Group - Target Audience

Target Audience Profile

• Over the age of 15


• Male and female


• Working class


• Enjoys films of the thriller genre.


• Prefers Arthouse films but is happy to engage in mainstream cinema

What audience research would be appropriate?

We have the possibilities to either do a questionnaire about our film when we show it to the general public, or we can do 'interviews' after the viewing of our piece. We have chosen to do 'interviews' as we feel that this will allow the audience to give greater descriptions as to what they think of our film.

Questions for audience research?

• What did you enjoy most about our opening?


• Name one thing you think can be improved in our opening?


• What genre do you think best fits our opening?


• What do you think the main storyline of our opening is?


• Who do you think the lead character of our opening is?


• The style of our opening is a montage, do you think this worked well?


• Do you have anything else to say about our opening?

AP Evaluation 2 - Social Groups

Evaluation 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Social Groups

• In our opening sequence the social group represented is young white middle class females, other persons of ethnic origins, men and people of working or upper class backgrounds are not included in our opening.

• The young, white, middle class females in our opening are represented both positively and negatively. One being a murderer (antagonist) and the other being an innocent victim (protagonist).  Through both characters we challenge social norms and show the traditional stereotypical view of women. 

• The antagonist is female and therefore challenges gender stereotypes because usually a male would be a murderer. However, the protagonist is also female,  she is wearing stereotypically feminine clothing which is coloured appropriately purple unlike the antagonist who is dressed in dark jeans and a black, unflattering jumper - not following the codes of femininity.

How is this representation constructed through:

Non-verbal language?

The main character (the antagonist) shows no emotion and appears to be cold and unfeeling, which challenges the typical stereotype of women being too emotional. On the other hand our stock character (the protagonist) is shown as laughing and smiling which adheres to this stereotype and therefore constructing a stark contrast between the two characters.

'Macro' Issues

Using only female characters in our opening and by both challenging and conforming to gender stereotypes and therefore common ideologies about women I feel that our opening would appeal to a large global audience. As someone of today's society I can say that I want to see different representations of people in the films that I watch and I believe that this is a popular view.

AP Evaluation 1 - Media Conventions

Evaluation 1 


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


Genre, form and style of our opening

In my opinion, our opening sequence is conventional to the genre of psycho-thrillers. This is because compared with some of the opening sequences we researched e.g. The Bourne Supremacy, Seven etc (of which we took a lot of inspiration from Bourne) a common style of opening is a montage. 


Similarly to the opening of The Bourne Supremacy our opening was that of a dream. The position of our titles within the sequence, I believe to be typical of a thriller as we used them to build tension. Not necessarily were they conventional to a psycho-thriller but the font ‘Mom’s Typewriter’ gave a sense of something unnatural and linked to the shots of book pages in our opening.


How does your piece conform or challenge the conventions of your chosen genre?

Characters
Our opening sequence both conforms to AND challenges typical gender stereotypes in psycho-thrillers. The main character goes against the conventional main character of a thriller because she is female however she is still shown as a vulnerable character which is a common stereotype for women. Similarly our stock character is female which conforms to the conventions of a thriller.


Plot
The plot of our opening, a murder, is conventional of a thriller. This murder is that of a stabbing which is also considered as a typical convention of our genre because it gives a sense of a more urban environment and uses the common iconography of a knife.
This murder also takes places within a dream which is more typical of our psychological sub-genre and is communicated through our use of a montage.

 Sound
In our opening we have various layers of different sounds to create a sense of disorienation. We used sounds from http://www.freesound.com/  which was really useful for finding interesting sounds such as:
- A music box
- A distorted guitar
- Birdsong
These are not typically conventional to a thriller as they do not create tension but the way in which we edited the sound i.e. having bits fade in and out and overlay eachother, helped to build the atmosphere that we wanted.

Camera Work + Framing
For the majority of our opening sequence we used midshots, MCUs and CUs. We used these shot sizes because we needed to show the details of objects and faces to emphasise the disorientation and confusion of a dream and create an enigma. In addition to this we used several shots with a canted angle to support this.

