Evaluation Activity 7 (Ciara - 4354)

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?

Evaluation Activity 6 (Ciara - 4354)

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Activity 5 (Ciara, Maria, Jodie)

Evaluation Activity 5

How did you attract/address your audience?
  

  

The main way in which companies attract their audiences to their film product is through public advertisements. This includes using teaser trailers, posters, social media, merchandise, official trailers, premieres etc. The higher the budget in the production process the more extravagant the marketing and distribution the film tends to be.  

Attraction through the storyline: 

We believe one way of attracting our audience is through our storyline. The film is set in modern day London and stars young actors/actresses, which the audience can relate to. The story follows a female antagonist who has, as a result of jealousy, grown obsessed with our main character. Jealousy among teenage girls is very common and we feel it will be a gripping story for the audience to watch as it unfolds.  

Social Media: 

As our target audience is a younger generation, 15 – 25 year olds, we believe a successful source of attracting our audience would be through social media. We identified that a larger number of people would be more likely to use sites such as Facebook and Twitter instead of special blogs and forums.  

As a result of this, we devised a strategy to set up promotion accounts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, they will included a brief outline of our film, as well as, updates, behind the scenes footage, free tickets and competitions to win prizes. Using social media is an effective and inexpensive way of raising awareness for our film and attracting our target audience.   

Use of Visual Advertisements: 

When researching visual advertisement’s we found the following facts: 

·   94% more total views on average are attracted by content containing compelling images than content without images. 

·  37% increase in engagement is experienced when Facebook posts include photographs.  

·   14% increase in page views are seen when press releases contain a photograph.  

Conventions Of A Thriller: 

·                Tension and Suspense 

·                An Antagonist and Protagonist 

·                Devices used to keep the audience guessing 

·                Red herrings – misleading information  

·                Big revelation at the end  

·                Effective use of soundtracks 

·                Build up to a climax 

·                Cliff hangers 

As we only filmed the opening for our thriller we did not want to include all the conventions as we felt it would give too much of the storyline away. If the opening included clues for the ending then the audience may not be as interested in watching the rest of the film to find out what happens

Real movie products usually attract their audiences using marketing campaigns and public advertisements to catch their attention about their film for instance, trailers, and posters. Especially Hollywood films that tend to have a bigger budget to spend on the distribution of the film. Here are two examples of film posters we created in order to attract our audience:

These are some popular film posters that we were inspired by:

After analysing many posters, we found a couple of examples to inspire us for our film poster. ‘House at the End of the Street’ caught our eye when deciding on the style of our poster. We liked the idea of a landscape layout, as it is different to many other posters on the market, therefore would be more appealing to our audience, and break away from the average, mundane posters currently available. Comparing our poster with this one, we found a similar connection. Both female protagonists have a look of concern across their face, which highlights the thriller genre and entices the audience. In addition, we were also influenced by the tag line of this poster as it makes you question what will happen in the film. For this reason, we decided to create a tag line for our poster too. 

Similarly, ‘The Others’ film poster has a female with a worried facial expression which we also decided to use for our film poster, as we saw a pattern occurring when browsing the web for poster ideas. Therefore, we thought our film poster would attract a wide audience, just how these films did. This is a typical convention of a thriller, as it emphasises the stereotypical weak and vulnerable female victim. We also thought the white font on the black background worked well as it stood out, and would attract our target audience. We decided to use a dark background in our poster, as it creates a sinister atmosphere, implying the genre of our film. The title in this poster has an evil and dangerous, by faded the edges slightly, and making it slightly blurred, which we thought would also be effective for our film poster.

MARKETING CAMPAIGN 

Here are some examples of how a distributor may market our thriller film, "UNHINGED"

Getting our film noticed on the go and worldwide.

BILLBOARDS

'UNHINGED' - Billboard are a very effective way of raising awareness for our film.

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY - The worldwide phenomenon film used billboards across the world to advertise.

ADSHELLS 

'UNHINGED' - We feel adshells could be a successful way of attracting an audience

Example - 'FOCUS' is a new film, that is advertised across London on adshells.

Electronic Adverts.

Teaser Trailer

  

Annotating our thriller 

Evaluation Activity 4 (Ciara - 4354)

Who would be the audience for your media product?

The audience for our film opening would be people over the age of 15, in particular, those within the age of 15 to 25. This is because the characters in our opening are in the same age bracket. 

AGE AND GENDER OF AUDIENCE:

In our previous research, we had two possible certificates for our opening, 15 and 18. However, after filming we decided that our film opening would have a certificate of 15. This is because it hints at violence and danger, but isn't brutal enough to be an 18. 

