Evaluation Question Three

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

A distribution company will disperse the film and spend money trying to make a name for the film, get people hyped about the movie through word of mouth. They do this for a percentage of the film’s profit, and sometimes they will buy the rights to a movie straight from the producers and rent the film to cinemas etc themselves. Ideally, 20^th Century Fox would be the perfect company to distribute our movie as they are such a well known, globally established corporation. According to IMDB, the company have distributed 159 movies in the UK since 1962. Although many are not British, they have distributed quite a few UK movies. For example, ‘Shallow Grave’ (1994), ‘Full Monty’ (1997) and ‘28 Days Later’ (2002). All three of these movies are of very different genres, showing how 20^th Century Fox are a company who distribute movies of all different sorts, but also because they distribute very independent movies. ‘28 Days Later’ was a very cheap movie to make, with a mere budget of 8 million – it made more than ten times this amount in gross profit. Our movie would be a lot cheaper to produce and film, and has some of the same codes and conventions as ’28 Days Later’, so could do quite well gross-wise as well.

There have not been very many movies like ours, but if I had to compare it to a film, I would compare it to ‘The Faculty’ (1998) which was distributed by Dimension Films mostly. Dimension Films have distributed many horror and thriller movies including ‘The Crow’ (1994) ‘Scream’ (1996) and ‘Grindhouse’ (2007). This makes me feel that, although a far lesser known company, Dimension Films would probably be perfect for distributing our movie as they seem to thrive off movies based around the horror and thriller genre. The main reason I compare ‘The Teacher’ to ‘The Faculty’ is because both movies deal with teachers losing control of themselves and murdering their students. However, the teacher in our movie is merely suffering a mental breakdown and commits the murders as she gets fed up of the harsh treatment she receives and dwindles into madness. The teachers in ‘The Faculty’ have been possessed by aliens, which makes them go on a murderous spree. Our movie is more of a realistic thriller, which the audience will probably find quite believable, whereas ‘The Faculty’ is a science fiction horror and so the audience will be more sceptical of the storyline.

However, my point still stands that I believe our movie would be a perfect film for Dimension Films as it seems to be the type of genre they generally represent. This being the case, they probably know a lot about the genre and how to distribute the film in a way that people will be attracted to it. Although, I still also believe that 20^th Century Fox would also be a perfect candidate to represent our movie, just because it is such a famous, household name.

Evaluation Question Two

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

A range of social groups would be represented throughout our movie – the main one being the tired, depressed teacher. Although the same cannot be said for all teachers, majority have to put up with a lot of bad behaviour and students who are unwilling to work. Our movie, if it were to last around 90 minutes, would tackle the many issues that teachers have to deal with, in a perhaps very extreme scenario. We would have a series of flashbacks throughout the movie showing what exactly pushed our main character over the edge and what forced her to start killing off her pupils, including abusive students, pay cuts and all around stress. We chose to film with a female teacher as we wanted to be different, in most thrillers the killer ends up being male – we wanted to give our movie a twist. Therefore we are representing males and females as being very similar in the respect that BOTH genders are very capable of murder. However, the movie would not be biased. We would show her victims, the students, points of view also. The students would be represented in a variety of different ways, we would cover many of the modern stereotypes, for example the ‘chavs’, ‘popular girls’, ‘emos’ and so on. The film as a whole would tackle a wide spectrum of social groups.

I would compare the character of ‘the teacher’ to that of the knife-welding, mask wearing maniac from the horror movie ‘Scream’, directed by Wes Craven in 1996. The images below show our character, on the left, and the masked murderer from ‘Scream’, on the right. Although our character does not wear a mask, they do wear a dark hooded jacket like the character from ‘Scream’ so as to hide their identity. We could have put a mask on; however we thought that we would instead use camera angles that made it impossible to see the hooded figure’s face. In our film, the murderer acts as the main star, whereas whilst the film ‘Scream’ does mainly revolve around the murderer, he is not the protagonist. The characters body language is also very similar, they are both very composed and poised, standing confidently – people who are proud of what they are doing. The images above also show how similar the deadly instruments are that our characters used, the large butcher knives. However, the two characters actual motives for murdering are completely different. The murderer in ‘Scream’ turns out to be two of the main characters from the film, just two teenage boys. One has his own vendetta against the movies protagonist, the other is just ‘tagging along’, but neither of them have any real reason to kill off all of the people they slay. This differs to our character, who is killing her pupils because of  the trouble and anguish they have caused her, thus she has quite a valid reason for committing the murders.

