section 12. evaluation ...KINDRED

Media Assignment
Thriller intro analysis

Mike Leah





We had to make an intro to a thriller film, we had to make it interesting and mysterious so that a viewer would want to watch more and it had to give hints as to what the film was about but without giving the plot away. The introduction had to be about 2 minutes long.

In my group we came up with the film idea for kindred, which is about a troubled girl who is trying to find the killer of her mother, her father is a suspicious character and is a main suspect but the twist is that she is the killer and he is trying to make sure she doesn’t find out.

As a group we decided that we wanted to try and break typical thriller film codes and conventions ( such as those dictated by C.K. Chesterton) , typically in thrillers there is a hero and a villain of some kind, the villains are usually middle – aged to old men and the victims are often young women. We decided to use a young female villain, she is the main character so she is also viewed as the hero character which makes it confusing and interesting.

Also, we wanted there it to be mysterious so that the viewers could feel involved in the movie, much like in a police/ detective like thriller, the audience should be able to put together the puzzle and think about who they think the killer is. This is why we wanted a shock twist at the end of the film.

Our introduction consists of an establishing shot of the girls house, we zoom into a candle in a window and then zoom out on the other side of the window to take us inside the house. This is where the audience are introduced to the girl who is cutting up newspapers and obviously looking for something, this raises the question “ what is she looking for?” and then her father comes home, when he enters the house the music changes and she starts hiding the newspapers and gets into bed, so the audience thinks that she is scared of him.

We had a young female character as the main character, she is looking down and looks un easy, the camera is looking down at her at first so already there are connotations that she is a weak character, the male character is big and tough looking and when he is going up the stairs the camera is just looking at his feet which makes him seem really powerful.

We got allot of positive feedback from our class when they watched it.
One viewer said they liked the newspaper scene, it was interesting and they wanted to know what the girl was looking for. We had other comments such as;

. It was a convincing performance from the actress/ actor.
There was no speech in the intro, which made both characters really suspicious and interesting, the audience were able to come to their own conclusions as to what kind of lives the characters lived.

. the editing was good and helped to create convincing characters.

. someone liked it when it was flicking from character to character, with the same music, it showed that it was happening at the same time and there was a “sound bridge”.
We chose eerie and tense music when the male character was introduced, this is a non diagetic sound ( the characters couldn’t hear it ) but we kept the same music to show that both of them are connected, also the female character starts covering her tracks when the male enters the house so the audience are wondering what is going on.

. the bedroom which the girl was in was convincing and helped viewers to see a little more about the characters personality which helped them to be seen as a person.
We had a strange room, with a mattress for a bed. This makes the audience wonder if the girl is being mistreated.

. someone liked the way we zoomed into a candle and used that to pass through the window, it was spooky and helped to create an atmosphere.
We wanted a way of making the establishing shot go into the house but without just flicking into it, we decided that focusing on an item inside, and then zooming in, we would be able to pass into the house in an interesting but strange way. Also, the candle contrasts with the darkness (because it was night time) and it makes the atmosphere mysterious before the audience has seen a character.

. our choice of music was intense and created a scary atmosphere.
The music was very intense, we wanted it to help reach a climax and get the audience’s hearts going and have them on the edge of their seats. We wanted to do this because nothing bad was happening but it makes them believe that something bad is happening.

. someone wasn’t sure who the dad was an thought he was going to hurt the girl.
We chose an intimidating looking male character to make him more suspicious and make the audience have a villain character. We did this because he is the “good guy” in the film and we wanted to break codes and conventions.

. a few people said that they liked our graphics, with the title in bold and credits in italics, there was a good contrast.

Because we wanted to break conventions, we also wanted to represent social groups differently, in the past impartially men are generally shown as more powerful that women but we are using a female character for the main character and she is the hero and the villain, so she is the most important character in our film. The man is shown as the bad guy and she suspects mainly males of killing her mother. So our film represents women as the more powerful genre, in terms of social class, we haven’t really shown any difference, they are all middle working class characters. This helps the audience to associate with the characters and feel more involved in the film even more.

I think that if our film was to be fully made and released, it would fit into the thriller genre because it draws in the viewers quickly, and makes them involved and “ keeps them on the edge of their seats”. It is not gorey or violent and not particularly scary so it wont be classed as a horror.


Our thriller would be aimed at people who like thriller films …
We did audience research which is shown below.


We found in our results the following data:
How old are you ?
15 or under 0%
16 -60%
17 -20%
18 -20%
19 -0%
20 -0%

Gender?
Male -50%
Female -50%

How often do you go to the cinema or watch a film on average?
Never -0%
Once -50%
Twice -30%
Once a week -20%
Everyday -0%
Most days -0%

How do you define the thriller genre?
Smart, scary and action -50%
Psychological, suspenseful and clever plots- 30%
Cheesy- 20%

Do you like thrillers?
Yes -70%
No -30%

What do you think makes a good thriller?
Plot -60%
Empathy -10%
Fire -10%
Violence action -20%

Gory or psychological?
Gory -10%
Psychological -90%

In your opinion what is the difference between a certificate 18 and a certificate 15?
More sex, violence and gore -100%

Which do you prefer?
15- 60%
18- 40%

In conclusion, we have decided from these results that we will be doing a psychological thriller with a certificate of 15. We believe that as people watch thriller for the psychological aspect of the film, the film will not have to be an 18.




To attract the audience we had to make the intro interesting but without giving too much of the plot away.

The technology we used for making the movie was the cameras and the software on the computers “ premier pro” we used http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ to get our sounds/ music from.
The technology helped us allot, because it allowed us to non-linear edit, so we could move bits around easily and add stuff in without having to re record over everything we already had. It was allot quicker on the programme, because all we had to do was import the footage off the camera and edit it to create the film. We had the choice to add effects and sounds to help create the atmosphere we wanted, we could speed up or slow down footage.

With the technology we were able to add credits and a title, which can help to set the theme, and we were able to time our credits with the music and/or the visual to make it seem more professional.


Comparing this task to my preliminary task, I would say that I have learned that it is the little/ simple tings shown off correctly that make an effective piece of film.

In the preliminary, we tried to make it funny, with a bin hitting the characters head. We focused on that and although I thought we did a good job, the finished product didn’t view too well. We had rushed on the filming and the editing, we didn’t master match on action.

In this film I think that we focused on the overall film, and tried to make sure that every second was as near to perfect as we could get it, we filmed each section of the film a few times and picked out the best one for the final film. We made sure that we used match on action when the character was walking and we followed the 180 degree rule. I have learned that you don’t need to go crazy with effects and images to create a convincing experience, if you have good actors/ actresses, you edit it well and find suitable sounds and music you can create an effective atmosphere.