Rough Version of Ashley's Evaluation

1. Thrillers can be recognised almost immediately when being viewed due to the conventions they employ. Our group opening of a thriller sequence was based on a chase between a professionally dressed businessman and two casual looking thugs. We used fast and quick changing shots to add suspense to the footage. Like other thrillers this is a way of controlling the audience to a high level of fixed concentration.

In thrillers there is always a good guy on the run usually involved in some sort of occupation involving a political or high class business. For example in the film ‘Vantage Point’ a president is on the run from his assassins, with one of his special agents chasing the villains down. In our thriller we have used a similar technique. A businessman is in threat by two villains. In thrillers a person’s identity is not always completely clear from the very beginning. The good guy who seems heroic to the vulnerable can turn out to be the baddy towards the end. In our thriller we have used a similar convention of confusion. The footage we have filmed causes many questions to arise. Who is the good guy? Why is the businessman being chased? Is the businessman really the good guy? The audience can become confused towards the end of our opening due to the businessman appearing to pull out a weapon from inside his suit jacket. This causes the audience to question whether he is the villain and the two casual thugs are actually chasing him for the briefcase which belongs to them. Who knows? It’s only the opening and this technique of filming and the interpretation of the story line is used to draw the audience in. Finally one other convention of a thriller which we used is where the sequence ends leaving a character in great danger. In our sequence the film closes with the businessman being cornered by two villains, he himself removing an item, perhaps a weapon from his jacket. This leaves the audience in a climax of suspense leaving them to wonder which character is the villain and who is in danger.

2. Social groups are represented in different ways throughout our thriller opening sequence. At the beginning of the sequence a character appears running down a dark corridor claiming that something has gone. This adds some confusion to what nature this character belongs to however the dark corridor could represent that he is not a completely innocent character. However, when he mentions something has gone this leads the audience to place him in a vulnerable group as it appears that something has been stolen from him.

Character one (businessman) appears walking in a casual manner out of a grand looking building, smartly dressed carrying a black briefcase. When the audience is first introduced to the character they probably feel he is a rich, innocent, businessman continuing his day of work. However, when character two and three appear sharply out of the building’s entrance, the grand taste of the building suddenly turns sour due to the two thugs appearing from it. This is where character ones appearance turns vulnerable as he is in threat due to being on the run form two un-identified men. The characters natures are changed from the beginning to the end of the sequence. At the beginning character one appears as an innocent businessman in threat by the bad guys, however, when he is cornered at the end, appearing to remove a weapon from his jacket his nature soon changes. This leaves the audience to perhaps believe that in fact he is the villain on the run with a stolen item which is locked away inside the briefcase. Characters two and three until this point appear as thuggish villains, plunging character one into a scenario of danger. However once they corner character one it begins to question the audience whether in fact character one is the bad guy on the run with a stolen briefcase. These questions that the audience are invited with therefore show that the nature of our characters changes throughout the shots of our footage.

Finally I would like to comment of the location of the final scene. Here we used a top level of an empty car park. This added suspense to our sequence as no one was around to help character one to safety. The background shows a dark sky in contrast with a golden sunset. This juxtaposition of warm and dark scenery corresponds with the threatening chase between character one and characters two and three making the location appear unsafe.

3. Thrillers are mainly produced by big American film production companies in Hollywood; however, there have been successful producers in the United Kingdom. ‘Hammer Film Productions’ founded in 1934 produced a number of thriller films. The films were cheap to produce but there use of excellent actors and well designed sets made them successful films to watch. The company produced high quality thrillers such as ‘Crescendo’ and ‘Hysteria.’ These black and white films with twist endings are often compared to the film Psycho.

Putting aside Hammer Film productions, the main companies responsible for successful thrillers are involved with Hollywood. The main reason due to this is because the billions of dollars Hollywood has to spend on its movies. They take every step they can to achieve the best from the films they make. This includes attractive, eye-catching advertisements, mesmerising trailers and expensive top notch premiers. The film companies in Hollywood also have fantastic design sets and use advanced special effects allowing the viewers to be speechless but the quality of film they watch.

However, if I were to choose a film company to produce our thriller I would chose Lions Gate entertainment. This company founded in 1997 has produced many successful films which contain elements of a thriller such as American Psycho and the Saw films. It is proven by the Saw films alone that the company is very successful in what it produces otherwise viewers wouldn’t be waiting in suspense for the release of the next film.

