Conventions of a Thriller:
- Suspense
- Tension
- Antagonist:
- Protagonist:
- Enigma
- The threat
- A victim
* The main conventions we used in our opening were enigma, suspense and victimization. This allows the audience to become hooked and continue watching, as well as sympathize with the character.
In the entirety of the opening, only one character is actually met and explored, even though others are mentioned. This makes it hard to realise whether this character is the protagonist or the antagonist. However, further on in the opening, through the use of tension and enigma, the audience realises that things are not right for the character, and that she is therefore the protagonist. The antagonist does not appear in the opening, but the presence of them is clear at the end of the opening.
This is much like the film "When a stranger calls".
In this film, the protagonist nor antagonist are clear, until the sense of enigma and threat are exaggerated further through the use of a series of telephone calls - much like the ending to our thriller opening.
Format
Shot 1 is of the character parking their car at what the audience assumes to be her home. The tree overlaps the scene to show the weather - dark and gloomy - and the time of year. This is an example of restricted narration, as the audience cannot see the character clearly yet, and does not know where she is, or why she is there.
Shot 2 is part of the cross cutting sequence. It is an extreme close up of dis-regarded toys on the floor, shown with low-key lighting to create a enigmatic effect on the audience. At this point, part of the titling flickers in too. The flickering of the titling fits in with the enigma of the shot. The sound is quite a quiet high frequency sound, as to not create too much thought, but to still be noticed as something strange. As part of the cross cutting sequence, this helps create quite a tense effect on the audience.
Shot 3 is also part of the cross cutting sequence. It is also a close up of a toy, yet this one reveals more about the character. It gives a clue to the audience that the character possibly has a younger child, who is female. A light eerily shines over the toy, to give the feeling that someone could be there. The same titling effect as previous is also used here. All of the above helps to create the sense of enigma and tension, as the cross cutting builds up.
Shot 4 is a static long shot which is part of a match on action sequence of the character entering the house. It is first in darkness, until she flicks on the light. As the light is turned on, the titles flicker away. Props are used in this shot to try and give more clues about the character's life. There is a small picture of a baby on the wall above the light switch, and pictures in photo frames along the side, to confirm that she has a child. The room is also decorated nicely to make it seem like a family home. The character's clothing is suitable for that of what a middle aged woman might wear; therefore helping give away her age. Her hair is not styled properly, and she is not wearing much make up, so this also helps provide this information. As this is at the end of the cross cutting sequence, the audience are feeling tense and suspect a threat.
Shot 5 is an over the shoulder shot of the character walking into a child's - as we now know, hers - bedroom, and she is calling out her child's name - "Emily". This cause tension now what has happened to this child, or if she was meant to be there or not. It is a dark shot apart from the natural lighting coming in, to give the illusion that no one is home. The shot is a tracking/moving shot, which follows her movements, to make the scene more edgy, as well as making the audience feel like they are there with her in that moment.
Shot 6 is a static long shot of the character rushing into her own bedroom, still looking for her child. We chose to use a silhouette shot for this as the darkness adds to the drama of the situation. We chose to use a static long shot as it enabled us to create an interesting match on action with the next shot. We made it so you could not see much in the room from this shot; it creates tension and suspense, so the audience have to keep watching.
Shot 7 is a low angle close up from outside the house of her bedroom window. You can see the rough shape of her. This is used in a sequence which flickers back and forth between the character in the bedroom, and the outside view. This outside view creates a mood of enigma, as from the way we shot it, it looks like it could be someone watching her from outside. We used a focus pull effect so the branch was the clearest and the rest slightly less defined, as this also shows that it could be someone else's unclear view.
Shot 8 is a close up shot of the character inside her bedroom. As the phone call she is making is quite an important part of the opening, we used dramatic lighting - bright on the left of her face; as if it came through the window, and heavy dark lighting on her right hand side - to exaggerate the scene. Her facial expression changes from just a bit worried about where the baby sitter has taken her child, to very frightened. This adds more tension to the scene.
Shot 9 continues from the previous shot - the screen fades to black, and the title flickers onto the screen. As well, the previous sound of the phone ringing is sound bridged over this, as to make it more dramatic. When the text finally flickers away, the phone stops ringing. This made the ending of the opening quite tense and enigmatic, as at the climax of the opening - where a phone inside her house is ringing - the titles appear. This hooks the audience and makes them want to continue to watch the rest of the film.
2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our opening for Fated, we only showed one character, however others are mentioned. This character still represents different forms of social groups, such as sexual orientation, age, gender and social class.
Our character represents: A straight, white female, of a middle age.
In our opening, our character's sexual orientation is shown through both props and association. One of these ways is the fact that she is a mother, which is usually associated with straight relationships. The audience knows she is a mother, as she is seen to be looking for her child, as well as the child's items scattered around the house. Another way the character is portrayed as straight is the wedding band on her finger, shown when she answers the phone in an extreme close up (Fig 1). We chose to make our character straight, as it allows our story line - that her estranged husband has taken the child - to flow more clearly.
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| Fig 1: Extreme close up of the wedding band |
Our character is a middle aged woman. We created this by using clothing, styling and everyday props. For her clothing, we made sure that she would be wearing something a middle aged woman would wear - so a casual jacket, deep purple jumper and jeans, with flat shoes. Her hair is styled down and plain - as if to represent a busy, middle aged mother. Other props we used - such as her bags, and items around her house - also represent her as a middle aged woman. For example, the candle sticks in her hallway wouldn't as such be associated with younger people, but with someone of a middle age.
