This document summarizes Priyanka Chawla's reflections on creating a media title sequence for a psychological thriller as part of a group project. Some key points: - Priyanka researched conventions of psychological thriller titles and incorporated some (simple text on black background) while avoiding others (black and white filter) for their project. - Close-ups, quick editing, and suspenseful sound were used to follow thriller conventions. Male characters were given more screen time and dominance to represent typical gender stereotypes. - Warner Bros. would be a good distributor since they have distributed similar thrillers in the past. The intended audience is males ages 15 and over who would relate to the male dominance

1. Chance-Foundation Portfolio
Evaluation
Priyanka Chawla

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before starting to plan our final product, I had to become familiarized
with various thrillers, in order to make a decision about what
kind of thriller we wanted to produce. Therefore to become
familiar, I watched many thrillers, and soon realized that they all
mostly follow similar codes and conventions in order to create
meaning. When I found this out, I looked more closely at certain
genres in order to distinguish, what concepts are imperative to
follow and those we could challenge.
One of the conventions that I became aware of through my research,
was that psychological thrillers generally have similar types of
titles. A simple block font on a black back ground. Therefore as it
was a consistent pattern that we has seen, as a group we had
decided to follow that theme. Here are a few examples
compared to ours.
Our title sequence was a simple white font with a black background.
Which is almost identical to the ‘Black Swan’ title which is also a
psychological thriller. ‘Inception’ is also psychological thriller,
even though it does not have the white block letters, it does
follow suit, by having block letters with a black background.
Another convention that I picked up throughout the research process
was that most thrillers have short sharp titles. The effect this
convention has is that it is appealing to the consumers eyes, as
they are generally titles relating to everyday life and they are not
to long, therefore not giving a great deal away about the movie.

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Within an psychological thriller, the type of titles generically used is simple text, centralized on a black background.
Regarding the titles we followed this convention. I believe that following this theme was beneficial to our media
product because, it added to the simplicity of the product. In my opinion it increased the level of suspense within
our piece, ensuring that our audience was engaged at all times.
However there were codes and conventions that we went against and didn’t not include in our title sequence. This was
the use of a Black and white filter. Though this filter is not used in every thriller it is used in some of the most
iconic psychological thriller, for example In the thriller ‘Psycho’ produced by Saul Bass, his film was black and
white, whereas we went with keeping it natural, because I believe we did not want to enter the field of following
the codes and conventions of film noir. To conclude in our opinion black and white would not have suited our
psychological thriller. Our final product had a slight element of action within it, therefore changing it too black and
white may have given out mixed messages to our audience.

4. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Camera-
In psychological thrillers many ECU’s are used or just CU’s. the purpose of this is to enhance the importance of the characters, and
intensify the scene. I personally believe that this convention is one that we followed through with closely. I believe it makes
that particular scene slightly more important and emphasize the feeling of fear and the idea that, this is a turning point in
the film. For example in the film ‘se7en’ and extreme close up was used. Which was extremely similar to one we used,
within our title sequence. This positioning of the camera is important In the way that it also tells the audience the
importance of the character. The character at this point in both scenes are the main focus on screen as not much else is
surrounding them.
Editing:
Psychological thrillers make much use of quick editing, to show that it is a fast paced film.
Parallel editing is one editing technique that is common as it can show the relationships
between certain characters and scenes.

5. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Sound:
The use of sound within thrillers as a whole, is an extremely important aspect as it shows the direction
of the film.
Within our media product the majority of our sound was non dietetic. In some sections it was slow and
mysterious, in others it was fast paced in order to inform the audience of how the scene may take a
turn.
We kept some elements of realism within our scene in order to make it suitable to our audience. this
helped the narrative of the title sequence, because it showed suspense and an element of
confusion, therefore using codes and conventions to keep the audience engaged.

6. How does your media product represent
particular social groups?
Our media product as a whole, focuses on the typical stereotypes. For a start
the majority of our characters that feature within our title sequence are of
the male gender. The use of camera has helped me enhance the fact that
men are the more dominant gender within our final product. As the
cinematographer I felt that close ups on the characters face showed that
their importance throughout the rest of the film will be significant. This
also follows the key concepts of stereotypes. In terms of media, as an
audience we often see the male character, being more in control and
significant. Therefore this is what we have followed, to attract the
audience and keep them engaged with what they are watching.
Examples of two
close ups used on
the male
characters to
enhance their
dominance.

7. How does your media product
represent particular social groups?
Further on in our media product the idea of stereotyping men as the more
dominant gender was enhanced with the use of sound and the mice en
scene. In this particular scene the mise en scene was that the only female
character in this sequence was in the kitchen cleaning, then a few seconds
in the scene there is a voice over from a male ordering her to hurry up.
This scene enhances that the
women is there to serve the
men throughout the scene.