B- Technologies and the process of making the film opening.

Technologies and the process of making the film opening

-The main use of technology within the project was our blog, the blog site we used was blogger which allowed us to work collaboratively as we could both contribute and discuss ideas at any time. This also helped us work better as a group when conducting group work and allowed us to focus on certain points. Here is an example of how we worked collaboratively on the blog...

-Other uses of technology were slideboom in order to upload our powerpoint presentations onto Blogger as well as Prezi in order to make presentations and survey monkey to create an online survey which we used for our target audience research before the 'pitch' Here is the website slideboom...

-After discussing ideas on the blog in particular researching locations and planning which scenes and shots we would be filming, we then created risk assessment forms for each location we would use to minimize risks of our filming.

-To film our opening we used a 1080p HD digital camcorder as well as a tripod so we could create smooth and steady camera movements for example, tracking shots when walking in the station shoot. Although, we did use handi cam to shoot some shots as we felt that they suited our style better.


-Some problems we faced when shooting were in that in some of the nature shots the camera was unsteady as a tripod was not used, this did not work in our piece so we had to re shoot some of the shots as well as cutting others so that the disjointment was not noticeable.


-For the lighting aspects of our piece the weather conditions at the time of our shoot worked really well for example in the park shots it was a sunny day therefore there was bright lighting which reflected on the happy mood we were trying to set. This contrasts to the dull lighting in the underground tunnel at High brooms station which also reflects the mood we were trying to achieve and helped to set the scene. For the bath shot we lit candles to create an atmospheric feel which anchored the footage.

-Special effects were a big part of our effects as our montage consists of a dream containing lots of illusions, focusing on certain parts of the shot as well as blurring and colour washes were main parts of our effects. Other effects such as cartoon/ black and white prints were effects used in our piece these worked particularly well in making it seem surreal and giving it a dream like feel. One problem which we encountered whilst adding effects to our footage was the lack of continuity, firstly we used a whole load of different effects which didn’t work. To solve this were started using a smaller variety of effects, this worked well in making our piece flow. Here is an example of one of the effects used in our opening...

-After all our footage was shot we had to edit it, to do this we uploaded it all on to the computer and then transferred it to the editing software, Premier. We then dragged all our footage onto the timeline. Here is the software we used...
• After this the first thing we done were placed the footage in a rough order of how we were expecting our final piece to look. We also began cutting the shots and removing/ choosing which take of a certain shot worked best. Here is a screen shot of our timeline...



-When we were left with only the footage we needed we began working through starting at the beginning and adding our special effects to each shot, this included filters, blurs, and changes in time, reverses and standard effects.
An example of this is the black and white over the murder shot...

-We then began to work out the cutting rate of our piece and added in the blank gaps we used in order to create the effect of disjointment and follow the idea of it being a dream.

-We then looked at the brightness, contrast and saturation of our shots and ensured they followed the conventions of the genre and worked well within our concept.

-We then added transitions such as fading and dissolves so that our footage flowed and to reinforce the idea of it being a dream.

-Next we added the text screens/ titles using the font ‘moms typewriter’ as well as this we placed them into their places on the timeline and ensured that the flowed with the rest of the footage. Here is an example of our fonts...

-Next we looked into sound and used a whole variety of sounds layered on top of each other to create the idea of confusion within the dream.

-We then did a final cut of all the footage to ensure that it cut at the right time so that the sound anchored the footage and we were happy with our final outcome.

-Next we exported our opening from premiere by clicking on the 'share' button, saving it on our personal computer and then uploading it on to YouTube so that it could be embed further to places such as the blog.

-In the process of making our film opening we both learnt a lot, in particular we both learnt how important storyboarding and planning is to ensure that you are able to get the most out of shoots. We also learnt that you should shoot more footage than needed so that you can ensure that you get the best shots as well as enough footage after editing. The rule of thirds is also key when filming as well as the 180 degree rule to ensure that the final outcome is good. Here is an example of a template used for our storyboarding...

