The document provides an evaluation of a student media studies project that created a psychological thriller film. Some key points: - The film incorporates conventions from directors like Hitchcock, including using black and white filters and a "macguffin" plot device. - The protagonist is an autistic man based on Kim Peek from the film Rain Man, challenging stereotypes of thriller protagonists. - Scenes use typical psychological thriller conventions like doctors' offices and dark rooms to convey mental distress and psychiatry. - Technical limitations like an inexperienced director and lack of equipment impacted camera angles and location dressing.

1. A Level Media Studies Steven Lowe Evaluation

2. Our thriller piece incorporates generic conventions from such directors as Hitchcock as we use a black and white filter in a scene whilst also using a macguffin, this is a plot device that motivates the characters or advances the story, but the details of which are of little or no importance and was traditionally developed by Hitchcock. Mark Romanec is a large motif in our plot as he tackles the issues of mental health in his film One Hour Photo. During our initial thoughts we looked at the film Rain Man, although not a thriller we wanted to research the lead roll based around Kim Peek, as our protagonist has the same strain of autism. Kim Peek has a remarkable ability to notice things and want to correct them and a remarkable memory, this is shown in this scene: Our role notices the time being wrong and corrects the police officer promptly. Another scene showing his memory is showing our role reacting violently to an image that reminds him of a murder: Kim Peek

3. Our thriller challenges conventional conventions because we use an autistic boy as our protagonist, This challenges conventions because its not the usual stereotype of a protagonist, e.g. James Bond, Jason Bourne, etc. This suggests that we are different from other thrillers although we still know what our audience wants, this gives us a USP (unique selling point). These are pictures showing our lead roll they show how he is afraid, weak and in need of a lot of help with his day to day life.

4. Our thriller uses typical conventions of a psychological thriller, we use doctors in white rooms to show a psychiatric practise and dark blacked out rooms to show distress in our lead. All of our initial thoughts led up to a psychological thriller, we thought of kidnapping terrorism and psychological as our base, but we found that psychological thrillers are the most popular and our resources were limited and psychological was the most cost effective.

5. I do not believe that our production could become a major Hollywood production as it is a Indi film, it is very individualistic as we did not spend millions on a huge marketing campaign. Because our production is so individualistic it would be released to a smaller audience of local private cinemas, friends and family this would be for feedback, as we would want to make another production based around feedback of our first. Merchandising and general intertextuality are out of the question, for this production at least, our brand could become more intertextual and maybe our future productions but not at this stage. Our visual style is clinical, our mise en scene shows psychiatric practises and dark dismal rooms this suggests that our production is psychotic and slightly twisted. The first shots are based in a white room (which is our title) this is meant to show a contrast of cleanliness whilst our protagonist has witnessed something disgusting.

6. Our thriller production was aimed at 18 to 25 and mainly aimed at men. This is because of our character selection, we researched and found that men are more interested in psychological thrillers and more diverse characters than women, this means that our audience profile is quite limited, this means that in our next production we should look deeper into opening our target market potential. In one scene there is a shot of a woman dead on the floor, this would probably distress most people, especially young children. This is the shot: this is disturbing because of the jump cut before the shot this startles the viewer and makes the viewer want to know what's going on, this builds tension. Our use of shots is quite limited, we initially had loads of thoughts about camera angles but after a while it became apparent that certain things weren't possible. Although in the end I was pleased, we used high angle shots to show a dead body, we then rotated the shot by around 80 degrees and went higher up, this gives the effect of confusion and disturbance because of the jolty changes, we used extreme close ups of peoples faces to show their expression and emotions which is significant because autistic people often have a limited control over their emotional expression. At one point we use a high angle shot to create the effect of a security camera surveying a space.

7. The intention of our camera angles was to make the audience feel as though they are standing at the other side of the room viewing at a distance, this is because the viewer is meant to be almost oblivious to what is happening (whilst the audience is watching over this side something significant is happening on the other side) this makes the experience so much more thrilling. In such film’s as Hitchcock’s: Psycho the audience is a voyeur, watching the event unfold in front of them, in our film the audience is still a voyeur but their watching from slightly further away. This gives great suspense as when things happen the audience isn't fully aware (unless it is blindingly obvious).

8. Our production represents 3 social groups, autistic people, women, men and police. Autistic people are the main social group we wanted to focus on, our autistic lead is based around Kim Peek, who was the basis of the research of autistic people in Rain Man. We wanted to put out autistic man across as serious and not comical what so ever, this was difficult especially as our practise audience all knew who our lead was and they are all younger that 25. Our autistic man is represented as almost normal, the only differences are his emotional tendencies. Our murder victim is a woman, this is slightly stereotypical as women are typically represented as weak and this is what our attacker wanted.

9. We had slight problems with camera angles, we wanted to use high angle shots quite a lot and found it hard to suspend the camera, this led to us not being able to use certain angles. Other problems we encountered was my inexperience with final cut express, I am not familiar with the Mac software and found it difficult to use. We found finding locations quite difficult as well, our area isn't the best setting for a thriller and limited finances made it difficult to dress our sets. If we had the chance to try again I would need to have a larger budget and more equipment e.g. a steady cam, dolly or a crane.