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

We all started the Planning of our production by firstly studying well-known thrillers and studying their conventions of thriller film. We did this to help us with firstly ideas for our films story line, but also so the the codes and conventions of the thriller genre should be more enhanced in the production of the film, such as lighting, sound and what types of shots. We watched and analysed films such as Psycho, London To Brighton, The Third Man and Leon. As you can see we analysed thrillers that have chose to watch a wide variety of Thrillers. We have included independent films such as Third Man and Mainstream films like Leon. Out of this part of production we found that a lot of close ups and quick cuts both help make a thriller really a ‘Thriller’ we also found from The Third Man that lighting is a huge part of thrillers as it can change the atmosphere of a film dramatically. One of the main parts of editing in a thriller is by far the most important aspect of a thriller. Music, music is an exceedingly important part of a thriller as it brings atmosphere and ties the shot sequences of films together.

• How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our Characters within our thriller film are of all different statures of social class. Our young girl character played by Matilda Pine is alone and can be assumed that she is a fairly low in status, which makes her seem like a venerable character towards the rest of the characters such as the three men that are involved with in the opening. They seem to know there way around the place and there clothes shows the audience that they seem to have a fair bit of money as the character in the hat seems to have a bit of money. This character also seems to be even higher in stature than the other characters as they seem to listen to him and even though the other characters are bigger than him, they still seem to respect him. Our film represents particular social groups such as the young girl who seems to be the age of 12-16 being open to attack and unsafe. It also represents the social group of the men in there 30's showing them that characters within the same age group can be seen as can very dangerous and not to be trusted.

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

I think our thriller film is Mainstream, as it has a basic thriller feeling, and is very easy to follow. So therefore it will be shown in cinemas such as VUE and ODEON, but could also be shown in cinemas such as Cinema City as they show mainstream and specialist films as well as independent films. The film is Generic to mainstream films for example the train station that we use in our film can be seen in films such as Heat and Witness. A popular setting in mainstream thrillers, as the often start at Travel Terminals. The clock used throughout the film is very iconic. It brings a essence of involvement for the audience to the film as they are watching the clocks when they appear, constantly wondering how much time has passed, working out in there heads what order these events happen. Another generic feature involved within the film is the heartbeat. The heartbeat brings a constant to the film making the character seem nervous but also the audience feels the heart beat too. Finally the city bustle within the train station making the character of the girl feel isolated and the audience sees this also, another film that uses this in a thriller is Leon, where the camera from the establishing shot sweeps through the city with all the haste of the people in the city. This haste of the city and the sheer amount of people isolates the singular characters making them seem vulnerable.

• Who would be the audience for your media product?

We started an audience research programme to find out what our target audience would appreciate seeing in our thriller. I asked people from the age group of 15 years old to 18. I found that the target audience would like to see a crime thriller above any other subgenre also that they would prefer a fast paced thriller. With these questionnaire results we had re-enforced our view on sound being the most important part of a thriller film, as 80% of the questionnaire participants agreed. The results of my questionnaire sparked our ideas in to the films aspects. With my audience research in mind the audience would consist of a wide range of ages from around 15 onwards as I don’t think a certain age group would be the majority of the people who would want to go and see it. Also the audience would most likely to be people who have an enthusiasm for the thriller crime genre. Thirdly I don’t think that the film would rely on a certain gender. It is a possibility that male population are more likely to come and see the film as they are represented in the film as gritty rebellious high class men, and feel that they want to relate to the film, as they seem that they want to experience a life with adventure. On the other hand the young girl population could also relate to the young girl who appears in our film, and as this young girl is shown as a low class vulnerable, and would seem that she will experience a traumatic experience in the film. The young females of the public wouldn’t want to relate themselves to this character.

• How did you attract/address your audience?

