SECTION 12: EVALUATION

Evaluation - IN SUSPENSE

In our thriller sequence we have attempted to develop the conventions of a real media thriller sequence. In this way we decided, for the opening, to take inspiration from the modern thriller, American Psycho. We attempted to show our knowledge of the typical codes and conventions of the thriller genre in our sequence. For example, John Cawelti believed that the hero of a thriller should be an ordinary person; Simon Spencer, our hero, in his opening monologue, tells the audience about traits of his personality: “I’m a mild insomniac, I watch far too much television…” – This shows the viewer that he is a normal person; he too has problems and is not perfect in every way like the unrealistic heroes of many action films.

However, we have also challenged a convention of our inspiration, American Psyco, because (unlike American Psycho) our main character is not the villain; Simon is the hero. This is why we chose to film closer to him and with more involvement in his movements in contrast with the more observatory, distant way Christian Bale was filmed as Patrick Bateman For example, in our sequence we placed the camera just behind the steering wheel. This is also shown when Simon looks directly into the camera or “mirror” rather than us filming his reflection.

The music we used for the title and credits was chosen because like the music in other thrillers it contains no comforting tones. The strength of the drum beat and with it being so loud and prominent in the piece of music it is apparent that the music is intended to make the audience feel uncomfortable and to build tension. We did not use tension building music with an eerie quality or to put the audience in anticipation of horror because our thriller, in some ways, is not typical and follows a different kind of story.

When considering if our sequence fulfils the specifications of a film in the thriller genre I think that we feel that the introduction we have created must be defended as from the first couple of minutes our film may not seem, to some people, like a typical thriller as there is no violence, gore or eeriness. However, our opening provides gradually building tension. We decided to use this small amount of time to build up, in enough detail for it to make sense, a complicated story that has a one of the most important conventions of a thriller, this being the labyrinth of twists and turns. Rather than frighten our audience we chose to use the introduction to set the audience off on the puzzling journey that is our thriller’s plot.

In a typical thriller film there is generally a female victim, a male hero and a male villain. An example of this is the film Se7en: the female and “most important to the plot” victim being Tracey Mills, Male heroes being Mills and Somerset and male villain being John Doe. However, in our film Scarlett, the only female main character is, in a way, one of the heroes because throughout the film the audience is willing her and Simon to escape. They are the heroic figures even though the audience is made to believe until the very end of the film that Simon and Scarlett are the victims with the news report at the beginning announcing their deaths.

Also, because our thriller is based around a mafia style gang the cast is prominently male we chose to do this because as we wanted the gang to seem as realistic and threatening as possible. Scarlett, although outnumbered by the men has a strong presence in the group and is brave enough to defy the leader and main source of danger, Mike. We also chose to show that not all of the men are violent and threatening. Pidge has a conscience and is loyal to his best friend.

The type of media institution that might choose to distribute our film would be British independent film distribution companies such as the UK Screen Association and the UK Film Council. Also, distributors that focus specifically on low budget British films like Momentum Pictures who were responsible for the distribution of Happy-Go-Lucky and Working Title 2 Films (a branch of Working Title Films) who produced Billy Elliot and Shaun of the Dead. It would have to be a British based company as our film is set in a localized area and there are no big name celebrites in the cast who would automatically bring people to see the film. If there was a definate audience for the film there would be more of a selling point for bigger companies.

The target audience for our thriller would be teenagers and young adults. This is because of our choice in having quite young main characters and cast. However, I think that the film might also be appealing to adults because the film has a detailed story which challenges the audience who enjoy trying to figure out the twists and turns rather than a basic plotline with a predictable ending.

In order to create the audience experience of a successful thriller, we took the results of our questionnaires from the audience research section of the project. The conclusions we came to, from our results about what the audience wants in a thriller were that tension, suspense and curiosity were three of the main components. Also in our research we found out that in regards to what kind of characters people said they like 30% said they like heroes, 25% choose gangsters, 17.5% said detectives, 10% went for spies, 5% said dug dealers, and the remaining 12.5 said other. The 25% that said gangsters confirmed to us that a mob style gang would be a good choice to base our thriller around and also there are not many films being made with that theme right now. We also asked what was the plot of the last thriller film they saw and what would they have done to improve the plot? For this question we had responses such as: making it less obvious, put more twists in and more mysterious. Three aspects which we attempted to include in the editing and plotline our film using partial vision.

