1. Thriller have been famous for creating a suspenseful, adrenaline-pumping
experience for the audiences. They aim to fulfil the feeling of fear and
anxiety. Mainly, the feeling of fear and the urge to want to “sit on the end of
your seat” is the seen as the most important key of achieving a successful
thriller.
However, there are many things I have learnt whilst doing this project,
thrillers are not as easy as they look, there are many things you need to do to
ensure that your communicating the right message to the audiences, this
includes, realism. If your movie does not seem real, the audiences are not
going to have such an interest to it, we decided to use dark locations and not
add much non-realistic material such as different effects of black and white
or “mirrors”, so we kept it simple. Other factors are, tension and suspense
this can be achieved through creaky doors, dark lighting, positioning the
actor/actress in a way that can be effectively sending the audience the
message that they are a danger. For example, we had a scene where we
filmed Sadek coming from behind the curtains and panned the camera up.
This was done to give the audience the feeling that they are looking up
towards this person. It changes the individual shot immensely because the
audience feel they are part of the experience and they are the ones being
looked down upon compared to Sadek who is looked up to, this encourages
more realism and the audience are manipulated into viewing more.
There are many factors to create the essence of fear, things such as, violence
and the scenes of blood to increase the tension and realism of the horrors,
music plays a vital role in dropping hints that something is about to happen
as it usually builds up before a dramatic scene. We did achieve the music by
duplicating it several times so that the same eerier sound would play
throughout Sadek’s psycho scene in the beginning, to build up more
tension, by letting the audience get used to the sound and believe that
something will happen to make them jump. Many would say that a thriller is
just a scary movie, usually filled with some scenes of violence and a theme to
make someone jump.

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
 Martin Ruben however argues that the thriller is not just one genre, it is
a “meta-genre” therefore it has an umbrella of different genres to it.
These include, silent serials, crime and violence, stalker films,
psychological, sci-fi, yet all thrillers seem to have one element that stays
the same> life being challenged, so some sort of danger about to
happen. From older directors such as Alfred Hitchcock who filmed
“Psycho” in 1960 who notoriously created the famous scene of the
“shower gory death”, to the more recent directors such as Quentin
Tarantino, “Kill Bill” where action, drama, thriller and crime is mixed
creating the memorable storyline of a woman seeking revenge of her
boss and killing anyone in her way, demonstrates the wide variety of
thrillers there are. Also directors such as Christopher Nolan who
directed the mysterious, psychological thriller titled “Memento” which
came to be a very unusual yet intriguing film. Many commented on it
being “An unforgettable trip into the mind of a man with no
memory” to which I agree on as it is very challenging to
understand at first, but later on you get more into it.
 Memento was a huge inspiration towards creating our own film as we
wanted to give the audience the effect of confusion and mystery. The
fact that we filmed Sadek in the dark room and switched it to a more
different location where there was a lot of light immediately, made the
audiences more lost, therefore this makes them stay hooked onto the
storyline to find out more. This was also shown effectively in Memento,
when there are fast cuts of scenes as we are introduced to his flashbacks
in black and white whilst the reality is portrayed in colour.
 It was very hard to create a very flowing piece of work as we had to
control all the shots and frames, the occasional shots of panning and
following the character made the camera feel like it was a person spying
on Sadeks actions.

3. How does your media product represent
particular social groups?
 The audiences have been interested in teenager horror storylines because they have
been a great way of demonstrating the “innocent, vulnerable” nature of the teenage
youth. By including them in thrillers this enables the audiences to experience the
horrors with them and feel like is an unfair, unexpected attack that can happen to
anyone. Young people have not got the full experience of being safe on the streets,
things such as getting followed then kidnapped as a storyline come frequently as it
is a very unexpected moment which also happens in reality, so audiences feel it is
more real and use it as something to relate it to. Thrillers are also a good way of
giving out morals, as it gets our minds set of the dangers around us and after
watching a film like “Romeo Brass” for example, we are more aware of people such
as Morell, having two sides to them. We tried to do this in our film by presenting
Sadek as the two-faced sort of psycho immediately. By introducing the whole clip
with him opening the door and entering a very dark and vague room, the audiences
don’t take such a positive “liking” effect on him, but by switching the clip to light
when he it outside and talks to me more calmly by saying “I miss you”, it creates this
contrast ensuring that the audiences understand that you never know what a
person can be like, as they can act different to what they seem to be. It also makes
me look like the innocent, vulnerable one, as the audiences have seen what he does
behind closed doors and I am obviously oblivious to it all. The fact that we were
asked to do a opening was a good idea as it created the sense of a cliff-hanger at the
end, so the audiences were more interested in what was going to happen next and
could determine whether or not they would want to watch more.
 Due to research, 78% of people picked horror as the main topic to thrillers that they
would enjoy this shows that thrillers are still a very exciting genre that audiences are
interested in viewing. Many people go to see horror movies to get an adrenaline
rush and enjoy the feeling of shocking disgusting images, films such as “Saw”
demonstrate this. People have a fear of blood, the whole gory concept of stabbing
someone is very classic but boring. “Saw” demonstrates the different sorts of killing
methods, examples of “wires” and specific traps which captures the audiences
interest more as they want to know what these strange contraptions are made of we
made sure that Sadek ripping my picture was an effective way to show that there is
going to be element of revenge shown.

