EVALUATION QUESTION 4 & 5- What kind of media institution migh distribute your media product and why? How will you attract/address your audience?

What kind of media institution migh distribute your media product and why?

As part of our evaluation we need to think about how we would advertise and distribute our films. It is a very important part of actually making our product successful , we also apply this in order to attract a good target audience. Undoubtedly we have to be extremely realistic about our student film release and have to   take into account that Candi Studios are a low budget company but we still have up to date equipment and facilities that will make our films look as good as possible. For our thriller (THE CYCLE) we did decided to use Candi Studios and did it in association with Safari films/ Broadway entertainment as it is a low budget production company so we have to find means of advertising that are not mainstream ideas.

Our film is a student video that will be released over the Internet on Vimeo, embedded onto a blog and may find its way onto YouTube for publicisiation. As it is independent, low budget production company we Will automatically get a cinematic screening a shared screening our peers and families for feedback and approval for a good Thriller movie.

There is an advantage of us being students and actually having the opportunity to film a Thriller movie. Continuously young people are forever spending hours on ends on social networking sites such as Sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Facebook is exceptional useful as young people who my thriller audience is often have hundreds and hundreds of friends on Facebook. Once they upload their video there 'friends' can view it and 'Share' it to their list. This is therefore a continuous cycle that allows the movie to be published and distributed through a social networking site. They can also get comments and 'likes' giving feedback and criticism on their movie.

Example of how Videos are posted/ shared on Facebook

We can also try and distribute our media product through Candi website adverts,  our own personal blogs such as Tumblr, adverts on student union websites and maybe even posters  Keeping in mind that we are a low budget company these are approriate forms of getting public opinion and notice as they don't cost much money and they are cheap and quick methods. As we all know to distribute to a good company there needs to be good forms of marketing.  It will be seen on cinematic screening at 'The Green Screen' cinema in Angel, Upper street, and will be viewed by ourselves and other media students in our college. There will also be a release of 200 DVD copies of our film which each media student will receive and then we will have the choice to distribute it by showing friends and family etc. 

The BBC Film Network is a realistic showcase for film. It provides opportunities for young filmmakers because of the niche audience that is attracted to amateur films and films that don't have enough money to distribute in a high budget way. This way the website gives the filmmakers a chance to get their product to an audience. Here is an amateur film from the BBC Film Network.

This is were we watched our thriller films with the MediaStudies Firm. Lovely time on the 5th April.

This a quick voice recording of the audiece reception after our film had been shown...

How will I attract/address my audience?

My film can attract an audience that enjoys the kind of psychological thriller that involves a story that consist of a killer and innocent victims. Facebook is a brilliant way to attract my audience as my target audience is from late to early ages women eg, 18years-25years who commonly use social networking sites.

 

An example of some student work on the Internet that has had quite a large number of hits is:

 

The Internet has been used to launch this movie to a wider audience as it has been published on YouTube one of the worlds most visited music and film sites that have millions of views a day. This Thriller opening called BLITZ from students that attend hurtwoodhouse performance college made 229 views on YouTube. It has also published through Blogger.com as our media teachers shared the link with us so we could access it accordingly. I think their target audeicne is for about 20 year old as it hold elements that young people may not be remotely interested in. It slightly has elements of crime/psychological thriller sub genres and rally does have some interesting shots. It also shows a transition in time when it says '60 years later' that reinforces that a change has happened which stuns audience. I followed a similar model of launching my film will be shown in a cinematic screening in front of students from the AS media department, i will probably then be able to ask people what they thought about my thriller opening.

YouTube is the most popular video sharing site. It reaches a wide audience and with a YouTube page you can receive user feedback and comments on how well the video actually was, you can remain anonymous. However you have to have signed up with YouTube in order to comment or like videos. This makes publicising better and more effective as it keeps being social involved and they can say what they think. 

EVALUATION Question 6

These were all of the positive responses from the class after they watched the thriller. The main things they liked were the effects and edits.

These were the  negative responses from the class after they watched it. The main thing that seemed to come up was the length of the breathing.

When asked by the class whether or not they would want to watch it in the cinema, the response was minimal, therefore I don't think that the age group of the thriller was for the people on out class.

Audience Feedback 1 on 1

From Poppy Power

From Nathan Miller

From Charlene Moore

EVALUATION: 3. Who would be the audience for your media product ?

AUDIENCE FACT FILE !

