Evaluation

1

Our group decided that our thriller opening would follow many of the typical conventions of the thriller genre to help the audience recognise the opening as a thriller opening. Firstly, the characters used in our film were typical to the genre, as we had a white male who was the dominant ‘Gangster’ (Connor) and lead character of the film. It is common to have a white male as the dominant character in a thriller movie, so we decided to adhere to this convention. We also made the ‘Target’ (David) in the film a black man. By casting a black male as the target, we followed a common racial stereotype of white dominance. However, this was not the case throughout the whole of the opening, as the convention was broken when the target attacked the Gangster and escaped. This is an example of role reversal, a very well known way of establishing and changing control and balance between the characters. The Gangster wore fairly formal clothing; including a black collared shirt, a white tie, and formal trousers. In many thriller films, gangsters involved in the mafia for example have worn formal clothing, such as in ‘The Godfather’. The use of formal clothing connotes a very professional feel to the character and connotes authority, which is why the Gangster’s boss (James) was also wearing formal clothing.

We decided to choose our setting to display different conventions and hidden messages. A strong example of this was the capture scene where the Gangster captures the Target. We set the scene in front of a church, creating an intertextual reference to Madonna’s music video for ‘Like a Prayer’, where bad deeds are occurring outside, and it is all in front of a church. Thus connoting degradation in the moral fibre of society. Another setting we used was the garage for the interrogation scene. We used this setting as we believed it was a commonly known setting in the thriller genre for an isolated environment. We also used low key lighting in the garage, as we only used the one main light in the garage, creating a dark and eerie environment. Furthermore, when the Target escapes, he opens the door into the bright, high-key lighting of the outside world compared to the low-key lighting of the garage. This could suggest that the Gangster’s world is a dark and evil environment, and the Target is returning to freedom in the outside world.

Another typical convention for the thriller genre is to build peaks of suspense. It is common for this to be done through death, so we used this convention and created a false peak of suspense when the Target broke free, as we believe that the Target is in serious danger. We also use dramatic irony in the capturing scene, as the Target does not know that the Gangster is behind him when he is walking to the Church area. Creating suspense is a typical convention in the thriller genre, and by adding suspense peaks in our film, we believe that we have further developed our film into being in the thriller genre.

Iconography was a big aspect of the thriller genre to consider. It involves all the visual elements in the scenes, such as props, and the setting. An example of a prop that we used which is befitting of the thriller genre would be the gun used in the still at the start of the opening. Guns are seen in a huge portion of thriller films, including films such as The Godfather, Leon, and Taken. We realised that the use of guns was a consistently used convention, and decided to incorporate this convention into our film. We also tried to add meaning to our settings, such as the Church setting as previously explained. We used settings which were particularly deserted, this helped symbolise the Gangster’s separation to society, as even when he was in a street of houses, cars all along the street, nobody was outside wanting to interact with him. Also, we chose to shoot the film in the day time, to show that even though it is daylight, nobody notices the Gangster.

Furthermore, our visual style was very conventional. We kept our visual style conventional to the thriller genre, and used commonly known techniques to help display power and dominance between the characters, and show typical features of a thriller film. To show the Gangster’s dominance in the film, we used low angle shots, low angle shots are generally used to show dominance and power, so we placed the Gangster in low angle shots. However, when the Gangster is attacked in the interrogation scene, the point-of-view shot falls sideways and turns into a canted angle, and falling to the ground, therefore causing the Target to be in a low angle shot. The canted angle used helps to cause confusion, as the audience becomes disorientated as to what is going on. Also, when the Gangster falls to the floor, the Target is centralised in the shot at a low angle, suggesting that he is the dominant character in the scene at this point, and is the focus of the scene, and the whole movie to come as he is the last character we see before the shot fades to the title of the movie on a black background. Our opening title sequence was text in a typical thriller font, being a thin, wiry font, set on a plain black background. This black background helped create focus on the titles displayed in this sequence.

Finally, we used audio typical to the thriller genre to help build suspense and set the mood of the film at certain points. For example, at the start of the film, we had eerie music that added a solemn mood to the film, which built into a suspenseful type of music. Music plays a big part in creating moods and suspense. We added music in certain areas so we could make the audience feel the right emotions we were trying to convey, such as adding fast paced music in the end scene to increase intensity. Music can be the best way to subliminally create emotions in the viewers mind, and therefore convey messages to the audience, it can create empathy towards certain characters and we tried to use music to our advantage throughout the film.

