Thriller Evaluation

The brief for our coursework was to create a two-minute entry for a thriller film. In order to do this, it required lots of planning, practice and organising. One part of our planning was to watch a documentary as a class about openings of a film. This included dramatic techniques, which build up through sounds, establishing shots, tones and atmosphere. Thomas Sutcliffe said “Films need to reduce their audience into long term commitment while there are many types of seduction”. This suggests that if a film doesn’t catch the eye from the start, there would be no point in watching the film. Following this Stanley Kauffmann described a classical opening with an establishing shot. A specific film that used an establishing shot for the opening was in Psycho 2. This is what my group and I did in order to relate to real conventions of thriller films.

Our opening is basically about a young girl running in the graveyard including shots of a dark figure with a weapon to create suspense. We decided to call our film “Vanished” as the audience doesn’t know what happened to the girl at the end of the two minute clip, therefore this allows the audience to want to watch on which is a convention of a thriller film.

Our media product does relate to real to real media products as establishing shots were used, as mentioned before is a typical opening to a thriller film. The opening is dark and creepy as it is set at Stoke Newington graveyard and this raises questions for the audience. Our credits and sound also sets a tone and gives an eerie feeling, which is what real conventions of thrillers do. Our media product is in slow motion throughout the two minutes and also the music starts when the figure comes in. this draws the audience into what is going on. We used close ups of Nazmin’s face to get the audience to get an emotive response, as close ups links into fears. We used the camera in an awkward angle; we filmed this part handheld to give a shaky effect so that the audience knows that the victim is being chased.
We used flashes of white light for a split second when showing gravestones and statues of angels so that the audience gets a sense of the atmosphere.

We also used a dark figure with a knife (weapon) and our opening ends with the girl screaming. We were inspired of this idea of the knife and screaming from the film “Psycho” as it was such a success in the 1960s even though the budget was under $1000000 and we thought it would work well in today’s modern age, as it still gives the audience a feeling of jumping from their seats which is a norm of a thriller.

In terms of social groups, our media product symbolises a young teenage girl around 15+(as in the film). We wanted to make the girl look like an average working-class girl, which is why we made her wear casual clothes so that other teenagers could relate to her. We also used a young girl because we thought this would portray vulnerability, which adds to the suspense and makes it even more thrilling.

Our media product would be distributed around the world because it represents particular social groups that exist everywhere. During our planning when we had to make a pitch to our class, everyone seemed to like the idea. When I done some research on www.canadianfilmakers.com, I found that the films that do best in the Hollywood Blockbuster are the films that contain characters where the audience can relate to them. We also want our product to be part of and supported by Paramount Pictures, as most of their films always do well and make a lot of profit.


This is why I think our media product could be a success in America as it is such a broad market. Then depending on how well it did in the cinemas, we will then release it on DVD, as now lots of people tend to watch films at the comfort of their own home.

For our audience our media product would be targeted for young teenagers to adults (15+) as mentioned before. In terms of the demographic, our product fits into a mainstream, as there isn’t a specific type of audience and its suitable for anyone who enjoys watching films. I think our product is more suitable for ‘achievers’ as it’s mainly for teenagers and for them to realise that they can achieve anything in life. An example of a typical person who fits into our target audience is a young girl named Katie who is 18 years old who loves listening to her ipod and going to the cinemas (like any other ordinary teenager) and currently going college and wants to go into higher education knowing that she can achieve anything if she wants to pursue it.

We will attract and address our audience through many types of advertising so that our product would get a lot of publicity, therefore persuading more people to go and watch it. This could be done through trailers that can be available on You Tube or Vimeo. Also through billboards and TV adverts, as lots of people watch television and then our audience would widen as people would know and have heard a lot about it and may then be keen to go and watch it.

I have learnt a lot from the process of constructing our media product. Firstly on the practical hands on level, throughout my experience of filming I have learnt to use a variety of camera angles, using the five-second rule before saying ‘Action’ and after saying ‘Cut’. I have learnt to use the Apple Macs well when using Final Cut Pro, when logging and capturing our footage and hen putting inputs and outputs and placing it on the timeline and adding special effects, such as flashing to give it a thriller effect. Also when using Live Type for our credits and choosing from a variety of fonts and styles. Using the Sound Track to choose an appropriate sound for our product (this included diegetic and non-diegetic sounds). I have also learnt a lot when having to use the Internet when having to blog about what we did in each lesson. I also learnt to use Quick Time when having to upload our media product onto blogger. By uploading it onto blogger, this may widen the audience for our product.


Looking back at the preliminary task the match cut exercise helped us understand the 180-degree rule and the shot/reverse shot. This exercise really helped us when we started filming our actual thriller in terms of camera angles and using Final Cut Pro on the Apple Macs. For the actual film we made, we used many techniques and effects on Final Cut Pro to make our opening better, such as slow motion, fading and flashes of light. In terms of the sound, for the first establishing shot, we kept the natural sound of the rain so the audience would get a feeling of environment. We then used the sounds tracks called, Processed Experiment Rhodes 05, Designer Synth 05, and Designer Synth 07. We used the sound effect of a heartbeat as this influences the audience to get scared and for the final scream we used Emmahelm scream, as it sounds realistic and frightening.

I have also learnt that planning such as storyboarding is important as this helps you to get a picture of the media product in your head before you actually start filming. This is why planning such as a shot list really helped me when I was filming. I also learnt that its important to organise your time and plan what days you want to film or edit, so that we would finish a few days before the deadline and if any improvements were needed, there would still be time to fix it. This is the mistake we made as in our media product you can hear someone say ‘Action’, but we could not remove it as there wasn’t enough time left to fix it.

In conclusion, if I could do this again I would definitely not rely on other members of the group to do the work and maybe not be in the same group as your friends so that you would get more work done. I would also have taken more of a variety of camera angles and make good use of the mise en scene of the graveyard by getting more shots of it.

Written By Shahida Choudhury