By making the murderer the central focus of the film, we did not intend to glorify murder or suggest it is in any way good, we merely wanted to show things from the murderers point of view. Or even, the teacher’s point of view. We wanted to portray how unfairly some teachers are treated and how one day; they might even go over the edge.

Evaluation Question One

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our thriller opening uses many of the same codes and conventions which real thriller openings use. We had a choice between shooting the opening of a horror movie, or a thriller movie.  We toyed with the idea of doing a horror opening; however I am far more interested in the thriller genre and so was my group member, Nafisat. Therefore it just made sense to do a thriller, as well as being easier to film than a horror. My group member and I each did our own individual research on all the different types of thriller movies and realised we had a broad selection of sub-genres to choose from. Our final product could be put into many of the sub-genres. I feel that ‘The Teacher’ is a crime/mystery/psychological thriller as a whole.

My group member and I took a long time deciding on the title of our movie, whilst we did not want to make the title too obvious, we wanted the audience to know the movie was a thriller. The main character of the movie is a teacher, so we eventually decided to make the title simple – ‘The Teacher’. We felt that, by having a short, snappy title, it would be both easy for an audience to remember, but also that it would have more of an impact. Alfred Hitchcock, the master of thrillers, did this quite regularly, some examples are ‘Psycho’ ‘Rebecca’ ‘Vertigo’. I gave out a questionnaire to ten people, and six of them agreed that the title ‘The Teacher ’was befitting of the ‘thriller’ genre. The other four people felt the title could apply to a different genre, for example comedy or drama, thus the title did not make it clear that our movie was a thriller. I took this into consideration and spoke to my group member; we both decided that in order for out movie to clearly be a thriller, we’d have to make a theatrical poster so as the genre was clear.

We decided to film most of our opening sequence in our college, not only because it was the easiest and most convenient place to shoot, but also because it just made sense as the title character of our movie was a teacher. We filmed in various areas of the college, starting off just outside of ‘H’ block and following our character as she eventually enters a classroom. We chose to film in this particular block because it was very brightly coloured, and we wanted to make a contrast between this and our other settings. For the latter part of our sequence, we filmed in ‘B’ block, this is because ‘B’ block has a colder, more metallic feel to it and we thought it would suit perfectly with the scenes. The ‘weaponry’ cutaway shots were filmed inside of my house; obviously we had to do this as we wanted to show knives, axes, hammers etc. Clearly we could not take these objects to college as it would have been dangerously unsafe, but also illegal. Therefore filming these shots inside of a house was a must.

Mise-en-scene plays a huge importance in all thriller movies, as it did in ours. I had to dress smart for our opening shots as I was playing a teacher, so I had to wear a blazer, shirt, skirt etc. I also had to wear my makeup in a more mature manner, so that I could actually pass for being older than 17. The props we used were also quite important in these early shots, for example when I enter the classroom and take out some notepads and a red pen, suggesting I’m about to mark some work. My co-star, Natacha, also had to dress the part and look like a student, which obviously was not hard for her as she was a student. For the latter scenes in the sequence, I had to dress in all black so that we could achieve the dark atmosphere we were going for, so I had to wear a hooded black jacket, black jeans and black shoes. The most important props for the sequence were, in my opinion, the weaponry laid out on the dining table. Without the cutaway shots to the knives etc, I don’t think there would have been as big a sense of tension and confusion for the audience. I laid the weapons out on newspaper purely because of the mess I was going to make using the watered down ketchup as blood, and I did not want them to stain the table. But I also felt that, since we were going to be using a black and white filter over these shots anyway, the black and white newspapers would merely act as a hardly noticeable prop in the background in comparison to the weapons.

