Evaluation

Thriller Evaluation

To introduce us to our new unit which was thriller films we watched a documentary so that we could get a clear idea of what a thriller film actually was. We learnt about the codes and conventions of a thriller film such as the victims are always teenagers, the murderers are mostly males and the music in the film plays a massive part in creating suspense and building tension.  This helped us a lot to start thinking about ideas for our own thriller film and eventually we started to portray the same ideas in to our work and decided to do a psychological thriller. We also watched thriller film openings such as ‘Arlington Road’, ‘The shinning’ and ‘Collateral’ these helped us to see how real directors want their films to be shown and what response they want their audience to have. They all built tension and gave hints to what the story might be about but they didn’t give away to much information so that the key storyline was not revealed. 

I particularly enjoyed watching ‘Arlington Road’ as I found it was the opening that was the most effective. It started with a point of view shot from a boy whose face we could not see, we only saw the back of his head and he was limping in the middle of his road, ‘Arlington Road’. The lighting was very bright and this gave the film impact and created an effect that was like flashbacks. The tension kept on building until the camera tracked around the boy’s body and road. This was a worm’s eye view from the ground looking upwards at the boy; this shot was very effective as it was the climax of the opening and this intrigued the audience to know what and why this boy is standing in the middle of nowhere. An opening that puts questions in to the audiences mind is always said to be a successful thriller. 

The thriller film that we made had a lot of pacey moments which built suspense for the viewers and was also quite unpredictable; this is due to the fact that we used the codes and conventions of an actual thriller film. The name of our film is ‘Capture’ we felt that this was a catchy name for our film as it tied in to the fact that the stalker captures pictures of his victims and for the reason that he actually captures the victims. In ‘Capture’ we used many codes and conventions of an actual thriller film. Such as the victims were teenage girls, the stalker was a male, which made him dominant, and this made the girls vulnerable, the film was set in an everyday location and the music played a big part in the film as it created an airy atmosphere that the thriller film needed. We included many shots such as low angle shots of the stalker to make him look superior and dominant compared to the girls, close ups to show facial expressions and feelings towards different characters, long shots to establish settings and to introduce new victims, over the shoulder shots to create tension and involve the audience in to our film and tracking to show movement of characters and for our establishing shot which was very important as it gave the audience information about the setting and gives the audience an idea of where the scene is set.

Looking back at my preliminary task, we had to carry out an exercise where we had to do a short clip. The scene we chose to do a terrorist attack which was going to take place in the near future. We had to include loads of match cuts and we were not allowed to break the 180-degree rule so that we would gain practise and gain skill as we had to use the handheld camera. This was very hard to keep the camera steady as our hands were wobbling a lot. 
The storyboarding was a long process for us as we had thought about every shot, shot type, and weather it was going to be internal or external. This was very time consuming but worth it in the end as it made our film easier to film. Then came the planning where we had to right up our storyboard but in more detail as we had to talk about when and where we were going to film. What time of day, characters, props and clothing. 

Then came the filming this was the hardest as this was new to us. It was harder then we all expected but this made us more determined to make our film a success. When filming we tried to vary our shots as much as possible. We wanted to build tension and suspense so that the genre would remain obvious by doing this we decided to keep the characters faces a mystery and only revealed their lips. For this shot we used shot reverse shot. The filming for the actual thriller film was a lot of fun but this time we took extra shots and varied shots more often, this made the film more intricate.

Finally came the editing and post production which was probably the hardest part as we had to log and capture our footage, we had many problems with the camera and computers but in the real thriller film this was all familiar to us and the editing was fun as we constructed our film in a way that it looked good and not too much of the story was revealed so that this would make our audience want to watch the whole film.

In my opinion the audience that my film is aimed at would be a person that would be aged between 14- 25. I think the main gender would be young males; they would mostly be working class or middle class. Daniel 21 who works in River Island in London, Oxford Street loves going to the cinema to watch Thriller films in particular. On a daily basis he wakes up at eight am and travels to work on the number 73 bus where he get off at Oxford circus. He is expected to wear his River Island uniform but on the weekend, Daniel wears clothing such as Denim jeans, t-shirts and flip-flops or trainers. He likes to listen to mostly RNB, Hip Hop and Indie Rock and loves going to nightclubs as he loves to break dance. He dislikes clowns and beetroot.  Daniel is studying ICT and Mathematics at Queen Mary University and wants to become an IT technician. In his spear time, he loves to go skateboarding with his friends in Regents Park. He owns an apple laptop, iphone and Play Station 2.

I would advertise my film ‘Capture’ so that would become well known and that my targeted audience would become aware of it and would want to watch my film. My film would be advertised on the Radio, Viral marketing for example on the internet, Film Festivals, TV, Trailers and on billboards so that it would be advertised worldwide. There were no famous actors in my film so this would not have been familiar to my audience but the fact that there were new fresh faces this would have hopefully intrigued them to want to find out if they were stars in the making. ‘Capture’ is a film that has characters of different backgrounds as two of them are from an Asian background and another of an African background this may appeal to different social groups. The main characters are all aged between 17-21 which will probably conclude to the fact that mostly young adults would be most interested in watching my film as they would feel as though would be able to relate to it. The representation of the psychopath was portrayed through mise en scene as he was in a red room full of pictures of schoolchildren and details about them such as height and hair type, preferably things that excited him sexually. He would stroke the pictures and pin point his new victims, they were mostly of young girls and this was clearly shown in the clips. The audience become very aware of this matter as the representation was clear and precise.

I think that my film would be a small UK release.  My film would be a low budget film distributed around the UK. My film would be shown on YouTube or MySpace.  I don’t think that this film would be successful to advertise and be seen in the cinema’s as it is a low budget film and this thriller may only appeal to a small niche audience so the majority of people may not pay to go and watch this film. 

I think that this film has taught me many new technologies such as editing which involved logging and capturing, adding special effects such as cross dissolves, still shots so that the shot looked like a camera flash, putting credits in to the opening, changing the colours of the shots for example black and white to represent something that has happened in the past or a shot from someone’s point of view and the adding the music which we added in heavy breathing for our stalker and for the other shots we had overlapped music that followed through the rest of the film. We did not just use one beat throughout the film we had to overlap the different beats and instruments such as the violin to create a gripping atmosphere. We also used the internet that was familiar to me, we had to record our filming process on our blogs, which we had to talk about in detail, and this was interesting as we could upload our practise video, photos and our final finished thriller films for any audience to view at any time. We also released our video on Vimeo and we could release it on YouTube if we wanted.


Overall, I think that my finished thriller film ‘Capture’ was a success as we used codes and conventions of an actual thriller film but it also had originality and was full of tension, it also had an unpredictable feel about it. I think that ‘Capture’ would attract its targeted audience as its genre is clear due to the research that was carried in the planning process and because of the characters in the film as it was a typical cast having teenagers as the victims and a male stalker.  Compared to the practise opening that we did before, it was much better as we thought more in detail about the characters, clothing, mise en scene, lighting, music, location and effects. Compared to an actual film such as ‘Seven’  I think that our film would be successful in the way that it had all elements of a thriller film but I think ‘Seven’ would be more successful in terms of the box office, as the cast (Brad Pitt) are recognisable and are known to be excellent actors. This would be the only disadvantage.  
         
 By Sanita Raj Kaur

Evaluation

it's crap