The document summarizes the opening of a thriller film created by the author. It evaluates how the opening uses conventions of the thriller genre through elements like suspense, a focus on criminals, and action. It also discusses how the single main character challenges stereotypes and how smaller distributors would be more suitable than large studios due to the low budget. The author learned new skills in filming, editing software, and improved from the preliminary task to the full film.

1. Thriller Opening By Joe Wright

2. In this presentation I will be evaluating the opening to the thriller film we created. I will be doing this by answering a series of questions about my personal views on the project:

3. In what ways does your Media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? I would like to think in a lot of ways. We spent a lot of time researching the Thriller genre (Please view my blog) and I would like to think we managed to incorporate that within our media production. For example our particular film I think was more of a Crime/Horror. We looked into these particular genres and tried to use classic ingredients of these genres such as Suspenseful accounts (His flashbacks draw him into having epileptic seizures) , A focus on criminal(s) (Our ‘victim’ would probably be a criminal if we were to continue the film) Emphasize action over psychological aspects (When we created our victim character’s background we suggested that he may be autistic, similar to JJ Jones off of British teen drama Skins. Which would tick this box.) A main character that is put in danger by enemies that are often unrealistic ‘creatures’ (when we were putting together our opening we did look at possible continuations we could think of to help us, this particular ingredient of a Horror Thriller film is something we did consider and even shot on camera with a view to possibly include in our opening, although after liberal thought we did decide against it as we though too much would be given away). I think our music also fits in nicely. We chose a suspenseful tune played using woodwind instruments. We chose it because we felt it was exactly the sort of song you would find in our type of film. We looked at the opening of films such as The Shinning to back this up. Also I think the general feel of our opening restricts one to putting it into any other category. Right from the word ‘go’ we tried to create mystery and suspense which are two features not really found outside of the thriller genre.

4. How does your media product represent particular social groups and places? I think we deliberately deviated away from classic stereotypes. There is only one character in our opening and I think we succeeded in purposely restricting this character’s classic teenage traits. In fact I think the only image of a typical teenager we did use is the images of our drinking a lot and beating people up which we only used to create empathy for the character. Other than that he is a loner who drinks on his own and is probably singled out due to mental issues which are not pertaining representations of a teenage boy. Although while this is the only question on my sheet that frisks at the representation of social groups I thought I would look at other stereotypes to see whether they were followed. First of all the setting, a rural country lane in the Norfolk countryside. I think that although the geographical choice for our location is not particularly relevant to this question the general selection of a remote area is. We decided to look at some time honored thriller films currently protruding the shelves of blockbuster to see how directors such as Nimród Antal (Director of Vacancy) and Stanley Kubrick (Director of The Shinning) had used rustic locations to create a nervy feel to their films. It was then, when we could begun to draw pictures of how we wanted to represent the pastoral backdrop that was carrot crunching Norfolk. We dipped the opening of our film to mainly black and white because we found this particular effect to be very impressionable in Shane Meadows’s film Somer’s Town and thought that ours would be equally good with the use of it.

5. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? I think a smaller company would probably be the better option. This is because the film is low budget meaning that a smaller company would not only be more affordable, but more realistic in the sense that it would be foolish in my opinion to pay a big company like paramount to distribute something that ammeter and low budget.

6. Who would be the audience for your Media product? I think we would probably certify the film at around the 15/18 mark according to BBFC classification, although I think taking into consideration the main influences of our film (Vacancy and The Shinning) you would have to say that the main age groups that are likely to watch our film are around that 20-30 age group I would imagine. I do however believe that other audiences, particularly older ones would find the film appealing. I think the age range of people that would choose to watch this film would however slowly dematerialize as the baby boomer bridge is crossed. The audience's main methods of watching the film if we were to release it would probably be DVD and the Internet. Both of these options are cheap and often effective for small time films, two boxes we would have to tick if we to distribute our film. We realistically couldn’t go to film4 or sell our film to apple for distribution via ITunes because it is a low budget student film that we have only had limited time to complete. For those reasons we would be restricted to distribute our product via the internet and/or DVD. List of certificates with reasons

7. How did you attract/address you audience? We created questionnaires to help give us an idea as to what people in the collage thought a thriller should look like. This combined with our own educated expectations of what we felt a thriller should look like allowed us to create something that we felt matched our own expectations on what a thriller should look like and also what our potential audience would enjoy as well

8. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? I think my knowledge of the fanatical world of Macs has improved some what! While I must proclaim my computing style still lies with Windows I have to say that I have enjoyed my continues’ battle with the Macs! Now on a serious note I would like to outline some of the new skills that I have learnt whilst using the Macs and also using the Cameras: First of all using the camera. Although I did take Media at BTEC level at High school I cannot say that I was particularly gifted in the camera/filming aspect of the course. Although since starting A-Levels I have grown in confidence in this department. I am now very familiar with all of the various types of camera shots from Wide Shots all the way through to point of view shots, as well as different angles (High angles low angle etc) I have also learnt a lot about the various software’s. I would first of all like to start with the actual layout of the Macs. I now feel comfortable around the mind boggling desktop and can even open up the relevant programs without accidentally shutting down the computer! Also I think my ability to use Final Cut successfully are also much stronger. I felt slightly hesitant initially whilst helping to edit the preliminary task, although when it came to the final thing I felt much stronger. Meaning that I was able to do a proficient job in the editing process. All in all however I found the Apple slogan “Think different” very typical of the firm Another piece of software that I now feel comfortable using is ‘Live ‘Type’ this program allowed us to create warped texts that helped us to create the desired mood in our production

9. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? I think I have learnt a great deal, and that is clearly evident in the quality of the two pieces of work. In my opinion there is no end of improvement between my preliminary task (A short film showing me walk into a room, ask for a DVD and then take one) and my final piece (A two minute clip of the opening to a Thriller film). I think this is down to a number of things: First of all I think I was able to familiarize myself with the various software’s. I therefore felt that the Preliminary Task was perhaps more of a trial thing as apposed to a ‘warm up’ if you like. Secondly I think time has defiantly meant we have been able to create a better piece also. We were only given around 5 hours to film and edit our preliminary task which was detrimentally probably not an amazing

10. By Joe Wright Candidate number: 9162 Thank you!!!