The document provides feedback on Amy Hindmarch's thriller opening titled "The Game". It includes feedback from audiences of different age groups who found the opening intriguing and wanted to know more about what happened. Some felt it was professionally made while others thought the typography could be improved. Amy Hindmarch also learned new skills in editing and camerawork from creating this product.

1. Evaluation
Amy Hindmarch
The GAME

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Before beginning this task I looked at a variation of thriller texts and analysed Whilst creating the finished product 'The Game', we
their use of camera, editing, sound and Mise en scene. This allowed me to have used, developed and challenged traditional forms
correctly identify the generic conventions seen in particular sub-genres. and conventions of real media products. For example,
we have used one typical convention of a thriller with
the extending lines and letters in the ‘Catch me if you
can’ title sequence. We incorporated these lines into
our own title sequence to give the effect of a real
thriller opening.
As well as this key feature of editing, whilst researching crime thriller, we found that the colours red, white and black were commonly
used throughout other title sequences as these colours connote death, mystery and evil. We however wanted to challenge these
conventions. As you can see, we still used the common white writing seen in ‘The Departed’ but however changed the background to
blue . Using the colour blue in our title sequence will fit with the theme and story of our thriller and represent a blue print.
Our thriller incorporates generic conventions of other crime thrillers. For
example, our thriller follows the narrative sequence of other real crime
thrillers such as ‘Goodfellas’ where there is a short piece of film, then the title
sequence and then the rest of the film. This helped our audience to know and
understand straight away that it was a crime thriller as apposed to another
sub-genre.
c

3. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
In other real media products such as ‘Sin City’ an establishing Close up’s of key items/props have also been used in many
shot has been used to indicate to the audience where the other crime thrillers. Because of this, we decided to
characters are. We used an establishing shot before the MI5 incorporate close ups in our opening. In the film ‘Goodfellas’
scene (See: 1:22) A close up of the gun has been shown. In our opening, we
showed a close up of the box of money (See: 0:42)
Our MI5 scene Sin City Close up’s of main characters faces have also been used in
other crime thrillers, for example in ‘The Departed’.
During our opening we have tried to challenge the Therefore, we used a close up of the police officer in the MI5
conventions of a typical crime thriller. For example, other real sequence (See: 1:36)
crime thrillers such as ‘Sin City’ often used low key lighting to
connote a sinister and dark mood. We purposefully filmed the
outside scenes in broad daylight to challenge other crime
thrillers and to connote a brighter atmosphere that juxtaposed
the storyline. (See: 0:05)
The use of conventions such as the close ups of main characters and key
props show the audience that it is a crime thriller as opposed to another sub
genre such as horror thriller. However, by us challenging previous real
media products through lighting, the audience may become confused of
what sub genre of thriller it is.
The real media examples that have had the most influence on our finished
product are ‘Catch me if you can’ – title sequence (See: 0:43), ‘Goodfellas’ –
Our outdoor scene Sin City outdoor scene sequencing and ‘Sin City’ – Establishing Shots (See: 1:22)

4. How does your media product represent particular social
groups?
Throughout our text we focused on the representation of our Gender is also represented in a stereotypical way with
main characters in relation to class, race and gender. Hugo (male) being the dominant character and the police
office (female) being the passive character. As well as
Hugo Grant (The antagonist) is a young man and due to the fact Hugo being the main character, he has been represented
he is attempting to commit a crime, this could fit the typical as being the dominant character through a variety of
stereotype of young people and portray young people in a camera angles. For example the low angle shot makes him
negative light. seem bigger and more important.
In contrast to this, we have also purposefully presented
At the beginning of our opening, the scene is set at a large manor the female police officer as being on the same level and
house (See: 0:03) which connotes wealth and upper class. This relatable to the audience through the camera being
is a binary opposition to the two men dressed in all black positioned at eye level.
running out from behind it, this is because black connotes a
lower class. This diverse range in representation of classes will
attract a wider range of audiences which I feel is important to
our text.
As well as the antagonist being represented as middle class due The women in our opening have been portrayed as being
to the all black attire he is seen in, He is also seen to be wearing strong and powerful. This has been shown through the
a purple shirt in the outdoor inter cutting café scene. Purple protagonist female character having a high status and
connotes royalty, wealth and upper class which combined with powerful job.
his previous dress would present him as upper class. However The female is wearing a black suit (See 1:31). Black connotes
due to his previous actions of running out from behind the power, elegance and formality. This challenges the stereotype
building, the audience as forced to see him as middle class. that women should not have as important and high status jobs
as men.
One piece of audience feedback stated in
response to the question 'Do you think
the representation of characters was
accurate? If no, why?' - 'No, Female was
in a position of power which is un-
convential for a film'.