NAME: Maggie Smith

GENDER: Female

D.O.B: 08/03/85

AGE: 25

LIKES: Going out with mates, enjoys PSYCHOLOGICAL, PASSIONATE MURDER THRILLER films, reading, her time at university

DISLIKES: Football, action films, mess, beers (love wine), smoke

HOBBIES: Going out for drinks, cinema, social networking sites, reading romantic novels in her spare time, shopping at local high street stores with friends

                                                                              

EVALUATION: 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

                                                  'He loves Me, He loves Me Not'              'The Cycle'

My character within the opening is a victim, who is very weak, vulnerable and fascinated by the littlest things. 

During our first lessons of research we watched a few thriller openings, in order for us to gain understanding of different thriller sub-genres. We watched the opening title sequence of 'He loves me he love me not'. Although the film is a romance thriller which is completely different to ours, the first character who we are introduced to is a female, who is in a flower shop smelling flowers and seems very fascinated and being very fascinated by such an object may impose that a person is very vulnerable.

I did not plan to behave in a way similar to the character in 'He loves me he loves me not' not however, on set we remembered the way she utilised the flower as a form of mise en scene, the way she would smile hard and sniff the flower to show interest. I then realised in order to portray a character who is very vulnerable and quite weak I had to use different types of body language and facial expressions, immediately I remembered the woman in the opening of 'He love me he loves me not' and her use of the flower as a form of mise en scene. 
The flower in my thriller opening is very crucial because in England it is one of the first flowers to grow during spring and, it is very common. The fact that my character was very intrigued by this tells us that she is not exactly normal, and I used my facial expressions to emphasis this. I constantly smiled and looked at the flower similar to the woman in 'He loves me he loves me not'. Because I was on my own it also emphasis the awkwardness. 

EVALUATION: 1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products

CODES AND CONVENTIONS !

- Establishing shot of the location and setting - London

- Title sequence in a specific order - Production company, title, actors, directors etc

- Ident for production company - Beginning of film

- Genre - Thriller 

- Settle down time - We did not exactly have any, as soon as the movie started the soundtrack was already playing, we done this in order to grab there attention immediately

- Intertextuality - Establishing shot of the city (London) and in Taking of Pelham 123 (New York)

9 SHOTS FROM MY TITLE SEQUENCE AN 9 SHOTS FROM 'THIS IS ENGLAND'

• They are both set in England (hence the name) however, there are establishing shots of common areas in England that allow the audience to establish the location
• The titles fonts are very similar, especially the film title and, they both go on top of the establishing shot
• The actors name in This is England appear over the characters, although in the cycle they appear on a blank screen however, we are introduced to main characters in both films.
• The close ups signify particular characters because they are the most important e.g. Elias and the girl and guy kissing in This is England
• Both films have the editors appear after we are introduced to the characters and after the editors both films have the producer/executive producer appear.  

EVALUATION QUESTION 6- Audience feedback and comment

POSITIVE FEEDBACK

NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

This is all the feedback that we gained from our class during lesson time. We all watched eachothers thriller openings and commented on the strengths and weakness of the films. Lots of members of the class really liked our titles and the black and white shots with soft edges, that really signify the dream/nightmare. The transititon of black and white to colour shots aswell as our music as they felt it suited the piece well however it could have been more creepy. I think it is useful to get feeback so that you know how to improve if you ever get the opportunity to do something like this again. It made me think diffently about how our thriller could have turned out, especially looking at others. I hope when we finally watch then on the 5th April we will get a good response from the audience. I wish we did have longer to actually film and edit but this is only the beginning of what i feel is going to be a career for me =D

QUICK VIDEO BLOG

This is a quick video blog just showing what blogs i am currently going, briefy explaing our target audience and showing a thriller.

EVALUATION QUESTION 3- Who would be the audience for your media product?

Michelle, 22 years old enjoys outgoing and entertain activities. Shes a journalist for the magazine Vogue, she is very creative and loves learning new things. In her spare time she likes going to the cinema especially with her boyfriend who likes watching thrillers and action movies. She does enjoy the typical stereotypical shopping spree and loves the colour pink. In the future Michelle would like to work on the radio and appear on television shows interviewing famous people. She gets a real buzz out of the media industry and continuously tries to get as many opportunities as possible.She currently owns 67 DVDs and often has friends around on Friday Nights for 'Movie Night'. Her his main clothes shops H&M, Footlocker and Selfridges. 