To attract an audience for our film we have chosen to use a young cast so that other young people are able to relate to the characters more easily. Also we have looked at all the expectations that our potential audience have and have attempted to include them in our film sequence. Therefore, in giving the people what they want we will gain an audience. When we showed our sequence to the audience in the class evaluation they gave us feed back such as: The way we had edited the news report was impressive and the graphics – putting the text in typewriter style - showed that we had put a lot of work into it.

For this project I have learned a lot about the technologies involved in the process of constructing a thriller sequence. Firstly, learning how to use the camera and understanding the importance of using a tripod correctly was definitely to our advantage. We also researched before filming how to make the camera pull focus, as shown in the last shot, it is not totally perfect but I believe that it does not look bad for a first attempt. We learned how to capture our footage from a digital source which was really helpful because in the past I have had a camera that uses a USB connector for a hard disc drive. Learning how to use Adobe Premiere properly has been of real importance in the construction of our project. The use of effects like ‘Dip to White’ to represent the flashback, which was crucial to our film, was a simple but very good idea. Also, I realised that we would need to use additional software such as Adobe After Effects and I allowed time in pre-production to learn how to use this programme. This gave my group the beneficial option of using After Effects compositions in our sequence. I put together the news opening and the news report using the programme which includes making it look like a television turning on and removing a blue screen and adding a different background I also learned how to use shape layers which are very difficult to keep in order but are important to know. Also, everyone that we have shown our sequence to so far has been impressed by the work that has gone into them. Jade and Sara learned how to use Adobe Flash to animate the text in order for the credits to appear as if on a typewriter, teamwork like this and dividing tasks like these helped with our time management.

Digital technology helped us greatly in creating our project as we were able to do non linear editing; at any stage in the production we could have gone back and changed things if we had doubts. This was helpful because during our construction we did go back and change factors in our sequence quite often, adding extra shots to make the piece longer and putting in the title and credits. Also using After Effects gave our sequence a more realistic quality and meant we were able to create an alternative setting because we did not have access to a news studio.

However, digital technology did hinder us from time to time in some ways. For example, when capturing our shots the very last one of them would not capture unless we recorded extra footage on the tape because the programme “did not like” the blank tape. However, if we had not had this explained to us we might have gone back and tried to shoot it again wasting our time unnecessarily. We also had trouble with compositions with pieces of footage going “offline” but they were fixed for the final time we exported our project.

Looking back at the preliminary task I feel that in the progression from it to the full project I have learned that yes, it is important to work together, but delegating responsibilities helps. In the preliminary task we all worked together doing one thing at a time in editing, this made us slower and meant that we were rushing towards the end leading us to render too quickly when exporting which gave the project an overall look of bad quality. In our final project we used two computers and that way we were able to get more done and finish without rushing. I know that it is sensible to take time with something so important but doing the project in this way actually helped us to learn how to work well and quickly. In the preliminary task the dialogue was unclear and was over too quickly so I made sure that in the final project we paid special attention to the aural aspects of the project as well as the visual. Also at 0:42 seconds, of the preliminary task, when Mike is about to walk up the stairs, in our audience feedback some people said that the match-on-action was not very good and I can see this. So I made sure that in our final sequence there was a successful example of match-on-action. This is shown in our sequence from 1:31 – 1:37 when Simon gets out of his car.

In conclusion, I think that our thriller, although not completely typical, has been successful and original. We met the codes and conventions of thrillers that we had learned about prior to creating our own and are able to relate the theories concerning what makes a successful thriller to our project. Our project directly used the audience research in showing the type of characters our research suggested the target audience preferred. Also, we have learned valuable experience in pre-production and putting our plans into practice.