5. What kind of media institution might distribute your media
product and why?
Men in black suits
connotes upper class, Dream Works
business and wealth. This
could suggest that the ‘Catch me if you can’ is a crime thriller
character has an important produced by the media institution ‘Dream
or perhaps secretive job Works’.
such as with the MI5, like ‘Catch me if you can’ is ‘A true story about
in ‘The Game’. Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th
birthday, successfully conned millions of
dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot,
doctor, and legal prosecutor’ (IMDb).
The white minimalistic As ‘Catch me if you can’ is a crime thriller and
background symbolises follows a similar narrative sequence of an
the fact of mystery about antagonist possessing money that was not
the film and does not give strictly theirs to ‘The Game’, it is likely that
anything away about the the audiences that enjoyed and watched it
plot. will be interested in watching ‘The Game’.
‘Dream Works’ is also heavily dominated by
animations which evidently we have in our
The idea of a true story opening during the title sequence. This is
creates a more relatable another reason why I feel that ‘Dream Works’
The hat signifies that he works for a sequence for the audience will be interested in producing our work as it
cruise liner or ship connoting travel. as if everything they are is again, similar to previous work they have
The arrows and the film title work watching is true, they will produced.
parallel to the connotations of the find it easier to relate to
hat signifying moving forward and a it.
sense of adventure.

6. What kind of media institution might distribute your media
product and why?
The only character in shot
Universal
which represents a male ‘Universal Studios’ is one of the “Six major
lead, similar to ‘The Game’. American movie studios” and is one of the
longest –living Hollywood studios around today.
The institution has experience producing and
distributing many other sub genre films such as
Again, the clothing he is ‘Love Actually ‘ and ‘Winchester 73’ meaning
wearing is similar to that of that they may be best to produce and distribute
Hugo Grant in ‘The Game’. our opening.
This shows a similarity ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’ is an Action Thriller
between characters. produced by the media institution ‘Universal’.
‘The Bourne Ultimatum’s’ plot summary is
‘Jason Bourne dodges a ruthless CIA official
and his agents from a new assassination
The gun signifies crime and program while searching for the origins of his
danger but also connotes life as a trained killer’ (IMDb). This is similar to
action and perhaps a fight that of ‘The Game’s’ plot summary as in ‘The
scene. Game’ Hugo Grant is trying to run away from
MI5 whereas in ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’, Jason
Bourne is trying to escape from the CIA.
Due to the similarity in plot, Universal studios
Similar to ‘The Game’, the colours blue and white have been used may be a good institution to distribute our
within the text. This signifies a link between both films meaning that product. However, they have not got as much
‘Universal Studios’ may be the best institution to produce and experience of distributing and targeting crime
distribute our product despite the lack in experience with crime thrillers as Dream Works.
thrillers.

