Finished Thriller

Audience Feedback

This is the audience feed back we got when we showed our thriller to a focus group

Never Let Me Go analysis

Throughout the trailer the theme of romance is emphasised by means of the soundtrack and what each shot contains. We constantly see shots of the male character with each of the two main females individually which shows us that there is going to be some kind of love story and romantic conflict between these three characters. From the trailer we can connote that not only is it a film made of the book, but also it deals with elements of social realism within a potential reality of the future.

What we have learnt about technologies

Looking back at the Prelim

We planned for our thriller much more thoroughly than we did for the preliminary task, primarily because of what we had learnt from our preliminary task. But also the idea for our thriller had much more depth and was way more complicated than the basic shot and editing sequences we had gone through for the preliminary task. For the prelim we were given a storyboard and script which meant we only had to work on creating the basic shots that we wanted. Where as for the thriller we storyboarded, wrote a script, chose specific actors, designed the set and had to research the conventions of the type of thriller we wanted to create. The editing process was much more complicated partly because of the sheer number of shots we took, which required marking, but also because the thrillers we researched were mostly produced by big media conglomerates, for example the film Se7en I researched was produced by New Line Cinema which is a fellow subsidiary of Time Warner. In the prelim we were only using basic wide, medium, or close shots where as for the main task we were using the range of shots and filming skills we had learnt about since the prelim. We found storyboarding difficult as our thriller contained montages and after effects, however we used the benefit of the script in order to formally introduce our thriller and explain the concept of it. The visual narrative was generally shown through the way our thriller was displayed and the editing process, because it moulded our sequence of shots into a game show program and solidified the basic plot of our thriller. The camera work of our thriller is clearly an improvement from the prelim task. We took into account head space, the 180 degree rule and the framing for our shots. In the beginning montage sequences we knew to keep the camera in exactly the same position for each shot of every character so that it would flow fluidly. We displayed new techniques like the wide shot zoom close up of the presenter during the introduction of the show, which we had learnt about through research of reality TV and throughout the planning of our thriller. The spacing and framing we used for each character interview was a new skill we had all learnt since the prelim. Our use of all areas has been developed since the prelim including sound. When filming the prelim we stuck to using the attached microphone, where as during our thriller we used a second wire microphone as well so that we had the choice of which sounds recording to use. We set the microphone up by doing rehearsals of the lines each character was going to say and making sure that the sound was keeping at the right level. Another difference between our prelim and main task in terms of sound was the after added sounds in our main task, the voice over, the synchronous non diegetic sound effects of gun shots etc and of course the music we added to create mood with in chosen shot sequences. This was done by our utilisation of a relatively new media technology, final cut pro and after effects which allowed us to work over the top of our thriller and add the special effects that help to conform to the conventions of reality television

Tripod mid two shot



Compared with a handheld shakey mid tracking shot



tripod side angle two shot

compared with a handheld interactive shakey shot

Thriller Annotations

Ideal Target Audience Member

This is a photo of Freddie, he's a 17 year old AS level student and an example of our ideal target audience member. Freddie's favourite film is Never Let Me Go because it deals with potential elements of social realism but a darker side of potential society. He is also a fan of reality tv like X factor, Britains got talent and Big Brother. Freddie spends his free time on facebook and working his part time job, when he's not keeping up to date with new semi reality programs like Made in Chelsea.

How we attracted/addressed our audience

Media Studies - Attracting Our Target Audience

What Institution Would Distribute Our Thriller

·        I think warp would be interested in producing our thriller because our thriller is a dark comedy set in game shows that exist nowadays and Warp has produced Four Lions which is also a dark comedy about a problem that exists in the world. Warp also takes first time directors and makes low budget films with them. Warp work in convergence with film4 to fund their films with experimental first time directors, Film4 release the film directly onto into their TV channels and on DVD the same day in order to capitalise on profits and make sure they get a return on their investment. Film4 can recoup their expenditure on the film if the film is successful through advertisement by increasing the price to advertise in the breaks of that film. Warp would make money from this film by marketing it on DVDs, pay per view and in cinemas/box office like it has done with ‘four lion’. Warp specialises in first time directors and low budget thrillers. Warp made the film Submarine which is also slightly similar to ours in that it’s a comedy with a serious undertone and story line. Warp seems to target an audience in the age range of 16 – 24 which is a similar audience that we want our thriller to attract which is also why I think Warp would produce our thriller. Warp typically produces thrillers with low budget actors that appeal to 16 to 24 year olds, such as the mighty boosh film which hadn’t made any films before. Warp made the film ‘This is England’ which fits into our style of social realism and representation of social classes.

