Audience feedback

These are some of the words people have used to describe our thriller.

Evaluation of finished production

1) In what way does your media product use , develop or challenge forms of conventions of real media products? The type of media conventions that are included in the thriller genre are red herrings,Suspense and cliff hangers . The conventions that my media product uses are susspence, tension and a cliff hanggers . The tension was built during the poker scenes this idea originally came from the film rounders.


This image is taken from Rounders . when this scene takes place it is very tense and we wanted to elaborate on this idea and try to create a tense atmosphere between two men with different statuses.

Some of our ideas were based on 21. Altough it isn't a thriller as such and doesnt include most thriller conventions. It still has a thriller theame to it. HERE IS A QUOTE I FOUND ABOUT 21 FROM AN ARTICLE : " 21 sucks you in, it’s as a thriller about law-abiding undergrads gone down the rabbit hole, rather than a conventional coming-of-age movie that happens to be set at the tables." This is where i found this quote http://www.timeout.com/film/newyork/reviews/85229/21.html

Our coursework is different to most thrillers as the tension is normaly a lot more intense. A lot more action usually takes place where as ours is slow. Some thrillers have a scary element to them however ours is not scary at all.

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

Our thriller shows man as musculine. It also represents man as overprotective and obbsessive. As the main character has to have the female and isn't happy at the thought of any one else having her. We have used sterotypes as we sometimes automatically associate gamblers as nasty and ruthless. A lot of the time the main man involved is serious and wants revenge on someone. We went along with the idea of revenge. We also stereotyped the setting for example a dark room with little light to show seriousness. Some gambling scenes in thrillers tend to take place in a basement or somewhere dark.

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

I think our media product would probably be shown on t.v. and maybe on dvd because i see our thriller not being veiwed by many people in a cinema. If we had of included more conventions of a thriller then it would have been a well liked thriller. I think people might compare this to a drama. However the way in which we could market it would be advertising the film through posters that stand out for example the film shiffty. The poster to represent the film has a bold yellow back ground and black text. This is really eye grabing and this is something that would be worth doing. Also possibly looking at making a sound track that is very catchy would be a good way to help the public recognise our thriller.

4) Who would be the audience for your media product?

I think the ideal audiance for our thriller would be teenage boys who are into the gambling and poker thrillers such as :

Ocens 11 and James Bond : Casino Royale

I see these types of films eye catching for teenage boys as gambiling is all about compertition and out smarting people and wanting to be the best, and a lot of teenage boys like to try and be better than others in competitions even in games such as football. I also think alot of the James Bond films are eye catchingf for young teenage boys because of the action that engages them.

5) How did you attract / Address your audience?We tried to attract our audience by including a story line about a love triangle. This could then attract another type of audience an example of that would be the romance genre. Not only that but also this could help some members of the audience identify with the characters. Perhaps they have been portrayed before By the person they play sports with?. We used the idea of flashbacks to back up the tension that was being caused also to let the audience into the life and problem of the character. I do think we could have built up the tension much better than we did because i feel that our thriller doesn't have enough where it needs to for the audience to understand. I do think the poker scene could engage the audiences' eyes because of the props that were included such as the poker chips and cards because this signifies that a game of poker is going to take place and people might be interested in that.

6) What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

I have learnt how to use Imovie and how to edit productions and also i have learnt how to add things to make the production look better such as adding music , dissolves, fades, and cropping scenes to get them right. I also have learnt about different types of websites for music and how i can dowload them for example http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ and mainly i have gotten to grips with using an Imac which at first was very trickky. I have learnt that you need to patient with the technology such as the camera itself because when putting in a tape you have to wait for the tape holder in the camera to go down by itself before you shut the camera lid.

7) Looking back on our preliminary task , what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the product?

Since my premliminary task i feel that i have learnt how to recognise and crtitisise certain shots and angles where as before i didnt seem to take much notice. I notice that in our thriller there are a few things that should have been re shot. There is a bad shot in our film when the camera is looking down into the phone. Because of the angle we had it at you can see the camera through the phone screen.

Discussion of appropriate technical competencies

Holding a steady shot could be hard at times. You have to be really focused and your hand shouldn't move or shake. In a way i found it quite challenging to be able to keep my hand steady.

Our idea of how we wanted to present the scenes were appropriate material for a thriller however when putting them into practical sometimes they didn't work. we did include elements of a thriller such as revenge . Some of the time revenge is included a thriller to make it angry and to help build up tension between characters. I think we could have built up tension more to make our thriller much more intreasting.

