Thriller Evalation

In my media product I feel we stuck to real life media conventions for example the 180 degree rule, match cuts and shot reverse shot. We especially paid attention to these 3 rules because if we didn’t we realised our whole thing would go wrong and wouldn’t be understood.
To do this and understand what works and what doesn’t we had to study a few clips that have made it as professional films. We watched a selection of films in our media lessons and we wrote notes down. Some of the interesting things that we learnt was some techniques which involve important matters like lighting in “28 days later” this didn’t really help with our filming because we didn’t have the money to buy it and use it, there would also be no point of us getting this because we wouldn’t use it apart from this one time of filming so it would be a waste of money. Also from watching these shot openings to a thriller, I found out that we was able to film anywhere in London and wouldn’t get it trouble or fined because it is a public place and can be used for anything. We were given the opportunity to watch a documentary of a film called
“The watching” which helped immensely. Also some of the clips we studied were:
”28 days later”,
”Arlington road” ,
“collateral”.
After watching a lot of professional films and their beginnings but surprisingly we decided as a group that we would not go for the shocking style of thriller but instead we went for a different style in the way of flashback and suspense.
However many thrillers can appeal to anyone of any age, for example a crime thrillers such as snatch
Baring in mind all of the information we have taken in from the professional thrillers we were asked to plan the opening to a thriller. Our teachers gave us as a group a double side of a3 size of purple sugar paper to come up with and a good idea to present back to them. Some of the things we had to come up were camera angles, lighting, storyline, who it is going to appeal to (age, gender, ethnicity etc) and we needed to produce a storyboard of shots which we could follow if we got stuck on what to do next. The first and second idea we came up with as a group wasn’t as appealing and got turned down by two of the teachers. After hearing some advice we decided to scrap them ideas and to think again and this is where we came up with our current idea of a job interview. When we presented this to our teachers we got approved so the next lesson we started to film which was a relief.

Yet our thriller only appeal to young audiences as many people are or have experienced being bullied or yet even witnessed this kind of terrible behaviour. This is why we feel that our thriller can appeal to all ages because everyone has experienced a bit of this disgusting behaviour in their life!

To shoot these specific shots wasn’t that hard to shoot as many people might have thought but was actually quite easy because we planned to do this. Here is some example of the shots:
The reason why we have chosen to present these in black and white is to show that he is having flashbacks from when they both were at school and when he was getting bullied. Also we chose to put them in black and white because we want these shots to seem exaggerated and too graphic to show it in colour. These still shot images were only to represent our story board so the teachers got a rough idea of what we was filming, and also felt it would be acceptable so we could go ahead and film. This is what we came up with these shots:


My media product isn’t like ordinary thrillers for example the conventions of my thriller was different to many of the other groups doing the thrillers my thriller breaks the conventions of thrillers as it is not about crime, violence or murder etc. Although we broke media conventions I feel we have stuck to the media conventions very well in the view that we generated allot of tension, building to a climax and making the audience what is going to happen next , when he opens the lift door.

In my media product I feel that it represents all ages, all races, all classes and all genders. We decided to have no women in the thriller because very rarely we see thrillers where there are men beating up the women, although this could have made people feel more sorry for the person being beaten up. Maybe this is something that we should have doneto make it more impactfull. Also I feel everyone who regards themselves to be in any of these cases can be heavily involved in being bullied as a child or even as an adult. This can also be a result of which religion they represent, their political views or even what postcode they are from. Also I feel that our thriller is different to others as we have the white guy being beaten us whereas in professional thrillers have the black guy or Asian being beaten up which is very unusual.

I think that my media product will be distributed in a smaller production line. Something like over the internet, YouTube,
MySpace, maybe turned into a documentary then put onto a DVD. I think this because we didn’t have a lot of money to work with like the big film maker make for the Hollywood type screens. Maybe if we had more money to explore more places with then we would definitely make it to a Hollywood premier.

The target audience for our thriller is mainly for the age group from children starting school to teenagers in school or even college students. Specifically people who have different looks (over weight, wears glasses, ginger etc) or even if they have a disability (wheel chair, dodgy leg, speech impediment etc). If children of these ages have a function like these, our thriller is aimed at them. People think that they are the only people going through these but millions are going through the same thing each and every day. In some cases it is because of races or even gender. These people fit into our product in the way that when the interviewee was in school the interviewer bullied him and although you might have forgotten about the past it will still be in your mind and may affect you later on in your life time. For example in this case the victim is called Timi and the bully is called Ryan, and the reason Timi got bullied is because Ryan was jealous of him, maybe he was smarter than him or he was more popular den him with certain people or even jealous of him because of his looks? As one of the producer I can’t say what the reason is behind it because that is part of the suspense and might make the story seem not as good but these are possibilities. The reason why we are aiming our product at these people is because this is how many teenagers are ending up dead, either being stabbed, shot or even committing suicide. We made this thriller in aid of sending a message to every single teenager around the world encouraging them to lead a good life and not starting trouble with other people their age.

Addressing my target audience shouldn’t be difficult to capture. I would market my film by ringing some good professional members of the film industry show them a trailer of our film, which I cannot see them disliking. But first I would get in contact with one or two famous actors to help progress this film to the next level. This would give my film that extra bit of oomph. Maybe to play the victim having a big star like:
Martin Lawrence who has previously starred in films like blue streak, wild hogs, bad boys, big momma 1 and 2etc. And to play the bad boy bully we could have bad boy Vinnie Jones who has starred in films such as mean machine, football factory etc. This would definitely get the attention of the film promoters. I feel that by bringing in some famous actors to act the parts that me and Ali was playing would make it more believable and because these are both two well known fantastic actors people would be attracted to their work which would make the viewings more than if it was just me and Ali some unknown actors. I feel that the relevance of having these two actors specifically is that the effect of their race would make the message more exaggerated. The victim would be black and the bully would be white like the common conventions of a thriller.

To go about advertising my film I would have posters in the most popular places in the country such as: Mac Donald’s, KFC, billboards on motorways, trailers at the beginning of films at the cinema, adverts on television, posters stuck at train stations etc.


Overall I and also my colleagues feel that this process of filming editing and acting went really smooth maybe a few kafuffles along the way and a bit of match making made this film the little bit better and probably wouldn’t have been half as good as it ended up as. Some of the things that went wrong and were not planned were some things like the close up shot of the fingers pressing the lift button .
The thing that made this clip work, is that once we put our video together we watched it and thought there was something missing so we thought we should do a close up of the fingers quickly repeatedly tapping the lift button to show some intensity about our thriller which also gives it a little bit of quickness.
Other shots we didn’t plan was things like the weather but luckily when watching the footage on the computers it blended in very well with our topic because it didn’t matter whether it had rained or not because we started shooting and finished shooting outside in the one day (session). I think if we had filmed the outside shots (bullying scenes) in different weather conditions it would have gave it the affect that he is being bullied on different days instead of just the one day and in the same place.