Evaluation: Question 7

Looking back at your preliminary task what do you feel you have learned in the progression from it to the product?

Evaluation: Question 6

What have you learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation: Question 5

How did you attract and address the audience?

Evaluation: Question 4

Who would be the audience to your media product and why?

Evaluation: Question 3

What kind of media institution might have distributed your media product and why?

Evaluation: Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Evaluation: Question 1

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

Final cut

Rough cut

Our rough cut was primarily for us to gage an idea of what we wanted our final cut to look like. We added the clips which we had decided we wanted to be involved in our final cut, so that we were able to see what they would look like when moving into each different section.When doing this, we came across different problems and realised there was a lot that needed to be changed. For example, We had originally started our piece by showing the antagonist playing with underwear. However we realised that by starting with the antagonist it ruins the aspect of suspense. we then changed the starting shot to photo board of the victim, this was establishing who the antagonist was targeting.

Originally each credit was placed one after the other with no cuts or other clips in-between, however in our feedback we were told that it seemed long winded and dragged. so we decided to change this feature to having each separate credit spaced within the opening, with short shots of action.

In our rough cut, we had originally planned to not put any effects onto our clips. We thought the natural lighting from the street lamp worked well with the piece, however after audience feedback and watching certain thrillers, such as 'Memento', we thought that by having the black and white effect on every clip, created an eerie atmosphere. We also did it to give the sense of a flashback, which is a popular convention of a thriller, causing the audience confusing and un-certainty to begin with.




Originally, we had featured a flashback from sixth months earlier, with 3 friends meeting up.






However, our audience feedback mentioned that our opening was effective enough, without having to go into more detail with the friends.








Because of this we decided to take out the section of them all meeting, and instead changed it to just a message coming through on a phone, whilst "6 months earlier" flew across the bottom of the screen, fading into black.

Popular thrillers and how they've changed over the years

Over the past 60 years the thriller genre has changed and adapted to new generations.

In the past thriller genres were more about the psychological effect they would leave on the audience. Gore and violence wasnt as popular back then as it has become in recent years. Looking back at old thrillers, for example Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho', the violence and gore is of poor quality and there is little of it.

However, compare that to a more recent thriller, for example 'Taken', and you see how much gore and violence has become relied on to make an effective thriller. Nowadays, thrillers rely on a mixture of violence and psychological suspense to create a thriller which will entice the audience and keep them on the edge of their seats.

The most popular thrillers in the past were those of Alfred Hitchcock's creation. The most popular and historic thriller is his work on 'Psycho'. In its time it was one of the scariest thrillers out, creating a whole new opening to a genre of thriller. 'Psycho' features one of the most well known scenes in all cinematic history, 'The Shower Scene'. In this single scene there were 77 different camera angles used and 50 cuts, this was due to the lack of  editing technology at the time. It required all of this to allow it to seem more realistic and threatening.









However, as years went on, thriller films developed along with the technology to allow them to progress. Better technology allowed films to involve more realistic gory and violent scenes. Wes Craven's popular 1990's film series 'Scream' is the perfect example. It became a big hit all over the US and UK, mainly due to the fact that the graphics and horror suspense of the thriller film was increased than any seen before.

What is included in titles

We presented our titles by having our actor, playing the stalker, write them onto pieces of paper, and then tear them off and place them onto the pinboard around the photos of the girl. We felt this was more effective than editing them in, as it became part of the action. We showed the actor doing this throughout the film, cutting them into short bits and having them fade in during different parts of action e.g. once the camera had shown the pinboard of the girl at the beginning, we showed the rapist writing the titles, we did this to show that he was behind the making of the pinboard.

Our titles included:
Film company- Paramount pictures
Directors- Megan Leask-Walters and Martha Hardy
Actors- Martha Hardy, Joe Lever, Roisin Pelosi
Film title- The unknown

Discussion of names for our film

We decided to name our film 'The unknown', however it wasnt an easy decision. Whilst we watched our film back, we decided to write down words that came to mind whilst watching it, some of those being; dark, hidden, untold, concealed, secret and unrevealed. However we still werent quite satisfied with any of these ideas, so finally settled with 'The unknown'.
There is a famous film called Unknown staring Liam Neeson. The storyline is completely different to our thriller. It uses the word 'Unknown' in a different term. This film uses it more in the sense of confusion for a character were as we used the word 'Unknown' as the sense of the audience not knowing.

We thought this was a suitable name for our thriller film as one of the main themes throughout was the hidden identity of the antagonist.

Before deciding what we was going to call our film we thought of the name

Target audience

Our target audience was aimed at around 15 year old and upwards.

 Our decision on this was based on our personal opinions of the storyline and to which age bracket it would be most appropriate and would be recognised as being a serious subject, which would be likely to go unnoticed by younger children.
Another reason for not having a lower age rating is due to the fact that the storyline of a stalker could potentially make younger children paranoid about such things, so we decided it would be best for us not to lower the target audience.

Age rating

Whilst deciding what age rating our film was, we looked into the BBFC age limits, and what each age bracket consisted of. Before we looked into the BBFC age ratings, we had discussed making it an 18 rating, however we soon changed it to a 15 after realising our content matched the age 15 restrictions, and was more appropriate than being in the 18 bracket. This is because in our film, there is no actual shots of sexual activity or nudity, however it was implied through sounds and the dominating acting shown by a male figure. Whereas an 18 rating would include many more graphic shots.


Most thriller films are aged between 15 to 18. They aren't always suitable for people under this age range. Deciding whether its a 15 or a 18 normally depends on the amount of violence that is shown in the film and the graphicness of the violence. For example The Departed isn't suitable for children however it doesn't have too much graphical violence in whereas another thriller film for example Se7en is a 18. This is because of the amount of gore and violence shown.