Our character's gender is shown clearly through her style and props - for example, the length and style of her hair, the colour of her clothing and the items around her house. Her gender - female - is represented as the victim in our opening. She is shown to be vulnerable, worried and scared, which is the same representation of women as in many thrillers.
Our character is a middle class woman. Her class is represented as being the average person - not rich, yet not in dire need of money. This is shown through her props - the car she drives, her house, what she wears and the props inside her house, as well as the supermarket she shops at (shown through her shopping bag) (Fig 2).
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| Fig 2: Average car, clothing and supermarket brand. |
3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Our thriller is a low budget, British psychological thriller.
Therefore, I decided against looking into bigger film distributors, such as Sony and 20th Century Fox.
First, I researched into some low budget British distributors:
- Soda Pictures
- Soda Pictures distributes independent films, as well as working with upcoming new directors. This distributor would be good for representing my thriller as it has also represented other low budget thrillers, such as Babycall (Fig 3).
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| Fig 3. Babycall |
- Icon Movies
- Icon Movies are an American based independent distributor, which represents many different independent films. Although this film does represent thrillers, such as Drive (Fig 4.), it usually works with slightly bigger films, so I do not think this distributor would be as good for my thriller.
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| Fig 4. Drive |
However, I was also interested in looking into other routes of distribution, too. Therefore, I decided to research Internet premiers and launches.
Internet premiering would involve releasing the film on websites such as Youtube, Netflix or LoveFilm at a certain time, allowing free streaming for the audience. It could also premier on social networks such as Facebook. This would allow potentially more people to view the film than if I decided to go down the distributor route.
- The film "Paranormal Activity" (Fig 5.) is a low budget horror film. Initially, snippits of the films and short trailers were released on Youtube. Then, it was only released in a small amount of cinemas across America. From this, it made $7m dollars on it's first weekend in a limited amount of cinemas. More here on the Daily Mail website.
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| Fig 5. Paranormal Activity |
Overall, I would ideally like to have a mix of the two routes. I would initially release the film online on Youtube and Facebook, which would hopefully increase interest and awareness in the film, and then use Soda Pictures as distributors for cinematic screenings in a few art house cinemas and then eventually go to DVD.
4. Who would be the audience for your media product?
- As our film is a British Psychological Thriller, I decided the first thing I should do to find out my potential audience was to ask people whether they would watch a psychological thriller.
- I went onto Facebook and made a post asking my friends to state their age, and a Y/N for whether they would personally watch a psychological thriller.
- In response to the post, I got 5 replies, all saying yes. All of these people were from 15-19 years old. This suggests to me that my audience could be in the teenage age group.
- Out of the people who replied to my post, the gender ratio was 3:2, women to male. This suggests that my audience could be more women.
From this research, I have decided that the audience for my thriller would be women in the 15-19 age bracket.
Deciding on the Age Classification for my thriller
- To decide on this, I went on the BBFC website and used the age category table.
- I also went on the classification guidelines pages. This told me the detail which helps decide on the suitable classification for a film.
- From this, I decided that the classification for my thriller should be a 15. This also fits with my audience.
5. How did you attract/address your audience?
As our audience are female teenagers aged 15-19, we had to attract them using methods in the thriller opening itself.
- To attract the females, we decided to have our main character as a female, so they could relate to her and become attached to her.
- In the opening we also used quite a few feminine props to attract the audience too, such as female oriented decor inside the house. This is because if the main probs and decor was heavily male oriented, the female part of our audience - our main target audience - would loose interest.
- Finally, as our audience is heavily female based, the thriller opening itself is quite slow and relies heavily on suspense and enigma. In the beginning, it seems like the character is just having an ordinary day, but with the use of cross cutting, the tension builds up. This is instead of straight away getting heavy drama and tension which could attract more males.
6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Since my preliminary task, I have learnt a great deal in the areas of camera work, sound, editing and the actual construction of the narrative.
- Camera Work
Since my preliminary, I have learnt to do shots and movements which I would have hesitated to do before. For example, in the preliminary, the majority of our shots were static. However, in our final production, we used move fast moving and over the shoulder movements which meant we had to film free hand. This took some practice to do, but it was a valuable thing to learn. Also, we learnt to do more extreme close ups from different angles to use in conjunction with continuity and match on action editing. Before, we used the bare minimum when it came to this, but in our final production, we put more effort into this.
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| Freehand shots |
+ Editing
In our preliminary, we were still trying to get to grips with the editing softwares - both Final Cut Pro and Garage Band - so we limited how much we used each. We didn't use detailed uses of match on action or continuity editing, nor did we use much sound editing . In this product, we used a lot more sound editing as we created different foley effects for the film, as well as changing the tone and pitch of sounds. Also, we made a lot more cuts for continuity editing in our final production. We also used titling and effects such as "fade" in our edits, which helped make our production more effective than our preliminary.
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| Final Cut Pro |
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| Garage Band |
+ Construction of a narrative
In our preliminary, the narrative wasn't clear - in fact, it was quite boring, as the character was just walking through a building for most of it. However, in our final production, our narrative was much more detailed, with uses of mise en scene to help back it up. Our character props and costume was properly thought out, too, unlike that in the preliminary exercise, where we didn't think about it as much.
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| Thought through props |
Overall, I am very happy with the progression we made from our preliminary exercise to our final production. I feel we took the technical ideas, such as match on action, that we already knew and put them to more detailed uses. I also feel our more detailed planning helped us make our product more successful than our previous.
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