The document evaluates the opening of a student-made thriller film. It discusses how the film used conventions from other thrillers such as portraying the main character as a vulnerable young female of Asian descent. It summarizes the audience feedback, which was generally positive while noting some continuity errors. The document also reflects on the filmmaking process and what was learned about technologies and planning from constructing the product.

1. Samuel Lai AS Media Studies EVALUATION

2. Within our thriller opening we have used many conventions of a thriller from what we discovered in our primary research. We used the idea of a stalker taken from the thriller ‘ When a Stranger Calls’ and the idea from the ‘early thrillers’ research, where we found that females were given the main leading role and were very beautiful in their appearance. The concept of the ‘hooded’ stalker is something that was frowned upon, as it’s the typical way to present a stalker and was something we were advised not to do. When a Stranger Calls used the idea of a stalker, but presented him without wearing a hood. We took this idea from the film and used it as a convention in our own film. The roles that were given to the females were stereotypes of the ‘vulnerable and helpless victim’, that found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. The females that appeared in these thrillers were all of a white descent and probably aged between mid-twenties and mid-thirties. Other films that have used this convention are, Enough – (Jennifer Lopez) – (2002) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278435/ or Flightplan – (Jodie Foster) – (2005) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408790/ . We then took this convention and challenged it by replacing the female with a female who was much younger and of a different ethnicity. We decided to use Jasmine Bual as our main leading actor as she was younger than the average female represented in the thriller genre and was is of an Asian descent instead of white.

3. Female of Asian ethnicity playing the main leading role Another film that has used a female of a different origin: Gothika – Halle Berry Within our product we also involved other individuals that had Chinese and British origins. This is beneficial as it shows the film is not bias towards one type of race or culture Other actors

4. As part of our brief we had to include the convention of enigma within our thriller opening. It proved to be successful from the data we received back from the audience questionnaires we handed out to our target audience. In many of our scenes in our opening, enigma is created to entice our audience and leave them asking question to themselves and what is going to happen next (left on a cliff-hanger). To see if we were successful we followed up by the response from our audience surveys: (Screen dump). WHO IS HE? WHY IS HE WATCHING & STANDING OUTSIDE THE FEMALE’S HOUSE? WHY DID HE BURN THE PHOTO? DOES HE KNOW THE GIRL? IS THE EVENT IN THE PHOTO SIGNIFICANT TO THE FILM?

5. We used stereotypes so that the audience can easily relate to the characters without the need for description Signifiers are another technique in how we can interoperate connotations just through images and sounds. For example the presence of loud music suggests a party is going on This stereotypical appearance has also been shown in films such as Kidulthood The type of atmosphere we have created in the first few seconds of our opening can also be seen in TV. Programmes such as Skins. Although it not a film, it still shows how the media industry uses stereotypes in order to attract their intended audience

6. Dark scenes is a convention that we noted in many thrillers, such as the opening to Vertigo and several events in Gothika. It enables the director to set a vulnerable/sinister mood for the characters within the shot, which will affect the way the audience react. We use subjective point of view shots to let the audience feel as if they are the person in the shot. It a very dramatic shot as it engages the audience directly as they feel as if they are the actual person in the video or subjected to their personal awareness. This type of shot has been used in many films, one film that I studied (Vertigo) used it to show the view from the man’s perspective when he is hanging off a building looking down. Subjective point of view shot Opening Of Vertigo Although this setting isn’t as dark as the one we have used, the audience still gain a sense of drama and suspense. The presence of the dramatic soundtrack playing helps emphasise this. This shot shows contrast between light and dark. The light can suggest safety and the building can represent the divide between

7. When reviewing our film opening, the audience can gain an idea of what the rest of the film may entail. From the storyline of our film we could conclude that our film could be a hybrid involving the genres; action/ psychological/crime thriller. From the previous slides its is clear that our film has been influenced by many media products. Gothika and the research into ‘early thrillers’ influenced us in how we portrayed our main leading actor. Gothika showed us that not all thrillers present the ‘typical’ female and being of a white descent. However, the majority of thrillers showed a female of white descent and this is what made us go with the minority and challenge this convention of the thriller genre. Dark scenes in both Vertigo and Gothika created real suspense for us and so we thought this would be a great convention to incorporate within our film. We thought it would help create enigma as many things happen at night that we don’t know about and adds a sense of mystery and suspense for the audience. Other conventions such as stereotypes, we already had some knowledge about as they appear in everyday life. Our film reflects the stereotypes that are shown in Kidulthood and Skins as this is a common stereotype for young teenagers and is one where are audience can relate to.

