Thriller Evaluation


For the past five weeks we have been creating our own thriller movies. This has involved a lot or planning and research. The most helpful exercise we done in class was the ‘match cut’ which involved learning a new skill of how to edit film. We were instructed to make a short film in which we had to use the technique we had learned. A few examples of the match cut shots we used in our film was when Rudo opened the door and we filmed her hand on the door handle, pushing the handle down, Followed by a shot of her from inside the room walking through the door. We also used match cut when Rudo was walking. We first filmed this as a long shot from the front, then a close up of her face from the side as she is walking, and finally back to a long shot of the front walking and continuing to sit in a chair. This exercise helped a great deal when it came to filming our thrillers and we had had a chance to practice before.
Having the opportunity to practice filming and editing match cuts also helped as I knew how it would look on my thriller, and I had a better understanding of what angles loo more effective and how to edit it to ensure it looked right.
We also looked at different thriller opening as stimulus for ideas. I particularly liked ‘Arlington Road’ as it kept the audience guessing and began with confusion. I wanted to apply this sence of confusion to my thriller opening.
We tried to use various thriller conventions in our opening, which I feel worked well. We used the dark lighting, to create a scariness and unknown, we also made the main character a young, blonde vunerable teenage girl. We hoped people could relate to her and feel sympathy toward her as she comes across innocent. Another convention we used was point of view shots and extreme close ups, running water and a fuzzy television switching on by itself.
I feel that teenagers are represented as vunerable and helpless in our thriller. Because of having three girls in our group we decided to make Rudo the male attacker. This is also typical sterotype by society, that an intruder/attacker would be male. We decided to be ambiguous about Rudos character by filming her in the dark, avoiding too many close ups and dressing her in big dark clothing. We felt his would scare the audience more not knowing the character and keeping her identity a mystery. The only thing we knew about Rudo’s character was her race. I feel this is also a social stereotype of a young black ‘male’. We did not aim our film at one particular target audience as we feel a variety of people would be able to relate to the characters/situation/emotions of our thriller. Also anyone could experience what is happening I the clip.
I am extremely proud of my thriller and I feel the storyline would be that similar of a successful movie, therefore I think my movie would be a Hollywood blockbuster. I feel it fits the thriller genre and its conventions, it also challenges some conventions, such as having someone staring down the camera. I feel put thriller would fit in this particutar media institution. We used a lot of professional programmes t assist in editing, such as final cut pro, live type, and soundtrack pro to create our desired effect and spend a lot of time on these programmes and experimenting with new things to see what would work and what wouldn’t.
I don’t feel we would have a specific target market. However I feel teenagers who like going cinema, outgoing and like being scared would me a main audience. Gender would not be specified in a target audience for this film as I feel it would suit the needs and expectations of both a male and female audience. The age range would vary from about 15-35. The reason I don’t think it would appeal to over 35 year olds as much is because the characters are mostly of a young age, no older than 25/30 therefore they may not be able to relate to the characters, but would still enjoy the film.