It was important to us, as a group, that our thriller was different from previous attempts by other students and even big-time media productions. We saw that in other productions people tried to give too much away and tell a lot of the story in the 2 minutes, however by definition a Thriller should be suspenseful and this cannot be created by being explicit in the opening so instead we opted to only give the audience small clips and shots in the opening sequence to make them ask questions and get them thinking about the connotations of the images.
Inspiration we took from other openings include: Seven (David Fincher, 1995) which is featured heavily throughout our initial research into other thrillers. Seven is shot in an extremely clever way as to give nothing away to audience with its use of angles and the way it changes focus from background and foreground depending on what the Director would like the audience to see leaving the audience with questions about the sinister images they have been shown and giving them implications, subliminally about the rest of the film.
Another film we drew inspiration from was the credits from The Collector (Marcus Dunstan, 2009). The sounds used were very effective at creating tension by building up a beat; steadily increasing the tempo to give the effect of a heart beat getting faster. This again used short clips of shocking images to grab the audience’s attention, similarly to Seven.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Like many thrillers ours is set in an ‘every-day’ environment which is used to give the audience a false sense of security. Ours particularly focuses on middle class suburbia and how it is made to seem safe but with the fall of darkness come hidden dangers. Our product represents middle class, nuclear families, as many thrillers do, as victims. This is because most audience find it easy to feel sympathetic towards an innocent family.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
A company that might distribute our film is Lionsgate as they have distributed many films in the thriller/horror genre including American Psycho, Saw, House of 1000 corpses and Hostel which are similar to our production. Lionsgate is the most commercially successful independent film and television Distribution Company in North America but although Lionsgate is a Canadian-American company they also have a British branch called Lions Gate UK.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
If our product were to be made into a full production I believe it would be given a 15 certificate by the BBFC this is because it is quite shocking and would not be suitable for children under this age and would possibly contain graphic images and violence. So our target audience would probably be people between the ages of 15 and late thirties. As with most psychological thrillers the audience would need a high attention span to keep up with the story line, this is again another reason why it may not be suitable for younger audiences.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Before constructing this product I had no real previous experience using a camera or any editing software so all specific technologies used were new to me. I think that the preliminary task helped in getting used to the camera an example of a skill I learned straight away was setting the white balance so that every time we changed location or changed lighting the white balance would need to be altered to improve the quality of the colours in the shot because the camera needs to adjust to the different lighting. This production also gave us freedom to use a variety of shots because there was no specification of shots to be used like there was in the preliminary task. The most important thing I have learned is how much editing can affect the final product. Transitions played a big part in creating a fast paced tense effect in our product, fast cuts were used to create this effect but fades were also important when leaving an image lingering in the audiences mind.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
I have come a long way since the preliminary task in terms of skills and experience. For instance controlling the camera, in the preliminary task I found it hard to control the speed of zooming, panning and titling but now have greater control over the camera which leads to an overall better quality of production. I also feel that everything in the preliminary task was quite basic for convenience sake such as location, cast and props; there was not as much thought behind the reasons for these things it was just an easy option, however much more thought went into the planning of the final production as the locations were chosen because they were relevant to the story such as the garage being chosen to create a tense, spooky atmosphere and the train station was used to replicate a shot that I had seen in other productions which I thought was effective in creating mystery in a character.
How did you attract/address your audience?
We attracted our audience by leaving them to ponder on the images we showed them, such as what does the teddy bear symbolise and who is the mysterious character? Although this is a convention of other thrillers we also attracted our audience by trying to do something different than other productions using a fast pace to create the tension and suspense as it builds up and the audience are disorientated, to an extent, with the shocking images.
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