Thriller Audiences

Audiences of Thriller in my opinion can be debated. Age restrictions minus out a child audience of Thrillers. However, the target audience for Thriller would be aimed at 16-25 year olds, as the majority of people who watch Thrillers are sudents. However, adults also enjoy watching Thrillers.

A Male audience is more likey to be attracted to a thriller film because of the action and crimes in them. However, some Thrillers attract a Female audience too due to the casting roles. If a role model for woman was cast in a thriller, this would attract more woman to watch the film. Some Thrillers can involve both sexual scenes and forbidden romance, which attracts both females and males. However, as a whole, the target audience for a Thriller movie is in fact men in between the ages of 16 to 25 years.

UK Cinemagoing By Genre in 2009.

Here are the figures for the suspense films released in the UK in 2009.

Above shows the income of suspense/thriller films that were made in 2009. It shows that only 4% of the films were the years box office. Which is a very small number compared to how many comedy's are successful at box office.

Definitions of Suspense

My definition od suspense is a mixture between enjoyable tension and anxiety. It can be seen as being in a state or condiion of being unsure or in doubt of something. However, referring back to Thriller, it can be described as enjoyable tension becasue it is a feeling of tense excitement about how a novel or film may end. Suspense in my opinion can also relate to anxiety as it builds up intense worry about something. In my group we watched a clip to jaws and it related back to how suspense is created. In jaws, the most known thing for this film is the soundtrack music of when the shark is about to attack. The sound is slower at first, however, when the sharks moves closer to it's victim, the music starts to speed up, relating back to suspense building up. The editing of Jaws was good and realistic, as the shots filmed abover water were how a day would normally be at a beach. However, under water the sea flow is normal, but shows that something is down there. Whereas, the people on the beach are oblivious to what is going to happen. The editing of clips and sound to match the clips were very effective and gives me a great understanding of how suspense is supposed to be represented as.

Introduction to Camera's: Skills

In class we were introduced to the camera's we would be filming with and th skills we would need to know to help us with filming. We were firstly introduced to the rules and regulations regarding the use with the camera's. The camera's cost £3000, so it is important to know the uses of them so we don't break them. The buttons on the JVC were shown to us by the technician Micky. With the camera comes a battery, memory stick, Tripod and an umbrella if needed, depending on the weather. When were finished using the camera's the memory stick needs to be taken out of the camera and handed in to the technicians office to put safely into a draw. This avoids comfusions and mix ups with students work.

The Tripod is the three legged stand that holds the camera securely. By using this, shots come out more proffessional, as they are not handheld. It has a red button on it that clicks the camera into place when the camera is fitted on to it. You can also shoot shots such as extreme close ups, close ups, long shots and extreme long shots, two shots, Bird's eye view shots, low angle shots, over the shoulder and tracking. These techniques help to explore every angle of a clip and it's situation.



A Tripod





 



This is a similar JVC to the one we are using.

Introduction to Editing skills

As part of my A-level media editing, the class was introduced to the software Final Cut Pro. This software is purely used for editing flms. Final cut teachers you to shorten clips, either make the clips slower or speed them up and to add special effects. This helps to make your film look more proffessional and fresh. By using Final Cut, you have to upload your clips on to the desktopfrom the hard driven and save it on to there. You then save it in to a folder and move the clips from this folder into Final Cut. By doing this it makes it easier to edit and as your clips you shot are automatically in the order they were flmed in, makes it more fun and interesting to edit on Fibnal Cut Pro.

Some effects used on Final Cut are cross fade, dissolve and Desaturate.


A screen Grab of how Final Cut Pro looks like.



Thriller Sub Genre's

Typer Of Thrillers (Sub Genre's)

• Conspiracy
• Crime
• Disaster
• Erotic
• Legal
• Medial
• Mystery
• Political
• Psychological
• Religious
• Supernatural
• Techno

The main Thriller sub genre that inspires me is Psychological. This is because i feel they make good movie genre's. This is because they are realistic enough to actually happen. Many people do have psychological problems, so their actions that come with this are real. For example, someone who was abandoned at a young age with no where to go can grow up having psychological problems due to their hard and bad past. Therefore, the twisted things that this may lead to can be real. This is why Psycholical Thrillers best suit and inspire me the most.