-Our production compared to real film production is different in the respect that we did not have access to the same sorts of actors, location or equipment although I do think that we managed to create a realistic film opening. Time was another issue which made it hard to com pares to real film production but again I think we managed well in the time we were given. Although it does not look as professional as most mainstream movies, we did manage to create a good opening which followed the conventions of the genre we chose, psychological thriller.

B- Evaluation 3- Media Institutions

What kind of media institution would we distribute our media product to and why?

After our film is completed we will need to use our production company to secure the film a distribution deal, the distributors would invest into the marketing of our film and appealing to our target audience. They would control our advertising such as posters, trailers and distribution of our film, in order for them to do this we would need to offer them a cut of our sales. We would also need to decide on our target audience to ensure that we are appealing to the right people, for our film ‘Afflicted’ the target audience is 15+ both males and females so our distribution company would have a wide audience to appeal to.
After the advertising and distribution is sorted we would need to decide how much to invest on promotion and exhibition of the film, we could exhibit either nationally or worldwide and to both niche audiences such as a art house cinemas for example Trinity, Soho Curzon and Prince Charles cinema as well as mass markets such as odeon.

I think that our film ‘Afflicted’ should be marketed to and target a mass audience as it is not specific to any gender age or culture, therefore would be suitable for multiplex cinemas such as Vue, odeon and Cineplex. The genre of psychological thriller is also very popular again increasing target audience, a distribution company which would be particularly appropriate would be ‘Fox search light pictures’ i think this because they also distributed the ‘Black Swan’ which follows the same conventions of our film and was distributed well. Fox Searchlight Pictures was established in 1994 therefore is well know and it specializes in independent and British films. Other films which Fox light have successfully distributed our, (500) days of summer, Marc Webb, 2009 and Slumdog millionaire, Danny Boyle, 2008 these films were very successful and exhibited in many worldwide cinemas including Odeon and Cineplex.

B- Evaluation 2- Social Groups

Our media product and its representation of social groups

-Overall the style of our opening is post modern as it is a mix of different styles and takes the form of a montage, this makes it unique and different from other film opening.

-Our opening is also ambiguous in that the true meaning of the opening is not clear as well as being polysemic, open to the audiences interpretatrion again this shows difference in our opening compared to normal conventions.

-The social group that appears in our piece is white, middle class females. Other social groups such as difference races, males and working class are not represented in our piece and they do not appear in our film opening.

-The white middle class females represented in our piece and represented both positively and negatively as we have two opposing characters one being the antagonist and the other a protagonist. Although there are prominent codes of feminist shown in our opening which do follow the typical conventions of the female gender.

-Again there are two representations of white middle class females within our opening as one follows the typical gender role ideology in that she is the protagonist therefore portrayed and weak and vulnerable. Also, part of her costume is purple which also follows the stereotypical feminine representation. Here is an example of the costume...

-Although, the main character is also a white middle class female but challenges the typical gender roles and conventions as she is the antagonist and is portrayed to be vicious and strong therefore holding typical masculine traits. Her costume also reinforces this as she is wearing a masculine jumper and dark colours which again are more conventions of a typical male character. Here is an example of the costume...

-The non verbal language of the two characters also follows these conventions, the antagonist shows little emotion and is very stern looking, and this follows the conventions of a stereotypical male character as men are not normally known to show emotions. In contrast to this the stock character and protagonist is shown to be laughing and smiling therefore again follows the typical gender conventions of a female character as females are stereotypically shown to show emotions. Here is an example of the shot...

-The sound we used doesn’t reflect traditional gender roles, as there is not one specific sound played the whole way through, some aspects such as the music box sound do reflect the stereotypical view of female but this is contrasted with deeper sounds such as a drone which could reflect a more masculine trait. This very much anchors the footage which has the same conflict between the traditional feminine traits of one female and the not so traditional traits of the other.

-Looking at the macro issues of our film opening, and how it serves to reinforce or challenge ideologies I feel that although our film opening does reinforce feminine traits within one character it does challenge the stereotypical and western ideologies of women with the other. The reason we created this division is to show the diversity in reflection of today’s world both conforming to the traditional ideological discourse of women as being vulnerable and easily challenged as well as challenging them by showing a stronger woman.