·        The target age for my thriller is age 16-24. They may like the film because it relates to everyday shows that this age group watches. A majority of the actors are also in this age range so they appeal to an audience of the same age. Each character is designed to be part of a specific social group that’s found in an everyday society, to place it into a social realism genre which creates a niche audience for our thriller, much like the audience that ‘This is England’ is aimed at only we’ve tried to widen our audience slightly by giving it a reality TV style glaze which conforms to the dominant style of popular TV. However our film is still very much a low budget art house film and therefore applies directly to a niche audience.

Social Representation Within the Thriller

Our thriller is all about the representation of social classes within a modernised extremist society. We take social groups such as smokers and radicalise the outlook people have on them. With in current society we know groups such as criminals, the homeless and even smokers are looked down upon. Our thriller uses these character types to infuse an element of exaggerated social realism into our thriller. For example the attitude to smokers is polarized purely through a smoker being forced into a game show where she must fight for her life against others who are also looked down upon. We tried to make the cast of our thriller the social throw aways of society. We subvert dominant ideologies of male dominance in our thriller by making the lead role a female. Although she is killing loads of people we're on her side which forms our thriller into a transgressive thriller. She is a counterpoint to the other members such as the druggy and the smoker because we dont side with them. Every character apart from the homeless single mother is represented in a negative light but we have a relationship with the single mother which subverts the dominant ideologies of single mothers living of welfare benefits displayed by newspapers such as the dailymail, she subverts this ideology by being clearly enterprising which represents her in a positive light and creates a contrast with the viewers idea of the character and the reality of the character within the thriller.

Ninety-two per cent of single parents are female, and Britain has more single parent families than anywhere else in Europe

Britain is the European leader when it comes to children being raised by just one parent.
Children who grow up in one-parent homes are more likely to suffer  poor health, do badly at school and  fall into crime or drug abuse when they are teenagers.
The latest figures show that the number of single parent families with dependent children in the UK went up from 1,745,000 in 2001 to 1,958,000 last year.

This is an example of how other medias represent our character of a single mother, the dailymail clearly villifies single mothers and in fact all single parent households.

 

14th century castle gutted in blaze sparked by two young boys who had sneaked into grounds to smoke their first cigarette

An historic 14th Century castle was gutted in a fire sparked by children trying their first cigarette.
Police say two boys set fire to some tinder dry grass at the foot of the imposing Krasna Horka in eastern Slovakia after sneaking in to the castle grounds to experiment with smoking.
Jana Mesarova, police spokesman for the eastern Slovak region of Kosice, said: ‘A unit sent to the site found that two local boys aged 11 and 12 were trying to light up a cigarette and because of careless use of safety matches, they set grass at the castle hill on fire.'

Up in smoke: A fire rips through the Krasna Horka castle, near Roznava, eastern Slovakia, after police suspect a discarded cigarette lit dry grass nearby

Children under the age of 15 cannot be prosecuted in Slovakia.
More than 80 firefighters were called to tackle the ensuing inferno which tore through the ancient hill-top building within minutes

This is an example of the Dailymail taking a stab at smokers, its clearly publishing this story to show smokers in a negative light because this is an event that took place in Eastern Slovakia and the Dailymail is a British paper, house fires are not uncommon in Britain so we can the connotations of publishing a foreign story about a fire caused by smokers is that they're taking up an opportunity to bad mouth smokers.

How does our product respond to the conventions of real media products

Media - How Does Our Thriller Conform to Thrillers Conventions

Editing Task

We began by uploading all the shots we had filmed to final cut pro. Once this was done we then marked each clip with alternate, interview, good or best shot type and added labeled markers to each clip to mark the action and a good place to cut into. We wanted to create meaning for our target audience by giving it the game show style through editing in an x factor style character montage in the first part, using a voice over introducing the show and giving the thriller introduction a theme song. It follows the normal conventions through the high paced action and constant danger of the show, reinforcing the thriller image is the killings that invoke thrills. We used match on action in order to create continuity throughout the thriller and make our editing techniques seem invisible. We used a montage right at the begining to give a preliminary view of the characters without it taking too long, this also helped show the game show style of our thriller. When the homeless mother jumps out of the bushes to attack another contestant, we use a match on action to give different angles and perspectives on it while keeping the editing invisible. Our thriller is successful because of its abillity to mimic the conventions of reality TV but also mix that with thriller style. We used the montage and soundtrack at the begining to create a high initial pace to the thriller that also safely secured it into this genre, the pace slows down when we see the introduction of the last shows winner to create feelings of empathy for her situation. We edited into this clip sequence by extending the length of clips and slowing the cuts between each shot which slowed pace as well as the much slower soundtrack we put to it. We built up our hero by giving her more camera time and by giving her character the title of winner from the last show. We juxtaposed two sides in one character, on the one side she was the heroine and liked by the audience but on the other she's running round mercilessly killing other contestants.