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

Our thriller film is probably best shown through YouTube which is a free video sharing website. This would be the best way to share our film as student film makers as it targets a wide audience of different age, gender and culture. Our target audience which is 16-24 year olds, aren't very likely to pay to watch our film, therefore YouTube is probably the best place. Also it will allow the audience view for free and give any feedback they wish to. Our thriller could also be put up on streaming sites, which is similar to YouTube and means that we wouldn't make a profit out of it, but would allow a lot of views.

However as film makers our film is independent and low budget, and therefore would probably be best exhibited in Art house theatres such as Cinema City. Because our film includes locations around Norwich, it would appeal and relate to audiences from this city. Also British independent films tend to do well in places like France and other European countries, so this would allow it to be globally viewed. 

If our film was to be distributed through home entertainment, I would think that it would appear on channels such as Film4, because it is usually the type of TV channel that would exhibit indepedent films. If it was to be distributed professionally, I would expect the distributors to be ones such as Optimum releasing which distributed films such as Dead Man's Shoes. The films are similar so therefore would probably have the same techniques used for distribution and exhibition

Thriller Opening Final Cut

Question 4 and 5

Question 4 evaluation

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

In our thriller film, our storyline only inludes male characters which means there are no female actors involved in our opening, so this creates a very male dominated genre. We didn't intend on omitting female social groups, it was just that male characters were well fitted to our storyline. The males in our film are all represented as gang members which suggests the type of people that are criminals.

Youths are also represented in this was because our film is also fairly youth dominated as two of our active characters are young 20s and the is around the age of 30. We don't have a proportional representaion of society because all characters are a similar age. Similarly, we only did this because it was convenient to use the actors we did and because it fitted well into our thriller as a reprentation on youths. I think the way we have portrayed our characters is a stereotypical view on teenagers and young adults. Their hoodies and jeans reflect their criminal ways therfore these characters do not represent all of youth society.

Our film also has a representation of family as a social group. It is one our the main themes in our film, because the whole storyline is based around it. The storyline enforces the importance of family, as the aim of our main character is to get revenge of the man that killed his twin brother. This suggests their love and  closeness for family and friends.  

Our film is an independent thriller and a lot of our ideas and thriller conventions were influenced through other films. For example Essex Boys, which is also an independent film and Memento, which uses flashbacks and is a psychological thriller. The main sub-genre of our film is the British Gangster style. It also has aspects of a psychological thriller because it particularly includes mystery and suspense. We have aimed our film at audiences from age 16 to 24 who enjoy independent thriller films. From our research we found out that from all the people we asked, a range of them enjoyed independent films. The type of people that will appeal to our independent film are those who respond to individuality. The unusual storylines and different actors create mystery that hopefully appeals to our target audience. Our audience will get pleasure from our thriller because of it's independency, as they like to see themselves as independent. Other films that our audience enjoy are independent thrillers such as Dead Man's Shoes, which relates in many ways to our thriller opening and the fact that they will enjoy films like this means that certain aspects of our film will also bring pleasure to our audience. The locations we used in our filming included the use of city areas. We thought that this would appeal particularly to youths because it focuses mainly on a similar age group and relates to real life situations that could occur. Some of the locations, (the one on our poster in particular) represents a dark part of the city where drug dealing takes place. By including this image on our poster, we thought that it would appeal to our target audience, so that they can get an idea of how our film will grab their attention. In our thriller we also used locations such as a garage. This relates to the claustrophobic aspect of thrillers, and the spacing and lighting helps to build tension. We hoped that this would appeal to our audience because small spaces are commonly used as a place where action or violence takes place. The social group involved in our storyline represents a gang of young criminals. Our target audience may not be similar to this lifestyle but they should be able to identify with the main characters because of similar ages and the fact that the film is from Archie's (the main character) point of view. This will be able to help the audience put themselves into the situation and relate themselves to the storyline. In our poster it shows a shot of Archie dressed in a hoody and jeans which represents a lot of young people these days. We constructed a narrative of our film by specifically focusing on Archie, who is the main character. We thought that this would help our audience to follow the storyline and identify themselves with Archie. The flashbacks of the murder focus on that certain event within the story, so the narrative is created by telling the background story. In our poster we included the quote “Tense and Gripping”. We wrote this on our poster so that it would appeal in more ways to our target audience. This would attract a larger audience if they knew that it was the type of thriller that strongly grabbed their attention throughout the story. The genre of our film will help appeal to a larger audience. We hoped that the detective aspects of our opening will relate to many other things that the audience enjoy. It create a sense of order out of chaos, so therefore a wider audience could enjoy it.

