Coursework feedback

Research and Planning 13

The research and planning is partially incomplete, but much of the work that is complete is detailed and focussed. There is excellent work into similar products, showing a real understanding of the task. However there is no attempt to look into potential target audiences. The organisation of actors, locations etc is proficient, with a clear schedule detailing shots, actors, locations etc. There is also a proficient storyboard. Overall there is a good level of care and presentation of the work that is there, but this blog is let down by the lack of audience research.  

Main Task – 38

There is evidence of a reasonably proficient ability to produce material appropriate for the target audience and task. The titles follow conventions, but the editing shows limited only skill in the ability to build up meaningful sequences that convey meaning to the audience. There is a reasonably wide variety if shots and framing. Some shots don’t work, including the shot of a phone that has a reflection across it. At times it looks too much like a trailer as the narrative is not entirely clear. There is limited content and it’s questionable whether the ‘dream’ works. However the camera work is controlled and the sound is well devised, building up tension across the piece.

Who would be the audience for my media product ?

Me and my partner in my group decided to make our opening a Thriller. We wanted it to be a Thriller film opening because we believed this was the best genre to allow us to create a really good opening. We also wanted to reach out to the widest audience that we could. We went through the genres that we could have done and thriller seemed like the best genre to keep our audience options really open.

We first decided to look at an audience that would being the film opening the most views, profit and good reviews. picking the wrong target audience to aim at could be disastrous and can cost film company's millions of pounds.

We looked first on the internet at typical target audiences for Thrillers. Most of them stated that most thrillers are an 18 film. We could see why this might be true but did not want to miss out on the audience of the under 18 year old people. We decided to put an age range on our film opening of a 15. This means we can reach out to 3 more years of people which can make a difference in gross profit of the film.

This had its upside for the film opening audience and money profit. However it did mean we had limitations on what we could put into the opening. A Thriller like Taken is now a worldwide franchise that has made its name through the stunts and amazing acting from Liam Neeson and others. Taken is such a clever film in how it reaches out to more than one target audience.

This film carried out extensive market research in order to inform and engage with its target audience. The film was certificated by the BBFC as a 15, this movie therefore targeted an audience who are aged 15 and above. I would suggest that the primary target audience would be of the age 17+ as the characters who are abducted are of the ages 17 and 19. However I think that there is a secondary audience for males and females of an age range, 22 – 45, I would suggest this because it shows the main character, a farther, using his carer skills to his advantage, going to any extent to save his daughter. I think this would appeal to people of this age range because it shows future commitments and an interest in protecting your family. I also think a movie like these appeal to males because of the genre of action, and brilliant action is provided with no disappointment.

Like taken we made our film a 15 certificate. However we did not push the boundaries as far as we could of. Our film opening will be a 15 because the movie will contain aspects of violence, kid napping and a character with psychological problems. some people may not like watching a film like this but we believe the number that do will out weigh who don't.

To further expand my research i went onto a website that can profile audiences for different films. This was perfect to help me look at in depth what type of audience i really want to be aiming my film opening at. I choose to look at the audience profile for the Taken films. I choose this film franchise because it was the type of thriller film our film opening was aiming for so would have near enough the same sort of audience profile. 

This screenshot shows the first thing you see when you go onto the audience profile website. In the box show on the screenshot i simply typed in taken and it then collected the information from real people throughout the whole country. It can then tell me in depth to a point what type of person likes the taken films. It even goes into there political views and favourite food.




This is the page that comes after the page above. It tells us the main age group that watches taken which is 25-39. It then goes onto say what type of social grade that the people that watch taken mostly are. The typical profession for someone that likes taken was in Finance. People from the midlands were most likely to watch Taken


It then went on to tell me that most people that watched Taken had hobbies like going to the cinema and listening to music. There favourite sports were boxing and motorsports and even there most likely pet was a dog.  

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

These screenshots below are taken directly form our Thriller film opening of our film "Hunted". These screenshots show the main points in the opening scene that I believe can be spoken about. Before we started coming up with ideas for our thriller film we had to look at conventions of a normal thriller. This was a long process but in the end we got lots of information that we could use to produce really good ideas.

One of the conventions that kept appearing in the Thriller genre was the use of dark colours for the titles and logos. The dark colours create a mysterious tension before the film even starts. The opening is key to set up what is to come so it is important that the colour scheme in the opening matches the plot of the film and can be linked in to what the film is about.













We chose to start the opening scene with in a house. In premiere pro we added a black and white affect to make it look like the scene was taking place at night. This is normally a convention for a horror genre film. However we believed that if we take little snippets of the horror genre and mix them in with thriller the outcome would look and work really well. Nearly all thriller films do not have a black and whit opening. The convention is to have an intense scene where everything moves quick and keeps the audience on the edge of there seat. We took an approach which would mean us having a long build up but in the end of the opening have a quick moment that takes the audience by surprise.