8. The social groups represented in our thriller opening are male and female teenagers aged 16-17 which are intended to attract both sexes of our target audience (15 years +). The teenagers have been portrayed as working class citizens; the average group in the social hierarchy and the group where most teenagers can relate to. These representations of the social group ‘teenagers’ were purposely done to attract, interest and appeal to our target audience of people 15 years and over. How we presented the teenagers can be seen as stereotypical, as many individuals tend to judge a ‘typical’ teenager as consuming alcohol, partying, and very flamboyant. We also added a gender stereotype consisting of the main leading role; played by a female, who plays the ‘vulnerable’ character. Many other films have used this convention such as Scream: the typical ‘pretty blonde’ all alone and is later involved in a sinister and brutal event (Link). When a Stranger Calls: young, white female alone in a house where she is later confronted with a stranger (Link). Furthermore, we have included characters of different ethnic backgrounds to illustrate how they can merge into one group due to social influences and conformity. There are characters of British, Asian and Chinese ethnicity. This is a convention that we felt goes against the thriller genre, as in many thrillers the roles of characters seem to be ethnocentric to white ethnics.

9. How does this link into the target audience? (Explore this fully in question 4). Is your audience represented as stereotypes in your thriller – or do they challenge stereotypes? These stereotypes we have used can be seen from two perspectives by the audience. Either they can represent them, such as they can relate to what is going on within the film, or relate to the characters that are being portrayed to them in some way. This could be because of numeral reasons. For example, a member of our audience may have consumed alcohol or gone to a house party. Whereas, on the other hand, other members of our target audience could challenge this stereotype of teenagers drinking and partying as it doesn’t represent them as they haven’t done it. However, we feel that although this stereotype may not apply to the whole audience we know that the character's will as they are the same age as them. We know ‘stereotypes’ are just generalised ideas/views of a particular group or person and are not accurate representations of most people. Their purpose is so that the audience can relate to them without any description needed. When we handed out our audience questionnaire to 15 members of our target audience they had to answer the question; 4. Did you think the characters were representative of people of this age in today’s world? YES NO When we collected the questionnaires we found that 15/15 members thought the characters were representatives of their age. Therefore showing our stereotypes to involve our audience as they can relate to them easily.

10. From the research into what institution would make and distribute our product, we decided that Warner Bros. Pictures would be our prime choice. This is because this institute is one of the top most widely known film institutions in the world and its successes keep on coming. Our film would be add to the their long list of successful films, whilst adding a fresh take on the thriller genre, from the conventions used and challenged that we have used. This company had produced many thriller/hybrid thrillers that have been awarded some of the greatest achievements in the film industry. An example of this are the Batman series. The Dark Knight won 2 Oscar awards, 1 BAFTA and many more. This is what we would hope to achieve with our film , possibly more. We would want to broaden its success by franchising the product to other companies along with promoting synergistic merchandise for the market ,for our audience to purchase. The merchandise could include posters, an arcade game, a book and many others. Use of SYNERGY Arcade Game Poster Book

11. Our film is aimed at males and females aged 15 and over. We decided to target this particular age range as we noticed that from the films that we had studied the majority were targeted at 15 years +. People under the age of 15 may be inappropriate for them as it may contain graphic images and swearing. Our opening is quite dramatic in that it creates a somewhat creepy and menacing atmosphere, which children may be distressed by. It will appeal to our audience because it has people roughly the same age as them in the film, therefore they can relate to characters a lot easier. Our audience would want to see the film due to this relationship between them and the characters, and also for the sheer interest in what the film will be about. When a Stranger Calls – (15) is a film that can ours can be compared to as the situation involving a ‘stalker’ is similar and the target audience is the same. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455857/

12. Attracting our audience was done by featuring teenagers of a similar age as our audience into our film. This would appeal to them as they could relate to the characters and event being portrayed at the very start of our opening. View other details in question 1. To address our audience, we constructed an audience survey in which we handed out to our target audience when we showed them our film opening. A filming session was arranged where groups showed their film to an audience. The audience were our friends and peers that were also taking media studies. As they were of an age near to 15, they were the best people to ask feedback from. When we had finished showing our film we collected the questionnaires back and revised the data. Within our opening we have used subjective point of view shots for the 2 main characters in our film (stalked girl & stalker). Firstly, the audience are put in the position of the teenage girl when she is walking home. The shot is blurred to illustrate that her vision has been impaired due to the consumption of alcohol. We found this was very effective and established the character even more (a person that likes to have fun, ordinary teenage girl). Then the audience are subjected to the position of the stalker ,where he begins to burn a photograph of the girl that he is watching. These 2 shots give a contrasts both characters positions and gives the audience the upper-hand (dramatic irony) on what is happening than the characters in the shot (mainly applying to the teenage girl). This also creates suspense; a generic convention of a thriller, as the audience wait in anticipation on what is going to happen next.

