EVALUATION BY LORA

Thriller Evaluation

Our thriller opening is called ‘vengeful vixen’ and starts off with a male victim being held hostage in a dark room. Many non-diegetic sounds are used here to add to the spookiness and confusion this scene should convey. A thriller opening is supposed to evoke feelings of suspense, worry, surprise or excitement. We had to make the audience want to watch the rest of the film. We see shots of the female murderer between the suspense-filled shots of the distressed male. Our aim was to create suspense for the audience especially as it gives out the feeling of ‘what happens next’.
Our media product uses conventions of real media products slightly, as we were able to make the comparison between ‘the shining’ and our thriller opening. One of the differences was that from the beginning of the shining it follows the character all the way through, even as he transforms into a murderer whereas our thriller opening just starts off showing the woman in the act of murdering her ex-boyfriend and later delves into how she turned out the way she is.

There are two main characters in our thriller opening, A man and a woman. The man is tied up to a chair in a dark room, with duct tape over his mouth and the woman is preparing to murder her helpless victim. As a group we decided to turn the tables on the stereotypical view in media of the helpless female victim and the powerful male figure, and made the male character appear helpless and gave the female character a more superior role as the serial killer. Also, both our characters are black and in their mid 20’s which is a unique concept as most of the time in thrillers the characters are white and middle-aged.

I think if our thriller was to be distributed it would be be a small independent UK release, perhaps only showing in cinemas around London where ethnic minorities are more likely to watch the film as the themes and characters may interest them. If it was a big hit then I think it could make it around the world, showing people who are unaware of black british talent what we are made of.

Our audience would be 15-30 year olds, people who live in inner city urban areas, especially as our aim of the film was to deviate the stereotype of black British films as the characters doing drugs, dealing with teenage pregnancies, gangs and show that there could be another side to these kinds of movies. The type of people that might watch this could range from unemployed to high-paid working class people.
Advertising would involve all types of media marketing methods such as billboards, TV trailers that would be shown on channels such as MTV, MTV Base, Channel U, Trouble, BET and other channels that would be popular amongst our target audience. Radio advertising would also be used, with our audio trailer airing on stations such as Choice fm, kiss 100 and capital fm. The film would star people that have been in other UK films such as kidulthood, Adulthood, Bullet Boy and life and lyrics.

Whilst filming our thriller opening, I learnt how to use a video camera and also how to download it onto the computer and use log and capture using final cut pro. I also learned how to cut scenes, alter the speed, add effects and dissolves in final cut pro. Livetype enabled me to learn how to add text for the credits and Soundtrack helped me to learn how to add sound and background music to our piece. Also, using the internet to keep a blog has enabled me to reflect on what I have done and therefore improve my memory for if I had to do it again.

Our match-cut exercise allowed us to experiment with everything before we had to apply it to the real thing. This helped us alot as when we were making our thriller opening everything was not brand new to us and we were familiar with a lot of things which helped us work quickly and efficiently. We followed our storyboard, but along the way we encountered many ideas on the side which helped us develop our original idea. This also occurred during the editing process where we used effects to improve our product.