Thriller Evaluation

Thriller Evaluation "What's Hiding Within"


1. In what ways does your Media Product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

We feel that our sequence has the typical conventions of a

 thriller for example the first shot is a point if view shot of the woods. This is also due to the plot being about two teenagers that have been killed in a wood’s and a women that had escaped from a psycho ward is being framed for the murder. The shots we used to film my thriller were all realistic using hand held camera work throughout. We feel we used a typical location for a thriller in a wood in the daylight. The editing gives the viewer an idea of what is going to happen throughout the rest of the film. The

main character to our thriller is introduced by running through a woods looking very scared.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

I feel that my thriller is aimed at 15-25 year olds. This is due to the story line being about murder and killing. Using my research on the Pearl and Dean website I found out that most thrillers seem to be watched by 15-25 age groups. So I decided to try and aim my thriller opening at 

the same age group. I feel that our thriller opening will attract male, female and all races. We feel our thriller does fit the normal stereotype of women being scared, nervous and shy which again i think will aim at the age groups.

These two picture are very similar. One is taken from our thriller opening and the other is from a thriller called The Forgotten.

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

We feel that the main way to make our film better known would be to use famous actors for the main characters in the film also we feel that the storyline could make a mainstream film. If this were to happen we feel this would attract more people to see the film due to the actors staring in it. we also feel that if my media product did go to a mainstream cinema we feel it mite later become a TV movie. Due to the budget of our media product it will not be released as a mainstream but as an art house. We would still hope that out product would have a good film and a lot of people would want to watch it. The independent cinema that we would use to release is the Genesis Cinema in London, this is because it would have more of a chance to be viewed by people because London is a busy city.

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

My media product would be suitable for male and female audiences and also all races which are aged between 15-40 year olds. I feel the rating of my media product should be 12A or 15 due to the style and content of my product.

These two pictures are examples of the age group that our thriller is aimed at. The Pearl and Dean screen grab is of a thriller called Nightmare On Elm Street which is being released in May 2010.

The age group is the same as our thriller/ Media Product.

5. How did you attract/ address your audience?

All for my media product was filmed using a hand held camera to represent a point of view shot of the viewer of women. For example the shot of the women funning through the wood is meant to make the viewer feel like they are running through the woods and understand how scared she actually is. The high angled shot at the end make the viewer understand how vulnerable the character is. All of these shots will give the viewer an idea of just how scared she is. Other shots may have made the viewer feel they are reading the newspapers themselves and how they were feeling as they did read the newspaper headlines. This all gives an impact of fear and suspense towards the viewer. In the questionnaire we used, the results showed that most people preferred an opening without dialogue.

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the processes of constructing the product?

The main technology used to make and produce my final media product was Final Cut Pro which I used to edit parts of my recording done using a camera. Using the camera was easy enough. However using Final Cut Pro to put it all together was much harder. Putting all my media product together using this was very complicated as it is hard to get the exact bit you want to use. This was the main problem I faced during the production of my product as I had never used this program before but once u start using it is very easy to learn

how to use. To produce the pictures using Photoshop to edit the text and reduce the size of the pictures also we used Garage Band to create the music that we used in our thriller opening. We combined a number of sounds together to create are final music for the thriller.    

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

I have learnt a wide ranger of media skills including production, filming and editing. The planning and research into thrillers gave me a go idea of what and how to produce my media product. Also I feel the experimenting producing the preliminary task helped me to understand different camera angles and shots. For the thriller I used hand held camera work because I wanted to give the viewer a feeling of the viewer actually being in the scene. I used match on action shots which I learnt in my preliminary talk work. 

This two pictures are taken from our preliminary task and media product. The one left is a point of view shot of the person who is walking into the room. Helps us to understand what they can see, and the one on the right is a high angled shot looking down at the women which makes her look scared and vulnerable.