Audience Feedback

We watched each others thrillers in class and noted down, what we thought the basic plot of each thriller was, what we thought the key strengths were, and how we thought the thriller could be made better. It was interesting to see other peoples opinions and to see if they understood what was happening in the opening title sequence.

What do you think the basic plot of the thriller is?

-rioting

-the riots

-riots

-a man during the London riots

-about a man who was joining the London riots

-about the London riots

-about the London riots

-about the riots in the city and particularly about one of the bad guys

-about a rioter in the London riots

-about a rioter that blows up a car

-about violence

What do you think the key strengths of this thriller are and why?

-the sound bridge between the two scenes

-the sound and fire at the end

-really cool shots, jerky-created a sense of chaos, good music- right atmosphere and mood. Good slo-mo

-the camera angles, sound effects and after effects creates a riot without seeing people

-liked the variety of shots, the fact we included actual news footage of the riots and also liked the music

-liked the graphics we used and the special effects adds realism

-had really good sound, and liked the atmosphere

-Well done, nice plot and editing and liked the included sound to it

-liked how it was filmed and edited

-liked the special effects and the slow motion

-liked the sound effects

How do you think this thriller could be made even more effective and why?

-better characters

-less time watching tv

-more people around

-could have included more people in the background to improve the idea of the riot scene

-could make it better by having quicker cuts

-could have made it better if we had a better location which would have been more convincing

-could be a bit quicker to make more tension and shows the audience atmosphere

-didnt really get the name of the thriller

-wanted to know more about his reasons behind his actions

i was pleased with the responses as most people understood what was going on in the thriller. Most people mentioned that to improve the thriller more people should have been around. This was what we had originally planned, but then we decided the main character was going to be in the back streets of the riots. We should of made this more obvious to the audience in the thriller by possibly lowering the volume of the riots to make it sound more distant. People also suggested that the shots should of been faster and that less time should be spent of the main character watching tv. However i disagree with this because we are introducing the character to the audience, slowly drawing them in to realise the character is dangerous. Then when he leaves the house pace picks up. And shots are fast when the water is being splashed on the car. We decided to slowly draw the audience into the film instead of quickly, as then they may not of understood as well as was shown in the feedback (that the thriller was about the riots). The contrast of the main character sitting at home doing nothing, then suddenly getting up and blowing up a car, also is meant to show how dangerous this man is, which would appeal to the target audience.

Evaluation Task 7: How did you develop from your preliminary task to your main task?

For my prelim task i was very unprepared as we had only had a few camera lessons i wasn't very confident with using the camera. The more i worked with the camera angles in the prelim task, the more i understood how different shots could convey different things to the audience. For example, a close up shot can allow the audience to feel the emotions of the character. So when i came to the thriller we used more creative shots to keep the audience interested. We used extreme close ups so that the audience could empathise for the character. We used a focus pull so the audience could relate the character and the rioting with each other, and this would show the audience that something was going to happen.

Not a lot of preparation was necessary for the prelim task. We were already handed a story board where we could base our prelim on. However in our thriller we wrote our own story board. We started with different personal ideas, then came up with one idea between our group. We then developed the idea by creating draft story boards. We then finally came up with our final story board. This process had a lot of thought put into it so that we all liked the final outcome.

We did not prepare for any mise en scene in our prelim. Natural lighting was used and there were no costumes or thought gone into where we were going to locate the thriller, we used a simple room and didn't recreate it in anyway. However for our thriller we decided before hand where we were going to film the opening title sequence. We chose the Turrets house because we could easily turn this into a room similar to that of a flat. We also chose to film in the car park at Hurtwood main school, because we couldnt drive all the way to London without taking out a majority part of our day where we could of been filming, yet we needed a place that could look like a backstreet in London where cars where. We adjusted the furniture at Turrets house, and changed the lighting by using a red head, and by closing the blinds so the room had a dim atmosphere in the shots. We set the room out to look plain and so the audience realised things about the character. For example, that he was not very wealthy.

When editing the prelim we used final cut pro. I wasn't very confident with using this but throughout the process i began to learn short cuts and the basics for editing and how to make cuts look normal, without repeating anything in the next shot or skipping out sections that would make it look strange. After learning the basics in the prelim it became a lot easier when editing the thriller. However, in the thriller we added titles and used special affects such as the explosion at the end. We also adjusted the lighting so that it seemed darker in the shots.


In the prelim we didnt do anything with the sound on final cut pro. We also didnt use sound cut pro to add special sound affects. However, in our thriller we used final cut pro to adjust levels of sound. We also imported sound affects in from sound cut pro such as rioters in the background, a police van, or a helicopter going across in the distance. All of these things added a more realistic feel to the audience, and to make them feel like it really was going on. I thought the use of sound made the piece seem more proffesional. We also added in some music at the end which built up to the explosion, this added tension and the type of music would of also appealed to the younger target audience that our film attracts.