Evaluation Task 6

Our final product uploaded with annotations onto youtube.

Evaluation Task 5

How did we attract our audience?

Our target audience are most likely to be teenagers who appeal to a darker nature and theme to film. Here are some screenshots that might help to heighten this idea.

Sharp object images of shattered glass

Teen smoker in our opening sequence will appeal to other teens who smoke

Image of blood appeals to darker tastes

CU image of fire creates a strong sense of danger, appealing to darker tastes

Evaluation Task 4

My target audience for my thriller sequence is most likely to be aimed at female teenagers, somewhere between the ages of 15- 18. Considering the first two actors you see in the sequence are around 17 years of age, we are most likely to attract the attention of this generation for longer than others.

The story focuses on a typical relationship break-up between a couple, but how the obsession of young love can turn to something quite sinister and dark. Considering relationship break-ups are fairly frequent within this age range, it is interesting to see how something so common can lead on to something very intense and powerful, as the female character begins to plan revenge and murder on her ex partner. Thus it is possible we will more likely attract a female audience.

However, our opening is not so much focused on the actual love itself, but it contains lots of confusing close-ups and intense, uncomfortable shots. There are images of bloody, cut hands dragging across pictures of happy memories and shots of jagged, dangerous glass fragments. There are additionally intense, close up shots of fire burning. This opening sequence therefore might attract specific teenagers who appeal to a darker nature, such as classified 'emo's' . However, our audience may probably appeal more to ordinary, everyday girls who have had their 'heart broken'.

An audience who enjoyed watching films such as 'Se7en' and

'Black Swan' which involve strong themes of psychological disorder, suicide and self-harm may enjoy our opening sequence 'Ready Or Not'. Our audience might listen to music such as trip-hop, which is dark in style and lyrical content. The band 'Massive Attack' may be a good example. Our audience, however, are likely to listen to evocative music which enhance the artists' feelings through both style and lyrics.

Evaluation Task 3

I think Warner Brothers Pictures would distrubute my media product. The product itself is very much targeted at a teenage audience, and considering they control the majority of cinema screen viewings, it is likely that the product would become successful because of this.

Warner Brothers Pictures have always aimed for and released big budget Hollywood productions, hoping for huge profits. They are therefore likely to be interested in releasing my film because it targets key audience members who will bring in most of the profits.

It is likely that Warner Brothers would distribute our product with New Line Cinema productions, considering this company distributed the film 'Se7en'. Considering there is a similar 'dark' theme in 'Se7en' as there is with our thriller product, the same distribution company may be interested in releasing our product too.                                                                             

I also think Vertigo Films might distribute our product because they are very diverse and work with many different genres of films, and broadcast to many different age groups. For example, they cater for children and adults.

Adult














Children

Evaluation Task 2

When representing our male teenage character in the opening sequence, these pictures are most likely represent his social group. He is quite a laid-back, chilled teenager, but we suspect there is something darker about him as he has hurt the female character in some way.

The picture below is from my opening sequence.

Evaluation Task 1

From these nine screengrabs, it is clear that the female has more power and dominance in the plot. There are not only more screen shots of her to indicate this, but;

• The screen shots of her are uncomfortable CU shots.
• These CU shots additionally let us identify with this character more than the male. 

• The typical idea of men having more power over a situation has been subverted, as the female has more control and instead it is the male who is vulnerable. 

We used elements from the film ‘Se7en’ in our thriller opening sequence.

Similar elements we included were;

·        Uncomfortable CU shots

·        Dark, moody colours

·        Extreme CU shots of an object that makes you feel uneasy (e.g scissors)

In our opening sequence we used a similar idea, whereas instead of using sharp images, we used fire to bring tension to the audience.

 

Evaluation of our shoot day

Before shooting our thriller we discussed what our plans for the day were and what target deadlines we were going to meet. This would help make our day more efficient and smooth running so that we would have time to finish all the shots we wanted to have.

We took half an hour to set up lighting and the mise  en scene of the room before shooting. We then spent a further half an hour planning which order we should shoot them in. This is something we could have planned before the day and we wasted valuable time here. Additionally this meant that our first few shots took at least two hours to film.

After a few takes we got a rhythm as to how we should be working together as a group and got used to filming with the cameras. Each one of us took charge of a particular role so that we could work more efficiently. For example I took the most sequence shots for our male character and directed our characters through each plot. Courtney took charge of mise en scene and make-up, Nina made lists and notes of our shots and Richard was also our cameraman and my assistant director.

We learnt along the way that mistakes can happen – but that they do cause some benefits! One of our shots was meant to show our leading female character about to smash a mirror, but due to health and safety reasons we would let our teacher do this separately. However, when we shot the scene, she actually did manage to smash the mirror. The landing and positioning of the mirror was good though and smashed well enough to create an effective image of her looking down at her broken reflection. We additionally decided we would use the diegetic sound of the smash in our sequence when editing.

Towards the end of our shoot day we were beginning to get tired and our focus was beginning to lapse. I knew I had to make sure that we got our final shots done to the same standard as before, so I decided to take charge to make sure we would finish in time. On the whole we did work very well together, but I think we needed to have planned well in advance before hand and focus more on the project itself rather than think of it as ‘a bit of fun’.

Casting our actors

Name Rose Salvage

Age 17 years
Height 5ft 5
Eye colour Blue/Grey
Hair colour Blonde/Brown


I cast Rose as our leading female actress because she had the 'sweet girl next door' type of look that I wanted. Additionally I knew she could act well, so I thought Rose would be the perfect choice.

Name Jake Cecil
Age 17 years
Height 6ft 3
Eye colour Lght Blue
Hair colour Lght Brown


Jake has a laid back type of look that I wanted. He is portrayed in our media sequence as lazy and a 'bit of a player', and I thought Jake would be able to play this character as he can act in this style well.