THIS IS THE MONTAGE OF THE CONTENTS IN HER HANDBAG

I think this is the Target audience for our thriller because of the fact that the victims of the killer are all young females. This way it would attract more of a female audience than it would of males. Furthermore it is a psychological thriller so it has elements of feelings and this is usually associated with women as they primarily are the ones who always 'think'. It may appear to males in some cases for example the being where we have reality shots of Elias turning and tossing this can relate to men when they feel stressed from a long hard day at work.

EVALUATION QUESTION 2- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

We represent a stalker as one of the stills of character from  THE STEPFATHER he is similar to our charter RELLIK (Elias) from our movie THE CYCLE They are both characters who are on a mission to capture female victims and turn their lives into what is seemed to be 'tragic'. Both  these male characters are extremely normal when they approach these females and do not flirt to give anything away, they just have subtle conversations about normal things. This allows the audience to think that these character's are 'normal' and just want to have a friendly conversation with these female character's. The fact that the shot are from the females point of view shows us that they really think that the guy is being nice and just generally showing them some attention. The differences between the two character's is that in The Stepfather the man (David Harris) is out to kill these women after he marries them, just for the simple fact that he wants to invest there money and this cycle just continues when he succeeds. In The Cycle however, he just have a psychological disorder where he is addicted and passionate about meeting girls, going on dates  and killing them for his own personal pleasure.

One distinctive similarity that we wanted to convey was that both 'killers' take their victims to the same place all the time. For instance in The Stepfather he seems to meet them in supermarkets, preferably women who have two children. This can be seen at the beginning and at the end of the film. In The Cycle he takes his victims to the park for walks.

EVALUATION QUESTION 1- In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Real media products usually consist of:

• The establishing shot that we used was that of THE LONDON EYE
• The Title sequence is usually in a specific order - We had the ident first and then the production company followed by the actors names and then introduced who the music was by, directors and producers
• Setting a mood - the breathing right at the start shows that we want the attention of the audience right from the get go.
• We can usually identify what the subgenre is or the genre of the thriller
• Main characters are always shown during the first few minutes of a film.

INTERTEXUALITY USED FROM OTHER THRILLERS AND SHOWN IN OURS 'THE CYCLE'...

An establishing shot of NY from 'Taking of Pelhem 123 was used to bring us into the setting and storyline itself. So we tried to show our skills of intertexuality through filming an establishing shot of LONDON, London eye a famous attraction. This helps sets the scene of our thriller and draws the audience into thinking that this film takes place in England. It introduces the film and makes the audience wonder about what will happen now.

The other piece of intertextuality that we used was a close up of just the face when Elias wakes up, just like in What Lies Beneath this can be seen when the female wakes up from under the water in shock. The audience then 'jump' as it was rather unexpected. This creates a dramatic response in the audience and they are therefore excited for the rest of the film. we showed our actors state of 'shock' when he awakes from his nightmare, puzzled and out of breath.


9 SHOTS FROM TITLE SEQUENCE AND 9 SHOTS FROM MY OWN TITLE SEQUENCE

 From http://www.artofthetitle.com/ i found a title sequence that was quite similar to my own thriller film. I found 'BLUE VALENTINE' The shots look very much the same in the sense that the font is plain white, on backgrounds that are clear enough for the audience to read. The title of the movie comes in rather early on in the sequence and this follows the main conventions of the order of titles on an opening of a film. The shots are kind of similar as it is a male character with females in different locations, this may show that he is either up to something or just simply likes travelling. The heavy use of colour and contrast is very eye catching and makes it look like an interesting title sequence. There is also a vary of shots from close ups, establishing shots and long shots this is one of the skills i learnt during filming, more varied shots makes the opening look much more interesting and exciting as it suggests what the rest of the film will be like.

I made this title sequence by screen grabbing parts of my film while it played.

This is my thriller 'THE CYCLE' as you can see it looks quite similar and the titles are very simple and clear.

Evaluation - Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Real media products consist on the use of:

• an establishing shot - The London eye
• title sequence in a specific order - We had the ident first and then the production company followed by the actors names and finally, the music & edited by...
• ident - the music usually comes after the ident but we decided to add heavy breathing as well as some of the music
• setting a mood - the breathing right at the start shows that there will be some sort of tension in the film and that creates a chilling mood for the audience

Intertextuality we've been using because of inspiritaions from other films:

similar opening to the taking of pelham 123 because of the establishing shot that they use in the start is similar to our establishing shot of the london eye.

Another inspirational use of intertextuality we saw in another film was the close up of the face when the women wakes up from the water in 'What lies beneath'. We used the same shot and positioning of the camera to make the same effect that the film made.

