Completed thriller opening

Media thriller opening evaluation - Ryan

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge and forms convention of a real media product? 

Our media product uses a popular convention of thrillers - an enigma, a puzzle or challenge which must be solved by our protagonist, in our case our protagonist 'Alex' is challenged by a mysterious figure, who isn't shown in our opening to raise the audience's suspense and ask questions which wouldn't be answered until much later in the piece. The opening of our thriller also challenges the conventions of fast paced action by using slow and mundane sequences to gain a more realistic and believable reaction from the audience by placing the viewers in Alex's shoes, thus asking how the audience would react to the goings-on in Alex's home and work place. Using a domestic and workplace setting rather than our protagonist being a member of the police force or the FBI, Alex is an average 'normal' human being, just like our audience we use this to connect with our audience, and bring more realistic actions. By watching popular thrillers such as Se7en, Fight Club and Inception to gain a deeper knowledge of thrillers and what their audience's expect when viewing. What the majority of the fans expect from good thrillers are two things; suspense and intriguing questions, one of the reasons Fight Club is so popular is the questions raised about society and the lives we live. Our opening sequence asks questions early on which would continue throughout the entire product, including 'How safe are we in our own homes?' challenging the audience's opinions.

'The art of the title' 9 frame sequence

1. The title is the actor's name over the main character (whose name is also Alex), a convention of thriller's is to use creative titling and focus on keeping the action going by simply placing the titles over the action, as you can see this continues throughout the entire opening, using the same font and style.
2. Another example of titling - this time giving the location of Alex's work, Gatwick Airport, and the time of day in which the sequence is. This Continues in .4
3. The title 'Home' is in quotation marks to show this could be anyone's home (although the character lives here) and this challenges the viewer's perception of safety in later events of the Home sequence
4. The titling from 2. is used again here, using the same font for consistency, which the time and location mentioned again, including the date, which is vital.
5. This shot is part for the first half of the opening, where Alex arrives at work, this shot uses the banister of the stairs to black some of the frame and details, this shot is a part of a larger walking sequence.
6. Is again a shot blocking the frame - this time using Alex to block off the frame and you see a figure in the background slowly creep through the darkness, creating a sense of atmosphere and suspense.
7. Here is the title of the piece cleverly worked into the action, with the titles fading over the mirror revealing the title '12 days' (.9), this is used in many thriller's where the title is a phrase or action in the film, for example Inception.
8. This is one of many repetitive shots of the phone showing missed calls and messages that Alex receives during his daily routine - The suspense and questions raised by this are used to intrigue the audience and complements the conventions of a thriller.
9. This is the title of the piece - shown in the same font and style as the others - this time in red to match the lipstick used by the mysterious figure.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

With positive connotation's concerning social groups, but with only one character being shown, a middle class worker, a representation of the audiences which would watch our piece with Alex (the character) being 20-24 years old this is the perfect way to capture our audience - to use someone from their age group as the protagonist. This also challenges a major convention of thrillers - the protagonist is usually a police officer or an government agent of some kind. With the idea of our piece to never show the antagonist with the idea that no-one could be offended by our choices of actor for the character, but all the audience does know is that the antagonist is a female - the lipstick on the mirror is a large hint and one of the only hints in the entire sequence.

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

Our product would be certified 12A this way we can still have adult themes but we keep our piece open for younger audiences to enjoy as well. Our piece would be played at the Duke of York cinema and also played on Youtube and Facebook - with our audience preferring to watch films and television digitally rather than physically viewing the piece at the cinema. With costs of putting a film through a cinema being taken away from the equation we could save a large amount of money and use more to advertise the digital copies of our piece. Our film would be shown all week with two showings on the weekends to increase the chance of our audience being able to see the film.  

Who would be the audience for your media product and why?

Our target audience would be 16-30 year-olds with these being the most loyal fans, buying merch' and supporting the product, with our target audience also preferring online distribution this gives us the prefect marketing tool, they would advertise for us.

How did you attract or address your audience?

We attracted our audience by using a younger protagonist and by using digital distribution to attract younger audiences. With the 16-30 age range being more technological orientated and more likely to prefer digital distribution. On top of using digital distribution to our advantage having the action taking place in a domestic setting, with most of the audience either living with parents or alone, this scares the audience and gives them a thriller a normal thriller setting wouldn't, with much of the audience looking for a thrill.

What have you learned about technology from the precess of constructing this product?

With our preliminary task we used iMovie, which was a mistake, with Final Cut being a industry standard, we decided to use that. With me taking the reins when editing our final piece, I found at first that using Final Cut was harder but nearer the end I found the program easier to use, have more advance features and made editing and titling a lot easier. Also using a blog for the first time was a new experience for me and my group this made it harder to adapt to 'blog' everything we did, from editing progress to problems on set. We also learnt to save our work regularly otherwise you can lose anything from a single edit or an entire lessons work.

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

In our final product we realised one of our fatal errors in our preliminary tasks is that we used members of our groups as actors instead of going outside of our group and using someone with some acting skills, rather than next to none. Another problem with our preliminary piece is that we left everything to the last minute - and to be honest, we did leave a lot of our final task to the last minute, this was mainly due to lack of communication and organisation between members of our group, we also had a member of our group leave college permanently so this really disrupted our group's motivation. We also learnt how to use advance editing which helped a lot when trying to make our product look more professional and give it a higher production value. By learning the different types of camera shots and angles - this improved the creativity and diversity of our camera shots and framing.

'Art of the title' 9 frame sequence comparing our preliminary and our final piece

  

(from left to right)

1. This is an obstructive shot, showing only the protagonist's feet and legs walking up the stairs, this creates suspense, where you can't see who it is instantly
2. This is another example of a hand held shot, this time rather than 3rd person, we used a POV shot to mix up the stair scene in our final piece
3. A shot of Alex walking up stairs, similar to 4. with the viewer able to see Alex instantly this gives him his protagonist status, where a antagonist would have been hidden with obstructive framing, Alex is not
4. A similar shot to 3. but in the narrative of our preliminary - this was a suspect of being our antagonist, she was not, the framing is very similar to 3. I personally like these types of shots, especially as 4. is used with 9. for the full effect of a movement sequence
5. The titling for our preliminary piece, we used a swipe effect on our title which isn't present in the screen grab - but it was there, this wasn't my choice, I want our title to go down matching the title, instead we had a swipe effect
6. Our titling approach changed from our preliminary - we used this in conjunction with the lipstick on the mirror to fade to the title.
7. This is an example of one the long shots used in our preliminary - this was a pan showing me, the protagonist, moving through a walkway
8. This is an improved long shot we got at Gatwick Airport - this actually showed where you were - an airport, rather than a mysterious urban air as in our preliminary.
9. This is the one and only two shot used in our preliminary, obviously with our final piece only including one visible character this was impossible to improve on, but the way the shot blocks the frame is repeated and worked on in the first 9 frame sequence (number 6, question one)

If we were to do this again, there would have been more organised meetings, booking equipment on time and getting the filming done by the deadline and having plenty of time to edit, rather than leaving it to the last minute.