Group 26 Thriller: Thriller Evaluation

Our thriller was c

reated through different ideas; some were through thrillers that we had recently seen, such as The Bourne Identity (2002) and some were through ideas that we had in mind from watching students’ previous thrillers. The ideas that we took out of The Bourne Identity was a scene where the main character, James Bourne, is looking for an intruder and ends up finding him somewhere else. The scene shows a false innuendo, where the audience thinks that the intruder is going to come out at that time but he comes out later when the audience was least expecting it.

Our thriller represents two different social groups; white lower-class British teenage girls, and Asian higher working-class young men. This is because of the characters we chose to include in our thriller. In our thriller, the two female students are shown wearing a school uniform and are seen having a hot chocolate during the day. This shows that the girls either are on the lunch break or are missing lessons; truancy is a common issue among young children living in London. However, this is not an important issue in our thriller therefore, we chose not to dwell on the subject. The other main character is a young Asian man who is higher working-class. This is shown by the clothes which he wears and his surroundings and possessions; the man is seen wearing a smart black suit and is driving a black BMW 1-Series M Sport 5-door with dark tinted windows. This is ironic as the man is a well-reserved character who likes to keep things hidden.

Momentum Pictures will release our thriller, which is a British, ‘Alliance Films’ company. It is set up in the U.K. and often shows British films like ‘Lesbian Vampire Killers’, however they also show non-British films such as ‘Milk’, which is an American movie. We chose to release our thriller with Momentum Pictures as they also work with smaller independent film companies that are released in the U.K.; they tend to show a wide range of films and have come to be very popular with the British public. We will also release our thriller on DVD; this depends on how well our thriller does in the cinema rankings. We chose not to release our thriller on the internet for many different reasons. Firstly, we would lose profits, as this would be easy for many illegal websites to gain access from. Secondly, by releasing our thriller onto smaller cinema screens, this would allow us to profit from any takings of the cinema firms.
The audience for our thriller will be a wide variety as our thriller revolves around issues that a wider range of people can relate to; the main issue in our thriller is ‘kidnapping’, which is a topic that appears in many thrillers . However, our main audience would be those that can relate to the characters within our thriller. This means that our audience would British lower-class females of an age range of 15-40; this would include students, mothers, middle-aged women etc. Our audience could also contain British working-class young women, whose hobbies include going to the cinema. Our male audience would consist of young British males, from the ages of 15-30, such as students and also working-class middle-aged men. A typical person who would fit our target audience would be a young British woman, who works in a small office and whose hobbies include going to independent cinemas and galleries.
We plan to attract our audience with advertisement. We plan to advertise our thriller using small advertisement companies, which will allow us to advertise our thriller in different methods while still costing smaller amounts; we plan to advertise our thriller on posters, on T.V. and online. As we do not have many funds, we will seek out sponsors that will help us with the financial side of our thriller. We will try to advertise our thriller in small posters in different areas around London and through a mini trailer, that will be shown on certain channels such as BBC 1; our trailers would be show during the least popular hour, due to our small budget. We would also try to advertise our thriller in cheap advertisement websites, as our target audience would most likely have access to the internet and would be regular surfers of the internet.
Through the production of our thriller, we have learnt several different things about both the filming side and the editing side of our thriller. We used a digital camcorder, similar to the Canon DM-XM2 Professional MiniDV Camcorder throughout the time we spent filming. We also used a tripod often, as this allowed us to film steady shots, high-angled shots and low-angled shots without the need of using other props such as chairs. As we did not have a dolly to use, we had to film handheld shots whenever we needed to move the camera at a steady pace. The effect that this gave some of our shots was the feeling of someone being followed when the camera filmed behind the person. We also learnt about the uses of the different buttons that were located on the camera itself. For the editing of our shots, we used a programme called Final Cut Pro, which is a built in programme that can be found on Apple Macs. We used Final Cut Pro to put all our chosen shots together and create a short film that came to be as our thriller. We had a few tutorials on the different uses of Final Cut Pro and this allowed us to use similar techniques in the making of our thriller. We learnt the basics first, such as how to upload all our footage from the camera onto Final Cut Pro. We learnt how to cut and paste different shots to create one long shot of filming. We then learnt how to add extras such as transitions, which were placed between two different clips, and music, which could be added to the whole of our edited film. For the soundtrack of our thriller, we had to compose our own music as we were not allowed to use other music tracks for copyright purposes. We composed our soundtrack on another programme, found on Apple Macs, called Soundtrack Pro. This programme had various types of sounds such as different instruments and mixes put together by the programme itself. Soundtrack Pro allowed us to add different instruments and sounds to result in one long soundtrack that would be played throughout the whole of our thriller. We learnt how to lengthen and shorten numerous types of sound to create a unique mix. For our thriller we had a simple base that played through the whole of our thriller opening; this gradually faded near to the end of the thriller. In addition we had two different sounds that helped to create the effect of idealism (what the audience think is going on) and realism (what is actually going on). This was shown through the switching of the two different atmospheres; the two girls sitting happily outside a café, switching to a man sitting silently in his parked car. For the scene involving the two girls, we placed some city sounds in the background, and for the scene involving the man, we placed an eerie sound that created an uneasy atmosphere. This gradually got louder when both worlds collided as the man had caught the young girl. All the sound elements then went off as soon as the car boot was shut. This created a sense of lost hope, as it seemed that there was no way out for the young girl!

As well as the filming and editing of our thriller opening, we have also used the internet, where we have ‘blogged’ our lessons and progression in a website called www.blogger.com. We have recorded our weekly progress, also mentioning tasks we had to do during class hours and also our achievements and flaws within the time we had to create our thriller opening. This has allowed us to keep track of what we had left to do and what we had to avoid doing in the later stages.
Overall, I think that we have progressed within our media project and that we have gained new techniques in the making of our thriller openings. I believe that there is a visible change from the preliminary task that we did in class, at the beginning of the topic, to our final thriller openings. We started with a storyboard, which contained many shots that we were planning to use. Some of these shots were kept and some were taken off in our final thriller opening. From our match-cut exercise, which we did in class at the beginning of the topic, we learnt how to do match-cuts and because of this, we were able to create a few very good match-cuts in our thriller opening. We have also learnt different techniques in filming, such as different shot angles and others ways of creating effective filming. We have learnt a lot in editing and putting together our thriller openings. Lastly, we have experienced many different things in the process of creating a thriller opening; we have learnt about the time it takes to film certain shots and the effort that needs to be put in, from every member of the group, in order to have a decent thriller opening. I believe that each member of our thriller group has progressed in our own way and that we have learnt a lot about the world of filming!