This screenshot shows the shot taken just before we enter the dream state of this character. This is definitely not a convention of a Thriller Genre. However we did get the idea for this from a Thriller film called Taken. In this film Liam Neeson the main character has flashbacks and flash forwards which helps him during the film. We took this idea but changed it so it was a dream instead and this reveals the equilibrium in the film opening.

We were happy with the idea of the dream stage in the opening of our film. However because we were going against the normal conventions of a thriller we had to make it very clear for the audience watching that the character was dreaming. It was necessary that they knew this dream was looking at what had happened in the past so it set up the story for the rest of the film. The shot above shows the main male characters face. This is also an extreme close up

A convention of a thriller film is lots of dialogue between two characters. Our storyline did not really allow for dialogue between two characters. Knowing this we decided to integrate the dialogue in a technology way. In taken 3 we see the antagonist rings Liam neeson on the phone to tell him that he is going to die. This is dialogue through a technological device. We used this idea and used text messaging rather than face to face dialogue. We believed this created more tension in the opening which is the main feature we were looking for when creating our film opening.

This shot is where the speed and use of different camera shots increases. This is to tell the give the audience the sense of fear of what is to come. We looked at the film "The Transporter" to get ideas for different camera angles and to get the tight quickness of shot. This really helped us to choose the right shots for the right part of the opening. In a thriller the pace of shots is really important so it is necessary to look at a few other films at how they dictate the speed and tempo of the film just from the shots.

This is one of my favourite shots in the whole film. A big thriller convention is to show power and weakness. This can be done in various different ways but when we were on set we decided to use height as a way to show weakness. We used this high angle shot just after the build up music fades into the shot. The high angle makes the female character look small and helpless. This added in with mysterious build up music really gets the audience on edge which is the main aim for a thriller film.













This shot shows the equilibrium within our film opening. This is the problem that occurs and it sets up the resolution for the rest of the film. We looked at many Thriller films and saw that the antagonist rarely shows his face until the end of the film. We stuck to this convention and decided to not show this characters face to increase the tension within the opening and keep the audience thinking which is what a thriller should do.

We could have ended the film opening there. This is a convention of a thriller opening to end on a cliff hanger and then start the film in an entirely different location. However we decided to go against this convention because we believe that the story line would be confusing for the audience if they do not see the character wake up and can see that it was all a dream. To make it not confusing we added a last shot at the end of the character waking up. This is where the opening ends.

Sound for Titles

We used a sound effect to accompany our title for Adrenaline Productions. This sound effect is futuristic and fits the title really well. We edited it in premiere pro to make it fit when the writing explodes and when the gravity brings it back. It was off a website which has royalty free downloads.

This is a screenshot of the sound effect and the website that we downloaded it from.

Hunted First Cut

This is the first cut of mine and Mitchell's film "Hunted".

After Effects Progress

We chose our film production company to be called Adrenaline Productions. We wanted our title animation to really stand out over any other title sequence. Before taking Media i did not know how to use Adobe After Effects to make animations that look really professional and can be added straight into our film very easily. I learned in after effects how to use different effects. I used YouTube to look for tutorials on how to create title animations that were a hard difficulty. Me and mitchell worked really well together as a team. One of us would watch the tutorial and relay information tot he other who was after effects. This made it much easier to get it done. We did not encounter any problems because we chose a tutorial which did not require any pug-ins. Like using the gravity feature which allows your to change the gravity on the animation to go from 0 to full. This makes the animation explode and then the 100 gravity brings it back to show the text in a new and different way. This is a picture of the title in after effects.

This is also the video tutorial we used to make our titles look the way they do. This really helped us learn more on after effects and now I feel much more confident to do more and bigger editing on after effects. The tutorial was split up into two parts and took us a whole 2 hour lesson to complete. However me and Mitchell are very happy with the finished product.

Script

The idea of our film was to create suspense and for the character to enter a dream state where everything was happening in his sleep and was not in reality. This means that trying to add dialogue in the right scenes was very hard. The start of the film was designed to be dark and eerie so me and Mitchell decided not to put dialogue in this part of the film.

When the character enters the dream we see the female character (Katie). This is where we believed the dialogue would be most appropriate. When the female character hears the doorbell ring she goes to answer the door. However when the doorbell rings again she stops on the stairs and says

"alright, i'm coming now"

This shows that the female character is totally unaware of what is about to happen to her. This changes the audiences view on the film and keeps them on the edge of their seat. This is the only dialogue that we put into the opening of the film. This in unusual for the opening of a Thriller and goes against the conventions for the Thriller genre.

If we were to do the script next time we would think out the plot of the film more and look more closely at where we could add dialogue in.