B- Evaluation 1- Our media product compared to other media products.

The form of our opening-

• Overall i would say that our opening does follow a conventional form of a thriller film, the use of a montage is a popular opening to psychological thrillers. We found this after researching many psychological thriller and thriller film openings. Some examples of films that particularly inspired ours are...

-Bourne Supremacy (click here to see my past research on the Bourne Supremacy)
-Se7en (Click here to see my past research on Se7en)
-The use of titles in our film opening is also conventional to that of a thriller, our credits form part of the montage which is often done in the thriller genre. The font we used is 'Moms typewriter' which works well with the images of books and words in our montage. This again follows conventions of a thriller and is especially inspired by the film 'Se7en' which also uses the iconography of books as part of a montage. The sweeping transitions of our titles aren't necessarily conventional to that of a thriller but work well in making the montage flow and work well with our concept.



-The main plot of our opening is very conventional to that of a thriller in that it is a stabbing therefore a knife is involved which is conventional iconography of a thriller. The murder is part of a dream which is also conventional to our genre of psychological thriller as many such as The Bourne supremacy start with a dream reflecting on the psychological side of the genre. Here is a screen shot showing the stabbing in our opening...

-The character exposition in our film opening does not play a massive part as it is mostly made up of nature shots. Although, the characters used are not typically conventional to a thriller, from our audience research and personal research i have found that typically a male plays the antagonist where as in our opening it is played by a female. This challenges the dominant gender stereotype usually shown in thrillers.


-The mise en scene used in our opening generally follows the conventions of a thriller, props in particular. The use of the knife is very iconic of thriller film openings and our audience research showed that most people would relate a knife to the genre of a thriller. Other props such as a handbag and phone are used to show character exposition as well as bringing the piece to life and creating an enigma in that every day objects are used thus this could happen to anyone.



-The costume used in our opening is conventional to that of a thriller, the main character and antagonist is wearing dark clothes to represent evil and follows the conventions of most genres. The stock character and protagonist is wearing casual everyday clothes again showing that this could happen to anyone, bringing the story to life. She is also wearing a white top to show peace and innocence compared to the black that the antagonist is wearing anchoring the storyline and again following the conventions of a thriller. Here is an example of the main character, the protagonist and her costume...



-The lighting used in our opening varies from shot to shot and is covered by the effects used so is not a main part of our opening. Althought the lighting on the effects does follow that of a conventional thriller opening as the murder shots are darker than those of the flash backs.

-The sound we used in our opening, is very disjointed and mixed up creating the effect of a dream, sounds such as a music box, humming and birds have been mixed to create our final track. The main sound throughout the opening also has the same sort of effect and creates strong ambiance therefore following the idea of a dream and anchoring the images in our opening.

-The camera work used in our opening is most done through the use of a tripod to get a better standard of filming an example of a scene shot with the tripod is the murder scene. Although, some footage such as the book shots and nature shots are shot using handi cam in order to create the effect of the audience being involved in the action and to create a more enigmatic effect. This follows the conventions of a psychological thriller as there is normally some sort of disjointment involved reflected on the psychological side the Bourne Supremacy opening is an example of an opening which does this.


-The camera angles used in our opening were mainly straight in the narrative part of the opening but we then used some canted angles in the nature shots to reinforce the idea of a dream.

-The framing of our shots is mainly CU, MCU and MS so that the audience can see real detail in the objects we are filming, this also give the impression of everything being closer therefore follows the conventions of a thriller and creating an enigma. Here is an example of a MCU shot from our opening...



-The editing style of our opening is very surreal and dream like, for example 'Ghosting', 'Blurs' and 'colour washes' are used in our opening a lot this was inspired by the 'Bourne supremacy' opening which is also a dream and works really well. The transitions used in our opening consist of fading which enables the shots to flow such as in a dream. We also used black spaces in our opening to create the effect of flashing in order to make it seem more like a dream. Here is an example of this...