We wanted to have a variety of different shots in our sequence to portray that we know all the different types. The first shots of our movie are quote slow and long, the cutaways are much quicker. As the sequence goes on, the shots get quicker and the movie has much more pace. We edited it this way on purpose, we wanted the audience to feel more and more tense as the sequence went on. Starting slow at the beginning suggests that something is coming, and we follow through on this, having the main event take place right at the end.

We chose to use quite regular font styles for our sequence, Tahoma, mostly because we had the credits running over our shots and didn’t want the audience to be distracted by obtrusive text instead of watching the sequence. I created our ‘logo’ in paint, as I felt it’d be easier to use paint rather than photoshop, which I have very little experience with. We used a red font for our logo so that it would stand out, and we used white coloured font for the rest of the credits, apart from our last credit which was the title itself. For this, we had white block capitals in Tahoma, but it had a black background instead of running over the shots.

Our movie would follow a teacher as she gradually descends into insanity, tired of her work and students. The opening presents us with this idea already, when her student comes in asking for help and our character suddenly gets very annoyed and slams her pen down on the table, exclaiming she cannot help the student with anything. Obviously, a normal teacher would never do this. Therefore we can easily say there is something wrong with this teacher – the constant cutting to knives etc suggests something is not right as well.

There are only two characters in our sequence, and it is clear who our main character is – I would say protagonist, but the person is not a ‘hero’. The main character is the young female, ‘the teacher’, who is given the most screen time – the edit. The secondary character is ‘the student’, who plays a very small part in the film, and is killed off very quickly. This is conventional to most thriller openings; they start off with a death.

Our thriller has quite short, quick cuts and we have included some black and white shots, we have done this partly so that those specific shots stand out, but also to pay homage to older thrillers, e.g ‘Pyscho’ directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film was made in 1960, and Hitchcock could have easily filmed it in colour, but he chose not to, and it gave the movie a very eerie effect – just as we wanted our film to have.

We had thoughts about doing a horror opening at first, but we decided to go with the thriller genre. Generally, a horror movie has to scare you quite early on. We knew this would be hard to achieve, and by doing a thriller we would not have this pressure. However, there are obviously typicalities that a thriller opening must have. It has to thrill the audience, make them wonder what is going to happen next and fill them with questions. I feel we achieved this in our opening thriller. We open with a shot in a dark room of an unknown person looking over the body of an unconscious, possibly dead, girl on the ground. We cut to a character walking and entering a classroom then. Already the audience are wondering ‘how are these two stories linked?’ All throughout the video we are cutting to shots of weapons, again making the audience question what they are seeing. Our last shot shows the same shot we showed at the beginning, but in reverse. This makes the audience aware that what they have just seen was a flashback. They are still filled with questions though, and we hoped that, by the end, they would realize that this hooded character is the teacher. However, that could just be their assumption – they haven’t been told this yet, so nothing is sure. This is what we feel the opening of a thriller should do; confuse and hook the audience.

The picture below shows 9 images which I feel sum up our opening sequence perfectly:

Evaluation Questions

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?

6. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

7. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Production Journal

18/1/2011: This was the first day we met as a group, during our two hour lesson we made a plan for our preliminary task then filmed it. One of our group members was not present, so we filmed the task with a classmate who's group members had already filmed theirs.

21/1/2011: In this two hour lesson, we logged and captured our preliminary task and spent the rest of the lesson familiaring ourselves with the editing software so that when we did edit, both for the preliminary task and for the real task, we'd find it easier.

25/1/2011: In this lesson we started editing our preliminary task, it took quite a while as we were still not yet properly acclamatised with the software.

26/1/2011: This was our evening session, in which we finished editing, added our final touches and uploaded the finished product of the preliminary task to the blog.

1/2/2011: On this day, I studied our preliminary task and took note of all the different shots we used, aswell as describing what is shown in them.

4/2/2011: In this lesson I wrote the treatment for the opening of our two minute thriller opening.

9/2/2011: On this day, I drew up the storyboards - nobody in the group was very good at art, but the rough storyboards combined with the shot list gave us a good idea of what we wanted to film.