4. How does your media product
represent particular social groups?
 Our film was aimed at teenagers as we wanted it to explore the
complicated relationships as well as the bad “horrific” side of people
that some people do not notice. Mainly teenagers go through the
phase of relationships were they are just meeting up with people and
not settling down to serious commitment, we made this unclear in
our film because we only filmed extremely short shots of Sadek and
mine’s conversation so that the audience know less. Sticking to the
rule of “less is more”, we were able to show that there will obviously
be something unusual going on.
 We starred Sadek as the psycho as men are usually more likely to be
the killers in thrillers, as they have the urge to kill to satisfy their
needs.
 Sadek seems to be around 18-19 which makes the audiences relate to
him if they are around that age as well. By being able to view what is
going on, audiences can make their links and assumptions. Example
when he slides his hand along the photo this could be a way of
demonstrating his complete obsessions towards me.
 We didn’t focus on including a variety of different ethnic
mixes, although we would have done later on in the film, mainly we
used two characters a female and a male to just create a hint of to
leave the audiences questioning “Who are they?”., “Why are they not
together?””Why is he reacting that way?” sparking off curiosity.
 I think overall, audiences expect a twist of events and the need to be
shocked by something. Music creates tensions and people are more
aware of something about to happen.

5. What kind of media institution might distribute your
media product and why?
I think our film would be good to screen at British cinemas such as DNA films who

sponsored such films as “28 Weeks Later” which I personally thought was a brilliant way
of presenting a raging virus as the story not only kept the audience interested but it also
made it very realistic in terms of the battling emotions the characters has to convey of
fear, lost hope and love. Our film is not completely bold but it doesn’t have the same sort
of element that a Hollywood theme based cinema would expect as our film offers a more
different outlook to thrillers. I would suggest that if we were to have continued our short
film, we could have expanded our knowledge on the different storylines that other
Thrillers offer and perhaps combined all the thriller aspects into it.
“Mum and Dad” (2008) film is directed by Steven Sheil because of its £100K budget limit,

set in the Christmas period when families are together and enjoy the spirit of Christmas,
this film tastes a feisty twist as critics say it is “A genuinely solid shocker”. There are
many scenes that have become famously known especially the scene of the father
pleasuring himself on a piece of meat.
“28 Days later” (2002) was created by award winning director Danny Boyle, this was a

very low budget film capturing the complete chaos of a world against man scenario,
where infection of “zombies” spreads through gory bites on the human body mainly the
neck. By making the films a bit more cheaper, audiences are more interested in seeing
them, no-one wants to see a film that is expensive unless they think it to be worth the
time and money.
Seeing as our opening is low-budget I think Independent cinemas such as “Odeon” are

good at screening the movie as it is the largest cinema chain in the UK, with over one
hundred cinemas. ODEON entertain more people in the UK than any other cinema chain
accounting for nearly a third of all tickets sold in the UK. Before it was name the UCI but
due to wanting to expand, they changed their name to ODEON.

6. Who would be the audience for your media
product?
 Judging by our film, I think we are more likely to have teenagers watch our movies
because we do include the teenager problems of life such as relationships or
friendships, and teenagers sometimes some to a crisis point in their lives where they
are unknown to what may come next in their life. Balancing studying with work and
being “mini” adults, they are perceived to be more vulnerable therefore audiences
find it more pleasing when innocence is dragged into danger as they want to see how
the “problems” are solved. In this case, I am seen as the innocent person, whilst
Sadek is seen as the more guilty and “weird” as he is dressed in a blue (doctors) long
jacket that can be symbolical of him being a freak. By using him as a nerd, adding
glasses and this strict formal clothing it also adds hints of him being mentally
unstable. Why would such an educated person as himself be in a dark room
obsessing over pictures?
 Even in Books such as The Terrorist Caroline B. Cooney teenagers are more likely to
seek revenge as their actions sometimes are not as mature. Caroline’s book is about a
16 year old American teenager who seeks revenge and answers to who killer her
brother who died of a terrorist attack. The storylines are mainly based on deaths or
some sort of reality where situations are extremely confusing and to work it out you
have to read on. So there if the sense that the cliffhanger effect is also ideal to keep
the audiences interested. We made sure in our opening that we gave away as little
information as possible to leave the audiences wanting to more. The use of little
flashbacks was used to create the effect of what will happen after or to give the
audiences a hint of what the storyline is actually about.
 I thought that the audience would mainly be under 29, and above 13 or 14, as they are
the sort of age groups that enjoy watching psychological thrillers about young adults
(teens or early 20s).
 So our film would convey a lot of ideas to the audiences of what could surround
them and how some people cannot be trusted at times.

