Group 3 AS 2014/15

Wednesday, 18 March 2015

Evaluation Activity 4 (Maria - 4326)

Who would be the audience for

your media product?

From previous audience research, we decided that our target audience would be 15-25 year olds. We set this age bracket as we felt the opening to our thriller better suited a younger generation and our research supported this.

Age and gender of our audience?

When researching film certificates, we specifically looked into ratings 15 and 18. The 18 rating would be too high for our thriller as our opening did not contain such offensive scenes and we felt that we would have a greater audience if we lowered our rating to a 15. This proved correct as when we interviewed a typical 16 year old boy we found that he was very interested in many types of thrillers and rating ours 18 would exclude valuable audience members from our film.
However we could not lower our film rated any more as there is hinted violence in the opening that would potentially get stronger throughout the film therefore settled at a 15 rating.

Another reason why our film opening appeals to this target audience is our main characters are around the same age and so our target audience can feel more connected to the characters.
Even though both characters are female and this could limit our film to the female gender, however as the villain breaks the stereotype of a 'weak and vulnerable' female, this makes our film more interesting to watch and appeal to all genders.

17 Year old audience member.

20 Year old audience member.

How have we targeted our audience?

When interviewing a 16 year old boy in our target audience, he mentioned that the reason why he was enticed to thrillers was the opening gripped him from the start keeping him interested throughout. He also liked how the opening raised questions such as who was the villain?, why where they there? etc. This is a common thriller convention and in this way will target our audience as we found out that this was the most popular type of thriller in this age group male or female, as we interviewed 4 different types of people who all had similar views.

Through technical aspects we targeted our audience as our main characters costume is similar to the typical audience member. Through props, a dog is also a common possession of a young adult. The editing, (quick jump cuts) and varied camera angles such as panning grip our young audience. The soundtrack also adds gripping nature.

Similar thriller films?

The Hunger Games is a real life product that has similarities with our thriller. The main character in the hunger games is a strong dominant female which breaks the stereotype of a vulnerable shy girl just like our female antagonist. This thriller also appeals to our target audience and this idea of a powerful female would entice a greater audience to our film as it is different than the conventional stalker thriller.

On the other hand, the conventional stereotype in our thriller of a weak female victim is also shown. Films such as Scream, Psycho, The Twilight Saga and Taken are all examples of successful films that have used the stereotype of a vulnerable female character. Scream also features a blonde victim just like our protagonist is blonde.

(Female Victims, Above: Psycho, Below: Taken.)

Evaluation Activity 3 (Maria - 4326)

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

I created my own directors commentary where I discuss the elements of the production and distribution process, why it is important and what kind of media institution would fit our thriller. I also talk about the titles and credits and how they compare our thriller with 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 (Maria - 4326)

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

First Character: The Protagonist:

Our female protagonist represents stereotypical social groups of age and gender. The female stereotype of a vulnerable, girly and weak victim is clearly used and shown in our opening. Her teenage age also connotes to this stereotype and represents how this character is too young to take care/protect herself. Here is a similar example from the film taken.

Close up Shot of protagonist in our thriller.

Close up shot of protagonist in Silence of the lambs.

Here camera shots are also used to portray the despair and vulnerable state of our victim. The close up shot lets the audience see this and as our character is of similar age to our target audience, our target audience can also relate to her despair. These camera angles are commonly used in thrillers such as 'Silence of the Lambs' and 'House at the end of the Street'.

Close up of Protagonist in our thriller.

Close up Shot of Protagonist in House at the End of the street.

Second Character: The Antagonist:

Our second character however breaks the female stereotype of weakness as our antagonist is female. This role is usually associated with males as the stereotype of males suggest they are stronger, bigger and more violent. As we challenge the stereotype, it makes our thriller stand out and the audience is intrigued as to what happened in the past to lead our female antagonist to follow the protagonist,

Dark lighting of Setting (alleyway) and antagonist in Batman Begins.

Dark lighting of Setting (alleyway) and antagonist in our thriller.

We added to the thrill of our opening by filming at night as a dark setting is typical in a tense scene. It also broke the stereotype that females are 'girly' or 'weak' as it made our female antagonist look scarier, creepier and in control. The hooded costume is commonly used in films when there is a stalker following a victim. This also added to the scary look of our antagonist.

Hooded figure follows characters in Now you see me.

Our Hooded antagonist in our thriller.

How have we represented gender, ethnicity and age in our thriller?

Evaluation Activity 1 (Maria, Jodie, Ciara)

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

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

Evaluation Activity 7 (Jodie - 4406)

Evaluation Activity 7

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 (Jodie - 4406)

Evaluation Activity 6

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

Evaluation Activity 5 (Jodie, Maria, Ciara)

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