11/2/2011: One of our group members was not present this day, but two of us decided to assign the roles and responsibilities this day - we had talked of what we had each wanted to do before so we knew it would not be unfair doing it without one of our group members.

23/2/2011: Before we came up with our final idea, we had various other thoughts on what to do. In this lesson, we made a brainstorm on 'bubbl.us' to illustrate the other story ideas we originally had.

4/3/2011: During this lesson we filled in the 'production brief' form, whilst I filled out our 'call sheet', 'props/resources list' and our production schedule, as we knew we had to film the following week.

8/3/2011: This was the first day of filming, we spent our two hour lesson filming our daytime shots in and around college.

9/3/2011: We continued to film in our 3 hour night session, shooting the "dark side" of our opening sequence.

10/3/2011: This day, I took the camera home and filmed the finishing shots which would have been impossible to film outside of a house. The shots involved weapons etc, obviously not appropriate to have been taken to college.

11/3/2011: As we had finished filming, we were able to log and capture our footage on the computer and were ready to start editing. The problems with editing are that we always have to use the same computer we captured our footage on, and sometimes that computer is not available as someone else is using it and so on. This proves to be a huge problem as we have a lot of work to do, and not much time, ideally we need to be editing in our daytime sessions aswell as evening sessions, but the editing suites are always booked out for other classes.

15/3/2011 - 25/3/2011: All of this time, we were editing our opening sequence. By the 25th we had finished our first draft, however we were not yet able to upload it to youtube and so will do this on Monday. However, we already know the changes we need to make and our second draft will be a lot shorter than our first, and more suited to the thriller genre.

28/3/2011: Uploaded our first draft of 'The Teacher' to youtube.


29/3/2011 - 5/4/2011: On the 5th April we had finished our final product, with a sountract, credits and the editing was finally complete. We uploaded our video to youtube, and for our remaining days worked on completing our 'Evaluation' questions.

5/4/2011 - 8/4/2011: Completing and uploading evaluation questions.

8/4/2011: This was the final deadline and everything was handed in on time.

Questionnaire Results

I asked 5 men and 5 women to fill in my questionnaire, all of varying ages.

4 people were between the ages of 15-24, 3 people aged 25-34, and another 3 who were 35+.

7 people who filled in the questionnaire did enjoy thriller movies; however 3 of the people did not.

6 people felt our title was befitting of a thriller movie, but 4 people did not. I asked them why, and all of them agreed that the title could have been a movie that could have fit into the comedy or drama genre, and thus the title did not make it clear that this was a thriller movie.

9 people expected the thriller to have twists. All 10 people expected to watch a thriller full of suspense. Surprisingly, only 8 people anticipated a thriller to have murders, and 9 people agreed there should be an antagonist in thrillers.

Nobody felt that our thriller was appropriate to show to young children, so nobody felt the certificate should be a 'U' or a 'PG'. The people I questioned also felt that the movie did not sound hardcore enough to be rated an '18'. 6 people felt that the movie would best be suited to a '12a' certificate, but 4 others disagreed, saying a '15' would be better suited as the movie sounded quite gorey.

The most popular thriller sub-genre among our 10 people proved to be the mystery thriller. They said that in any thriller they watched, they wanted there to be mystery and suspense. 2 people found supernatural thrillers to be their favourite sub-genre, saying that they liked the hint of horror. The others liked; crime thrillers, disaster thrillers, erotic thrillers, psychological thrillers and rape/revenge thrillers - each of these sub-genres had one like each.

At the end of the questionnaire I enquired as to whether the people liked the premise of our movie. 7 people said yes, 3 people said no. However, I don't take the 'no' answers to heart, as I asked at the beginning who enjoyed thrillers and who did not - 3 people said they did not enjoy thrillers, and they were the same people who did not like the premise of the movie.

After doing my questionnaire, I feel that I have gotten more insight into what audiences expect from a thriller movie, and what they like to see. With this discovery I hope to make my thriller movie as high a standard and as realistic as it can be.

Audience Research - Thriller Questionnaire