From my past audience research, I interviewed 2 females aged 17 and two males aged 16. Their feedback allowed us to understand what is popular, which would be similar for most teenagers. I found that the main aspect we needed to focus on was creating tension. By doing so, we would successfully grip our audience, which is what they are looking for in a film.

As you can see, I choose to interview both male and females in order to find out if there are any difference between the two of them, and if our film needed to cater for a specific gender, rather than both. However, their answers to our questions were surprisingly similar, therefore we know our film would be suitable for both genders. We ensured the conventions of our thriller opening were versatile as we used both a female victim and a villain. 

SIMILAR THRILLER FILMS? 

'House at the end of the street' has a female victim, similar to how our film does. This conforms to the stereotype of a female victim being vulnerable. As shown in the above, we can see both characters are scared of their current situation. 

We decided to use another female character as our antagonist, which challenges the stereotype. We felt like this would be more interesting and entice a wider range of people to watch our film. 'The Hunger Games' similarly uses a female main character, but one who is strong and confident, which also breaks the stereotype of females being powerless and exposed. Furthermore, we thought using a knife as a prop would also engage the audience more- we got this idea from 'The Hunger Games' as you can see above.

HOW WE TARGETED OUR AUDIENCE:

After taking into account our audience research feedback, and finalising the age rating of 15, we were able to create a list of key features that we needed to include in our opening. This list was made during pre-production and was used during production and post-production to ensured we would meet the expectations of our target audience. I believe this was a successful technique to ensure we included everything that our target audience hoped for.

In terms of technical components, we targeted our audience by creating characters similar to themselves. This was done through the use of costume. Our protagonist is wearing jeans, trainers and a jacket, which is typical of a girl of her girl. This allows the audience to build a connection with the character and engage them more in the film. As well as this, jump cuts were used to keep our audience on the edge of their seats, which was one of our factors on our checklist. This way we wouldn't loose their interest and grips more them.

EXAMPLES OF OUR TARGET AUDIENCE:

We also settled with the fact that our film would be an independent film, therefore a certain group of individuals would watch it. For example, they would possibly have a particular individual style and hobbies. 

Evaluation Activity 3 (Ciara - 4354)

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

I produced a commentary whereby I explain the production and distribution processes and why they are crucial to a film. As well as this, I also discussed what kind of media institution would be best suited for our thriller and compared it to similar real life products.

The order of Titles and Credits of our thriller includes:

- Production company logo

- Distribution company logo

- Producer

- Director

- Title: 'UNHINGED'

- Screenplay

- Costume designs

- Main Actress Protagonist

- Main Actress Antagonist

- Other Main actors

- Lighting Co-ordinator

- Music By

Evaluation Activity 2 (Ciara - 4354)

EVALUATION 2-

HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PATRICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?

The social groups presented in our opening are two 17 year olds; a female protagonist, and a female antagonist.

Because both our protagonist and antagonist are the same age it adds a sense of mystery and concern, which are generic conventions of a thriller. We purposefully choose characters that are the same age as our target audience so the audience feel like they can relate to them.

CHARACTER 1- the protagonist

Our protagonist conforms to their stereotype as she is presented as weak and vulnerable. This is shown through her facial expressions, for example the close up of her face when she is scared, which highlights her vulnerability. The use of Louise’s costume also conforms to the stereotype of a 17 year old girl. She is wearing jeans, trainers and a jacket, which is a common casual outfit choice for a female of that age. Like in this scene, the females are often young bubble blondes. This makes the audience care about the victim more than they would if the victim was an older male and they end up more engrossed in the film which raises tension and suspense, and having the audience care for the characters is an effective way of doing this.

                                   

CHARACTER 2- the antagonist

The common connotations around stalkers is that they are strong and threatening males who are possibly violent. However, we decide to challenge this stereotype and have our stalker (antagonist) as a female character. The reason behind our choice is that we believe it would interest people due to its different outlook and entice people to watch it. The reason as to why she is a girl is revealed in the plot if we were to make the entire film, corresponding to our opening.

We used a knife as a prop to indicate the threat of this stalker. We gathered this idea from the ‘Scream’ movie, whereby the antagonist is also dressed fully in black and uses a knife in certain scenes.