-The main colours used in our opening were contrasted between really bright colours to black and white in order to create the sense of confusion within the dream.

-Some visual techniques that have been used in our opening are reversing some clips creating more of a dream like effect, time stretching clips to make things seem extra slow, this worked really well placed with the fast cuts of some parts of the opening and Compressing some time for example in the street crowd shots the crowd seems to be walking really fast this again works well in creating a sense of confusion and follows the conventions of a psychological opening.


Our opening compared to the 'Bourne supremacy'


In the 'Bourne Supremacy' opening the use of a handi cam to film the action creates a sense of isjointment and little control. This also positions the audience within the action and therefore creates a thrill and a sense of excitement. - Our opening similarly uses handi cam in some parts in order to create a sense of disjointment as well as reinforcing the idea of it being a dream.


The use of a CU shot to show the man in bed positions the audience with him, therefore allowing them to feel more involved in the action as well as following the typical conventions of a thriller. A CU of the waking up shot is also used in our film opening to show the audience that it is a dream, this therefore shows that our opening is conventional to that of a thriller.

In the Bourne Supremacy Editing helps to anchor the camera shots and conform to the genre of thriller. Quick cuts are used to connote the action and create a sense of excitement to the audience. The cuts also portray the idea of fragments of memory which is what the film is based around. The cuts contain iconography specific for thrillers, a phone, photographs, disjointed faces and conversations as well as a room number '646'. This gives the audience the impression of being given clues grabbing their attention and involving them in the clip.


Our opening is also similar to this in that we have used quick cuts in our montage again to create the idea of flash backs a memories. Disjointed images are also used with the use of blurred images to create the sense of confusion which works effectively in our film opening.



The blurred images used in the 'Bourne Supremacy' opening are also a technique used in thrillers, in this opening it is used to create a sense of being unstable and unable to focus. The slow motion shots are also used for this effect. Again the same effect is used in our opening and 'Ghosting' is an effect used a lot in our opening.


From all the similarity's shown through our opening and the actual psychological thriller opening i can see that our opening is conventional to a thriller opening and we have followed and taken into consideration all the aspects and conventions of a psychological thriller when making our film opening.

B- Update of progress

8/04/11- Today is our final day of editing, we are mainly working on the sound and transitions of our opening in order to finish in time.

AP Sound Research and Rough Cut

31/03/11


This lesson we are exporting the 'rough cut' of our opening sequences. So far we have no sound so I will also be researching sounds on Freesound.

Our rough cut was very short as it is still in a phase of trying to get everything in the right order. However, after showing it to the class we got positive feedback. For example, people liked our storyline and liked some of the effects and shot compositions that we had used.
On the negative side we were told that we needed to vary the speed in which some of our footage was shot in order to create a more dream like effect.

B- Our sound

The main soundtrack used for our opening is Outerspace1. WaV. The free sound website we got this from was www.freesound.org.uk, this sound is copyright free therefore we are allowed to use it in our opening. The reason we chose to use this sound is because it fits well with the speed/ pace of our montage as well as creating an atmospheric effect which anchors the footage and fits well into the conventions of thriller sound.

B- Update of progress

6/04/11- Today we have added in the titles and credits of our film opening as well as adding all the effects in order to prepare the footage for our final cut to music. We also managed to find a sound track which could fit which we are planning to put with the footage next lesson in order to finish our piece. Here is an example of a title we have used. Left to do...

• Final editing


• Audience feedback


• Finalise sound

B- Progress

5/04/11- Today we continued our editing whilst looking for sound, we are having problems with the length of our footage as after cutting it down so much to create a fast cut montage we have only got 1:20 worth of footage, to solve this we will need to add more titles and lengthen some parts of the footage as well as using effects such as time stretch.

B- More progress

1/04/11- Today i continued to edit the footage and add effects in to make it seem more like a dream. I also re watcher the 'bourne' film opening which was the main inspiration of our opening to get back on track and review what our final outcome should be.