Evaluations.

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

Genre describes a type of media product that fulfils audience expectation. It is defined by particular codes and conventions and can create audience expectations by introducing new codes and conventions. The genre of a film can help producers and audiences.
The thriller is a broad genre of film. It includes, often overlapping sub-genres i.e. Spy Thrillers, Military Thrillers, Conspiracy Thrillers, Legal Thrillers, Psychological Thrillers. It also includes hybrid genres such as sci-fi thrillers and horror thrillers. Thrillers are categorized by fast paced and frequent action. They usually have a hero/heroin as a main character that must prevent the plans of the more powerful and better-equipped villains. They also usually have a “damsel in distress” or victim that is usually played by a woman who gets captured by the villain and has to be saved by the hero/heroin. The themes of thrillers usually involve conspiracies, revenge, enigmas or puzzles to be solved and suspense.
A genuine thriller is a film that relentlessly pursues a single-minded goal – to provide thrills and keep the audience cliff hanging as the plot builds towards a climax. The tension usually arises when the main character is placed in a threatening situation or mystery, or a dangerous mission from which escape seems impossible. Life itself is threatened, usually because the principal character is unsuspecting or unknowingly involved in a dangerous or potentially deadly situation. Plots of thrillers involve characters which come into conflict with each other or outside forces. They are similar to horror films, except thrillers use exciting action and tension to engage the audience. An example of a thriller is What Lies Beneath. Norman Spencer, a university research scientist, is growing concerned about his wife Claire. She reports hearing voices and witnessing eerie occurrences in and around their lakeside home. An increasingly frightened Claire thinks the phenomena have something to do with the couple living next door, especially since the wife has disappeared without apparent explanation. At her husband's urging, Claire starts to see a therapist; she tells him she thinks the house is being haunted by a ghost. His advice? Try to make contact.
Our opening sequence follows most of these conventions of a thriller by introducing the audience to a “victim” in the beginning who ends up in a deadly situation but ends up dying because there is no hero to save them this early in the film. It also involves a lot of suspense and terror involved in the plot resulting in death. However, our opening sequence challenges the thriller genre as it involves a lot of horror and some could argue that it is a horror-thriller rather than a genuine thriller.

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

Our opening sequence represents the male and female gender. The stalker is represented as being male because stereotypically most males are seen to commit crimes rather than women. This is due to the fact that the media sensationalise these crimes to be commonly committed by men in particular, which automatically stereotypes them. The victim is casted as a female because they are perceived to be vulnerable and helpless, especially in the situation of our opening sequence. The victim walks in a defensive manner- with her hands in her pocket and her head bowed down, the stalker, walks with a sly, confident conduct. A binary opposition is shown. Where the victim (female) is shown as weak and vulnerable, the stalker (male) is presented as strong and intimidating. This is a dominant ideology since most people view males and females in this way.

Race is also presented in our opening sequence. The stalker represents black people as threatening. This is because he is dressed in tracksuits and a hoodie- which most of his face is covered by- creating an uneasy atmosphere towards him and symbolising that he could perhaps be part of a gang. Gang members are seen to be dangerous and hostile towards people that are not in their social circle. The stalker reinforces this stereotype when he murders the victim for an unknown reason- raising questions to the viewers. We tried to represent this reinforced stereotype of thugs and gangs through the way people commonly view them. In some ways, this can represent moral panics as it can be seen to encourage black people to conform to this stereotype of being intimidating, unsociable gangsters, which is an unrealistic version of what they really are.

The mise en scene is in a dark alleyway- which can represent an area where dangerous people hang out such as gangsters. We tried to illustrate this as the area where gangsters are associated to stay in and an environment where the stalker is possibly comfortable in. The period our opening sequence is set in is at night. We chose to do it at this time as it creates an eerie mood, which suit the conventions of our thriller. The night also represents the most common time criminals commit their crimes as it’s the most defenceless time for their victims.