Firstly our thriller film attracts a wide audience because it is a mainstream film. Being a mainstream film it will be advertised on a vast scale within the commercials on television, trailers on the adverts when you see other films, radio, magazines, and the internet that many people have access to in the modern world of technology. Having a mainstream film means that it can be recognised easily. The internet can be a good thing for distributing our film wider and advertising it. But it can also be a threat to the film because of illegal downloading. I am part of the target audience so I know what types of films I like to spend time watching. Our film consists of drugs and a venerable isolated child. Hope fully the film will attract people who have an interest on these subjects and would inspire them to do something about these problems. Our film is set in a recognisable place if you live in and around Norwich, but on the other hand the audience might not recognise the setting of the film. Either way we have made the film to be attracted by the audience research results where we found that the best locations would be unknown for a thriller as the audience won’t know what is coming next impacting on the confusion of the thriller.

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

We came to start filming at the chosen locations some shots seemed to be too hard to achieve, such as a shot that we had to go under the bridge that was in a river as we thought there was a platform there. But there wasn’t so we resulted in doing this shot on a side path that was almost the same level. This change didn’t affect the film too much as the shot that we got instead wasn’t too different from our original idea. One other Change we had to make was because of the weather. On the days that we wanted to film, it had snowed. We decided that we should still film because the snow we thought gave off good lighting, and effects that you cant get any other way as. So we thought we should make the most of it, as it brings new aspects to the mise-en-scene. As you can see from Still number 3, the snow on the ground and the classic street lamp, together represent fantasy and an evil landscape. The lamp and the snow connote this because of in the film ‘Narnia’ these two things represent the evil, in which the snow connotes fantasy.
When Creating and putting our thriller film together, and through all the individual processes I have become aware of the facts that miniscule touches to the film, can change it dramatically, such as steady shots (to obtain a steady shot, we used a tripod.) and that the more shots we took the better all from different angles such as a high angle shot a low angle shot, over the shoulder shots, two shots, tracking shots and panning shots all go together, to create a fast paced movie that keeps the audience involved and wanting to see more. When we were editing we found that when we got our music and soundtracks sorted it was much easier to edit as we had beats to cut too. In our film for the transitions I used fade to black mostly as this transition enhanced our heart beats effect that repeats through out the film. We liked this idea as when you can hear the sound but the screen is just black the audience can become confused, this is perfect for a thriller.

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

The next piece that we did after the audience research was our thriller treatment. Jasmine Dinnage wrote our thriller treatment. This Thriller treatment is primarily our brainstorm of ideas for the storyline of our film. After this I created the shot list, the shot list consisted of all the shots that we would have to take on the days that we had the camera and ready to shoot. The shot list was then passed on to Yvonne Frosdick to draw the storyboard this was done to start to see what the film would start to look like, also to be able to see if some of the shots in the sequence would work properly and whether it would be up to our standards.
Our Preliminary task was a huge wake up call, showing us that editing a film, even a short film well, was very time consuming. Secondly creating the preliminary task gave me experience with the editing software (Premier Elements) and filming itself. I learnt how to manage a good tracking shot, panning shot, high angle shot and many other shots. The editing process of the preliminary task was very difficult to get the grasp of as I was new to this programme but by the time we had finished editing, I was fairly fluent in editing. Further more the process before editing and filming such as story boards and shot lists became simple and straight forward by the time we came to do our thriller production. Overall the Preliminary task became a useful experience as it made our individual organisation skills and filming intelligence more efficient.
During the production of our thriller we were assigned to work in groups, at the beginning of the production we worked well together giving lots of ideas to each other for the treatment and the shot list and also the story board. The treatment was contributed by all of us with ideas. (Jasmine Dinnage, Yvonne Frosdick and me) the treatment was written by Jasmine Dinnage, The shot list was created and written by me, and the story board was done by Yvonne. The Location Shots were taken by jasmine and I, the document about location shots and characters was drawn up by me. The costumes and props were written up by jasmine Dinnage. Jasmine found two pieces of music that were used in our thriller that I edited. What I think we could have done better would be our team organisation and communication skills as we didn’t all see eye to eye at some points during the creation. Also if we had planned the film better we would have had an almost effortless time filming. On the other hand this production has turned out very well and came from, passion and pure determination, to get it completed and completed well. The preliminary task taught me to plan.