The editting was fun but also hard. I noticed a few jump cuts that i took out and i included a few disolves

Revisions - Changes from story board:

We changed quite alot from our original story board. These changes include deciding to change the ending. Rather than showing the kidnapping and revenge we made our thriller look like it was taking place during a poker game and was based on flashbacks . We also swaped the kidnapping scene for a scene where Joe rips up a picture of chaise and Alex. Originaly we wanted to show Joe burning the picture up to emphasise the anger and batraied feelings he had. However the weather was bad and so we thought the best thing to do was to rip up the picture.

Constructing the production

Production Process: AGGGGGGHH! stressful. Getting used to the camerea was tricky at times and getting certain shots right where hard. We have a wonky shot in one scene and when we were shooting we had placed the tripod on unlevel ground and when we looked back at our work we had realised that was the cause of the wonky shot. Working in a group is quite hard at times with different opinions being made now and then so when we were filming at times we would have discusions about other ideas and opinions. We changed original things from our storyboard because we each would come up with more ideas. However alot of the time i noticed that changing orginal things from our storyboard wasn't helpful and lead to more debates and when working in a group it can be hard to listen to someone or be heard.

Back to planning the production

Organisation of the group: Our group have been organised . However we do need to work on that alot. We haven't been as organised as we should have been.

Use Of Sound: : We have chosen to apply back ground music that is quite upbeat and fast. this is to emphasise the state if mind the gambiler has at this moment in time. It also adds more tension to the thriller .

Use of props , settings and actors: : Locations we used were a local park to give the thriller a realistic look and we also used our schools drama room as i thought it would be effective if we used the lighting for the poker scenes. Our actors were with us when we needed them however at times one would not be able to make it.

Health and Safety risk assessment

These are the things you need to consider when making a production:

1: No filming inappropriate locations
2: Check safety of locations e.g. roads.
3: Minimise risk of theft of equipment
4: When filming on location ensure teacher or responsible adult where you are going , when you return and leave a telephone number incase of incidents .
5: Check all equipment is working before you leave.
6: Ensure you have permission for filming if necessary.
7: Always film with at least one other person
8: Ensure you have the permission of those you are filming.

Target audience (Thriller survey )

Click here to take survey

Possible Locations for thriller

These pictures are possible locations that we as a group have thought about using in our Thriller.

Animatic

This is our animatic. It isn't the best qaulity as we realise we could have croped the pictures ,looked at how long each shot would be and some pictures are not as clear as they could be. We have as a group spoken about changing possible ideas when shooting which we will then record on our blogs. This idea is just a plan that we are going to go by incase we can't decide what to do however we might add more or take out things.

preliminary task

I am happy with our attempt of our preliminary excersise as we found it quite challageing at first when we started shooting for the first time. We reshot our excersise and managed to work around the things we had done wrong. At first i took ages to walk in and so we had to work around that. We havent editited that particular bit for some reason but we can see where we went wrong. Also we noticed that the camera was held wonkey so we need to work on being steady with the cameras. I think our excersise is quite jumpy but considering it was our first time with the cameras me and my group are happy with it.

Getting used to the cameras

To get used to the cameras we did a short exercise. We looked at the different kinds of shots we could include for example over the shoulder shot. Using the camera for the first time wasn’t easy but it did help us develop our skills of using the camera.My group found the exercise quite hard and we didn’t do as well as we could have. In a way this is good because it will help us in future. At the moment we are editing our short scene and then we will post it onto our blogs.

Target Audiance and Storyboard

We decided that we should aim our film to 15 +. This is because we think that the theme is suitable for that age range. We agreed that the age range is suitable for teenagers.
We also started on our storyboard and whilst drawing it came up ideas we could include in out film for example we spoke about maybe having a point of view shot throughout.

Further ideas

Our group have decided to stick with the Gambling idea.

We thought about our plot which is about two men . Both are in love with the same woman and their game of poker is not just a game of poker. It is a battle to compete for the woman they love. We came up with the name 'Gambling With The Enemy'. The plot will be based on a poker game and near the end of our two minutes you will see who has won and how the loser of the game feels which will lead to revenge. This is to help set up what would be the rest of the film. Then we thought about characters, props , costumes and lighting. and we spoke about people we could include in our film. For the opening we thought about credits , Focus on the mens faces and the title

Initial Ideas for our Thriller Coursework.

In a group we discussed themes that we liked for our piece of coursework . We came up with a few things such as a sci-fi kind of theme and gambling. We disscused the themes first so we could then think of a plot and see what we want to do from there, In the end we decided on gmabling. We thought about what type of characters we could involve , what height they should be for example we came up the idea of the main character being smaller than the others to show intimidation. We thought about pops such as a poker set and then we decided to think of a name such as Flash Back.