Examples of Psychological Thrillers are: 'The Cell'

And 'Premonition'



Thriller Audiences- Who watches thrillers?

1. How many suspense films were released in 2009? How many films were released altogether last year?

In 2009, out of 503 films released, only 31 were thrillers.

2. Action, animation and comedy account for 52% of Box Office in the UK in 2009. Why do you think these genres are so popular?

Mainly because it is children and teenagers that go to watch these movies, and when you look at the figures for thriller movies you can see the huge difference. This is primarily down to age restrictions on thriller films. 

 3. Why do you think Thrillers account fro quite a low proportion of UK Box Office takings (4% in 2009)?

Primarily due to age restrictions. 

 4. Looking at the 'genre by gender' diagram above, what information can be derived about Thriller audiences and gender?

 Thriller is seen as a more male genre due to the inclusion of action and crime in them, however, they do also include suspense, which by what the diagram tells us is more a female than a male thing to go and watch.

Animatic, Match Cut and 180° Rule.

In one of our lessons I few weeks ago we were asked to create an animatic storyboard (using jelly) babies to act as a preliminary exercise before we actually started making our thriller piece. Whilst doing this we learnt what a Match-Cut & 180° Rule were.

A Match-Cut is a transition that involves a direct cut from one shot to another, which "matches" it in action, subject matter, or actual composition. This kind of transition is commonly used to follow a character as s/he moves or appears to move continuously.

The 180° rule is a basic guideline in film making that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.

Questions and answers from Documentary on Film Openings

In this task we had to watch a documentary as a class about film openings. The documentary gave me a good insight into the mind of a director and what inspires/ influences them when they are making a film opening. We were given a set of questions to answer while we watched it.

1) What does Thomas Sutcliffe mean when he says "Films need to seduce their audience into long term commitment? While there are many types of seduction , the temptation to go for an instant arousal is almost irresistible".

What Thomas Sutcliffe means is that they need to find a way of interesting their audience without giving away too much about the movie; in other words, sort of tease the viewer so that they are more tempted and so that they are even more likely to carry on watching the film.

2) According to director Jean Jacques Beineix , what are the risks of 'instant arousal'?

What I think he is trying to say is that the opening of movies are meant to start of slowly building up to something big or a climax. The consequences of a director choosing not to follow this tradition in that the viewer might feel disappointed because the movie doesn’t live up to the expectations of that in the opening sequence.

3) Explain why "a good beginning must make the audience feel that it doesn't know nearly enough yet, and at the same time make sure that it doesn't know too little.

This is important because if the audience feels like they know too much already, they might think that there’s nothing else to look forwards to. Whereas if the audience know just about enough it helps restore the balance of suspense seen as they don’t yet know everything so there are still things for them to look forward to finding out about.    

4) What does critic Stanley Kauffmann describe as the classic opening?

Stanley Kauffmann describes the classic opening that the film began with an establishing shot , then a close up of a building and of the camera going up the building to a window, then in the window taking us through some of the main characters and giving us an insight to what each character is like e.g. personality wise. To do this the director uses MES to his advantage. For example if the character being show is very playful and the joker of the work place the camera might get a few close-up’s of some of the things on the desk i.e. some office toys.

5) Why is Kyle Cooper's title sequence to the film Seven so effective?In my opinion I believe that it was designed to tune in and wake the audience up and get them ready for what’s going to happen, the title sequence introduce the audience to the character and the psychotic feel to the movie becoming the first scene of the movie. The title sequence was so effective it has influenced many movies even up until today. Some even say that Cooper was ahead of he’s time, in terms of the way he saw things and he's mentality.   

6) What did Orson Welles want to achieve with his opening to the film A Touch Of Evil? What did Universal Studios do to it? Why?

I believe that he wanted to create an opening sequence with a evil side; which in turn would create tension, without credits wanting to throw the audience straight into the story. However Universal Studios put the credits and title music losing the effect that Welles wanted to achieve.

7) What is meant by "a favourite trick of Film Noir"? What is the trick?
The trick is that the film starts with the end, then throughout the rest of the  film we are shown how a character got to that particular event which we were shown at the beginning.

8) How does the opening to the film The Shining create suspense?
The opening of The Shining creates suspense as a view of a helicopter shot of the camera fixed on that object pursuing the car like a predator suggesting that evil is upon this in the car.

Final preliminary piece