Question 1: In what ways does your thriller use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real thrillers?

The thriller opening that we have constructed is based on a 'British gangster' style thriller. It is about the story of two twin brothers who are follow a gang full of criminals. The gang leader ends up murdering the main character's twin brother because he wasn't following his orders. Then Archie (the main character) starts planning revenge on the murderer.

One of our main influences was 'Essex Boys'. We tried to use the same British gangster sub-genre by following the same forms and conventions. For example, the dull grey weather represents typical Englishness and so we tried to choose a cloudy day to do our outside filming, and I thought it was quite successful. Also both Essex Boys and our thriller film are independent films and I think our use of locations helps to indicate this. Essex boys similarly follows the life of a young male protagonist, and although our film doesn't use voice over to help the audience identify with this character, we still hope to do this by our use of close ups and following panning shots.

In the opening we have created, we have included flashbacks of the time in which Nathan was murdered, to give details of the storyline. This relates to the thriller Momento, which also used this technique. It is a typicall thriller convention and was also included in Casino Royale at the beginning to help give background information to the audience. This is what we hoped to do with our use of flashbacks. Also our use of lighting helps to develop conventions of thriller. The scenes in the garage are fairly dark which is a common technique used to thrillers to create a tense feeling. The garage is also quite a claustrophobic area which again is a convention of thrillers especially Essex Boys again, which uses a car going through a tunnel which also uses limited space, which creates suspense.

The characters in our thriller opening the gang leader/murderer and the two twin brothers. The gang leader is a dangerous threatening character. We used my dad for this character, mostly because he was the most convenient person to use. This was the same case my brother who played both of the twins. We decided for my dad (the murderer and gang leader) to be dressed in jeans, black hoody and black hat. We thought this would help to bring out a criminal type character. My brother Jack, who acts as the main character Archie, and also plays Nathan (his twin brother) in the flashbacks. They also both dress in jeans and hoodies to show how they are also part of the gang.

We also hoped that the props we used add to the forms and conventions of thrillers. Our main prop was what the gang leader used to murder the twin brother. Most thrillers contain guns or another type of weapon. It adds suspension and a sense of danger and we hoped that this prop would help to build up the tension. We used other props such as pens, paper, photographs, and books etc. This was during the planning of the revenge. It helped to represent his organisation and determination of how much he wanted revenge. However, when he pushes everything off the table it conveys how unstable he is.

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

I worked in the same group for my preliminary task than my thriller opening. I think that working on our preliminary task helped us to pick up ideas and tips for our thriller. For example, the main aim of our preliminary was to include certain shots and this definitely improved our confidence of using a camera and tripod for the shooting of our thriller. We used shot reverse shot in our preliminary task as we were told to do, and also included a few close up of facial expressions which involved zooming on the video camera. We also used close ups in our thriller and we were much more used to doing this with help from our preliminary task.

There was a lot more research and planning involved for our thriller and that differed from our preliminary task. However we learnt how to plan out our filming using storyboards during our preliminary task. We drew out different shots of our films and wrote down what was going on in each part of the scene. This was useful and helped us in our production of our thriller by following through all our planning.

The fact that I was working with Holly in the preliminary task helped us to get used to working and planning our films together. So when it came to making our thriller, we were quite well organised with our research, planning and construction of the film. Also I think it worked well having a small group of just two people because it meant that we could communicate and listen to each other easily without getting too disorganised.