We used a low angle shot from the stalkers point of view to create power and authority, as he was looking down on his victim. This represents the stalker as the dominant role in the opening sequence as he has the more control and ability upon the victim because the stalker is committing the crime. Camera angles we used with the victim, was tracking from the stalkers point of view to show vulnerability, and the use of high angle shots to show an unguarded manner of the female victim. The stalker’s social group is seen in society as dangerous and hostile, whereas, the female victim’s social group is within the society- therefore she is seen as approachable and as one of them. We mostly used quick cuts to create fast action to generate tension and make the audience feel on edge. We also used fade in and fade outs to create enigma.

We tried to construct a real world by setting our scenario in realistic surroundings. This was done by using ambient light from the moon and available light from the street lamp- which was not specialised by film lighting equipment- to make the scene more pragmatic and so the audience could relate to it, as they probably have walked through alleyways at that time of the night. We also made the committing of the crime quite simple, as we didn’t use weapons and so on, because most criminals do not have advanced equipment in the real world. It related to the genre as we filmed in the dark which created tension when watching it. We also filmed in the dark room- therefore the connotations of the red lighting made the opening sequence sinister.

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

There are five major distributors that dominate the UK film industry: United International Pictures, Warner Brothers, Buena Vista, Twentieth Century Fox and Sony. There are also independent distributors such as Pathé, Icon, and Optimum Releasing. Generally nine of every ten films seen in the UK are viewed as a result of these major distributors. These distributors are often directly linked to the Hollywood production companies who make the films. Film distribution describes the process by which films get from the production studios on to our screens and how audiences become aware of the film. The situation of the UK film industry was the investment in the making of films dropped, due to the rate if the English pound against the America dollar and the availability of the low cost studios in Eastern Europe. However it bounced back up again, largely to a renaissance of TV companies’ involvement in production and distribution.

The film ‘se7en’ is similar to our opening sequence as there is a serial murderer/ stalker who justifies his crimes on the basis of the seven deadly sins. It was distributed by New Line Cinema, founded in 1967. Though it initially began as an independent film studio, it became a subsidiary of Time Warner and is now a division of Warner Bros. New Line continues to market, produce and distribute its films; however, it does so now as a part of Warner Bros. This subsidiary could distribute our films because it is part of Warner Brothers which can help financially, plus it is a very well known company. New Line has said that it “will not just be doing genre…there’s no mandate to make a particular kind of movie.” This suggests that New Line is open to distributing any type of film and perhaps would distribute our film, as they don’t stick to certain types of generic themes: making New Line versatile.

New Line does not distribute its own films outside America, but contracts other studios such as Entertainment Film Distributors in the UK, to distribute its product overseas. Entertainment Film Distributors is a British distributor of independent films in the UK. It has distributed Se7en, White Noise 2: The Light and most notably for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s also responsible for genre films such as dark city, blade trilogy and so on. This could work in our favour, for them to distribute our media product as it’s a genre film and contains all the conventions of a thriller which they might be interested in and would make good use of distributing.

New line is beginning to make more traditional co-productions with other major studios (where one studio has North American rights, the other international rights.) This could possibly be a plus for our product as New Line could have the rights to North America, which could make awareness for our film overseas, and if we contact another distributor such as Entertainment Film Distributors who distribute independent films, to have the other rights: as we can have filmed on a small budget- putting our product under the category of an independent film.

Another film that is similar to our opening sequence is one hour photo. These films relate to our opening sequence as the main character (Sy) takes photos of his victims. The main company that distributed One hour photo was Fox Searchlight pictures. This distributor could be another possibility as it specialises in indie and British films alongside genres such as horror which is similar to the genre of thrillers. It’s very well known for distributing Slumdog Millionaire- which won an academy award.

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

As film producers, it is important to keep your target audience in mind; this is because it helps focus ideas and direct your product the right way. For an initial brief, as a group, we all decided that our media product would be produced for teenagers and young adults of both genders. As our analysis and research progressed, with this target audience in mind, it helped us choose existing thriller movies that are within this age group. This included “16 blocks” and “one-hour-photo”. These films were especially important to us as they were a certificate 15, which is within our target. As we filmed the opening sequence, we had kept in mind aspects of the films we researched previously; this included the idea of a black and white effect to show a flashback, as so used in “16 blocks”. In the end, we didn’t use this idea but we used photos instead. To make our storyline apparent to our viewers, we had to change various ideas, so that they are clear in helping the audience understand what the film is about. This included changing some personal views into tracking camera angles so it is apparent that there are two characters. Our sense of audience helped us keep in mind a more complex idea to the storyline, as our age group would be able to understand it, rather than a simple one.

