AS Thriller Evaluation

When we started planning our thriller opening we based our idea on the movie ‘Saw’. Even though our final edit of our thriller is nothing like ‘Saw’, we based our ideas on it because they are scary films that most teenagers and adults have seen. We wanted our thriller to give the audience an eerie and creepy feel, so that is why compared our ideas to ‘Saw’ because we had all seen the films, and there’s a lot of torturing in them and even though we don’t show torture in our thriller opening, we gave viewers the idea that it was going to happen if they watched the film.

We used many different camera shots in our thriller to create suspense. We used close-ups of the girls face to show fear through her facial expressions and close-ups of the boys hands when he was putting on the surgical gloves to give a creepy feel and to raise questions to the audience, for example; what does he need gloves for? Or what is her going to do to her?
During the alley way scene filmed in Liverpool Street we did tracking shots on the actors feet to show viewers that there was someone definitely following her. So we filmed both the actors’ feet as they walked, to create suspense and to show viewers he was getting closer to her.
We also used a low angle shot in the alley scene, where you see the back of the girls’ feet as she walked as the camera was slowly tracking up her body. This was to show that she was by herself and there was no one else around her and also to make the alley way look almost as if it was endless.

During a lesson before we started filming our thriller openings we watched a documentary on thrillers and film making. At some point it talked about music to a thriller opening, and showed us a clip of the opening to ‘The Shining’. Although it was of a car driving up into the mountains, as an audience we could sense that something bad was going to happen later on due to the music, the music was eerie and made the opening to the film very effective.

I think our thriller appeals to people who enjoy thrillers or horror films, everyone could watch this film but they have to be over 15 years old due to the content. It isn’t really a family film – so it wouldn’t be advised to bring your take your children to watch it as a family outing because it’s more of a film that you would go and see with friends, rather than your parents because it is going to be quite gory and scary but also there are young actors in the film so it appeals to younger people.

I think our thriller at first would only be shown in the UK because it is a British film and all the actors are British. But if the film gets good reviews and lots of people go to watch it then hopefully we could show it in other countries as well such as, the USA and see if it does as well there as it did in the UK. Since our film would be British, we would think about working with distributors like Working Title Films that distribute and produce British films, as well as Universal.

Our target audience is 15 years old and over and they would be mainstream viewers because our film will be well publicised in the UK and on the internet, so we want to encourage a lot of people to go to the cinema and watch our film.
I think our target audience would be ‘aspirers’ because they’re young and they could look up to the actors in the film and inspire them to take on a drama course or maybe even pick media studies as a subject at college, or university. Or even look up to a character in the film, for example; in a film where someone gets kidnapped or is getting tortured and the victim is the main character and they manage to get away with their quick thinking and good plan – most people who watch this film will want to be like them if they ever get in that unlikely situation.
An example of someone that would fit in to our target audience would be David. He’s 17 years old and he is almost finished doing his A Levels at college. In his spare time he enjoys going to the cinema with friends, and especially like thrillers and horrors. He would be a perfect example because he is over the age of 15, he likes going to the cinema in his spare time and his favourite genre is thriller and horror – seeing as our film is 15+ and the genre is a thriller he would definitely enjoy it, and it would be the type of film he would pay to watch.

To make sure our film was well publicised as the lead role we would definitely have a young actor, who is a role model for a lot of young people, someone who is recognised with previous experience in previous popular films, for example, Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter).
We would also advertise our film on the television, on satellite channels (Sky TV), on digital TV (Freeview) and on channel 4 so people only have channels 1 to 5 can still see the advert for the movie.
Also we would advertise our film by doing a competition, we could ask a question about the lead role and give 3 possible answers and the winner that gets the right answer would win a shopping trip with 2 other friends and a spooky trip to the London Dungeons all expenses paid. I believe this would interest a lot of young adults and definitely encourage people to go and see the film.
We would also show the trailer on television, and viewers will feel suspense, and have questions just by watching the trailer which will also make them want to watch the film because they will want their questions to be answered.

From the process of producing the thriller opening I experienced using a Mac computer for the first time properly. I am now able to use Final Cut Pro and know how to edit footage on it, I’m glad I learnt how to do that because I’ll need to know how to use this programme next year for media studies, and in the future if I decide to further my studies with media I’ll probably need to know how to use it.
I also learnt how to use the website ‘Blogger.com’ where we posted our thoughts each time we worked on our thriller opening. I think this is a good and easy way to keep track of your progress and so other people and read it and see what you are up to, it is also a good way of teachers seeing our progress as well. ‘Blogger.com’ also made me realise that the internet is used by millions of people all round the world and would be an excellent way of getting our thriller noticed by a lot of people. For example we could upload the trailer to websites like ‘Youtube.com’ so people can easily search for it on the internet.

The most valuable lesson I think was learning how to do match cuts on Final Cut Pro because we have quite a lot of match cuts in our film, and it really improved our footage and made it more exciting in the final edit. Another lesson that really helped us during filming was the ‘Card Game’ exercise, where we got a chance to practice filming using all the equipment, I think this was a good experience where we got a chance to try different camera shots and angles, and it got us thinking about what shots we should use in our film. It also gave us practice using Final Cut Pro because we had to edit our footage from the lesson.
One of the reasons while our thriller opening was successful and we finished it on time was the plans we wrote out. We wrote out two detailed plans of the two scenes we were going to film. We wrote a plan for the filming session in Liverpool Street and when we were going to film in the college basement. We wrote exactly what the actors were going to do and what camera angles and shots we planned to use. We made sure we stuck to both our plans and it made it a lot easier when it came to filming because all we had to was look back at the plan and we knew exactly what shot to use for each part. If we didn’t write out plans, it would be no doubt that filming would have been a lot for time consuming and we didn’t really have that much time either.
Something I could criticise about our filming was that the girl was wearing two different outfits for each scene when she was suppose to be wearing the same clothes, however when the rest of the class saw our thriller they thought it worked and thought it was two different people (even though it was suppose to be the same girl!), so may be it could be used as a good mistake.
Another thing that we could have changed with more time is when we were adding the music to the final edit in the editing session; we weren’t able to fade out the main music before the scream at the end of the opening. We wanted to fade out the music so we could create suspense and shock viewers when they heard the loud scream on the title screen.
Overall we did work very hard on filming and editing, and it was a relief when we were able to hand it in on time. Even though there is room for improvement we were very pleased with the outcome of the final edit.