EVALUATION - Question 1

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

In real media products there is use of:

• an establishing shot - We used The London eye

• title sequence is in a specific order - We had the ident first and then the production company followed by the actors names and finally, the music & edited by...

• ident - normally the music comes after the ident but we decided to add heavy breathing as well as some of the music

• setting a mood - the breathing right at the start shows that there will be some sort of tension in the film and that creates a chilling mood for the audience

FINAL EDIT OF OUR THRILLER 'THE CYCLE'

FINISHED NOTICE BOARD

LIVETYPE

SOUNDTRACK PRO

FINAL CUT PRO

EVALUATION QUESTION 6-Audience feedback and comment

POSITIVE FEEDBACK

NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

This is all the feedback that we gained from our class during lesson time. We all watched eachothers thriller openings and commented on the strengths and weakness of the films. Lots of members of the class really liked our titles and the black and white shots with soft edges, that really signify the dream/nightmare. The transititon of black and white to colour shots aswell as our music as they felt it suited the piece well however it could have been more creepy.

opinion on Thriller Opening

I actually feel that our thriller opening is quite suspensful and interesting. As soon as the film starts you can already hear Elias breathing heavily. While the 'candi studios' is showing. This will captivate the auidences ear as soon as it beginning, as we wanted to get there attention from the moment starts. As our opening is a series of flashbacks that Elias has, the flashblacks are in black and white with a soft edge background that will suggest it is a dream. The opening has many transparent scenes to show uncertainity and distortment of Elias frame of mind. We kind of want the auidence to be confused so that they will remain interested and intridgued. The opening shows reality shots aswell so you can see Elias movement while he sleeps. (Tosing and turning). I really like our opening. We will now wait on feedback from students and teachers.

Relief!!

AHHHHHHHHHH!!! The feeling you get when something is over, is really something special and i know everyone, not just in my group, but in the class is feeling the same way that i am. Unfortunately there is still a few more things the class needs to do individually in their groups but regarding my group we are quite confident with what we have produced and now we are just awaiting the feedback from other teachers and students.

Finished!!!

Our Thriller film is now completely finished.. I am happy to say that we were able to finish at the end of our lesson with a few minutes to stay behind after college.. It was a hard task that did consume lots of time and effort especially the editing process. We was all stressed out as we really wanted our film to look as successful as possible. We added our soundtrack that was made by Me in our group and it sounded really good with the rest of the film. We also had to quickly get recordings of Elias breathing heavily as if he had just awoken a bad nightmare. (which didn't turn out so good so we used the breathing sounds already on soudtrack pro).

As today was our very last editing, we put in all the names e.g. directors name, actors name etc, Our titles are really simple but still very appealing. They crawl into a black screen  (white font) and slide outwards.

Hopefully everyone enjoys our thriller opening and will be excited to see what happens when our film is shown on the big screen.!!

sounds from soundtrack.

 THE PICTURE BELOW SHOWS US THE SELECTION OF SOUNDS WE HAD WHEN WE DECIDED TO DO OUR SOUNDTRACK FOR THE OPENING. WE ALREADY HAD THE ROUGH IDEA. BUT FOR THE BEGINNING AND ENDING OF OUR OPENING SEQUENCE WE CHOSE TO USE 'HEAVY BREATHING' TO SHOW THAT OUR ACTOR WAS WAKING UP FROM HIS NIGHTMARE

TO NAVIGATE TO THIS WE HAD TO GO TO

-EFFECTS

-PEOPLE

-THEN TYPED IN 'BREATHING'

THERE WAS THEN A SELECTION OF EITHER FEMALE OR MALES BREATHING TYPES WITH A NUMBER OF DIFFERENT EXAMPLES FOR US TO LOOK AT AND DECIDE WHICH ONE TO USE.

changing the credits!!!

our CREATIVE idea of using our initials as our production name got 'ejected' or in other words bin as the teacher gave us some 'new' feedback about how using initials is tacky which caused more stress as we got told about this, LAST MINUTES.

 

In the end we decided we wanted our film to look as if it was made by an independent company as there was no way we was gonna use paramounts' name or 20th century fox because the thriller has nowhere near the budget or skill in order to make those names believable.

 

We chose the producers name to be 'Mike Collins' which is quite persuasive for a made up name and for the production and distribution companies ina slide in the opening you will see 'In Association with Safari Films and Broadway Ent'.

