The preliminary task was a continuity exercise focusing on dialogue and action shots. From this to the full product, the learner feels they have progressed in planning, researching genre, framing, editing and sound. Storyboarding and creating an animatic helped with shot selection and timing. Tasks improved skills like over the shoulder shots and using a tripod. Overall, planning and preparation were found to be crucial for the success of the final product.

1. Harry Brown

2. In what way does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
When planning our title sequence we decided to add certain features that went with the generic convention of the thriller genre.
The features include the music and titles of this genre, as the music has a spooky/on edge tone to it which creates a typical
thriller atmosphere. The titles have a black background and the font/transition looks ghostly. Our character adds to the
convention too as we picked someone with dark features i.e. black hair colour which represents shadows and is related to
generally dark things. Black make-up and clothing is also worn by the actress and some by the actor which gives the mes en
scene a thriller atmosphere when taking into account the actors. These small things add to the general feel the audience has
when watching our title sequence, because they are adding to the subconscious of the audience watching with things that
don’t stand out but still give them a recognition that they are watching a thriller. The lighting is low key which is typical in
thriller movies as it adds to the well known suspense they give off. Our thriller develops these features at the opening goes
on as the actress hangs herself which is much more significant to the actions she carries out at the start. The plot of our
thriller is quite on edge and sophisticated so I think the sub genre which is psychological can be identified easily. I would like
to think our psychological thriller is unique in that the suicide note doesn’t relate to any other thriller film of our sub genre.
The overall small generic conventions are typical but these are needed in order for the audience to identify what genre the
movie is. In order to get an insight to what type of opening to give our thriller, we each watched a total of five openings from
different genre thrillers. One of the openings I watched was shutter island, which had basic title font but still matched the
footage and proved an effective opening to the film. Another opening we all watched as a group was from se7en, which had
a great soundtrack with tense footage playing over the titles. However, this style of opening wouldn’t match the type of feel
we wanted to give ours so after a discussion we decided to go with the shutter island type of opening, giving a bit more of a
sophisticated title font and footage but keeping it simple at the same time.
A more simple font is used
in the shutter island titles
compared with the writing
them given to se7en.
Footage is also played over
the top which keeps the
title sequence interesting
and fast paced.

3. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
We decided to go with the typical representation of social groups and make the male protagonist appear more
dominant than the female protagonist. One of the ways we did this was through the way in which certain
parts were shot. In the alleyway scene where the female protagonist is pulled in by the male protagonist,
the camera looks down on the female to show her weakness and the general dominance of the male.
These aspects included in our title sequence gives our
audience an insight to whether it will be a stereotypical
thriller in terms of characters and general plot. We felt our
audience would enjoy this type of thriller rather than a
thriller that tries to be unique.
The clothing of the female character connotes
something bad is going to happen to her. The colour
black is also typically used in thrillers as it is a dark
movie genre, especially on the female characters as
they are revealed as the passive ones.
At a first glance the room the female protagonist walks into seems
like an average teenage room, with the mes en scene presenting a
desk, bed and laptop. As the camera pans round the corner it can
be seen that everything isn’t quite right as there writing all over
the wall and a chair with books on top. This also keeps the
audience interested and wondering why everything is set up like
this.
The hooded top worn by the male in the alley way
scene adds to the stereotype of kidnappers being
male with a inconspicuous and threatening nature.

4. What type of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
I think our media product could be distributed by a media institution as it has a unique idea about it but also
incorporates features of typical thriller movies. After doing some research I found a popular film with the
same psychological thriller genre and generally had the same plot. Orion pictures distributed this
movie, and it was a big hit even though this isn’t a well known film distributer such as paramount pictures.
In this particular clip the female
protagonist is seen to be wearing
black clothes to signify something
bad will happen to her, and the
character who causes the
problems is seen to wear lighter
clothing to connote he has some
power even though he’s in a
maximum security prison. This is
clearly shown through the mes en
scene of the security guards and
bars, which is why we took our
mes en scene seriously. This is The silence of the lambs is an 1991 American
similar to our colours used in the thriller that mixes the genres of crime and
mes en scene included in our horror, with elements of a psychological thriller in
thriller opening. also. The plot consists of a male and female
Diagetic sound is primarily used throughout this protagonist, the same as ours. The female is a
film but we thought the most successful films use detective who is trying to find out where a
mainly non diagetic in theirs so we kept ours the murderer called Buffalo Bill is hiding, but through
same as we saw this as the most effective to set Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal is an intelligent mass
the atmosphere we were aiming to give our murderer, and poses as a threat throughout the
thriller. movie.