COSTUME COMPARISON:

Since our protagonist is a white female, it adds a sense of innocence and the clothes highlight her femininity as she is y oung, fashionable and girly. The costume conforms to a female character very well as it highlights her as being young, pretty and fashionable, like the characters in these photographs from real movie products (left: 'LOL') 

Although we challenged the stereotype of a male victim by using a female character, we decided it would work best to follow the stereotype of the all black costume, and the typical hood up. This worked well as it created mystery and suspense, as the audience weren’t shown the face of the antagonist. This is done in many thriller films, for instance ‘Scream’. (right)

Evaluation Activity 1 (Ciara, Maria, Jodie)

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

Evaluation Activity 7 (Maria - 4326)

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Evaluation Activity 6 (Maria - 4326)

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Here is a Slideshare i produced explaining what I have learnt during the process of constructing our product.

Evaluation Activity 5 (Maria, Jodie, Ciara)

How did you attract/address your audience?

Evaluation Activity 5

How did you attract/address your audience?
  

  

The main way in which companies attract their audiences to their film product is through public advertisements. This includes using teaser trailers, posters, social media, merchandise, official trailers, premieres etc. The higher the budget in the production process the more extravagant the marketing and distribution the film tends to be.  

Attraction through the storyline: 

We believe one way of attracting our audience is through our storyline. The film is set in modern day London and stars young actors/actresses, which the audience can relate to. The story follows a female antagonist who has, as a result of jealousy, grown obsessed with our main character. Jealousy among teenage girls is very common and we feel it will be a gripping story for the audience to watch as it unfolds.  

Social Media: 

As our target audience is a younger generation, 15 – 25 year olds, we believe a successful source of attracting our audience would be through social media. We identified that a larger number of people would be more likely to use sites such as Facebook and Twitter instead of special blogs and forums.  

As a result of this, we devised a strategy to set up promotion accounts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, they will included a brief outline of our film, as well as, updates, behind the scenes footage, free tickets and competitions to win prizes. Using social media is an effective and inexpensive way of raising awareness for our film and attracting our target audience.   

Use of Visual Advertisements: 

When researching visual advertisement’s we found the following facts: 

·   94% more total views on average are attracted by content containing compelling images than content without images. 

·  37% increase in engagement is experienced when Facebook posts include photographs.  

·   14% increase in page views are seen when press releases contain a photograph.  

Conventions Of A Thriller: 

·                Tension and Suspense 

·                An Antagonist and Protagonist 

·                Devices used to keep the audience guessing 

·                Red herrings – misleading information  

·                Big revelation at the end  

·                Effective use of soundtracks 

·                Build up to a climax 

·                Cliff hangers 

As we only filmed the opening for our thriller we did not want to include all the conventions as we felt it would give too much of the storyline away. If the opening included clues for the ending then the audience may not be as interested in watching the rest of the film to find out what happens

Real movie products usually attract their audiences using marketing campaigns and public advertisements to catch their attention about their film for instance, trailers, and posters. Especially Hollywood films that tend to have a bigger budget to spend on the distribution of the film. Here are two examples of film posters we created in order to attract our audience:

These are some popular film posters that we were inspired by:

After analysing many posters, we found a couple of examples to inspire us for our film poster. ‘House at the End of the Street’ caught our eye when deciding on the style of our poster. We liked the idea of a landscape layout, as it is different to many other posters on the market, therefore would be more appealing to our audience, and break away from the average, mundane posters currently available. Comparing our poster with this one, we found a similar connection. Both female protagonists have a look of concern across their face, which highlights the thriller genre and entices the audience. In addition, we were also influenced by the tag line of this poster as it makes you question what will happen in the film. For this reason, we decided to create a tag line for our poster too. 

Similarly, ‘The Others’ film poster has a female with a worried facial expression which we also decided to use for our film poster, as we saw a pattern occurring when browsing the web for poster ideas. Therefore, we thought our film poster would attract a wide audience, just how these films did. This is a typical convention of a thriller, as it emphasises the stereotypical weak and vulnerable female victim. We also thought the white font on the black background worked well as it stood out, and would attract our target audience. We decided to use a dark background in our poster, as it creates a sinister atmosphere, implying the genre of our film. The title in this poster has an evil and dangerous, by faded the edges slightly, and making it slightly blurred, which we thought would also be effective for our film poster.

MARKETING CAMPAIGN 

Here are some examples of how a distributor may market our thriller film, "UNHINGED"

Getting our film noticed on the go and worldwide.

BILLBOARDS

'UNHINGED' - Billboard are a very effective way of raising awareness for our film.

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY - The worldwide phenomenon film used billboards across the world to advertise.

ADSHELLS 

'UNHINGED' - We feel adshells could be a successful way of attracting an audience

Example - 'FOCUS' is a new film, that is advertised across London on adshells.

Electronic Adverts.

Teaser Trailer

  

Annotating our thriller