The document discusses the production of a student thriller film opening. It describes design choices made to challenge genre conventions, such as setting it in the suburbs rather than a forest. It discusses the representation of various social groups in the opening, including the main character and extras of different ages and abilities. It also covers the intended audience, potential distributors, and how editing and sound were used to attract audience attention and create an unsettling tone.

1. Paranoia Evaluation

2. Q1.In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge Forms and Conventions of Real Media Products? When Coming up for the idea of our Thriller we decided that it would be a good idea to steer away from the traditional thriller style and instead of choosing our location as a forest or a hamlet we choose to film ours in the suburbs. We did this because it gives the audience a higher sense of relation to the film therefore making the story more disturbing and putting the audience on the edge of their seats. During the opening the video editing is used to slow down and speed up footage of people passing by the main character, the use of the editing showed the main characters fear and paranoia, this is following the thriller conventions as in thrillers slow motion is often used to show important aspects and objects. The titles we used were very conventional in terms of positioning and there transitions, but were not in terms of the font, which stood out and was edgy, we thought this was a nice addition makes the viewer question the intention of the font.

3. How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups? Our thriller opening represented a number of different social groups. The main character, casted for his long legs and mid twenties look, is a smart dressed man in his work clothes. He is not any different to any other commuter and fits in with his surroundings. There aren’t any shots of him communicating with others, this connotes that he is a bit of an outcast in his environment. The other characters in our opening were merely extras but were cast specifically. All extras that were chosen were male. This is to fit the stereotype that men are more threatening than women. We choose a selection of ages for our extras but the majority were teenagers, but dressed in the right outfits showed a wider range of ages. One group of extras are a group of teenagers. They play the stereotypical group of aggressive teenagers, who walk in a group shoulder to shoulder. Although we choose to take the stereotype and brake it slightly by including a disabled character, the reason for this is to draw attention to the fact that the main character is being watched by everyone and we believe by adding the disabled character that it added to the effect other character.

4. What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute your media Product and Why? I believe that our thriller could possibly be distributed by paramount pictures or phoenix pictures who together distributed Shutter Island, a thriller of the same genre and similar style. If the film was to be distributed by these two companies the production quality would be much higher and it would be filmed elsewhere, but for the money and equipment we had we filmed our opening to the best of our abilities.

5. Q4:Who would be the audience for your media product? Our thriller would have to be given a certificate of 15 due to the nature of the thriller, later on in the film our paranoid character would be seen using swear words and potentially taking drugs, also there would be scene of gun violence. Although I would give our opening a certificate 15, 15 and above is not the target age it is to be aimed a. I would put our opening in a similar league to films such as Shutter Island. Shutter Island is aimed at people of a more sophisticated age, such as 18 and above. I would say our film would also be aimed at people of a similar age. Our opening would also be suitable for any type of person as it is not scary, although is slightly physiological. The nature of the physiological parts is more of a “keep you guessing” type of style than a “make you jump out of your seat” which would make it suitable for all.

6. Q5.How did you attract/address your audience? Our opening scene would be the biggest attraction for the audience as it draws them in to the film and makes them question what is going to happen in the film. I believe we captured this effect by the use of non-digetic sound in the form of music, the reason we choose this music is because it is eyrie and tense. The music makes the audience edgy and curious of what is going to happen. We also captured the audience attention by use of tracking of the legs. This draws the audience in to what surroundings the character lives in, we also use POV shots to show how the character is portraying his fellow citizens. During the opening we brake the 180 degree rule by turning the camera full 360 degrees, I believe this really added to the opening of our film by disorientating the audience and emphasising that all eyes are on the main character. The use of a rotational birds eye view at the end of the opening shows the character dead but adds to the confusion for the audience. Through the use of editing we drew the audience in with the long cuts, slow fades and also through the use of time remapping. The shots where we see the world through the characters point of view the use of speeding up time and then slowing it right down give the effect of the main character thinking and pondering on what he has seen. We also used a fade technique to show different locations by fading similar shots in to each other. Mis-en-scene is used in the characters clothing, he is seen wearing different coloured trousers this lets the audience see that the shots are from different days and I believe this was highly affective with the use of the fades with object match.

7. What Have You Learnt About Technologies From the Process of Constructing This Project? Whilst creating my opening I used software’s that I had used before but through the creation of my opening learnt new skills in. we used after effects as our main editing program but also used some Photoshop and premiere pro. We put the majority of our video together in after effects because this meant we could add in titles that moved and faded with ease, although we could have mad the video in premiere pro, exported it , and then added the titles later, as a group who do “digital art” we found it much easier to use after effects’ layers and found its usability much higher. Generating our titles meant we could experiment with after effects and try some new things. I enjoyed making the “Halldigital” title very much as it used many different skills.

8. Looking Back at Your Preliminary Task, What do you feel you Have Learnt in the Progression From it to the Full Product? When we came to film the preliminary task we had very little knowledge of the cameras and equipment we came to use, it also helped in learning and relearning After Effects. This meant that by the time we came to creating and completing our final project we were skilled in the use of using the hardware and software. The pre production research into other thriller films helped greatly as we knew what our film had to look like before we made it. I felt that the Animatic helped too as it was the first stage of our film, it gave us an idea of run times and how long each shot needed to be for us to create an effective thriller. We had to change the way in which we were filming our opening because the shots were to shaky , but by using the tripod upside we were able to walk and keep the film steady.