Evaluation

Above is our thriller opening which we uploaded to youtube. The number of views and 5 star rating is positive feedback after random people have watched our opening.

Due to the size of the upload, it has cropped the right hand size of our opening off by a little, if this is an inconvenience, then please click on the link below to watch it fully.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWl1LHnw1io

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

As a group, we decided that our thriller film opening, 'The Reprisal' fell into the sub genre of a crime thriller. This is due to the fact that the main events are based around a crime which was the car crash and the young boy played by Ian's eventual revenge would also be a crime. None of the other sub genres suited our film opening particularly well so this one seemed best. We managed to incorporate a few generic conventions of a thriller into our opening such as having a build up of suspense using dark and and ominous drones, the main character has also experienced a close loss, which triggers off his obsession throughout the duration of the film. Our thriller opening also has an intricate plot which creates fear and apprehension for the viewer, as they are unclear as to what the main character (Ian) is going to do because of his loss. Our thriller opening does not particularly develop or challenge these generic conventions of a thriller, but it does stay true to them in order to build up tension and create fear within the view. The sense of enigma keeps the audience watching as they are eager to discover the answer to the mystery by the end of the film.

How does your media product represent particular Social groups?

The main character in our opening 'The Reprisal' is a 17 year old boy traumatised and obsessed with a car crash that claimed his family a short time ago. The opening does not reveal a lot about him, but more about his obsession (as seen with newspaper clippings and pictures of the person he seeks revenge on). He is a caucasian, 17 year old male and that is all that is fully revealed about him, so he does not have any type of stereotype. In some ways, it could be said that he has more dominance over the female he seeks revenge over as he has paid great detail in plotting his revenge. However this could be challenged as she is the one that took his family away from him, even if it was accidental.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

'The Reprisal' would be the type of film to be produced by a major Hollywood studio as it would need to have a fairly high budget and use of equipment to create a full sense of fear through lighting,sound etc. The car crash scene that often appears throughout the film would be a major focal point of the film as it is the reason for the young boy seeking revenge and so would only be fully successful through being produced by a major studio such as Warner bros. It's main reason for release would be to bring back a type of film that is not predictable or focuses mainly on gore, but to trick the audience and keep them on the edge of their seats and to use their imagination. Many films such as these are hard to find in the media nowadays, and the main point of the film is to bring it back.

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The target audience for our film does not have a specific gender as we believe both males and females could relate to it. However, we decided that the target age group should be around 15-early 20s, as it is a '15' rated film and the main audience for thriller films are around this age group also. Our questionnaires about our film revealed that almost everybody enjoyed the film which reflects the fact that what we believe our target audience has been well decided. We chose this particular target audience because we know that the main viewers of thriller films are teenagers and young adults, we wanted to create a film that they could enjoy and possibly shock them as it would be something rather different to what they are used to. We believe the thriller appeals to them due to the fact that they are able to relate to the young character, as all will have experienced loss at some point, and all of them have a family so would find it easy to place themselves in the position of the young teenage boy.

How did you attract/address your audience?

We attracted the audience through use of enigma early on in the film, the mystery that is created at the beginning makes the audience want to continue watching until the final crescendo at the end. The aspect that would especially terrify the target audience is the loss of family and to be left alone after watching your family die. This would deeply traumatise anybody of any age, however younger people are more vulnerable and this concept is a terrifying thing. We played on this and combined it with the obsession and theme of revenge so there are two points to the film that scare the audience. On the whole, the audience are not placed in the position of anybody and are merely watching the film, however the flashbacks put them in the main character 'Ian's point of view in order for them to grasp a feeling of the fear and experience what he did. The impact of this is that they feel vulnerable just like he does and are able to watch what he experienced through his point of view, but also watch him from a distance and observe his erratic behaviour.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product?

We experienced a few problems as a group when beginning to film our thriller opening for 'The Reprisal'. After discarding our first project 'An Eye for an Eye' we had very little time to re-film and edit this new opening. However, we persisted and as we began to set up the tripod and lighting to begin filming, we found that the second part of the schools camera charger was missing. This meant that we could not use this camera to film and we were now faced with a dilemma - forget filming and focus on our original project which lacked in many areas, or use a camera with poorer quality but create a better film. Of course we settled for the second option. Our final result shows that the camera was of poor quality, however this wasn't helped by extremely dark lighting, but we believe this adds to the suspense and plays on the audience's minds as they cannot properly see what is happening. This opportunity to create a thriller film opening taught me a lot about the iMovie software.

We edited the film entirely on my own personal MacBook, and prior to filming this I had never properly used it, so it was a learning experience for all of us.

I learnt how to overlap sounds and adjust the volume so that one did not overpower the other and two effects can give an effective sound, eg. our opening sequence with the drones,traffic and child's laughter. In addition to this, the use of transmissions and getting each frame to flow was quite a challenge but one i think we managed well. I found the editing on iMovie a lot easier than using the actual camera equipment. I found the tripod fairly tricky to

work with and achieve the right height for the camera. Although, I think i found the camera we filmed 'The Reprisal' on, more difficult to use as it belonged to Ian and was unlike the cameras we used whilst filming our original thriller opening 'An Eye for an Eye', in which we had several weeks to come to terms with and understand.

Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Since the very first preliminary task, I feel my overall knowledge and grasp of the editing facilities and camera angles and equipment has vastly improved. I now find it easy to interpret how to capture the proper lighting and gain the most out of a shot as well as trying out different ideas to see which angle works best. I also found that sometimes small sections of film clipped together are much better than long frames, this is because you can experiment with more angles and become more creative with your film. This is shown in our new thriller opening 'The Reprisal', compared to 'An Eye for an Eye' which consisted of many long pieces of film.