Media Evaluation

Molly Niklas

How does your media product represent particular social

groups

In our Thriller we only had

one character

representation. We did this

because we felt that using

one female would create

that vulnerability that you

often see in Thrillers.

Our character was a female,

she was wearing all black. She

had a very feminine look about

her which we intentionally

wanted to highlight because

this creates innocence and

more of an innocent character.

The fact that our character was

alone represented that females

seem to be a lot more prone to

being a victim. Even though the

character wasn't drawing any

attention to herself, the idea of

her being alone creates a tense

atmosphere for the audience.

When we analysed other Thriller fi

lms,

we noticed that in the opening

sequence the silence of the lambs,

their is a female character alone in the

forest. This gave us inspiration to use a

female character in the opening of

ours because we wanted to show

innocence and the idea that something

was going to happen.

In what ways does your real media

product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of

real media products?

Inspiration

OUR THRILLER FILM!

OPENING TO SEVENHere you can see that from inspiration from the Thriller opening Seven, we have created our own similar notice board and analysis of a murder scene. We did this because we felt that it was very effective in seven and we wanted to create something similar that we knew would engage our chosen target audience.

4) WHO WOULD BE THE AUDIENCE

FOR YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT?

How do you feel when you watch a Thriller at the cinema? What do you

look for in a Thriller opening?

At the beginning of our Thriller we have flashing images of a killer plotting a murder, how and why is this effective of your age group?

Our target audience was 15+. We

chose this target group because we felt

that at this age you would properly

understand the topic we wanted to

convey. When we researched the

classification, there were certain

aspects we wanted to include that

wouldn't be suitable for under this age

group.

I think that our Thriller will

appeal to other ages outside our

target audience. I think this

because the scene is quite

confusing and the aspects used

would confuse an older target audience

When we researched different

Thriller films, the majority came

under the certificate rating of 15.

The conventions we used were

similar to some of those used in the

other Thrillers so we felt that having

it at certificate 15 was the best thing

to do and most suitable.

How did you attract/address your

audience?

HOW WE WANTED OUR AUDIENCE TO FEEL...

Nervous and anxious to know what’s going to

happenQuestioning what’s

going on and having

to wait for th

e

answer

Relate to some

real life situations

that they have

been involved with

Un a where of

what’s going to

happen next...

Create a tense atmosphere for the

audienceThe idea of having to work out what’s

happening

Mysterious atmosphere

Make our target audience know the real life situations.

We asked this question in our audience

research because we wanted to know

whether we should reveal some sort of

murder at the beginning of our

Thriller...

As you can see from these results,

we knew that having a opening that

didn't give away much of the story

line would attract the audience we

wanted it to.

The audience research was a very

important part of the preparation

process into making our final

piece a success. The rest of the

questionnaire results are on my

blog with the conclusions as to

how the answered questions will

help us.

What type of media institution might distribute your

media product and why?

Mainstream films can best be defined as commercial films that have a wide

release and play in first run theatres (A movie theatre that runs primarily

mainstream film fare from the major film companies and distributors, during the

initial release period of each film). Being sold at popular stores, or more typically, at general stores can also be an indicator

A possible film distribution is called

http://www.launchingfilms.com/

They have covered a lot of popular films

that are now in all the cinemas around the

country. This particular film company have

distributed films such as ‘The Fighter’ ,

‘Little bit of heaven’. I feel that this would

be a good company to distribute our film

because the films that have been previously

distributed are of the same target group as

ours.

Having our film digitally

distributed enables a wider

target audience and also

would be a lot cheaper than

film cinema. The digital film

also has a better quality and

less likely to get broken or

damaged.

Our final Thriller obviously isn’t as good a

quality as a professional film because the

technology is a lot more advanced and they

are professionals who are paid to do what

they do. However, our film included some

qualities that you would find in Thriller

openings for example it had background

music to, camera angles, and the effects we

used weren't as good as professional but

they were in keeping with the project criteria.

What have you learnt about technologies

from the process of constructing this product?

Handling of the software and

equipment...

The shots we had already planned were

mainly the shots we used when we came

to making our final piece, however,

there was one shot that we did use in

the final piece because we felt that it

looked good when we came to piece our

whole film together...

The days we were filming, we

did have a few problem.

Because our mise-en—scene is

based at a train station, it was

very difficult to know when the

trains were going to arrive in

order to have the cameras ready.

The noise of the tra

ins did

interfere with the rest of th

e

sounds, we have background

music to our Thriller so it d

id

take us a while to make sure the

trains didn't over power th

e

background music.

I personally found Premier Pro a very

hard editing programme to use. I

thought there were too many confusing

tabs and I didn't understand how to

capture my footage at first. However,

once you had played about with it and

had a few lessons practice, I found it a

lot easier and manageable to use.

We used various different effects to

create our Thriller. We didn’t want

titles running through of the

producers names because we felt this

would take a lot of the mysterious

effect away from what we wanted to

create. However, instead, we just

had a plain black background with

the name of the Thriller wrote across

it...

We did add special effects into our

Thriller when we came to edit it. We

wanted to create the idea that the girl in

our Thriller was being followed or acting

very secretive. We put an effect on her

walking, this effect was called ‘Ghosting’

and it made the camera go fuzzy as if

something was following her.

We did add background music to our

Thriller because we felt that this

created suspense and tension

because the music does gradually

build up and create an atmosphere to

the audience that something bad is

going to happen. I thought this music

we found was really effective and

when we made our questionnaires,

our target audience found the sound

very effective.

Looking back…