Evaluation

I believe that our opening uses and develops the use of a “Classic opening” as described by film critic Stanley Kauffmann in the documentary “Watching”. It described openings where setting, occupation and organisation level (high or low power) are all portrayed in the thriller opening. I believe that my groups has integrated this convention well as: we start the opening with medium and long shots of the location, which sets the scene; props such as the character wearing a lab coat and the activities he carries out such as putting wires together etc, show his occupation (although the audience will not be quiet sure if it is actual occupation) and we have a long, low angle tilt shot of the building were the camera tilts up which suggest that he is in the upper levels of the organisation. Also I believe that we used conventions from a real thriller movie “seven”. We used forms from this film such as close ups of the activities carried out by the person were only the hand can be seen and also we used the gruesome images of bodies etc, however we developed it so that these images were distorted as we believed it would cause more curiosity and unease for the audience

Our thriller opener has very little use of however the ones that are used are effective in representing specific social groups. At the end of our sequence we are introduced to our second character only for a brief few seconds and they are tied up. The use of having this character as a young black male could, represent him as a bad youth that would be involved in bad deeds such as violence and crime. At the same time in most films black characters are usually the ones with the big egos and are often used a humour and are most venerable to being the ones that suffer physical abuse. From the opening to our thriller we have represented them as the weaker character. This fits in with a typical film characterisation of “the black character always dies”. Also our main character illustrates a general stereotype of a film scientist where they are usually white in race and male in gender.

I believe that our thriller would be an attractive proposition for British film Production Company’s such as Working Title or a “made for TV” film for British television. This thriller would be distributed to main stream cinemas in Britain such as Vue and Odeon as these are the main means of cinema entertainment in Britain and in terms of TV on main stream TV channels such as BBC, ITV and Channel 4 as these are channels most associated with Britain (and Channel 4 especially with out target audience of youths). I think this because our thriller is set in a typical British inner city college environment (as is city and Islington College). I think this makes it good as a British film as our thriller would provide a thrilling illustration of college life which is different to those of international countries such as the USA as their system of education at 16. They are different as, at 16 you would still be a high school and also there environment is different such as having individual lockers and the social groups are tend in films to be very vague and precise (e.g. jocks , nerds, etc). This would mean that the thriller would be more related to British viewers as it is something they can relate to both directly (having experience college life in the past) and indirectly (thinking about joining college or interaction with college students). On the other hand it still remains a attractive proposition for international audiences at is gives them a insight into the education system and atmospehes (both physically and socially) of the UK which would differ in other countries such as the US.

The target audience for our film will be main streamers and aimed at the younger generations ranging between the ages of 15-25. It would be a attractive to mainstreamers as it is a thrilling film that conveys the thrilling entertainment it is meant to provide, also it is not generalised to any specific race, gender, etc so it is viewable for all people. I believe this as I feel that as our thriller is based on a college it would be something that the target audience can relate to in terms of most people in this age category are either contemplating going to college (aspirers) , are currently in college of have recently left full time education(achievers).

This would be a great audience as it would provide the age groups a opportunity to get into grips with supposed college concepts and to have college life as a thriller may make it more as an attraction as to a different surreal approach to life at college and in some ways an over elaboration of the “evil teacher” which students have experienced. The thriller I feel would be more targeted at lower to middle class family house holds as the college it self is more of a public college and upper class people are often used to a more expensive method of upper education. In terms of gender I believe that it would be suitable for both sexes as it does not have any masculinity such as “action films” with guns and explosions which usually tend to be a favourite with men and at the same time no femininity such as romance etc to appeal to women. This thriller is more of a mind game of how the main character “punishes his victims”.
To attract the audience I believe that an affective method would be to have a main star with a lead role that the target audience would recognise and appreciate as an actor/actress. Also I believe that as this thriller is to be distributed only on the UK scenes a British born star would be more appealing as for the target audience it would be known to them as home grown talent. This star could be one such as Aml Ameens who has been successful in both British television (as a police in ITV’s The Bill) and in British film (kidulthood which was a renowned success for teenage audiences). To advertise this thriller I think that advertisements such as billboards and posters on bus stops would be effective. I think this as for the target audiences age (15-25) the most popular mode of transport would be public transport so by having it advertised out and about on this area would grab the attention of the target audience more affectively. Furthermore to market the thriller to the audience I believe advertisements such as billboards and banners on web sites which would be affective as our target audience are young people who tend to use the internet a lot so having banners would be affective of drawing attention to our thriller and attract the target audience to view it using liks to a website containing other promotional material such as trailers.

Through the production of our thriller opening we I have encountered new technology. Firstly we were introduced to a more professional video camera and the concepts of using it including zooming and focusing shots. The most challenging piece of technology I was faced with was the use of final cut pro when it came to editing out footages to produce our thriller opening, this process included uploading our footage, logging and capturing our footage, putting them in sequence, editing to include effects and producing a sound track. For my final thriller opening the use of final cut pro became easier and easier due to have practice of the use in our preliminary tasks which allowed us to develop the skill. Also the internet opened up further doors of new technology that I have encountered. The use of blogging allowed me to keep a record of what we have done to make references to when looking back to things we still required to perform in order to make a good thriller opening. Further more by being able to release our thriller opening onto our blogs and also on to Vimeo illustrates to growing affect of the internet in our lives and how even amateurs can still put something out there to entertain audiences
I believe that the lessons we learnt from our preliminary task was essential in how affective our final practical task is. From our first task of a card game you can see that our editing was not very good as the scenes did not flow through very well and also unwanted footage was still on it. This was due to us having too much footage of the same thing which was necessary but to a certain extend and because we had so many it was difficult to make it flow through well as we had so many small clips to link together in order to produce the final edit. This taught us that we show have varied shots but ensured that there is enough substance to be affective. Then you can see our progression of skill when it came to our next task (match cut exercise) in this one our footage flowed through a lot better and made more sense, also we managed to include a soundtrack and some effects to make it look more professional. From this we learnt that having the shooting better planned out makes it more efficient and better when it came to filming as we knew what was required.