Thriller Evaluation: Grove Park

For our own Thriller Opening, the ideas and conventions we used were from studies of the conventions of Thriller movie openings, ‘Watching’ film openings documentary, ‘28 Days later’, ‘What Lies Beneath’, ‘Collateral’ ‘Seven’ and ‘The Shining’. We used the idea of the book from the opening of ‘Seven’ and ‘The Shining’ was just a thriller full of suspense and a film which made me literally sit at the edge of my seat.

Se7en - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY
The Shining - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw23KM3-Ry8

When we were shown these openings, my group and I had instantly decided that we wanted a scene where the audience was shown no faces. This was because the opening of ‘Se7en’ was awesomely done without showing any faces but just by the use of mise-en-scene, the props and hands. We similarly used this convention in our stabbing scene, where the murderer’s face was not shown, also in the beginning the audience can only see a girl researching in the library.

The idea of the titles had also appeared from the film ‘Se7en’. Lipi had come up with his idea, and then we put it into action in our thriller opening. Also the quick effects and transitions were taken from the film ‘Se7en’. The way the film had quick shots had inspired us to keep our film opening short and snappy.

Another convention taken from the film of ‘Psycho’ was the relentless stabbing. We looked into this scene and decided that we were to just film shots, close ups of the knife constantly stabbing the victim, which I found worked effectively in our Thriller Opening. The fact that in the scene where the victim is killed, the face of the murderer is not shown works very effectively. I think this works as this shot and scene gets the audience to keep thinking ‘Who is the killer?’

If our product was to be distributed then it would’ve been for small Independent UK release. This is because the production is small and doesn’t require expensive sets or props or actors. It would’ve been released perhaps on TV and on Internet, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, etc.

Our film would have been amongst the films such as ‘Hot Fuzz’, ‘Shaun of The Dead’, ‘London to Brighton’. These films have been a hit in the UK and the USA for the reason being that they were appealing to mostly UK, young audiences (12+). ‘London to Brighton’ is a film by Paul Andrew Williams, writer and director. It is a Steel Mill Pictures production. Paul had written the storyboard of this film over one weekend, it had been filmed in three weeks. As this was a small film, Paul got £60, 000 from a private investor. It had been film in Hackney and Brighton, UK. The cast of ‘London to Brighton’ was Johnny Harris, Georgia Groome, and Lorraine Stanley. The film had six wins and six nominations. It was distributed in 3 cinemas, in one week in the US box office and all over the UK. ‘London to Brighton’ was released on the 1st December 2006 and released on DVD on Monday 30th April 2007. Similarly our film would’ve been distributed in the cheapest possible ways and perhaps on DVD too.

Paul Andrew Williams

Our audience for our media product would’ve been for youngsters from the ages of 12+. Mostly mainstream audiences and ‘aspirers’ as I believe small films is a good beginning for film writers and directors. Our thriller may be shown to pupils for example who are studying Psychology and also it would be a good film to show to victims and youngsters who have experienced knife crime. This is because our thriller is based on a possessed girl and also we have the characters of a victim of knife crime and a murderer. These sort of issues relate to our younger generation more often.

To market and promote our film we would most likely advertise our film through firstly the genre, thriller and through billboards, posters, leaflets, magazines, trailers, e.g. T.V, Youtube and social sites e.g. Facebook. This way we would be attracting our audiences as youngsters are more likely to watch it as they are out and about and have their eyes peeled to upcoming films.

Throughout the entire journey of constructing this product from creating our preliminary thriller to our final product, I believe, personally I have learnt a lot. Before creating and performing tasks I hadn’t a clue of what Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro was, neither did I know the proper way of filming and editing professionally. Through filming I have found out things such as using a 5 second gap before starting to act and role camera, also logging and capturing, which was a mission and learning different shots and angles when filming. Using blogger has helped me to see how I have progressed throughout this process. Also, releasing our thriller onto Vimeo (a video-centric social network site) had given us the opportunity to watch our final product along with other thrillers created by the other media students.

Final Cut Pro Soundtrack Pro

Looking back at our preliminary task and comparing it to our final product, there is a major difference. I believe our team skills has become more co-operative and reliable. Our filming and acting has improved, storyboarding has helped as we had planned every shot before filming. And also editing has improved a lot. I now know how to function Final cut and Soundtrack Pro fluently. This has helped me to understand how editing really works and how time consuming it may be but also the fact that the labor is worth it at the end. All our lessons, ‘Match Cut’ lessons and ‘Introduction to Sound’ have been put to test in our final product. Using mise-en-scene helped a lot too, as we used quite a few props in our thriller. Also, we have learnt to use the previous lessons effectively. I had used Windows Movie Maker which included effects and transitions, therefore understanding how to use effects and transitions to make shots sequential was quite straight forward. Credits and titles were new to me as previously I haven’t done any up to date editing on Windows Movie Maker. I enjoyed creating and editing the titles, moving them around the screen but I must say it was hard work!

Over all, after watching our thriller along with everyone else’s thrillers in the Vue cinema made me realise that there are many different ways to convey thriller films, whether it is through actors, props, camera work, editing or sound. I felt a relief after watching our thriller and receiving positive feedback from students, teachers and staff. On the whole, I am delighted that our hard work has paid off positively and that I can use the lessons and editing in the future!