7. What kind of media institution might distribute your media
product and why?
I believe that our product does have the potential to be produced by the a major Hollywood title such as ‘Dream Works’. This is
because I feel that the narrative structure of our film has real potential to be developed and altered so that ‘The Game’ can be
distributed to cinemas.
I feel that ‘The Game’ will be best suited to the distribution of a cinema as apposed to online etc. as this way it has the potential
for a bigger and wider range of audiences, meaning that ‘Dream Works’ will then have the potential to make more money.
Our product will also work well as it is not a traditional crime thriller film sue to the conventions we have challenged such as the
lighting aspect. This may make more people want to watch the film in the cinema rather than a traditional thriller which often
has something scary or frightening within it.
I also believe that the mise en scene works well with our product and within the crime thriller genre. This is because we have
used typical conventions of a crime thriller such as money however we have not used them in a typical crime thriller setting
which would be in a dark alley way or such like.
After researching a number of different media institutions I have come to the conclusion that our film ‘The Game’ will be best
suited to be produced and distributed by ‘Dream Works’ as opposed to ‘Universal Studios’. This is because I feel that ‘Dream
Works’ have far more experience in producing and distributing crime thrillers meaning that they will be able to target the right
audience and make the best sellable product out of our film that could have a future for publicity or merchandising.

8. Who would be the audience for your media
product?
Before creating our Thriller opening, we decided to
carry out research into the ‘bbfc’ about what we could
and couldn’t include in our opening depending on the
age category we chose. We also decided to carry out a
survey to help decide on the sub genre and help
16-20
towards deciding on the age category of our film.
Overall we decided on an age range of 16-20 and a
‘bbfc’ rating of ‘15’.
Many other crime thrillers such as The Bourne
Ultimatum have this age group as their target audience
and we feel that this age group would enjoy our film
the most.
If we had decided to classify the game as an ‘18’ film,
we would lose the majority of our viewers as they
would not legally be able to watch it in the cinema or
buy it on DVD.
Due to the fact we have developed and challenged generic
Through our preliminary survey, we also found out that our
conventions of typical crime thrillers, this widens our audience
target gender would be male. This is because out of the
range and may make our film more relatable or enjoyable for a mass
people we asked that would be interested in our film, the
market.
majority were male.
However, due to the content of parts of our opening, younger
Through other secondary research, we found that the
viewers may not be engaged by the long narrative and the plot may
leading target audience gender throughout previous real
be too complex for them to comprehend. This limits our audience
media crime thrillers such as ‘The Departed’ were also male
viewing slightly but however does not affect our target audience.
which helped reinforce our decision.

9. How did you attract/address your
audience?
During the research process, we developed As our target audience gender was male, we decided
questionnaires to gain knowledge of our audiences to make our main character male. This gave the
interests; from this we learned that the majority of majority of the audience a chance to relate to the
people enjoyed crime thrillers. At the end of our project main character due to their similarity in gender.
we all posted our final piece on Facebook and Twitter
along with our survey to gain feedback on what went The alarm sound going off outside the manor house
well and what did not. could shock some viewers as there is a large
contrast between the quiet viewing of the house and
Although this strategy worked well, I feel as though our the loud alarm sound.
audience feedback process could have been improved
due to the people being targeted for feedback were all During the opening, we used a variety of camera
around the same age meaning that we did not receive as angles to help the audience put themselves in the
wide a range of feedback that we had hoped for. position of the main character. For example, at
00:40 the audience sees a close up of the box of
Our attempts to attract our audience could have also money which is exactly what the main character is
been improved as during the research process we seeing. This again, allowed the audience to relate to
focused more on the genre and not so much on finding the character more.
our target audience. This could have been resolved by
more people carrying out our preliminary
Close up of
questionnaires allowing for a wider range of results and
money
it would have meant that we could have improved the
outcome of our final piece basing it around the
improved target audience.