Overall, I would say we used typical thriller genre conventions more than we broke them, and tried creating a conventional thriller genre film opening.

2.

I think that our film had many typical stereotypes; the main thing that we focused on was the representation of each character in the film. We created this representation of a typical male gangster by giving him smart clothes (T-Shirt, trousers and shoes) which were black, a typical colour to use. We also used a gender based stereotype and a racial stereotype. We had two white characters (James, Connor) and one black character (David) in the movie, as a typical stereotype would go, the white characters are the dominate ones; whereas the black characters are not as dominant, lower in the food chain as they would say. To begin with Connor captures David and holds him captive; this shows the state of dominance at the time. Towards the end of the film David breaks free and punches Connor, then runs away and escapes from the building. We broke the conventions by doing role reversal making David dominant one.

The other type of stereotypical convention that we used was gender based. In most thriller films men are seemed to be represented as the more ‘dominant’ character in the film, either being the hero or villain. In this case we represent the male as a villain. Unlike general thriller films his face wasn’t covered up in anyway what so ever which shows that he didn’t care if anything was to happen to him. The black clothes that he worn represented ‘darkness’ or maybe even violence in a certain sense. The only thing you were shown was the black bag he carried and the building equipment that he kept in his garage which he used to torture his victim. Many thriller films, like Saw or Hostel, use building equipment such as hammers and drills as torture devices. So we decided to incorporate this convention in to our own film.

3

We had to think about what kind of budget would be required for our film, and what kind of media institution would produce our film. Our film would fit into a genre commonly coined as a ‘Brick Gangster’ film.

Films that would fit into the ‘Brick Gangster’ type of film would be films such as ‘Snatch’, and ‘This is England’. The budget to films such as these two ranges from about 1.5 million, to around 6 million pounds. This is a significantly small budget compared to recent ‘mass market’ productions such as ‘Inception’ that have a budget of around 100 million pounds. As you can see, the budgets clearly have a huge difference, and therefore a smaller company may look into producing our film. Our film would require a small amount, if any special effects, and require a small amount of money towards locations, props, and actors. This would minimise costs from the film and consequentially lower the need of a large budget.

Our movie would probably side towards catering for a smaller, more ‘niche’ audience due to the nature of the film. By having a smaller audience, we could be potentially limiting the revenue gained from this film. However, by creating a film catering to a particular audience’s wants, we may be able to gain a strong fan base, leading to a sequel with a larger budget. Due to the fact that our film caters for a small audience, our film probably wouldn’t be in every main stream cinema, but more so in a smaller number of cinemas around the country.

Overall, we believe our film would be able to develop and be explored in many ways, and could have a various number of endings. We also believe our film could have the potential to gain a strong fan base and lead to a sequel if we felt like the audience would accept a sequel.

4/5

            In our film one of our main objectives was to correctly address and attract our audience. When we was producing the film and planning it, we was always thinking about what the audience wanted see in our film and what would interest them most. The first thing we thought about to accomplish this was that we had to think about what kind of audience is our film going to be directed to. We decided that we was going to direct the film towards male teenagers, somewhere from ages 18-30. Violent gangster films are generally targeted towards the male population at the same kind of age range. The audience that was shown our opening was from ages 18-22, they felt that the opening had just the right amount of action towards the end and the slow build up at the beginning made them want to keep on watching it.

The audio that was used throughout the film matched the setting and was all used correctly to add to the emotion that the audience felt whilst they watched a particular scene. For example at the beginning the music made a darkened, sad atmosphere which the audience could relate to. The visual elements/mise en scene also helped create a stereotypical type of gangster film/character. This also helped generate a suspenseful and darkened atmosphere for the audience to relate to. There was also slow editing at the beginning to create the suspense and the likely hood that action is soon to occur; fast paced editing was also included towards the end to actually help the action scene create a typical thriller atmosphere.

We also as a group gathered feedback from the audience asking what was good about the opening and what appealed to them the most. One person gave us this as he’s feedback:

“I felt that the opening was very appealing for the audience, it had all the forms and conventions of a typical gangster thriller film. The music that was put in the film was very suitable for each scene. The volume levels were set right, for example when Connor was speaking at the start and there was background playing the in background but we could still hear what Connor was saying.”

