Thriller Evaluation

Thriller Evaluation

After some advice from our media teachers, we decided we wanted to be creative with our thriller opening, as they weren’t really looking for your ‘bog standard ’ thriller or cliché. We were told that normally students would do openings about stalkers in hoodies, kidnapping or serial killers. So we crossed all ideas regarding those types of stories off our list. After an hour of brainstorming a couple of ideas, we pitched three main ones of three different sub genres (you can find our initial ideas in an earlier blog) and later came to a final decision of which to film.


Our final idea, ‘DeathWalk’ isn’t a typical crime thriller or action. When choosing our thriller we tried to relate more to horror therefore chose the sub genre; Super Natural, this allowed us to be more creative. We were inspired many clips from thrillers. We used these clips ideas and later developed them to give them our own twist e.g./




This clip from arlington road inspired us for our final shots, with the use of quick cuts and bright lights.




This clip from 28 days later gave us he idea of isolation hence all of our shots showed someone walking through the forest alone.


Our main protagonist had her hair over her face to add tho the thrill, we were inspired to do this from the horror film the ring.




This clip from arlington road gave us the inspiration to put our title over clips instead of at the end on their own blank screen.

We stuck to the conventions in terms of the narrative; supernatural which is menacing our protagonist. Protagonist we have a main character however some could argue that we went against the norms by having a female protagonist. Films with female protagonists include :

In our opening of a thriller, the normal representation of females in thrillers is they are vulnerable and tend to be victims of the supernatural force; this was achieved by making the protagonist a female. Also, it isn’t very clear but the female is a teenager and we used this to represent the fact that statistics show suicide numbers among teenagers have risen.

The audience for my media product would mainly be teenagers who, although our opening is a thriller, are horror fans as our thriller deals with the supernatural. A typical person who fits our target audience is a 16 year old teenage female called Karen, who spends Friday nights at home with friends watching horror movies, she also loves going to the cinema with friends and boyfriend.

Marketing and promotion of films can be very expensive so i have chosen a couple cost effective ways to advertise:

• Television and radio Trailers
• Advance trailers, longer previews, or behind-the-scenes footage on rental videos and DVDs
• Product placement: paid active or passive insertion of film brand in drama or sitcom shows, or as passing mentions in dialogue
• Viral marketing: free distribution of trailers on movie-oriented websites and video user-generated-content websites, and rapid dissemination of links to this content by email and blogs.
• In the movie theater
• Trailers and behind-the-scenes shorts, shown prior to the main attraction

Our videos have already take one major step to promotion and this was via internet. Our opening thriller is available on , and even this already gives us a wide audience as the intenet is available to everyone and is relatively cheap so access to it is at a high level. The fact we are targetting teenagers allows facebook and youtube to be very useful as these are sites that are frequently visited by our target audience.

I learnt how to use new technology such as camera, internet fro blogging, soundtrack pro and Film Cut pro. with the camera, i learnt the use of different angles to help cause a thrilling effect eg. Low angle, Pan, Tilt. the main angles we used were a pan as she was walking and the effect of this was to establish she was alone in a deserted place. Also we used many low angle as she got close to hanging herself, the effect of this was the lower the angle the shorter her life was becoming, this shows her life coming to an end. We made sure we had all our shots well planned at the start with the use of a well made story board.

I learnt ahow to use final cut pro mainly about logging and capturing, sequencing and addin certain effects in relevant places. When editting i needed to make sure my cuts were perfect in order for my sequence to flow perfectly.

Below you see our sequence, its not clear but thats a low angle shot, with the use of a blurr and dark mast effect.

I also used soundtrack pro which happened to be very effective in our media thriller, we experimented with a range of sounds, including different genres and instruments. In most thriller films we noticed the use of high pitched and string instruments therefore we stuck to the convention.


From my prelim, I have learnt organisation and structure is key to success, making sure you plan before u start is vital otherwise you are clueless as to what type of shots to do. Also editing, getting the types of cuts are perfect as one mistake eg. The cuts too fast or cut don’t match could mess up the whole thing. However although we planned we didn’t plan thoroughly, could’ve ended with the girl waking up but we missed out that shot, also a shot of the girls’ feet while she was hanging. However, our final thriller was a big improvement from the prelim as when doing the prelim we didn't have as much experience in using the softwares and we were still in the training mode. In comparisson to the prelim we had better camera angles in the final. Also we mastered the sound in our thriller opening and the effect were used creatively given a eerie feeling to the thriller.

After all thrillers were complete, we went to the vue cinema to watch them. This was good in a way that we could see other peoples, they were all of a high standard but it was an effective way of judging and comparing other people work. Many people used similar storyt lines. Our Thriller was only repeated by 1 other groups which made it slightly unique. We got a very good response from our peers and they enjoyed it. Teachers said that we were very professional in how we conducted ourselves and the thriller.

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