7. How did you attract/address your audience?
 I think the start of our movie is a really good way of luring the audiences in to try and
figure what could possible be going on. The fact that you get a scene of Sadek opening
the door immediately props questions such as “Where does this door lead to?”, “Who
is he?”, “What is he doing?” and I believe that it what makes a good thriller-the
intention to keep asking questions and to keep the story alive so that the audiences
don’t get bored of it so easily.
 There are have been cases in reality where people have had some sort of obsession
with celebrities, in our film we are trying to convey that same sort of obsession but
through Sadek as he is obsessing with the love of his life.
 There have been many psychological thrillers such as “Silence of the Lambs” where
Clarice Starling has an interview with ex psychiatrist Dr Hannibal who is also a cannibal,
this film was effective especially in the beginning when she was running as we felt
more uncomfortable already. We tried to create the same effect with Sadek in the dark
room in the beginning opening the creaky door to give the audiences the sense that
something was going to happen, yet by switching it to the next scene, it seems like a
lucky escape, this is shown as well in “Silence of the Lambs” as the camera follows her
running through a forest and the music keeps building up so we get the idea that she is
going to get attacked severely yet it switches to the scene of her entering and office to
speak to a member about her case.
 Thriller elements of suspense, tensions and continuity is very key to making the
audiences believe its real and enjoy the genre more. However, this was hard to obtain
as we only had 2 mins to get an opening.
 We started off our opening with more storylines than one, the problem with that
being, it got too confusing and people lost an interest to it, in the end after editing it
looked like a trailer. So by cutting out the other storylines, focusing on one we were
able to construct a more reasonable piece of work where more questions were to be
asked.

8. What have you learnt about technologies
from the process of constructing the product?
 I have learnt a lot about filming. At first, I thought it was pretty
simple yet it actually is not. Proud to say, I’ve learnt to switch the
camera on as it did seem like a challenge finding what the
buttons mean. The shots were more easier to maintain but to
make it successful there has to be a lot of thought put into it.
 Shots such as the close ups of feet walking up the stairs to
gather a “creaky floor” effect were quite hard as I had to hold the
camera as still as possible and pan to the right, following
Sadek’s shoes.
 The characters had to make sure to focus and portray the right
sort of facial expression so for pain, by screwing your face up
into a way that was more easier for the audiences to understand
the emotions. Also how the camera moves slowly to the danger
and seems to let the music flow, encourages a more scarier feel
to the whole scenes.
 I think planning is a very important element to making sure that
everything is in order. So more time needed to be spent on it to
ensure that we could have more choices in what we wanted to
do and a variety of camera shots to choose from so we could
communicated different or similar messages to the audiences.

9. What have you learnt about technologies from the
process of constructing the product?
It was much easier to act out the scenarios but more difficult to capture

the specific moments on film as you want to capture the most crucial
moments and thinks such as murmuring or pauses create a more eerier
surrounding so people feel more tense and scared.
There were a few technical difficulties because when we filmed and went

back to seeing it, the parts we filmed were usually in between certain
time intervals, when we filmed Sadek’s death we realised that it gave
away too much of the storyline and made the opening look like the
ending with credits, so therefore we decided to not go along with it.
The process of actually constructing a good piece of work relies entirely

on team work, having patience and being able to plan everything
carefully. I think we all learnt a lesson that being able to communicated
ideas and share them alongside each other will make us have a good
piece of work in the end.

10. Looking back to your preliminary task, what do you feel
that you have learnt in the progression from it to the
full product?
 Our preliminary task was a great wake up call for me, we decided to go with
the storyline of a chav female mother {me} with her children facing up to the
death of her husband.
1) We picked the location at the last minute, the classroom, and it didn’t seem

realistic at all, so we made sure that when we filmed the thriller opening we
had to choose a location that created hints to the audiences and made it feel
much more realistic.
 2) We had many retakes which was good as we had more clips to choose from
in the end when editing, however camera angles were not so good as
sometimes we would break the 360 degree rules especially in the beginning
when trying to film the whole family sitting around the table.
 3)There were many instances of the shaky effect too, although we tried to keep
the camera steady, it was hard to walk around with it and keep all the shots
and frames in tact.
 4) Speech is very important in determining that the audiences can actually
understand what the story is about. However, due to this storyline being
completely negative and sad, we decided to speak more quietly, but learnt that
it was hard to speak quietly and get heard by the camera at the same time,
therefore had to speak up.
 5) By being able to experiment with many shots, we were able to choose what
shots we were going to do for the final piece, shots such as following a
character like when the camera panned to characters reactions in the
preliminary task and when Sadek was walking around the table the camera
panned to his reaction.
 By Yana 12KKE