Another person also commented saying:

“Overall I think that it was a good film but at some points some of the shots were held for quite a long time which sort of made my interest go elsewhere. But apart from that the majority of the shots worked very well with each other, like the match-on action was used very well during the film. One thing you could improve is that you could have a few more variety of shots rather than keeping it held in my place for one long shot”.

Overall the feedback from the audience we got was very positive, but some off the feedback told us that we should focus on the editing a bit more by taking more of a variety of shots.

6,

When looking back at our thriller opening, we’ve seen that has taken many different technologies to make the film. We used a wide knowledge and understanding of the thriller genre so that our film fit the brief. In our film we had to make sure we edited our film well because we needs to use the right kinds of camera angles, shots and right pace of editing. This was to make sure the audience got the right effect from what we produced. At the start of the coursework project we had a vague editing and constructing a film. When editing our film we had to look at the mountings of footage taken, so this we had to sort though the footage to so we could get what we wanted across to our audience. This was to make we were able to show the audience what we were trying to get across.

We used editing software that was called Sony Vegas Pro 9.0. When filming the man character (Connor) we made sure we were filming him from a low angle. We did this because we wanted to make Connor look bigger so he can come across and the main character. When filming our film we made sure we used a variety of shot like shot reverse to show communication between the characters. When editing to show shot reverse, we cut a section from out footage and matched it up with other parts of our footage. That was to make sure that the audience was concentrating on the right character.  This made sure that the audience’s eyes were able to concentrate on the characters need. Instead of use just one shot in the scene were Connor has David tied up, we use a number of POV shots to get a close up of the main character Connor; and to show that we were able to show a variety shots.  We made sure we used different shots like point of view, a variety of mid shots, long shots and close ups. We also used effects like zooming shot reverse shot fade ins and outs. In our film editing was a major part because with out this process we would have not been able to make our film look like a thriller film. We used a lot of cross-fade in between different scenes this was manly to show passing of time. We had to use a function in our film were we had to shrink the picture because there was the camera in the mirror. This was easily done because we were able to our understanding of the editing software do this easily. While editing we used a slow pace of editing at the start then we built it up to the end so we created suspense to the audience.    There were a lot of cuts involved in our film this was to go from different shots to shots. We choose two different types of music for copyright free websites. The first was to create suspense and the second piece of music was at the end of the opening were the character runs away. This was there to create an atmosphere towards the audience.  This was a form of non-diegetic music in the scene. We use add a voice over in the first scene this also non-diegetic sound, we put this in so the audience was able to know the back ground of Connor the main character. 

There was one shot were we could of used more shots and more cuts to speed up the pace of it. In our media I was able to pick up on skills of how to edit where to put a cut, where to put certain music and how to frame a shot.  I also learnt were a certain scenes should follow and how to use match on action in the right place.  All these skills give me a wider knowledge of how creating a thriller opening, this was through audio and visual and also matching them up so they all make sense through editing. 

7.

Compared to our preliminary tasks we have picked up many more skills then we had before hand. When produced our preliminary task we thought that it was a well worked scene, with use of shot reverse shot and match on action. Doing this media scene was beneficial to use because we were able to show a different kind of media concepts like the 180 rule, match on action and shot reverse shot. This also benefited us was because we were able try out the edited it and how we had to frame the people in our film. The preliminary task was also a good way to show what the group was capable of. In comparison to our preliminary task, we saw that we had the ability to improve a lot from the start because we were able to use media more media concepts; and able to adapt to our thriller opening. With the first task we were not able to go in detail about our location and our costume, therefore the mise-en-scene was not appropriate to the characters.  We also didn’t go into any depth in the storyline of the preliminary task. We also never thought of things in the editing like transitions and music etc. We tried to keep our film very simple so we weren’t able to think about storylines and impact on the audience.  From the preliminary task we learn how to construct a media opening. We learnt about how we need to use certain shots to show character in a certain way and effects contribute to how a film comes out at the end and keep our audience interested.  From the preliminary task learnt the importance of mise-en-scene and how it affects the in product.

From doing the preliminary we have learnt that there is many different things that we have had to consider to make a film. This is through editing, effects mise-en-scene and many more. From the reading the first synopsis we were able to start constructing how we would handle the film, but we never thought about how long it was going to take us to construct the film. We felt that after looking at our preliminary we were able to make our film better than what we had form your preliminary task. I felt after doing the tasks we were able to make a good thriller opening by using the forms and convention we researched about and we created well worked thriller opening and good story line. I feel that we were able to connect to the audience we would be targeted by the way constructed the thriller opening.