10. Target Audience Feedback
In order to evaluate our finished product, it was important to gain as much feedback as possible from the widest range of
people possible. As part of the evaluation process, we posted our product on YouTube and sent out a link to the video and our
survey on both Facebook and Twitter. We then got as many people as possible to watch our thriller through verbal
communication and through e-mails. After people had watched our thriller, they left comments and/or filled out our survey.
These included:
• Age 41+:
‘It lulled me into a false sense of security. lovely sunny day, beautiful house, then wham, the alarm goes off, straight
into the action of two men running...exciting...why are they running....’
‘Intriguing; I wanted to find out what happened? What was the robbery? Of what? By whom? Good guy or bad guy...
And then I was told some of this by the MI5 sequence’
‘Very clean, simple and professional’
‘It left me wanting more’

11. Target Audience Feedback
• Age 16-20:
‘I loved the animation and think the concept of 'The Game' is really good and grabs the audiences
attention from the very beginning’
‘Very professional’
• Age 11-15:
‘It makes you wonder if MI5 are going to catch this villain and how’
The feedback we received from the survey was very complimentary, a lot of people found that the
juxtaposition between the quiet beginning and the alarm sound going off worked well with our
crime thriller genre. Many people also really enjoyed our title sequence due to the quick animation
and moving words. Nevertheless, we also received some criticisms of our work which we can build
upon and use to help us to improve in the future. They included:
Do you feel the font and typography was appropriate to the opening?
‘No, Too basic for a film’
‘No, the colours could be more darker’

12. What have you learnt about technologies from the process of
constructing this product?
Throughout the process of preparing and creating our
thriller opening, I learned new abilities such as a variation For editing our opening we used a programme called
of editing skills and how to use the camera effectively. This Premier Pro. This is a large piece of software that is
was a vivid change from our continuity task where these extremely useful when wanting to edit large pieces of
skills were not present so simple mistakes were made such footage.
as the camera moving or jolting on what was supposed to
be a still shot. I was not the main editor so therefore did not use
Premier Pro as much as other members of the group
however particular effects and tools that we found
useful were the split tool as it allowed us to quickly cut
and edit our footage when and where we wanted it.
Also the lighting effect was extremely useful as it
allowed us to change the lighting (high/low key) in
different situations to either fit the mood or previous
The camera equipment we used included an SLR camera shots. For example during the MI5 scene, we had to
and a SONY recording camera. tamper with the lighting as the lighting was different
One strength about using the SONY camera was that is was during re-shoots and to keep continuity, we had to
extremely easy to operate meaning that on shoots, we could make it the same.
easily reflect and improve upon previous footage without
any inconveniences. This feature was especially important
to me as I was the cinematographer.
One weakness of using the SONY camera was that after
moving it, the lens would take a while to re-focus meaning
that especially during panning shots, it was hard to quickly
pan and then re focus the camera.
Before Editing After Editing

13. Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you
have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Through the progression from creating the continuity task to I have also learned the importance of storyboarding. Due
creating our full media product, I can see the vast progression to the lack of time available to complete our continuity
made in members of my group. I feel all of our editing and task in, we were unable to storyboard our narrative
camera work skills have improved tremendously meaning that sequence as much as we had liked to. In the end this did
our product will be the best it can be. not have a huge effect on our finished product however if
we had not storyboarded as intensely for our opening, it
Since the preliminary continuity task, I have learned the may have has a bigger effect of the finished product.
importance of research and planning. We only had limited time
for research and planning during our continuity task which One dilemma we faced during the planning stage of our
reinforced to us the extent of research and planning that needed opening was that we had storyboarded our opening 30
to be done. This meant that when it came to creating our seconds short of what it needed to be. This meant that we
opening, we were able to leave enough time for extensive had to re storyboard and extra 30 seconds onto our
research and planning. opening. This problem reinforced to use the importance
of a storyboard as we could then refer back to it whilst re
One of our strengths during this projects was our shooting storyboarding a new sequence and it also made us realise
schedule and keeping to it. Our shot list was also extremely that without a storyboard, we would have just gone
ahead and created our opening and realised that we were
useful as it related directly to the storyboard but would not have
30 seconds short after it was too late!
been successful if we did not follow it one hundred percent
which we did.
When looking back at the preliminary task, we did not use a
huge variety of shots. This limited us to the effect our product
could have on the audience. We changed and improved on this
aspect when creating our opening as we used a variety of shots
including close ups, long shots, tracking and panning shots,
along with high an low angle shots.