5) How did you attract/address your audience?

Click Questionnaire:
1. What did you think of the opening sequence?
2. What did you think the film was about (interpretations)?
3. What questions are being raised?
4. Did we stick to the conventions of a thriller?
5. Do we need more special effects?
6. Does it create enigma? If Yes or No, Why?
7. What do you think we need to improve/ include in our opening sequence?
8. What was the best part of the sequence?
9. Was the music appropriate for our storyline in the sequence?
10. After watching the opening sequence, would you like to carry on watching the development of the film? Yes/No, Why?
11. Do we create tension in our opening sequnce? And why?


As we read through the answers to this questionnaire, we found that the best part of our opening sequence is the scream section, and mainly the beginning as there was alot of tension created. Our dark-room scene was also very popular as it fitetd the theme of photos and the 'click' of cameras. the red setting also connoted blood and sinister moods. To improve on our opening sequence, we were told that the newspaper could be improved to make it more realistic and to hold a steadier camera shot at the beginning, because although it was a chase, it was too shaky. With the audience in mind, we knew we had to include young actors and alot of suspense to satisfy our young aged target audience. our opening sequence matched our intentions for the opening sequence as most of viewers understood the storyline and felt we were able to create suspence and enigma sucessfully.

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

In my group, we shared the use of the camera as many of the clips only included the three main characters. After completing practise exercises in using the digital camera and producing a preliminary task, we were familiar with the camera’s practicalities. We had originally planned to film most of our opening sequence in the dark, but realised the lighting was bad and made the shot look amateur. This was the issue for the opening scene of our opening sequence of the character walking down the dark alleyway, it is badly lit making it look unprofessional. We overcame this by filming the scene again where the lamp-post was in the alleyway making it slightly brighter although it was still difficult to make out parts of the scene. The disadvantage of not having professional lighting on the alleyway that we filmed on did in fact obstruct and element of our creative flow as we were forced to change the whole idea of our opening sequence and make sure that we filmed the parts that were outside near lamp-posts.
Though most of the filming equipment on set was far less advanced than that used on professional sets, the new Macs we were editing on did give us a huge scope to create an outstanding final product. The most time consuming part of editing our footage was probably cutting the clips down and putting them together whilst thinking about narrative and the continuity of the whole film. The clip where Salmaa was walking down the alleyway when the stalker follows her was particularly difficult to put together and make the audience jump. Through the use of the footsteps sound effect and Salmaa’s scream, the overall mood of this clip was enhanced greatly. The visual effects were mostly helpful in editing the lighting in each shot; the outside shot was probably the biggest issue as the street we filmed on wasn’t lit very well, though after experimenting with the ‘brightness’ icon, this scene was easier to see. Once we had chosen the music on the Mac, we decided to mute the whole sequence as there were some clips where the background noise was distracting to what was going on in the scene. We then chose to make the music play quietly throughout the whole sequence and play a news report over the top to make it seem more realistic. To reflect the change in locations and keep the continuity of the storyline, we used fade-ins to help the audience understand what was going on. Though we were originally unsure of using this transition in case it looked amateur, we did eventually recognise how much of a difference it made in making the sequence clear. The technological equipment that my group has used has definitely helped in making our final product look polished, slick and professional.

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

Even though our preliminary task was a simple one, as a group we had to overcome numerous problems, to complete the task. These problems include having to position the tri-pod correctly, which was difficult as it wasn’t fixed. To organise our human resources, people involved in our production, we split each group member into a certain role, one person was in charge of camera, another of script, and the other organising actors and setting. We decided not to use any props, just a simple setting with a table and chairs. As a group, the preliminary task had taught us how to use the basics of iMovie editor. The preliminary task was important for us to learn new shots such as the 180 degree shot and ‘shot-reverse-shot’. It was also a starting project for the group member who was unfamiliar with the subject and practical side of it. It also helped us to understand the steps needed to create a media product. It was very educational.