Thriller Opening Scene Sequence

1. Thriller Opening Scene Sequence Joe Woodhall

2. In what ways does your media product develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products • Our thriller incorporates a few important generic conventions that are key to a good thriller. The convention ‘extraordinary events happening in ordinary situations’ is one of the main conventions used when the protagonist is driving home from work and then having to get out of the car because someone has placed a pram in the road so they can get in the car. Another main convention is the ‘Themes of voyeurism’ as someone is watching the protagonist but she does not know she is being watched. Our conventions indicate that the genre that our thriller is categorized in is drama and crime. This is because it is highly dramatic and there is a lot of suspense. • We were influenced by the film ‘Saw’ where voyeurism used throughout the whole film and the whole Saw series. ‘Jigsaw’ always seems to be watching the protagonists either through cameras or in the first seen his is the man who is apparently “dead”. He is really listening to their conversations without them knowing.

3. There is also a number of crimes at the core of the narrative. One of the crimes are breaking and entering when the antagonist breaks into the protagonists car. This crime is used in many films for example ‘Hostage’ when the antagonist breaks into the protagonists house. A crime that could be suggested to be imminent is abduction, murder and rape. These crimes and threats of these crimes happen in a vast amounts of thriller. The convention ‘ a complex narrative structure, with false paths, clues and resolutions’ is used in our thriller because the pram being in the middle of the road is a false path because no-one is expecting anything to come from it as it could be a normal situation however it turns out to be the pivotal moment. The protagonist in the thriller may have a flaw which is being exploited by the antagonist. As women can be very caring towards children and babies as they either have one or going to, so the antagonist drew in the protagonist by their good will which is very cunning. The extraordinary events happening in ordinary situation in this film is basic normal drive home and then someone jumping into your car without realising because you had to get out to check if a baby was in a pram.

4. Themes of identity is the antagonist who is a adolescent female driving home from work and the sadistic man who got into her car. There is the theme of voyeurism because the antagonist is always watching the girl. When she is in the car , when she gets out of the car , when she is checking if there is anyone in the pram. Use of this theme creates the sense of drama and it also implies that tragedy is inevitable.

5. How does your media product represent particular social groups? • The social groups that are represented in our thriller are gender. In our thriller It is very stereotypical for the young female gender as the woman is portrayed to be in the “damsel in distress” scenario. As the woman is not in control as the male is able to get her out of the car without her even realising. This suggests that the male gender is more dominant than the female, this is what the antagonist exploited. • I think it would target the teenage generation of about 17/18 because people of that age are just starting to drive and start to drive around late at night so the target audience can relate to the storyline and protagonist in our thriller.

6. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why? • The media institute that might distribute our media wouldn’t be as high class as a studio in Hollywood. The film would have to be developed with better cameras , lighting and sound management and a more advance editing software and teams. A lot of money would be needed to fund these projects. • The short film would probably only be released on the internet because we did not have sufficient funds to produce a high quality movie that could be aired on the television. The short film could help other AS students to complete the task that we were given to us and it would also be good to watch as it is a short film viewers would not lose concentration but still get the satisfaction of watching a thriller. • If the film could be sent into a producer for funding and then be improved to create a better film then there could be opportunities for merchandising by selling tee-shirts , posters and other products with a logo on it .

7. Who would be the audience for your media product? • We carried out primary quantitative research on the type of thriller that we wanted to use with a variety of different ages and genders. The most popular was the action thriller with the 16 – 18 year olds . I think this ages group would be able to empathise with the antagonist and the situation they are in because they are the same age so they will also will be able to drive and I am sure there is many opportunities when someone has had to drive home from work or somewhere down a country lane and they are scared because it Is very dark you feel like you are in danger as no one is around. • The film saw has many similarities in the way that they make the audience feel on edge and also how they keep you in the dark about things for example in our thriller you are not told why she is driving , who she is , and where she is going and in saw the two men wake up in the horrible rotten bathroom with a dead man in the middle of the room, you don’t know who they are , where they are , why they’re there and who’s the dead man.

8. How did you attract/address your audience? • Our target audience is 16 – 18 year olds male and female. Although the antagonist is female the whole story line could apply to either one of the genders. • The whole film is based around that the age of the antagonist as she is young it is stereotypical that she is naïve but caring. This is why she got out of the car to check if there was anyone in the pram. • The use of point of view shots help an audience empathise with the character. This makes them feel more connected to the film and also make the viewers more on edge maybe because the viewer may feel as if they care for the character because the P.O.V shots the audience is put in the position of the antagonist so you feel like you know what he is going through.

9. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing the product? • The camera equipment that we used was very basic. It was a hand held camera this made the shots very unstable and shaky although that gave the sense of realism. The tripod helped keep the shots steady in long shots and establishing shots. It would have been better to use a tracking platform to create a less amateur feel and to improve the professionalism of the shots. • The software I used for the final cut of the thriller is ‘serif’ as I had not used this before I found this particular task quite difficult however the more I used the software the better I got at it. The software was used for cutting , cropping , slowing and speeding up images, fading in and out of shots, adding titles and adding in sound effects. • This made the whole film more dramatic and created a lot more suspense and terrify. This makes the film a lot better to watch.

10. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel that you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product? We carried out primary quantitative research on what thriller we should do, for example action thriller, conspiracy thriller , psychological thriller etc. we chose the action thriller as it was most popular on our survey. Once we were filming we changed our story board slightly as we thought that some of the shots would be better from different angles and the type of shot was also changed. Our point of view shot was successful because it made the film create the sense of realism which made a link between the audience and the viewer. The viewer would then feel more on edge as it is more realistic. I feel a lot more confident with both the hardware and software equipment. The camera and tripod were quite easy to use to start with so I didn’t have much of a problem using them and however using serif was quite difficult because I had never used any editing software before but now I have the capabilities to do so. Overall I think the overall task was successful because we worked well as a team although we could have had better organization however we created a dramatic suspense filled action thriller.