 

Opinion on thriller opening

Looking back on it, if we .stuck to our initial idea I think my group and I would have lost a lot of marks. The e-mailing system was time consuming and it was difficult to get the shots precisely. Furthermore the whole opening would have too much going on and it was not exactly significant, so having a poor opening scene in my opinion would mean a poor thriller opening altogether. 
With the effects and backing track on the opening I think it all fit perfectly, we each tried our hardest to give our best and indeed we did. I am very happy and positive about our final thriller opening compared to our initial idea

Favourite Parts

Throughout this coursework I think the best part for me was filming. 

Although sometimes setting up the camera and carrying it around was 'distressing' the whole experience was fun. We had our times when we wanted to cry because both camera batteries were almost dying or we could not get the shot we wanted however, apart from that I really enjoyed the filming. Taking care of such equipment proved that we were all responsible, no one ever stopped us which is something we feared especially filming in the Central London and we generally had a very good time. 

Photo slideshow

Teamwork

Compared to other groups who were ranting at one another and, in constant disagreement my group and I worked very well together and never had an argument. 
We did not always have the same opinion or want the same things but we somehow managed to put everyones idea in. We were also able to express our talents, Elias for example has a passion for making music and we allowed him to take on this role, Sheri wanted to experiment with the fonts so we allowed her to do the titles. Me and Demi both thought it was important two people do the editing because, we would need advise, and to apply our knowledge of what we had learnt in previous lessons because, one of us was not enough. Although those were our main roles we all had a turn in doing different things. When I was free for example I would mess around with title fonts and, when Sheri or Elias were free they would do different things. We would always feedback to each other on what we had done and appreciated others input even if it was wrong or not needed. 


In terms of blogging we all did at least one blog each where everyone could tag themselves. 
Overall I would say that I enjoyed working with my group because, we were all aware of others opinions, when we were off task we would get back on task, we all sacrificed some of our precious time which resulted in a very good finishing piece. 

OUR Group 14

Looking around during the filming process i saw that many groups were struggling or got easily frustrated with all group members surrounded around the computer screen shouting and telling each other there ideas. As a way to keep our filming pace fast we allocated jobs to each member in most circumstances.

For instance when we met up for filming we decided who would bring the props for that day or who would bring the filming equipment.

• Sheri- Focused on the Titles of our Thriller opening and the way it would be presented
• Elias- Focused on the music that went into any scenes we needed, he often used Soundtrack pro
• Mariama & Myself (Demi)- Focused on Editing ad doing all the Importing and Exporting of devices.

 We took it in turn to return equipment if needed.

As a group i actually think we worked rather well, even tough we had a few disagreements we always done majority vote or just tried to incorporate every ones idea the best we could.

Export and Import

Two words that I will never forget from this whole experience is 'import and export'. As we had to keep re-editing our opening, titles and the soundtrack we had to keep exporting and importing different files onto different programs. 
This was very crucial when we were adding effects to our backing track because, we had to ensure that it was going according to the clip.
Although it did get too a point when those two words reminded me of being instructed to walk forward and then backwards, annoying right ?

Adding and editing the soundtrack

As we had very little time left, we allocated Elias to produce our soundtrack as he has experience in creating music and he was very eager to create a backing track. 

We wanted something very suspenseful but at the same time something that was suitable and appropriate for our opening. We decided that dialogue was not to be added because, it was a dream/flashback and everything was going very fast so it would not make sense. However because it was a nightmare we recorded heavy breathing (which did not turn out great) and decided to change our mind and use one of the effects on Soundtrack Pro. 

Because the backing track was not as long as the opening clip we had to copy and paste the track again, as we played it back for what we thought would be the last time we realised there was an awkward noise in the background of a baby crying. We were VERY confused as to why this was happening because, we muted all recorded sound during video recording.. 

We realised that we had a hidden effect in our sound clip that needed to be removed and after 20minutes of stressing all we had to do was press the delete button.

Production company name CHANGED

Sadly we had to change our production company name as our Teachers said that they dont consits of just initials so it would look abit sill. our intial idea was D.E.M.S we decided to call it this because it had all our initials and we wanted to seem like our film was made by an independent company. There was no way we could have used  20th Century Fox or Paramount pictures as our thriller was going to be a low budget film. 

However, we were told that it was not very professional for a production company to be someones name and the idea of initials was slightly tacky, so we decided that it was better to use a producer called 'Mike Collins' and another title to be 'In Association with Safari Films and Broadway Entertainmnet'. These sounded more like common production and distrubton companies that you would randomly hear baout or see on trailers or film reviews. The idea of two production companies tells the audience that this film budget is not too much and it is made by an independent company rather than a large .

 

 

SAFARI FILMS/ BROADWAY ENTERTAINMENT