Thriller Evaluation

Our media product was a 2 minute opening to a thriller film, in my designated group was Fouzia Abbasi, Qiu-Ling Lam, Krisztina Omoergie, we were collectively Group 19. When we came together we decided to embark into the romantic thriller genre aimed at a younger generation then would be the norm. In preparation for this project I watched more films in the thriller genre, to analyse the opening scenes and seeing where I could emulate such great films for example a classic such as ‘The Shining’ directed by Stanley Kubrickwhich, begins fairly normally, not trying to give away to much, which is conventional of most thrillers, where as a modern day thriller such as ‘The Inside Man’ directed by Spike Lee, a crime/conspiracy thriller, it begins with the central character ‘Dalton Russell’ (Clive Owen) giving the audience the Who, What, When, Why and leaves the ‘How’ for the audience to discover throughout the film. I wanted our thriller to follow the standard structure but at the same time we would put our own spin, because we introduced the antagonist or villain of the story (Fouzia) and we introduced the victim (Qiu-Ling) and we tried to confuse the audience as to why would Fouzia kill Qiu-Ling, if she was in love with me. So in that sense I believe we both followed and challenged the norm at the same time.

I believe our media product represents at all young people aged 15 – 21 because our films cast includes a wide diversity from mixed race and background, to Chinese and Somalilander. It represents London, as the most diverse city in the world; also with the final edited product it threw up questions of sexual motif for example if Fouzia was in love with me and she couldn’t bear to be without me then normally, the crazed stalker would kill the person she wanted but in this film she kills the Girl (Qiu-Ling) so maybe she was in love with Qiu-Ling.

Well if we created a feature length then, it would probably be an independent produced film, probably by a film company such as WARP Films or Film4, because they would offer us as a group the artistic direction we need as they are experienced in low budget yet hard hitting films, that are critically acclaimed and do relatively well for films of that stature. I would push for an international release because I believe the message of the strenuous weight a relationship places on your mind can push anyone over the edge, especially when it’s fuelled with desire, passion and lust makes for an attractive story that must be told.

The audience for this product would most certainly have to be late teen early twenties, specifically because of the violent but also because of the message. Also it’s meant for the teens because it might be something there going through or about to grow through, evidently not to the same extent as the film but in a more general sense, because at 15 – 18 you are still learning the mechanics of a relationship, and you still might not understand how the littlest actions have sometimes the biggest effect. This film aims to fill the niche of informing adolescents that they can still feel the effects of adult problems. Lets look at the typical person this is aimed at ‘Frank is 17, he is currently in college and in his first year doing an apprenticeship to be an electrician, he is currently in a happy relationship with Kayla who is also 17, even though Frank is happy he still picks up a few phone numbers or two when he is socializing ‘he doesn’t know that maybe one day maybe one of these girls will fall for him and he is unavailable. This kind of person needs to know that love is confusing as an adult so as a teen it could be fatal in conjunction with an already hormonal time for the girl.

To attract our audience I think we would first show it to a select group of film critics from the local national newspapers, once we get the feedback we called maybe go back improve it slightly. Then we would advertise on terrestrial TV channels during prime, it would be the ‘must see’ movie of the year ‘Spine-Chilling’ etc. Another way is via social networks such as ‘MySpace’ and ‘Facebook’, we would build up a buzz around the film especially since more young people use these means of media, it would be perfect. I would say it would be more of a rising director and a group of talented actors that one day might rise to the top if given the right backing from the British film industry and its audiences.

Overall I think that I have learnt a lot about technologies from the process of filming because I learnt that when your filming even if some things like weather can work to your advantage, also that most of the work takes place on the other side of the lens, as it only records what you point it at, so good planning and executing even when it seems unlikely you will get good footage to just power through and you never it might be better than you planned. I enjoyed using software such as ‘Final Cut Pro’, ‘Live type’ and ‘Soundtrack’ because they allow your idea to come to fruition , even the smallest drum or transition add to the product as a whole improving more and more. I used the internet as well to document this project on the blog provided, reading back and then watching the video posted on the blog shows our entire process from beginning to end.

Looking back at the preliminary tasks the match cutting exercise and the thriller newspaper task, I have seen how we all have grown, from making mistakes like leaving to much space above the head, to shaking camera. Also in the planning we were definitely much thorough and detailed, the editing was a lot easier this time because we knew already, exactly what the finished product looked like, although it was still stressful. Another lesson I learnt was that although sometimes its good for everyone to play a part, you should as delegate jobs to people strong points to maximise efficiency and quality.