4. I feel that the audience for our thriller could be any group from teens to middle aged people. It is generally quite hard to choose an age group for films depending what is and what isn’t appropriate for people of today’s era. However I feel that our footage is able to be viewed by all ages as it has a suitable content. It would probably be most appealing to people from 20-40 whom ordinary are working people in society. However, the audience should have a high concentration span as the shots are fast and a lot happens in just under three minutes of footage, therefore the viewer needs to be fixed on what they are viewing otherwise they could get bored and lose concentration.

I feel that the gender suited for this film would largely be male as it contains fast action and I feel that many females will reject their concentration from this type of story line. However, I’m sure females would enjoy the film too but their demand for viewing won’t be as strong of those who are male.

5. Our sequence has attracted our audience in many ways involving them to become involved with the film. We have used quick cuts between each shot causing the viewers to become infixed on the footage. This technique achieves full concentration from the audience if done so correctly. I therefore believe we carried out this technique to a high standard causing us to address the audience with a successful thriller containing a hint of action. I feel that the chase throughout the sequence worked well in capturing the audience’s attention. It will keep them transfixed as this fast scene scenario will allow the audience to never take their eye of the screen throughout. Also the theme of confused identity used in our sequence causes the audience to have a role in the film themselves. Here they can throw a number of questions at the sequence such as, What is in the briefcase? Who is good and who is bad? This main theme that we used throughout the sequence really does attract the audience to become involved.

Finally I feel that the audience is first attracted due to the opening scene where a character is running back and forth down a darkened corridor panting ‘it’s gone’ this short speech is very effective pulling in the audience as they want to know what is gone.

6. From this assignment of constructing an opening to a thriller sequence I have learnt a lot through using certain technology. First of all I have learnt many types of shots which we have used successfully in our own sequence. These included long, mid, close-up, match on action, and over the shoulder shots. Without these types of shots our footage would be very stale and boring looking as if someone who had never come across a camera before had been told to shoot some people running. These shots were discovered and learnt due to the very useful preliminary task that we carried out before this coursework assignment. We also learnt about different techniques from camera movement such as zoom and pan. These types of camera movement were very useful in helping us capture our chase scenes without the footage looking jumpy.

A great deal was learnt through using editing software programs such as Final Cut, Garage Band and Photoshop. Final Cut was where the editing of the footage was carried out. Here using expert tools we managed to cut out bad and unnecessary footage. We were also able to learn how to use tools which would make our sequence shorter as it all had to be viewed within two to three minutes. Final Cut also allowed us to be able to fade one shot into the next without it appearing jumpy. This tool allowed us to have the sharp cuts between each shot that we wanted creating a build up of suspense throughout the sequence.

Photoshop was also useful, here we didn’t so much learn a lot but it gave us an opportunity to experiment with certain styles and ways to display our opening titles.

Finally from Garage Band we were able to learn how to create a successful soundtrack to go with our footage. Here we experimented with instruments creating an audio which would work well with the footage. Tools in the program allowed us to change the pitch and tempo of certain sections in the soundtrack and instruments such as the piano and guitar could be overlapped to create a combined piece of music. Thanks to Garage Band our thriller footage was taken to another level due to the fast upbeat music which was added to it creating more appeal and suspense. Therefore the programs above allowed us to create and capture a successful thriller sequence.

7. Since the preliminary task I feel that our group made a great deal of progress. For this assignment we were better prepared. The preliminary task wasn’t taken into account with as much seriousness as our thriller sequence. Due to an incomplete story board and shot list much of our footage which we captured was poorly improvised and this can be seen in some scenes of the footage due to the unrehearsed script. When creating our thriller sequence we took time over making the story board and the shot list was carefully discussed and thought through. I also felt that a great deal of progress was made due to one main factor. The thriller assignment allowed us to have more time to plan and prepare. Due to this we were able to scout locations and also had the opportunity to watch some other people’s footage inspiring us with a number of challenging ideas.

Due to the amount of time we had for shooting the sequence, we were able to shoot more footage than needed allowing us to watch it through and pick out the best shots. Finally the preliminary task allowed our confidence with the use of shooting and editing to improve. Without a taste of filming in the preliminary task I don’t think our thriller sequence would have been as successful. It gave us the opportunity to pick up on mistakes allowing us to avoid them when shooting our coursework assignment. Without our evaluation of the preliminary task little progress would have been made as it was the evaluation that really helped out group to pick up on errors. This resulted in us being able to create a sequence using the best of our abilities.