The student created a thriller film with their group for a media project. They had to plan extensively and film a preliminary 2 minute scene to practice techniques like camera angles and character dialogue. From this experience, they improved their full product by correcting mistakes. They applied conventions of the thriller genre like fast pacing between scenes, scary music, and a plot twist. Their film represents young adults and features a stalker threatening a teenage girl. The student believes their 15-rated film would be suitable for distribution. They aimed it at teenagers familiar with relationships and used that storyline tension. Through the process, the student learned about film technologies and editing software.

1. Evaluation Name – Victoria Hamilton Candidate Number – 4082 Centre Number - 64820 Of The Deadly Silence!

2. About My Project For my media project, I had to create and film a scene of a thriller with my group. To do this, we had to do a lot of planning and research on thrillers and had to create a preliminary task. This involved us as a group to film a 2 minute long clip showing various camera angles, including the 180 degree rule and showing characters extracting a few lines of dialogue. By doing this, it showed us how we could improve our main product and not to make the same mistakes again.

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? My project conforms to the conventions of a thriller, by creating tension by having fast pacing between different scenes. We created scary fast pacing music, to set the atmosphere along with a heartbeat in the background to create suspense. We wanted our audience feelings to change dramatically, from a happy to a scared emotion. We did this by starting with a happy scene of a couple having a picnic, which then turns into murder. We created suspense by keeping the audience waiting until the end, to see how the girl was murdered. We used a flashback to show what happened to the girl which is typical of the thriller genre. This was similar to other thriller films that we looked at from our research.

4. How does your media product represent particular social groups? We have presented our media product to a young adult social group, as we represented a stalker and a vulnerable young teenage girl. We showed this by a stalker following a young teenage girl down a street towards night time, when she was on her own. She got into her house but so did the stalker, who then murdered her. Research – I looked at other thrillers and looked at the conventions of the genre. I looked at Vacancy, which was about a stalker and gave me some ideas. It showed me what different camera angles create tension and how music drastically changes the atmosphere. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TK2gqYIVuc

5. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? I did some research before deciding what media institution, might distribute my media product. I looked at all the different age categories, which showed me why they are suitable to that age group and why not. They also come with guidelines such as themes, language, violence, nudity, horror, discrimination and drugs. After doing this research, I believe my media product will be distributed at a 15. I chose this because it has a theme that is aimed for older teenagers and not suitable for anyone younger to view. It also dwells on injuries and blood which is caused and shown by a knife. It also contains sustained moderate threat and has occasional glory moments. However there is no strong language, nudity, drugs or sex references.

6. Who would be the audience for your media product? My media product would be aimed at young adults/teenagers who are familiar with relationships as friends and couples. We chose this audience because it’s based on a typical storyline that goes from a happy start to a twisted glory ending.

7. How did you attract/address your audience? We attracted this audience into our media product by using a couple’s relationship which then turns into something unexpected, which is typical of a thriller. It’s similar to other thrillers, as young happy couples don’t always have a happy ending due to many things.

8. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product? I have learnt that technology has really improved and can help people film steady images and cut them smoothly. However we did have a few difficulties such as the Apple Macs, which we had never used before so it took a while to get familiar with it. Creating our preliminary task helped us do this, as we had to edit our scenes and put it together. I realised using a tripod means our filming was steadier and created a good picture to watch. To edit and cut our movie we used iMovie on the Apple Macs. This helped us edit, cut and use transitions on our product.

9. Continued… We also kept a blog on blogger.com which helped us keep note of where we were on our product and showed us what progress we were making. However when we went to upload our preliminary exercise, it compressed our product because it was a big file, which made our film blurry and bad quality. To overcome this we sent our preliminary exercise on disk. We used a programme on the Apple Macs called Garage Band which none of us had never used in our group. We found this hard to use but after a lot of practice of the preliminary task, we found that it helped us create music that was suitable for that scene.

10. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? I feel I have learnt a lot and progressed from my preliminary task, as we used the tripod more giving us a steadier image to watch. We also used an updated version of iMovie for our main task, which let us use more transitions and add different techniques to our product. It also let us record a voice over of the girl’s thoughts. We did some research into different camera angles that were typical of a thriller and filmed them, to see how they look. We then used these varieties of camera angles in our main product, creating more tension for the stalker attacking the girl. I feel I have learnt more about how sound makes a scene better, by setting the atmosphere and creating suspense.