The student created a 2-minute thriller film introduction with a classmate for a media studies project. They chose to subvert genre conventions by making the killer a woman and victim a man. Through strategic editing, music, and filming techniques, they built suspense and left the audience with questions about the plot. While the short film showed promise for conveying its concept, the student acknowledges that more planning and filming could have made it look more professionally produced.

2. Introduction - Our project was to create a 2 minute long film introduction, and we chose to do a thriller. I worked with Laura Eddleston to mak e it. We both did equal contribution in the planning but with the filming stage, I did all the camera work and Laura did the organising of the actors and the props etc.

4. Question 1 (Cont.) We tried to do something a little different, but adding a twist in a twist in the sense of the killer is killed by another killer just to make things more interesting. Its vital to do something new to the genre as after a while, the audience watching similar things over and over, interest would be lost, so doing something new would grip the viewer into watching and making them think over what they just saw.

5. Question 2 We have represented men and women in our introduction and criminals and victims. We have also gone for a more..Alternative and challenging approach to make it more interesting (also another genre convention change) Men and women: - We didn't keep to a dominant mode of representing a group -The male was the victim the first time and the female was the killer on both occasions. - Their appearances are stereotypical of men and women, though their actions and behaviours aren't (such as the male cowering and the woman being violent) - The character of the boy screams when the bag is put on him and this emphasises his fear but challenges how males should act stereotypically ( no fear, not submissive)

6. Question 2 (Cont.) Criminals and Victims : - I think we kept to a dominant representation, one person was the criminal ( The part played by Amber) was dominant with her attack, though challengingly her appearance seemed like an average female. - I think challengingly, the girl seemed happy in what she was doing, and the occasional smile shown in the filming could have been intentional if mentioned this way, - The character of the boy screams when the bag is put on him and this emphasises his fear in being the victim, also when he runs away from the girl he is supposed to look scared/distressed.

8. Question 3 Our film would probably be distributed by an independent institution, we thought this as thrillers of this sort usually aren’t mainstream enough for cinemas or for a Hollywood distributor and as its a British film too, a British company would be ideal. One we thought of is Film4, as they are well known and distribute British, indie films. If we had to go for a Hollywood distributor it would probably go to Lionsgate films as they distributed films of similar genres.

9. Question 4 In terms of audience, I think its aimed more at women, as there isn't much action and it goes for more of a psychological approach on thriller. For age audience would be from 12 to 16 and16 to 25. The socio-economic status would be aimed at the C1-C2 groups (middle). For fans of a special interest, those with a fondness for mysteries/crime and thrillers would want to watch it. I think this is a good audience to target as it would cater to a lot of people, which would financially benefit a low budget independent film such as ours.

10. Question 4 (cont.) Here is the result of out audience questionnaire! We asked 20 of our friends to take it.

11. Question 4

12. Question 4 Gender: Both male and females but it probably would lean more towards males as an audience. Race: Its probably aimed towards a British audience. Age: 15-18 + Social-Economic Status: Middle class.

13. Question 5 Our video included (below) to attract and address the audience: - Chronology was kept through the chase scene and towards the end, as through editing we made sure it all went ordered and sectioned it to make sense! -Many Enigmas were created and a few were resolved in the 2 minutes, including ; Why were they running in the woods? Who was chasing who? Why did the girl do that to the boy? Why did the girl get attacked herself? What would happen in the rest of the film to reveal all this?

14. Question 5 (Cont.) - Binary opposites were created in the behaviour of our two main characters, the girl was confident, the villain, and had a dominant role where as the boy character has a submissive, scared and innocent role as it appeared. - We didn't use any voice over's or narrative devices as we thought the footage would speak for itself. - Suspense and tension was created by cutting the editing at the beginning to speed up the chase scene in a way, and to confuse the audience into thinking about what is going on. Also the music was eerie so this also built a sense of suspense and unknowing.

15. Question 5 (Cont.) - I think in relation to ideologies around crime is something like crime doesn't pay in a sense, as the villain we see gets killed again by another and later in the film for all we know it could be played out again!

16. Question 5 (Cont.) Use of Media language - Mise en scene : The setting was in a woods, with no people around so it kind of adds to the mystery surrounding what is happening. Lighting: Though when we filmed it, it was bright, we edited the footage with adding a saturation filter making it dull and adding hue adjustment filters to make the little colour there was stick out, making a more striking appearance Music and sound - We removed all the sound (almost) from the camera footage apart from the boy's screams and the shovel clinking on the pavement as we kept these for emphasis of what's going on, and we added a backing track of eerie music (3 tracks edited to add to the pace of the film) Continuity - For continuity we made sure every time we filmed, the actors wore the same clothes, and edited it in a way that nothing overlapped (time wise) and that there wasn't any repetition in clips.

18. Question 6 Technologies used! We mainly used Imovie pro, and it was our first time using it, we thought we did well though, as we easily used effects and edited it effectively! For reasearch we used knowledge we already had and websites such as www.Google.com and www.Wikipedia.org for information! We used word and excel to make graphs and such.

19. Question 6 (cont.) We also had to learn to use a camera effectively, and we improved a lot compared to our previous attempts and prelim we also learned how to effectively make use of surroundings and which shot to take and how to zoom best etc. We also used a blogging ( www.blogger.com ) and learned to upload videos, and edit things with more than one person contributing to it.

20. Question 7 Compared to out prelim, a lot more thought got to go into the final product and using things such as the editing software and the camera itself became more simple to use after time, improving the final piece in comparison. Our final piece was more watchable in a sense it was edited more smoothly, and as there was no dialogue we could work on the shots to portray more than words could have. We also got to be more creative with settings, props, story, everything pretty much! Compared to the prelim we could develop everything further including characters especially.

21. Conclusion Personally, I think it was a really enjoyable experience and I think out final product was good! I think a strength of it was that we put a lot of effort into it, making it effective for the genre (e.g. Going to the woods to film etc.) and the editing of it to make the audience feel suspense! A weakness was that I think we could have made it look more professional if we put more time into it, and made the most of the filming time (took more footage just in case) . I think if it was a real film, it would have a good concept, but probably wouldn’t hit film standard at the current skill level!