5. Low lighting is a Hannibal seems to tower over
typical convention of Clarice showing dominance
a thriller that gives a even though he is locked away.
dark atmosphere and Potential future threat is given
we have done the by the male which illustrates
same in ours. that this is another
stereotypical thriller.
At the end of our thriller it The male protagonist and
was vital to keep a tense female protagonist interaction
atmosphere, so we went with is usually done with a mid shot
what we gathered from our or over the shoulder shot,
research and created a darkly which is what we aimed to do
lit room for the part the with ours to create an
audience needed to effective scene.
understand.
Another film I watched as
part of my research was
Inception. This film used low
key lighting at important
Orion pictures is an American parts of the film to add to
Independent production company. the seriousness of the
The company produced four dialogue. We aimed to do
academy award winning movies this in our opening to keep
from the years 1978 to 1998. an on edge atmostphere.

6. Who would be the audience for your media product?
We have decided our media product should be a 15 rating due to the wider audience we could reach with this
rating, especially if it was to go into cinemas. This would be a major Hollywood studio film due to the
stereotypical aspects. We also made this decision because it suited the levels of torment and abuse given
by the antagonist. As a result, a younger audience cannot view this due to it not being suitable for their
age so our main target is from the ages 15-20. Furthermore, factors such as the actors being the same age
as the audience gives the watchers a sense of identity between the characters. Our thriller is stereotypical
and will raise typical conventions such as kidnappings, so the audience can relate this to the usual thrillers
they watch and will enjoy ours. This maximises the audience with no risk of creating a different to usual
plot and the audience disliking it. Our survey we did for our research also showed us that our target
audience preferred the aspects a stereotypical thriller has to offer. A film similar to ours would be Silence
of The Lambs (slide 4). This film also has the typical thriller plot of kidnapping, but this audience is slightly
older. I compared the amount of blood and gore expected in our thriller to this film and ours is slightly
milder in terms of these factors, which helped me come to the conclusion of the age rating. Inception was
another film I researched and is distributed by Warner Bros, a well known distributer. I would choose this
company to distribute our film mainly because of the reputation, but also because inception is similar to
our thriller in terms of editing and people can relate to this film then ours. Again, after research on the
BBFC website we agreed to make our thriller a fifteen due to the horror without too much gore. These
people would be mainly female due to the fact they can relate to certain situations or understand the
female’s emotions. and as we found out from our survey the people that would watch our thriller are
mainly aged around 16. This couldn’t be an art house or internet release film due to the way it has to be
portrayed and the general style of it. This film also has potential to be a franchise if the first one is
successful, just the same as any film.

7. How did you attract/address your audience?
By using a long shot of the girl
The juxtaposition between the walking up to a hooded figure
female protagonist’s emotions is the audience can see how
part of the generic convention we nervous she is and how the
are trying to convey. It also creates darkness shows a sign of danger.
suspense as the audience doesn’t The use of low key lighting and
know why she is upset, attracting alleyway as part of the mes en
them. scene also helps give suspense to
the scene.
The camera looks down on the
female to signify her weakness
This part is vital for the and the slamming on the walls
audience to understand the connotes she is trapped by this
plot behind the beginning. It mysterious man. We chose a red
also attracts the audience the wall to film with as this also
most as they want to watch signifies danger.
what happens to the mans
next victim.

8. Target audience feedback
In order to get a full perspective of our finished product, we created a survey to gain feedback from our
audience. Google survey was used to create this survey. Here is what we asked and found out in response:
What is your age? Did you enjoy our opening?
Did you find our opening engaging? Why so? If yes, why?
‘It built suspense and the
‘the music created a lot of narrative really engaged
tension which makes it me and made me want to
more interesting and find out more as to why
makes me want to see the the girl committed suicide
full film. I also liked how and what the man did to
there were small clips of her’
footage and then screens
of writing.’
What genre What age do you
do you think our target
think the audience is?
thriller is?

