to be advertised on TV too and billboards too, because this ensures a wide range of people hearing about the film and remembering it if they are seeing it in different places, at home, in the cinema, on the side of buses, etc. These types of advertising have been proven successful and I know from experience that these specific marketing techniques make the film easy to remember, as I find these the most informing yet also the most inviting.

I have learnt a massive amount about technologies from the process of constructing our thriller, because I have experienced all the different sides of making a media product. My knowledge on how to do filming effectively has been widened and it has helped me to realise how to film things cleverly, so that this transfers onto the screen. By this I mean the different shots, from establishing to close ups, I have realised that the filming process, if completed properly, allows everything else to run smoothly. Moreover, using Final Cut pro has become much easier now and working out all of the things that are difficult in this editing process builds your confidence to edit effectively.Adding the soundtrack using Soundtrack Pro was harder than I expected it to be, yet all of the time and effort that we put into making the soundtrack definitely added a lot to our film, dramatising specific parts and creating suspense at others. It has definitely been a huge learning experience for me. All of the production that we did on the internet was really rewarding. Also, the blogging process noted our progress and kept everything in order, so we knew where we was up to and what we had left to complete. This proved to me, organisation is key. Being able to release the film on Vimeo means that the audience for our product has been widened and it felt good to have the final product somewhere that can be accessed easily. I also found it helpful that we could get feedback from the people that have watched our film on Vimeo, so this allowed me to learn even more once everything had been completed, so it became apparent that improvements could always be made.

Looking back at the preliminary task, I feel that I have progressed a lot since then and the final product shows this. The ‘match cut’ exercise did help us to widen our ideas but showed us what not to do as well.

We knew that the quality of shots that we filmed was very important, and after the preliminary task, I watched it and noted what was good about it and bad about it, in order to improve our next media product. When storyboarding our thriller film, we knew that it had to be very clear and detailed to make the filming process run a lot smoother. Before we went out to film, we made sure that this was completed in as much detail as possible because I do not think that it would have worked as well if we were just making it up as we went along.

Finally, each step in the production process of the film has been rewarding yet very hard work. I think that all of the planning made the production a lot easier to handle. I definitely think that our group did our film to the best of our ability and put a lot into it. I am happy with the final product and think that it has enough conventions in it to be a good thriller film.