Thriller Evaluation
In what ways does your media project use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media projects?
The opening to a thriller is a vital part of a thriller film. They tend to show everyday life and some form of title sequence, this is usually bold and stands out or layed over the top of the video footage. We challenged the first convention by only showing a glimpse of everyday life before turning the characters life’s upside down. We stuck by the second convention by overlaying our titles over our video footage.
Also in a thriller victims tend to be female and the villainous lead tends to be a male. We stuck by this convention; this can be seen in films such as 'Psycho' (Alfred Hitchcock) and 'Last House on The Left' (Wes Craven). Some films have challenged this and it worked, such as ‘The Orphan’ (Jaume Collet-Serra), but we decided sticking to this convention was the right thing to do for us. Another thing common in thrillers is the use of dull or bland colours, we stuck by this convention as well by avoiding using bold colours to create and eerie atmosphere, we used a couple of bold colours to make the main characters stand out, such as Daisy's purple cardigan and Rosie's black top, the two colours stand out from the background.
We also challenge the boundaries of a thriller by having dialogue in the opening sequence as well as music and making our lighting bright instead of dim. We challenged the lighting because we wanted to show a different time of day to usually shown in thrillers.
How does your media project represent a certain social group?
Our media project represents the social group of teenage girls aged 16-19 well, as it shows the two girls walking together and shows the vulnerability the social group has. At an age where girls are given the freedom to go out into the world, dangers also face them. Our piece shows the vulnerability this social group gains with their freedom. Our other character isn’t seen enough for them to be classed as any kind of social group, but it could be argued that he represents males of the same age and how instead of vulnerability coming hand in hand with their independence, them being a danger to society does. This would imply that the girls represent society and the male a danger to it, following stereotypes in today’s media.
The audience for a traditional thriller is people in their late teens to late twenties depending on the certificate. We are also aiming our project at this audience, because we feel like they are prime target. As you can see they aren’t the age group the go to the cinema the most, but this leaves the market for this audience wide open. We also feel like as we are a similar age to them we can relate to the need of this audience.
How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted our audience by using two attractive girls as our stars and making them part of an age group that the audience are either in or have recently been in. The titles and colour create an eerie feel that we think will appeal to this audience. As we are using the same target age as the typical thriller target group, we studied films carefully to figure out how to attract an audience. We watched several film clips for inspiration and ideas, one that really appealed to us was the use of a female victim in ‘Psycho’ (Alfred Hitchcock).
Also we liked the use of the titles in the film ‘Se7en’ (Kyle Cooper). The titles were on top of the footage allowing the action to carry on in the background, using this idea we can show more of the storyline in our two minutes but still do the titles that are required. (See below for image of ‘Se7en’ titles)
Also we used a mixture of music at different speeds to show the different emotions through the project. We watched the trailer for ‘Last House on the Left’ (Wes Craven) to get this idea. Although it wasn’t part of the actual film the trailer has many different types of music that follow the emotions and pace of the film.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media project and why?
The kind of institution that would distribute my films could be EM Media or Pathe. Although EM Media aren’t a distribution company they do pick up films made in the East Midlands like this one and get them distributed. Also Pathe are a company well known for attaching themselves to British films and also horror or thriller films, such as this one.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you think you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
When we did the preliminary task I didn’t fully understand the software we used and now I do. I think mine and my groups editing and planning skills have gotten better, it didn’t take us as long to make decisions and we spent a lot of time re-filming.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
The cameras we used were Panasonic cameras and I was not familiar with this equipment. It took us a while to get used to the equipment but we had already used it in the preliminary task. The equipment quickly became easy to use.
We also used 'Blogger' through-out the process to document our process. I had used this before for personal use, but this was my first time using it formally. I had to adapt to using the layout more formally and spending longer on layout and adapting my language appropriately.
The last piece of software we used was Adobe Premier Pro, we had also used this through-out the preliminary task, but not in as much detail as we did this time. We looked into slowing down and speeding up parts of the filming for effect. This took us a while to figure out how to do and perfect, but we quickly learnt how to do it and perfect doing it.
No comments:
Post a Comment