8. How does your media product
represent particular social groups?
The use of editing also enhanced the significance of the male gender
throughout the piece. The screen time of characters also signifies their
importance within the piece.
Thus, when the journey of the two men were shown, their screen time was
equal, but took up the majority of our opening sequence.
The use of costume also helped enhance their significance. The two
characters were wearing dressed in a smart manner, black trousers and a
shirt. This showed that they belonged to a social group that was high class
and well put together.

9. What kind of media institution might distribute
your media product and why?
• When deciding what media institutions would be best to distribute our
media product, I had to research various media institutions, regarding the
types if movies they have distributed and if they follow a specific pattern.
The media institution that seemed most appropriate from my research
was Warner Bros. I believe that this will be well suited to our media
product because, they have released a few other psychological thrillers,
therefore, consumers will be familiar with that particular genre, therefore
most likely making the film a popular hit, quite soon.

10. What kind of media institution might distribute
your media product and why?
Other media products that have been distributed by Warner Bros, that follow
the psychological genre are the following:
These thrillers are similar
to our media product in
terms of thee codes and
conventions it follows.
To conclude, our decision was made
because we feel that the mise en
scene of the movie is quite suspense
building and engaging, something
that the audience look for when they
go to the cinema to watch movies.
As a personal opinion, I believe that
the movie should be released on to
T.V soon after it has stopped being
shown in cinema, for example on the
sky store. This will increase the
popularity of the film, as people enjoy
watching movies in the comfort of
their own home.

11. Who would be the audience for your
media product?
To decide who our target audience would be, we created a simple survey for anyone to fill
our anonymously. From our research we gathered that our film is best suited to males
who are 15 and over. The reason we chose males was because, I believe that they will
be able to relate to the male dominance throughout the media product. Because they
can relate to the male dominance that was represented frequently throughout the
piece.
However personally I believe that females could also be interested because of the ending of
the title sequence, where a woman is shown spiking a drink, they could be engaged, to
find out what would or could happen.
To gather some feedback we conducted a survey, in order for people to have their say after
watching our title sequence.

12. How did you attract/address your
audience?
In my opinion I believe we addressed our audience showing them what they
wanted to see, and in some ways what they expect to see. For example
having male dominance is a key concept that is represented in many films
of today. However they were also drawn in by something slightly unusual,
and something that pushed boundaries slightly, but not so much that it
put the audience off. And this was the fact that we had a female
protagonist.
By having a close up of the female protagonists hand,
enhanced that the audience should pay close
attention to this character and that her actions link to
episodes throughout the rest of the film. I believe that
this would attract the audience because their curiosity
would get the better off them, and all they can do at
this point is carry on watching.

13. How did you attract/address your
audience?
I also believe that the title of our
film, had a huge impact on how our
audience was attracted to watch our
sequence. In my opinion I think this
was attractive because it was short
and sharp, rolls off the tongue easily
and is a word that the majority of the
population would associate with on a
day to day basis. Therefore the idea
of familiarization will attract the
attention.

14. What have you learned about technologies
from the process of constructing this product?
Throughout this task my main job was the cinematography. I had never filmed
anything before this task, therefore whilst I was filming it took many re shoots to
perfect the shot. However throughout the filming process, I believe that soon
enough, my filming skills became stronger and stronger, and I was able to take
more control of the camera. Therefore allowing me to create the right meaning
behind what I was filming. The type of shot I believe I perfected the most was a
pan shot. This shot was carried out during Aman Dhillons scene. The problems that
kept re occurring were that either his head was not in the shot, or the camera was
too shaky or the pan was not keeping up with this movement. However after many
hours of repetition, the scene was eventually perfected.
Alongside the cinematography, I believe I strengthened my skills in the editing
department. Prior to this task I was able to conduct basic editing techniques,
however this task enabled me to learn how to cut clips and move them around to
change the narrative. I also learnt how to change the filter of the clips and add
sound over the movie.

15. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learned in the progression from it to the full product?
Compared to my preliminary task I have learned many thing, not just skills related to the technical side, but
also teamwork skills.
Communication has a huge impact on the progression of your task. Within my group we learned the difficult
way that a lack of communication between each other slows down production in every way, and can risk
our success severely.
I have also learned that detailed planning at every stage is essential in order for us to refer back to ideas and
make improvements. I learned this from our continuity editing task, because the execution of one of our
shots was not as planned. Had we written down the plan before hand and looked into it more deeply it
may have worked slightly better.
To conclude taking this concepts that I learned over the tasks enabled me to succeed in helping create the final
product we are left with today.
Because my major role within this project was the cinematographer, I had to closely compare with our
preliminary task, in terms of where the camera went wrong. For example in one scene the head of a
character was cut off, so I had to keep this in mind when filming a lot of close ups, to ensure we wouldn’t
loose marks due to this aspect of filming.
At this point of the shoot the
camera shook, therefore when I
filmed our establishing shot for the
real piece, I made sure that after
pressing record I allowed a few
seconds to make sure we had still
footage before pressing the stop
button.