13. Questionnaire results: Overall, our audience’s feedback to our questions were really positive and many said that our thriller was successful, and the use of conventions created a good and effective opening. However, several picked up on that the continuity in some parts were poor. Such as when the stalker begins the photo he burns it from the bottom left of the photo. But when it’s dropped on the floor it is burning from the top right. This is something that we have only just noticed and changing it now is simply unfeasible due to the deadline of project. However, this shows the benefit of allowing an audience to watch your film before it is released, as they can pick up on errors such as this, allowing you to make the change. Below is the url for our Audience questionnaire http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/27M832D

14. 6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product? My knowledge on technologies has grown continuously throughout this project. The types of technology that construct films is constantly advancing (CGI). From this project and the experience of filming and using professional equipment, I have learnt that the use of editing can really enhance your work as it allows it to flow fluently and makes it far more professional. Strengths and weakness of the camera equipment – what were you able/unable to do with it? We rarely had any problems with our camera equipment as it was already at the location where we were filming so transportation wasn’t an issue. However, when we were filming different shots, such as long-shot to then a subject point of view shot, mounting and demounting the camera from the tripod was really strenuous . As we used a professional camera getting to terms with some of its functions were tricky at first, such as changing the focus. But when shown how to work it, the camera worked fine and had no other problems with it at all. Talk about the filming process, was there problems you faced, how did you resolve these issues? As we were a little behind schedule and had only filmed one scene (party scene), we wanted to film the rest of it all in one day so we could get back on track. We managed to do it but we were filming in cold temperatures and everyone was getting restless as it became unbearable. We worked quick but accordingly as possible. However, everyone contributed their part and gave their best efforts to complete this filming stage.

15. Using Imovie for the editing stage of making our film was the most time consuming part of the project, but probably the most exciting as you get to see your film take shape. When adding transitions, titles and sounds to your film, you had to take into account whether or not it suited your film. These components added to the mise-en-scene of our film, as it made the scenes more dramatic. The addition of sound involves the audience much more than if it was absent, as It establishes the type of mood within the scene which affects the audience in how they feel. From our learning and understanding of the music industry we knew that we were unable to use ‘real music’ within or opening. However at the very start of the process of making our film we really wanted to use real music created by top selling music artists in the charts. We wanted to do this as we felt that our target audience would get more involved into out film as they could relate to the music. However when we contacted the institutions in which the music was signed to, we explained our situation but were given a fee in which we had to pay to use the music. As students and not yet in the real media industry, this was simply an unfeasible transaction for us to do. We were then told about a website called http://freeplaymusic.com/ which allowed you download legal free music. After browsing through many soundtracks we found a few that worked well with our film, downloaded them and then added them to the appropriate area within our film.

16. When researching the thriller genre it gave me an insight in what a thriller actually consisted of. Such as its characters, themes, features etc. This helped when we had to create our own thriller opening as I could relate and use the information that I had discovered from this research. The research that we had done such as generic conventions that appeared in thriller films, helped us create a very successful product. The planning stage gave us guidance in what are intentions were with the making of the thriller opening. Noting down our ideas such as what characters will be involved and why, the location chosen, sound used and mise-en-scene, allowed us to have a clear idea of what to do when filming. Planning gave our intentions structure and a clear showing of what we intended in our film. Creating the storyboards were vey useful when in the process of directing and filming. We used it as guidance of what we were doing. They acted as our ‘blueprints’ of our plan and helped us a great deal. However, in the process of filming we added and changed a few camera shots from our storyboard and so created a final storyboard which showed our changes. We also created a script for the actors within our film, so that they knew what to do and how to do it.

17. Other planning involved creating a shooting schedule; where we set a date in which to film our product and organise ourselves so that we were well prepared. This involved making sure all actors were available when we wanted to film, checking equipment was working and ready in advance and informing actors the location of where to be at what time, and if the location was accessible at this time. We decided to shoot our film parallel to the order of our storyboard. This is because it made it easier when it came to editing as the scenes were easy to find as they were in order. We had nearly an hours worth of footage and edited scene by scene. This was the most efficient way as we could add the next scene to the previous scene thus creating a fluent product without any glitches. From the mistakes I had made in the my preliminary task (to recap, errors such as not using a tripod, actors continuing speaking whilst camera moved to different angle/shot and stopping recording as soon as shot was finished) taught me to improve these techniques, which now look rather amateur and thoughtless. However, as we were knew to the equipment as a whole we could only learn from these mistakes in order to move forward. Our match on action shows a definite improvement in our thriller compared to that of our prelim. The shot looks a lot smoother and fluent. Example of how we used match on action

18. From the 2 filming tasks that I have produced, I think I have gained far more knowledge in how a film industry goes about making a film. The amount of research and planning is a necessity in making a successful film. I now feel far more confident in using filming equipment as I have overcome the technicalities that I first struggled with. One of which was using a professional tripod, which had many more functions to the basic one that we had used in our preliminary task. I had never used a tripod before this project and some of its functions were often hard to maneuver and operate as it was a professional tripod that we used. Considering that this was our very first attempt of creating a professional media product, I think our Thriller opening was very successful. My teammates and me were very pleased with the outcome, as we spent a lot of time into it and had a good response from our audience. We can only learn from what we have produced and put it right in upcoming tasks.