9. Do you think the titles are
Why so?
effective?
Do you think the music is
‘They fit with the style of your opening’ effective?
Do you think the representation of
characters is accurate?
Would you watch the film in
full?
Yes: 11
No: 0
8 out of 11 people thought our film genre was
physiological. This shows us we have been accurate in
making sure our thriller opening has aspects that fits out
Overall, what sub genre. The age that people thought was suited to our
would you rate title sequence was correct also, with 8 out of 11 people
this out of 10? choosing 16-20 also. As most of the comments are
compliments about the tense atmosphere created I would
say our opening is affective. All of the people who took
part in the survey said they would watch the whole film
so we have successfully gripped the watcher of our
thriller.

10. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?
Throughout the process of constructing the product I have learnt multiple skills
in the editing and camera department. The continuity task given to us before
the start of our coursework filming helped develop these skills, and the work I
produced at this stage compared to our final product contrasts greatly. We
planned more before making out title sequenced as from the continuity task
we realised this was an extremely important factor when carrying out camera
work and editing.
I have learnt to create meaning with shots throughout our theory lessons, and
by being given tasks such as the continuity task and anamatic I have applied
these shots many times to perfect them. A problem we encountered while
going through these shots is not being able to have a dolly camera to
effectively shoot the running scene. We considered making one but then
decided we were tight on time and it wouldn’t be as affective as one you can
purchase as the materials would be better. In order to alternatively overcome
this problem we just decided it was best to use a shot of Beth running for
about 3 seconds with the camera still as we could fit in most of the scenery we
wanted too.
Furthermore, the tripod deemed as a handy tool in the process of filming and I
found it easy to use. When we needed a steady shot or a rotation whether it
be fast or slow, this piece of equipment was very useful. Although this is an
easy tool to use, I encountered the problem of it jolting a few times when
rotating it but after a view practice shots this was no longer a problem.
The programme ‘Adobe Premier Pro’ was used to edit and my skills have vastly
improved by having done the task in lesson of re editing clips in pairs. I can
now add in fades and titles between clips in an effective way, where as at the
start I struggled to do this. I can also important and export things through
using this software when I have done editing in a confident manner.

11. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the
progression from it to the full product?
Our preliminary exercise: Continuity task which involves two characters exchanging dialogue, and an action shot such as opening
a door. In this task we had to include action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule.
Main task: The titles of a thriller film, to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio material must be original, produced
by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copy-free source.
When I compare and contrast both the preliminary exercise and main task I feel as though I have progressed in many aspects. I
feel as though I have finally understood the importance of planning in order to create an organised list of things to do so
everything doesn’t get muddled up. This includes planning from who the target audience is going to be to a shot list, it
doesn’t matter how small a task is it has to be planned. The specific aspects included genre, framing, editing, and sound
which all needed researching into. We decided we would use the physiological film genre as we could use various plots
which means more of a chance to experiment with shots. Before this decision we each watched five different films openings
each, with different genres included. When watching shutter island I felt the titles were simple yet needed to be to suit the
atmosphere of the footage in the opening. With this in mind we decided it was very important to keep our titles suited to
our footage. In our preliminary exercise we realised the importance of storyboarding. Before I didn’t think much of this but I
soon realised it helps greatly when thinking about shots to use. This is because you can actually visualise whether a shot will
be affective or not without needing to reshoot a whole clip again. The anamatic also seemed to be a great way of planning,
as it was a step up from storyboarding and further helped us with timing as well as other aspects of the filming process. An
animatic is a preliminary version of a film, produced by shooting successive sections of a storyboard and adding a
soundtrack. We could also discuss as a group what shots we thought were good and bad, with the anamatic out in front of
us. This helped create a smooth editing process as well as an efficient filming session. At first I struggled with over the
shoulder shots as I couldn’t get a good ratio of shoulder and head to the person facing the camera. Now I feel as though the
tasks given before and planning have helped me improve this type of shot greatly. I now also feel more confident with the
tripod as this was used as a main piece of equipment throughout filming. I feel our end product has been successful and
these steps have made me realise how important it is to complete the planning, and the success of our product is mainly
down to these factors.