Evaluation Questions 1

Evaluation QuestionsEvaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

Our media product is a short clip of three minutes to an opening of a thriller. The storyline is based on a woman beingcaptured by a mystery villain and locked in a basement. This specific choice of storyline builds up anxiety and suspenseadding to the horror theme. Martin Rubin points out that a Thriller should be categorised as a ‘metagenre’. It is consideredone of the most broadest genres in film as it can have many sub-genres coming from it, such as crime, action adventure,mystery etc.Due to thrillers being broad, it is the most difficult to identify, however, there are elements within it that an audience willexpect to see. These include, a sense of unease, danger, tension and anxiety. If a thriller is successful it should keep theaudience on the edge of their seats. This is usually achieved by the particular use of both diegetic and non-diegeticmusic, camera shots and angels.Before we began filming we all researched a number of thriller films, this was in order for us to learn the conventions that areneeded to create a successful thriller film, we did this both as a group and independently. We focused on their story linesand openings, comparing them and looking for similarities. The two main films we analysed were “Memento” and“Silence of the lambs”. After having watched the openings to these thrillers we began noticing the similar aspects betweenthem, we also noted what the evident conventions that occurred in them, some of these where; narrative enigmas, suspense,mystery, eerie music and a sense of uncertainty. These allow the audience to be drawn into the film and feel a part of the characters experience. Another thing that really helps create a thriller, is when the audience knows just as much as thecharacter, really putting them in the same position. We too tried to perceive these aspects in our own opening, leaving theaudience in the dark as well as the characters.Although the films have completely different storylines they both use narrative enigmas in the same way to keep theaudiences attention. As well as both creating an air of suspense and mystery. We used non-diegtic music, it has an eeriequality and fits into the background perfectly, this adds to the tension of feelings amongst the audience watching andmakes them feel on edge. At some points we erased the idea of music and used the technique of silence which added to theuncomfortable, dreary atmosphere, we felt that this helped with the mystery and suspense you would usually achieve in agenuine thriller . Throughout the filming process we decided to use two locations, this was because the house we was usingthat had a basement didn’t look as scary from the front so we decided to use a different house for that specific scene.

For the front house scene (house 2) we filmed an establishing shot of the old looking Tudor house,which told the audience where the action was happening before it actually did. Overall, we wereentirely happy with our location choice as it has all the main elements of a thriller.We decided to keep the amount of characters very simple, the villain and the victim. I felt that thiswas a good choice because it helped express the seriousness of the situation by having minimalactor’s showing a smaller chance of a heroic ending, this leaving the audience questions, what'sgoing to happen next?. All the scenes involving the villain where shot from behind, we felt it wouldbe better to keep the characters face anonymous creating a real tense atmosphere and leaving thevillain rather intimidating.We used make-up on our actresses to help add to the realism and also create the illusion of bruisesand scratches to show the horror and pain in which our victim had gone through. Also, the use of blood expresses the pain and danger experienced.We then began discussing what to call our project, we looked back to the thrillers we analysed.“Memento” was a one worded title we thought this had an impact on the audience, because its fastand striking. It also helps the audience to think more in depth about what they are about to watchand the main point is that it also links to the storyline, another aspect I feel makes a good thriller is

1. Continued1. Continued

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